Pokemon S01E44-45 Review: Pop Idol Balloon Baby

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 44: The Problem with Paras; Episode 45: The Song of Jigglypuff

Episode 44 is... it's a pretty bland filler episode, yeah? There are some fun moments in it, for sure, but it honestly feels pretty dang bland. Our heroes arrive on the town-of-the-week and discover the character-of-the-week, a lady that runs traditional Chinese medicine shop, Kiyomi (Cassandra). And as the title of the episode would tell you, she owns a Paras! I understand that the actual parasitic nature of Paras and Parasect's pokedex entries is something horrifying and never going to see any anime adaptation, but they just sort of reduce Paras into, well, a drug-generating mushroom. There should probably be discussions on how ethical it is to evolve Paras into Parasect just to make use of its bigger mushroom, and considering how the anime tends to have the conception that evolution isn't always the best for a Pokemon, it's... it's bizarre to have practically everyone being so gung-ho about getting Paras to evolve. Also, Meowth is sick, and ends up falling in love with Kiyomi after she cures him with her medicine, and it's... it's honestly just bizarre and nowhere as funny as the show thinks it is.

The actual scene of our heroes being real confused at how to get Paras to actually win in a fight and get enough EXP Points to evolve is fun, though, as everyone keeps struggling with just how utterly weak Paras is. A teenie-tiny 10 volt shock from Pikachu sends Paras falling down, and even Squirtle's water gun causes Paras to faint. And Ash, bloody genius that he is, sends out a fire-breathing dragon, Charmeleon, to attack Paras. Charmeleon burns Paras and Ash, and is only taken out when Pikachu knocks it out with a thunderbolt. Koyomi's grandmother helpfully tells us that apparently Charmeleon's too strong for Ash, and won't listen to orders. Ah, teenage rebellion.

Far more charming, of course, is Team Rocket's attempt to 'train' Paras, with the love-struck Meowth straight up just defeating poor Arbok and Weezing in order to build up Paras's confidence. Jessie and James are so supportive and hammy, too! Also love the gag where Meowth off-handedly notes how Arbok and Weezing's specialty is losing.

Paras later catches up with our heroes, and Pikachu does the same "oh no you poked me I have lost", complete with an adorable white flag. And Ash, brilliant dumbass that he is, sends out Charmeleon again, forgetting he has at least three other obedient Pokemon. Kid's... not very smart, isn't he? Team Rocket ends up getting roasted alive for the crime of showing up to cheer Paras, and while Ash yells at Charmeleon to stop... and Paras accidentally scores a victory by poking Charmeleon in the gut? What, is that his weak tickle-spot or something? Paras then evolves into Parasect and sleep powders Charmeleon out.

Overall, it's... it's filler-y, but definitely has its moments.

Episode 45 is the introduction of a huge, huge aspect of the Kanto and Johto seasons that I genuinely loved! Sure, Jigglypuff is going to be overused to hell particularly in Orange Islands and Johto seasons, but in this episode, Jigglypuff is genuinely adorable, and the animators clearly had a lot of fun animating this lively little purple pudding-balloon. From the crying Jigglypuff to the pissed-off Jigglypuff to the mean dynamic kick Jigglypuff, we get a lot of great faces from this expressive Pokemon, and I am so glad we got to see a whole lot more of Jigglypuff as one of Pokemon's longer-running recurring characters.

The actual plot of this episode is... it's not that good. The random injection of this "town without sleep" where it's basically Las Vegas, but everyone is irritable because they don't sleep, is laughably random and nonsensical even by Pokemon standards, we're quickly introduced to Jigglypuff! Who's apparently lost her confidence to sing or something? Misty attempts to capture Jigglypuff, but after causing Jigglypuff to cry by lobbing Staryu at her, they forget all about the capturing and is instead caught up with the "we gotta help this critter!" mentality. All the while Jigglypuff is just making some of the greatest expressions, being pissed off, then frustrated, and later sneaks around and drop-kicks Pikachu right in his fool head! Jigglypuff is such an asshat, but she's also so adorable that I don't care. Hell, it's actually implied that Jigglypuff really hates putting any sort of effort into things, which is just so hilariously relatable.

