Pokemon S01E51-52 Review: Onion Frog Society

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 51: Bulbasaur's Secret Garden; Episode 52: Princess vs. Princess

We're back with Pokemon! A couple of episodes, anyway -- I think my mistake when I first covered the first 50 episodes of Pokemon was I really tried to go too much, too fast. Better to just watch at my own pace and enjoy the sights, yeah? "Bulbasaur's Secret Garden" is a pretty fun, chill episode, even if it does admittedly raise a whole lot of questions. Evolution in the anime has always been a bit of an interesting pickle, because, of course, what form of the Pokemon our main characters will be using throughout their journey through the anime is going to depend wholly on what the marketing department decides to push. In this case, clearly, Bulbasaur is another one that the marketing deparment decided that, hey, merchandise of the far cuter looking Bulbasaur is definitely going to sell a lot more than the far more toad-like Venusaur. (Clearly these people are assholes, Venusaur is a good boy). This does lead to some inconsistency on our characters' behaviour, though -- Ash and company absolutely respect the decision to keep Pikachu, Bulbasaur and that one Eevee and have them not evolve as this "yeah, respect your choice, awesome!" routine, but also, within the span of episodes, are all super excited when Caterpie and Charmander reach their respective final evolutions.

Of course, they had to make a whole episode about it, which is nice -- I always do like episodes that give one of the non-Pikachu party members some spotlight, particularly in these earlier seasons. After a battle with some random trainer and his Rhyhorn, Ash's wounded Bulbasaur seems to begin to convulse, like something's wrong with him. Turns out that there's nothing wrong, other than the bump on his head, which ends up with Bulbasaur getting a little bandage that differentiates him from the other Bulbasaur. It's just that age for Bulbasaur to evolve! And over the course of the episode, we learn that apparently, for Bulbasaurs, this is a phenomenon that is triggered by weather and we get to see the location around the pokemon center have plants and flowers that bloom.

It is admittedly a simple, but pretty interesting, way to give these Pokemon some sort of... I wouldn't say society, but certainly some lore. Apparently these Bulbasaurs will gather in a secret garden where a Venusaur will preside over a mass evolution of many Bulbasaurs into Ivysaurs. A garden that's covered with walls of vines to keep out intruders. And... as interesting as this is, and as cool as the visuals are, we never get a whole ton of explanation. Is this just a phenomenon localized to the Bulbasaurs of this area? Or are there just a bunch of Venusaurs located in different places all over the world, with their own secret gardens? We do get some pretty visuals of the flowers blooming and whatnot, but it does carry the odd little implication that for Bulbasaurs, their evolution seem to depend more on the location and season more than actual experience, something that the episode just sort of glosses over.

What is probably the episode's biggest weakness, though, is definitely that we don't really learn anything about Bulbasaur's decision. Pikachu's refusal to evolve into Raichu stemmed from pride and a fear of changing, but while Bulbasaur and Pikachu had that adorable little pokemon-speech talk, we never really learn just why Bulbasaur is so adamant at not evolving, other than the fact that he was basically abducted by his Bulbasaur brethren and dragged to the mysterious garden against his will.

The episode eventually has Ash show up and take a blow launched by the asshole Venusaur and give a speech about, hey, let his pet onion frog be a non-conformist if he wants to, god damn it. Then Team Rocket shows up with their silly balloon and everything... and because of rule of drama, none of the dozens of Ivysaurs or the giant, ancient Venusaur is able to do a damn thing until Bulbasaur unlocks Solar Beam, unleashing it to blow up Team Rocket's balloon. It is admittedly a pretty damn badass moment, though watching it again and not going "oh what is this cool thing Bulbasaur is doing?" does make me frown a little.

Overall, still kind of a solid episode, but one that I wished they had put more thought into planning and plotting. The visuals and concept are pretty neat, though, and as a huge Bulbasaur fanboy I am happy for anything that gives us more Bulbasaur.

Episode 52 is honestly kind of an underwhelming episode, and that's before you factor in the insane amount of edits that the English dub made to basically hide the fact that it's meant to be a celebration of Hinamatsuri, a cultural holiday in Japan that's basically translated as either Girl's Day or Doll's Day, celebrating young girls. The Hina doll set prominently featured in this episode is something that a lot of girls get in this celebration, which depicts a seated male and female dolls (usually meant to represent the Emperor and Empress).

And... well, it's basically a general "holiday episode", y'know? Except that we've got a Pokemon tournament thrown into this one, as well as Jessie randomly catching a Lickitung, which sort-of-but-not-really became the focus of the episode. It basically got a scene showing Jessie's capture, and later on ends up being the 'final boss' in the tournament. As far as the debut of what's technically a recurring character, it's honestly a pretty bland debut. It's a better one than what Arbok and Weezing got, though, admittedly, where Lickitung at least got to be some sort of an obstacle, but also... eh?

We basically start off the episode with a bunch of exposition on what Hinamatsuri (or Princess Day, as it's known in the dub), then a bunch of "oh, girl stuff, ha ha" with Jessie and Misty pontificating about how great Hinamatsuri is, how girls get discounted or free stuff, how they can shop... before, of course, the Lickitung capture, and the subsequent glaring-daggers contest as Misty and Jessie end up entering a competition to obtain a set of princess dolls.

