Pokemon S01E39-40 Review: Let's Go Pikachu! Let's Go Eevee!

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 39: Pikachu's Goodbye / Forest of Pikachu; Episode 40: The Battling Eevee Brothers

Well, it's been some time since we got a proper "review two episodes at once" segment, huh? Mostly that's because I always tended to find something interesting to ramble about the episodes. And the relatively large amount of banned episodes recently also means that I have a fair bit to discuss. These two, though... yeah. Episode 39 is an utterly bland episode that is basically the anime equivalent of a clickbait title. Oh, no, "Pikachu's goodbye?" And basically our heroes stumble upon a random forest of Pikachus, who distrust humans. Ash's Pikachu befriends them and we get a long sequence of our Pikachu jumping into a river to save a smaller Pikachu, and are subsequently pulled up by the rest of the Pikachu horde, earning their friendship. It's all pretty sweet and the Pikachu's voice acting is neat, but everything is paced so utterly slowly that there's genuinely nothing interesting to talk about.

At around when you expect them to, Team Rocket shows up, makes some generic dialogue and catches the entire swarm with a net, and the Pikachus bite through the rope and escape. Then we get the fake-outs of Ash looking at the Pikachus being happy together, and decide to leave Pikachu behind for his own happiness, and runs away while crying and surrounded by flashbacks. This bit was actually emotional in the original Japanese, with Satoshi clearly putting up a brave front, but I remembered the English dub was done with such little emotion that this entire episode is honestly minimal-effort and easily one of the most flat-out boring episodes in the original series.

Part of it is because of the fact that this episode was apparently cobbled together so the series can restart after a hiatus with a big Pikachu-centric one (and only having two Pokemon run around, as well as a lack of any significant animation effects, really points to this episode being done cheaply), which we'll cover below... but it still doesn't change the fact that the episode kinda sucks.

Episode 40 is the Eevee one, and it has a special place in my heart for being the very first Pokemon episode I've ever seen. I'm not 100% clear if my parents brought me the games first, or if I was already aware of the franchise from the aggressive merchandising and advertising, but I am definitely sure that this episode was my first introduction to the anime, and not, oh, the Pikachu one. This is a pretty fun episode, and features a whole lot of Pokemon, and a fun little standalone plot focusing on Eevee. And... I obviously really love this episode enough to check out the 30+ episodes that happened before it, and continued watching Pokemon regularly up until the Johto seasons. While I didn't really follow the anime all that often afterwards, I remained a massive fan of the games and the manga, and, as evidenced by the sheer amount of Pokemon content on this blog, up until this day. So thank you, "Battling Eevee Brothers", for bringing me into this madcap universe.

The episode starts off relatively simple, with our heroes stumbling upon an Eevee chained to a tree, and in an attempt to return it to its owners (there's an adorable dog tag!) they come across a huge mansion on the bottom of Mt. Evolution, where evolutionary stones are mined. We get the obligatory "explain the game mechanics to us" introdump by the three brothers, who have one of each of Eevee's first-generation evolutions, Flareon, Vaporeon and Jolteon. Meanwhile, the youngest brother, Eevee's owner, doesn't actually want to evolve Eevee and doesn't want to pick sides on any of his three brothers. It's a nice, little moral of forging your own path, not succumbing to peer pressure or familial obligations if you really don't want to, and I actually appreciate the subtle touch of having Misty (who has three identical-looking asshole siblings of her own) be the one to sit down and have a cheerful little talk with Mikey/Taichi. Not evolving your Pokemon is actually kinda foolish in the games, but it definitely works in the vein of the in-universe world. It's also fun to see Pikachu pika-pika ing at Eevee, telling Eevee that it's okay to remain as he is or whatever, which is neat.

I also really love the setting of the mansion, with the show writers actually doing their research for once and populating the party with actual Pokemon that evolves with evolutionary stones. Having a Victreebel and Vileplume hang out in that fountain-pool is also a hilarious visual image. We get the older brothers trying to get Ash and Brock to evolve their Pikachu and Vulpix respectively, and we get some interesting replies. Ash, of course, has already gone through that whole storyline in the Vermilion City episode, while Brock notes that Vulpix is technically 'on loan' to him. It is interesting that Misty doesn't actually bring up her Starmie as a counterpoint to make evolution not always be a bad thing, but eh.

And we get Team Rocket arriving to steal everything there! The Pokemon, the stones, and the food! Especially the food, which they gobble down in the midst of their motto. One Weezing smokescreen later, which is blown away by Pidgeotto, and Team Rocket's absconded with everything valuable there. There's a nice little bait-and-switch as Pidgeotto attacks the hot-air balloon, only to find out that it's a decoy.

