Pokemon S01E35 Review: Guns, Guns Everywhere [Banned Episode #2]

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 35: The Legend of Dratini

Ah, another banned episode. We'll see another one pretty soon, I believe. And this episode finally have our heroes arrive at the real Safari Zone, a place to capture Pokemon to your heart's content. We get Ash and Misty singing to the tune of the game boy music pretty badly until we reach the warden's house, and Warden Clint Eastwood Kaiser straight-up just pulls out a revolver and aims it at our heroes. And this is why this episode is banned. Kaiser here is so trigger-happy with his gun, "the Thunderbolt", and keeps pulling out his guns and jamming it into people's faces that got this episode banned from international broadcasting.

After a surprisingly game-accurate information dump about the Safari Zone rules, Ash and company are about to leave this crazy gun-toting grandpa and go off to play the Safari Zone game... until Misty sees a picture of a young Warden Kaiser with a Dratini, who's a super rare Pokemon. Kaiser gets so freaked out and keeps shouting that there is no Dratini to be found in this goddamn Safari Zone, and hides the picture while screaming.

If you didn't want the Dratini to be found, why the fuck do you put the picture in the lobby where anyone can see it? And also, why open the Safari Zone to the public at all? Stupid triggerhappy fool.

In a neat bit, Ash just straight up calls Professor Oak, who gives the information dump that apparently Kaiser was the person who first discovered Dratini, and the news that the legendary Pokemon is in Safari Zone causes so many trainers to enter the Safari Zone, wrecking the place and capturing so many of the other Pokemon in the place, which in turn is why the 30-balls rule is established. It's... it's kind of a realistic thing that would happen in the world of Pokemon really, and fits with why the Safari Zone has such unique rules. Of course, right after Oak condemns how overhunting/overcatching Pokemon is bad... he tells Ash to catch more Pokemon.

And then Team Rocket shows up, and I absolutely find it hilarious that halfway through their motto, Kaiser just straight up unloads his guns on Team Rocket. What the shit! We get a hilarious gag of them jumping off and James' parachute deploying too late, and Jessie ends up challenging Ash into a challenge to capture as many Pokemon under the Safari Zone rules. And this is where Ash and Brock catch a pair of the stampeding Tauros in the Zone. And when Ash attempts to catch a Rhyhorn... the Tauros herd runs past again.

This is where Ash gets his herd of 30 Tauroses, which, for those who watched the English dub, just sort of appeared randomly. Honestly, considering that Ash tried to catch a Tauros in the Pokemon race episode, couldn't we have had a throwaway line or two where they said they were given Tauros or something? I dunno.

Meanwhile, Team Rocket's threatening the warden, somehow overpowering him off-screen and is now threatening him with his own gun, demanding to know where Dratini is. This scene is reasonably fun, too. When threats from a gun and a giant purple cobra doesn't work, Jessie attempts to use her womanly charms, and Kaiser actually starts to fall for it until she goes into the ganguro getup from the St. Anne episode, which is not Kaiser's type, apparently. Meowth and James then do a good cop/bad cop parody, complete with music provided by a radio and the offering of food... but the thing that breaks Kaiser is a tickle torture machine.

Meanwhile, as our heroes try to fish and capture a Pokemon with Misty's special lures, the three of them try to reel in a particularly big catch -- although that particular scene with Misty's expression really makes it look like Brock's got fingers where he's probably not supposed to...

Their attempt to catch Gyarados is interrupted by the Kaiser coming in and asking for their help to protect Dratini. Apparently Dratini is in the Valley of Dragons (gee, apparently all the other pokemon trainers who came to Safari Zone are dumbasses). Not sure how Kaiser got there, but hey. Meowth and James's attempt to use the diving suits connected by pipes to an air source ends up being foiled when Jessie accidentally cuts off their oxygen supply, and Meowth ends up wanting to throw a bomb into the lake to flush out all the water Pokemon.