The actual competition is kind of neat, even if we had to fudge over Misty and Jessie strong-arming their male companions' Pokemon, as well as giving a sob-story about how they totally deserve to win the hina doll/princess figures because Jessie's just straight-up poor while Misty was the unfavourite child. The actual Pokemon battle tournament mostly deals with a montage of still frames, but I am pretty happy to see that the episodes are starting to be more comfortable rapid-fire showing us a bunch of Pokemon. Some neat little features of the tournament include a surprisingly competent Arbok taking out Primeape with poison, as well as Bulbasaur's one-man-show against that Kingler lady.

Of course, the actual conclusion of the episode is a bit... eh? Pikachu basically one-shots Arbok, Weezing and Meowth in a funny rapid-fire gag, and then Lickitung shows up and is able to paralyze all of Misty's party with its tongue. Team Rocket's about to win with their badass new Pokemon, right? until Psyduck pops out, and the two dumbos just stare at each other, ignoring their trainers. Because... of reasons? Eventually, Lickitung licking Psyduck causes Psyduck to unleash a psychic blast that sends Team Rocket blasting off again. Okay, then.

There's also this bizarre running gag with an overly-excited announcer and an idol called Fiorella Cappuccino, which, in the original Japanese, was meant to be a homage to Japanese celebrity Kimura Takuya of SMAP... but all of it sort of ended up falling flat in the dub -- and I didn't bother to look up how this was handled in the original Japanese, but I bet it featured better voice acting, because even by minor-character-in-the-dub standards, Mr. Cappuccino had a particularly bad voice.

I did remember this episode the most because it came up in a discussion in my high school literature class, where a classmate used this episode as an example of protagonist-centered morality, because, shit, Jessie didn't even do any crimes in this episode, and is just being competitive because she didn't even have the chance to own the set of dolls -- and while Misty getting hand-me-downs is kind of shitty, too, Jessie and Team Rocket gets treated particularly poorly, getting blasted off and whatnot just because they are the designated villain. At least James and Meowth decide to cheer Jessie up by dressing up for her, which is very sweet.

Overall, though, if we're being pretty damn honest, it's honestly a pretty forgettable episode.

Pokemon Index:

• Episode 51:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Rhyhorn, Bulbasaur, Chansey, Meowth, Venusaur, Ivysaur
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, Nurse Joy, Jessie, James
• Episode 52:
• Pokemon: Meowth, Pikachu, Lickitung, Arbok, Bulbasaur, Vulpix, Kingler, Pinsir, Cubone, Raticate, Primeape, Weezing, Fearow, Graveler, Tangela, Machoke, Parasect, Psyduck
• Humans: Misty, Jessie, James, Brock, Ash

Random Notes:

• The title of episode 51 is actually a pun on Bulbasaur's Japanese name -- Fushigidane is a pun on fushigi (mysterious), which, of course, doesn't translate to English. 
• Episode 51 marks the first time that Pikachu does imitations and impressions to communicate with human characters, briefly imitating Bulbasaur.
• It is pretty damn hilarious that Team Rocket's suction was strong enough to even start to lift up the 100-kg Venusaur, but the three human kids, and Ash's Bulbasaur? Nope, their legs are firmly planted on the ground. 
• Episode 52 is obviously meant to air a lot earlier, with Togepi being completely absent, while Jessie's Lickitung was mentioned in episode 50. 
• Dub Changes:
• Not an English dub change, but several other language dubs like French, Polish and Swedish, the scenes where Pikachu and Bulbasaur are talking are interpreted and translated by the narrator. 
• In the original Japanese version, Brock notes that Bulbasaur is doing fine despite of Ash's sub-par training skills, continuing the trend of Ash's relative luck-driven persona. In the English dub, this is changed to Bulbasaur doing fine because of Ash's training. 
• In the original Japanese version, when met with the massive vine wall, James makes a crack about how Meowth can't learn HM01: Cut, as in the specific move. In the English dub, any references to the actual move is, well, cut.
• Episode 52 had perhaps one of the most edits regarding the text and signs on the mall -- although this particular shot looks positively terrible. Also, of course, there's the whole replacing of Hinamatsuri with a fictional "Princess Festival". There are a lot of cultural subtext that is basically lost in the dub to English, which I'm not really going to list everything about. 
• Episode 52's "Who's That Pokemon" segment was Lickitung in Japanese, which makes a lot of sense, y'know? The pokemon that debuted in the episode? But in the English version, it's bizarrely changed to Butterfree. 
• The original Japanese version makes it clear that girls get a discount while men have to pay the full price, but the dub's implication leans to girls getting items for free instead. 
• Jessie's original line in the Japanese version about the gifts for Giovanni are more for generic appreciation, whereas the dub makes it out to be their apology for not capturing Pikachu.
• The lines about "genuine designer fakes" and "batteries sold separately" were a dub addition, too, and were both very, very hilarious additions.  
• As you could imagine, the announcer randomly going about how the fighters must be "poised like a Jynx, serene like a Jigglypuff, and possess the charm and grace of an Oddish" were actual puns that really only make context with a Japanese proverb and the Japanese names of these Pokemon. 
• Jessie's outburst to the announcer was less about the announcer using "perhaps" and "maybe", but rather because she was addressed with the "-san" honorific instead of "-chan" (the latter denoting either a younger girl, or a cute girl). 
• A dub error! The the fourth Pokemon that Misty wanted to use in the competition changes from Starmie in the planning stage to Staryu during the actual battle. In the Japanese version, it's consistently Staryu in both lines.
• Another dub error, sort of, is that in the original Japanese version, Lickitung consistently has its stomach growling throughout the fight, and end up not listening to Jessie near the end because it got too hungry. The characters make note of this. For whatever reason, in the dub, this was kind of removed, so Lickitung's just a dick for no reason.