I absolutely remember my first exposure to Weezing in this episode, which is the first (and frankly, only) Pokemon not readily based on a real-life animal or plant. Like, I saw Horsea and went "cute, a seahorse" and Eeevee and went "cute, a fox baby" and Pidgeotto and went "cute, a bird", and then Weezing shows up and little me went all "whaaaat the fuuuuck?" That's a good WTF, by the way, because I think that's what made the Pokemon universe look so appealing to me. It's not just weird fire foxes and electric mice, there are clearly far more bizarre monsters running around.

Aaanyway, Horsea, who got a fair bit of screentime earlier in the episode (is this the first time he's shown up since his debut?) shoots out ink from the cage he's in to let our heroes follow them. Everyone catches up to Team Rocket, and after a bit of comedy involving Psyduck's water gun being kind of a disappointment (he is trying his best!) we get the Eevee brothers showing off the Eeveelutions fighting off against Arbok and Weezing.

And it's pretty neat! Arbok's poison sting faces off against Jolteon's pin missile, and Vaporeon uses an ability that its trainer had boasted about before by disappearing in water to baffle Weezing (who also tries his best to vomit sludge onto the lake) and sucker-tackling him, and Flareon uses Fire Spin to trap Team Rocket. But in a surprising turn of events, Team Rocket just fucking refuses to go down. In the original Japanese, this was because they are obsessed with the pun of Eevee and Victory, and keeps ranting about how they'll achieve victory. And Arbok and Weezing actually got to do some badass moments, actually taking down the Eeveelutions in combat! This is honestly a far better showing for the two Team Rocket Pokemon than their actual evolution episode, honestly... and while this episode's pretty busy as it is, wouldn't Ekans and Weezing's evolution be better placed here?

Hell, even Pikachu walking out of the sidelines and zapping Team Rocket is still not enough to cause them to blast off, and it's Eevee that charges in with a "Rage Tackle" to send them blasting off. For... for some reason. I guess the others weakened Team Rocket enough for Eevee to win? It's not like it's a "oh, it learned attacks it wouldn't otherwise have learned" situation like Pikachu and Raichu. We get a fun little resolution to the brothers accepting Taichi's choice very happily, and Brock and Pikachu pull off a fun little zen proverb thing that's actually quite hilarious.

Still, it's ultimately a pretty fun episode with a nice little theme of evolution and choice and whatnot. The episode itself is also genuinely structured well, with a lot of great moments and comedic beats from the Pokemon themselves. Psyduck, Pikachu, Horsea, Eevee and Weezing all get of nice little expressions and animations, and just going pretty quickly in showcasing the Pokemon honestly does make this episode a pretty exciting one to watch.

Pokemon Index:

• Episode 39:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Meowth
• Humans: Misty, Brock, Ash, Jessie, James
• Episode 40:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Eevee, Flareon, Vaporeon, Jolteon, Poliwhirl, Poliwrath, Cloyster, Vileplume, Starmie, Victreebel, Exeggutor, Raichu, Ninetales, Meowth, Vulpix, Horsea, Psyduck, Weezing, Pidgeotto, Squirtle, Arbok
• Humans: Misty, Ash, Brock, Jessie, James

Assorted Notes:

• So "Forest of Pikachu" was not included in the original schedule before the hiatus that the series took after the Porygon incident. Some episodes were shuffled around (two of them were removed from the regular listing of episodes and aired as a special two-parter because they were pretty Christmas-y). When the show was approved on air again, this episode appeared out of nowhere despite there being no indication of its existence before. 
• After Team Rocket finishes their motto in the Japanese version, James bombastically announces a 'thank-you' to the millions of fans in Japan for their support, and that this victory is for them, a sneaky little fourth-wall breaking to the fans clamouring for the show to return after the Porygon incident. 
• Nearly every single pokemon that could evolve in the first-generation games with an evolution stone that you can buy in the market shows up in this episode other than Arcanine, and the ones that require the Moon Stone to evolve. The Moon Stone is not a stone you can purchase readily in the first-generation games, though, and is always treated as something special.  
• Psyduck is hilarious in episode 40, first happily nom-ing on the sandwich that Misty was about to give Taichi, trying and failing to water-gun Team Rocket, and later on taking the photograph but tripping on his face. Poor Psyduck!
• "Oh no, Jessie evolved into a Flareon/Booster" is something I found so god-damned funny and I don't know why. 
• Among the party's food is a real-world lobster that James is clearly holding up. 
• Dub Changes:
• The flashback scenes in the dub of episode 39 were completely changed around, instead of being in chronological order like the Japanese version. 
• As mentioned before, for whatever reason (it's a joke that could translate perfectly), Team Rocket is obsessed with how Eevee's name contains "V" in it, which is why they spend the entire episode calling themselves the "lovely victory" team (as opposed to their usual moniker of "lovely charm-y"). 
• Jessie calls Misty a "flat-chested girl" when they confront each other in the climax, which was cut fro the dub. 
• "Rage Tackle Attack" isn't an attack in the games, of course, but the original line was actually "do a tackle of rage", so it's actually a relatively accurate translation of the original Japanese line.