Team Rocket randomly shows up and does this... this insanely weird non-sequitur of a fake karaoke sequence, before being sent blasting off again. Our heroes try to get the reluctant Jigglypuff to sing, first with singing exercises and later with a balloon (???) and a throat-cleansing berry of sorts. Jigglypuff eventually sings, and whichever version you listen to, we actually get a pretty neat and pretty well-done song. Sadly, poor Jigglypuff doesn't realize that her songs will cause people to fall asleep, and she goes around stealing a marker from our heroes and just doodles on all their faces. Ah, the start of a soon-to-be-tired gag! It's actually funny in this one.

After everyone wakes up, angry Jigglypuff tries and fails to sing, and fails to get a crowd to stay awake. Our heroes' Pokemon all fall asleep (even Staryu!), and even dumb old Psyduck falls asleep with his eyes open. They get the idea to bring Jigglypuff to the conveniently nearby town where no one sleeps, and we get a hilarious moment where Team Rocket pulls out a gigantic punk rock stage out of their asses, cosplay as rockstar punks, and plans to use Jigglypuff to put the entire town to sleep while they wear earplugs.

Of course, the predictable happens and Jigglypuff causes everyone to sleep and doodles on everyone's face. And with sleep, the jackasses living in Fake Las Vegas suddenly all become polite and start apologizing with each other. Honestly, taken at face value, the episode's honestly kinda bad... but Jigglypuff's so adorable and fun that I don't really care, and I really, really loved that Jigglypuff goes around following our heroes after this, marker in hand. 

Pokemon Index:

• Episode 44:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Meowth, Paras, Squirtle, Charmeleon, Arbok, Weezing, Parasect, Persian
• Humans: Ash, Brock, Misty, Jessie, James
• Episode 45:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Meowth, Jigglypuff, Psyduck, Staryu, Weezing, Arbok, Bulbasaur, Onix, Squirtle, Pidgeotto, . A lot of Pokemon appear with stock art in James' fantasy.
• Humans: Misty, Ash, Brock, Officer Jenny, James, Jessie

Random Notes:

• Apparently the show-writers just completely forgot about Misty's bug phobia, huh.
• Apparently, the bizarre, abstract nature of experience points ends up being awarded if you are declared a winner and feel victorious? So if that's the case, why not just have all your pokemon pretend to faint against each other? Silly anime logic. 
• It's very interesting that the Generation II games would actually introduce actual "traditional medicine" items to heal your Pokemon. I'm not sure if they took inspiration from this episode, or vice versa. 
• That bizarre fake-karaoke sequence with Team Rocket in episode 45 is certainly an acid trip, huh. 
• The melody of Jigglypuff's song, be it the Japanese or English versions, is actually extrapolated from the jingle that plays from the Sing attack in the original Red/Blue/Green games. It's amazing. 
• I do like the little detail that Ash doesn't send out Charmeleon in episode 45. He's dumb, but he's learning. Or maybe the animators forgot about Charmeleon, since they sure forgot about everyone in Brock's team other than Onix.
• Dub Changes:
• Bizarrely, episode 44 basically has Team Rocket pretending to be travelling superheroes throughout the entire episode, whereas in the original Japanese they just claim to be travelers. I guess they want to "explain" the random hammy bit of James and Jessie posing with traditional Japanese outfits?
• The 'gross traditional medicine' that the old lady offers Ash was Magikarp whiskers in the original, and snake-root in the dub. 
• Meowth's plan involves actually becoming a literal lucky beckoning cat in the original Japanese. The scene where Meowth turns into a beckoning cat doll is cut, and the dub makes him out to be a mascot. 
• Pikachu is told to use a "10 Volt" attack as opposed to "10 Thousand Volts", the Japanese name of Thunderbolt. The dub changes this to a fun "Teenie Static Bolt".
• Some international broadcast versions of episode 45 cuts out the scene of Jessie being picked up and spanked by the huge woman.