And then we get a hilariously over-dramatic action scene where Kaiser swims into the lake after the bomb, and then Ash swims into the lake after the bomb and Kaiser, telling everyone that 'justice will prevail' despite Misty's reservations. Misty sends Staryu to help Ash out... and then Ash tells Staryu to rescue Kaiser and only Kaiser? Really silly that Misty forgot she has like four other water Pokemon, too. Ash actually freaking chokes and drowns, and if not for the help of Dratini's mother, a Dragonair, Ash would've died right there. Instead, Dragonair allows Ash to ride her, changes the water and creates a whirlpool and a waterspout, before allowing Ash to throw the bomb at Team Rocket, sending them blasting off again. Kaiser thanks Dragonair, who is the older form of the Dratini he met when he was younger, while Ash sends 30 Tauros to Pallet Town to trample poor, poor Professor Oak.

So, overall, how does this episode actually stack up? It's... it's honestly a pretty generic episode, and if not for Tauros showing up randomly later on in the series, the absence of this episode wouldn't have been felt at all. The episode itself is also filled with a bunch of plot holes, and Kaiser's a pretty unlikable asshat even without the gun-waving. I do appreciate the adaptation of the Safari Zone from the games, though. It's... it's honestly a pretty all right episode, but looking at it now, it really feels pretty average.

Pokemon Index:

• Pokemon: Rhyhorn, Tauros, Nidoran Female, Nidorina, Nidorino, Pikachu, Dratini, Rhydon, Meowth, Arbok, Gyarados, Slowpoke, Poliwag, Goldeen, Horsea, Magikarp, Staryu, Dragonair
• Humans: Misty, Brock, Ash, Warden Kaiser, Professor Oak, James, Jessie

Assorted Notes:

• This episode actually tries to relatively faithfully adapt the gimmick of the original Safari Zone. You're limited to thirty Pokeballs, and you can't battle them with your own. The fishing rod from the games, a pretty important facet of Pokemon capturing, also makes an appearance in this episode as part of the Safari Zone kit.
• Impressively, all of the Pokemon featured here are indeed Pokemon you could find in the Safari Zone, even if Tauros is actually one of the 1% rare encounters as opposed to having gigantic herds running around.
• I thought that Brock caught a Tauros too, but apparently only Ash registered for the Safari Zone game, so that Tauros that Brock captured ends up becoming one of Ash's 30 Tauros. 
• Dratini and Dragonair are referred to as 'legendary' Pokemon several times in the episode, even if they're not technically counted as actual legendaries.
• The Ban:
• Yeah, this episode ends up becoming one of the episodes in Pokemon's shortlist of banned episodes, in almost all countries outside of Japan (mostly because most other countries dub over the English-dubbed ones). The main reason being the fact that Warden Kaiser is a very trigger-happy man who dual-wields revolvers and keeps sticking it in Ash's face; and later on, Jessie and James sticks the revolvers in Kaiser's face. There are several arguments on why this episode is banned, and some others where firearms are featured are not. Episode 12 (the Squirtle one) features Team Rocket robbing a store with a machinegun and a bazooka and the previous episode features James and officer Jenny both wielding rifles, with Jenny specifically pointing her rifle at Ash. And that's not to mention the various other episodes that feature Team Rocket with a bazooka (on top of my head, this includes the Tentacruel episode, the Gastly episode and the Bill episode). I guess the real reason is the sheer amount of scenes, as well as the fact that revolvers are involved as opposed to the theoretically harder-for-kids-to-come-by machineguns and bazookas? The counter-argument to that is that episode 54 features a burglar with a handgun. I've also seen people noting how the guns in episode 12 are quickly established to be fake guns that shoot party favours, while in the Kangaskhan episode, James' gun is noted to be a tranquilizer rifle while officer Jenny's was not fired.
• I'm honestly baffled why they don't just try and edit out the guns, because 4Kids certainly is happy to do so for One Piece episodes. Or pretend that the gun is a toy gun or a laser gun or something. Or cut out some of the offending scenes, replacing them with repeated footage or something. I dunno. 
• Whatever the case, this episode was never dubbed, and is currently on the very short list of banned episodes that will never see the light of day, with the other episodes on the ban-list being the world-famous Porygon episode, and the Ice Cave episode from the Johto season that prominently featured Jynx. "Beauty and the Beach", as noted before, had the dub lines recorded, and would be released way later with James' scenes cut as a 'lost episode'. At around the Orange Islands and Johto seasons, Pokemon would become known as an international brand, and the Japanese showmakers will try their best to try and fit their show for international audiences. 
• Despite the ban, though, the English dub did use footage from this episode as part of the PokeRap.