Pokemon S01E53-54 Review: Cats and Dogs

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 53: The Purr-fect Hero; Episode 54: The Case of the K9 Caper

Again, been a while since I did one of these. I sort of barely remember watching either of these episodes, and more than some of the others in the first 'season', these really did fill kind of like filler-y episodes. Episode 53, "The Purr-fect Hero", is another Japan-only-holiday episode, although Children's Day functions more like a backdrop to the Meowth plot as opposed to informing the entire premise of the episode like "Princess vs. Princess".

Our heroes stumble upon some random preschool, and after a bit of a not-particularly-funny comedy gag with the preschooler teacher alternating between a sweet schoolteacher and an angry screaming head, we meet the character-of-the-week, a kid who is sad because he once met a Meowth that saved him from a Beedrill, but no one believes him. Of course, the expected shenanigans occur when Team Rocket does their weekly zany routine of trying to steal Pikachu, showing up as travelling magicians, and, of course, Team Rocket's got a Meowth of their own. Thanks to the expected wackiness of these sort of episodes, they end up accidentally kidnapping little Timmy instead, and because Team Rocket's not in the business of 'crushing children's dreams', Jessie and James convince Meowth to play the part of the heroic wild Meowth that protects the kid.

And... uh... the third act is just sort of the characters sort of floundering about a bit? Meowth's infiltration of the school basically amounts to nothing much as he panics, almost blows his cover a couple of times, and escapes. Through one way or another we end up in a relatively samey action scene (we do get a fun rare appearance of Onix and Pidgeotto doing some action, which is nice), and, of course, the wild Meowth shows up with his kung-fu kick to rescue Timmy and Ash from a giant rock.

Ultimately, kind of a throwaway episode. There's nothing particularly bad about this one, but there's also so little for me to really care for here.

Episode 54 is an episode that is a bit more fun. We get to see that the Officer Jennies of the world aren't as incompetent as they originally seemed, and Growlithe ends up getting more focus after being relegated to the last 5 minutes of the James-centric episode. Instead of playing off of the loyal companion vibe, these Growlithes are police dogs. Ash and company attack a fake thief that is apparently part of a training exercise, and ends up getting sort of roped into the police training regiment. It's another one of those "Ash sees people doing something cool with their Pokemon, and decides to enroll Pikachu in the same thing". Of course, the training that Growlithes and Officer Jennies go through aren't quite the same sort that a young ten-year-old trainer and his electric pet rat is supposed to do.

And... uh... it turns out that based on this episode, Growlithes are kind of... dumb? Like, the intelligence of Pokemon sort of alternate between being a particularly smart dog/cat to near-human levels of intelligence, but the Growlithes end up being tricked en-masse by Team Rocket showing up with a massive Gloom-gas bazooka, what I assume to be helium gas, and a voice-changer, basically causing all the police Growlithes to turn on their trainers. I really felt like the episode and the premise would've flowed a lot better if Team Rocket had, oh, I dunno, sent out Weezing to blind the Growlithes' eyes as well? Sure, Team Rocket's both cosplaying as Officer Jennies with their police miniskirts, but they don't even bother to change positions.  I get that the Growlithes are doggy Pokemon and dogs rely on scent the most, but I dunno. The Team Rocket plot of the episode, which dominates the 20 minutes, ends up feeling particularly dumb, particularly since the Growlithe can see what's going on.

Of course, Team Rocket's attempt to do the same trick on Pikachu ends up with it not working out at all, which I guess is because of the bond between Ash and Pikachu is stronger or something, but the episode never gives any hints that the Jennies push their Growlithes too hard or whatever, making this sequence sort of fall flat on its face.

Ultimately, while I do like Growlithe, and the idea that they serve as police dogs, this is not the best episode outing for them.

Pokemon Index:

• Episode 53:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Meowth, Pidgeotto, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Staryu, Starmie, Horsea, Goldeen, Psyduck, Geodude, Vulpix, Zubat, Onix, Beedrill, Weezing, Arbok
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, James, Jessie
• Episode 54: 
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Jigglypuff, Growlithe, Meowth, Dodrio
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, Officer Jenny, James, Jessie

Random Notes:

• Episode 53 was one of the several episodes that apparently aired out of order thanks to the whole Porygon incident, and in some airings and DVD releases, are grouped together with the Christmas episodes and "Princess vs Princess" as 'special episodes'. 
• Superman!Meowth, complete with the English word in the background, was actually animated that way even in the original Japanese version, which is a nice little hint that the Japanese anime is starting to slowly go more international-minded. 
• Ash may be a dum-dum, but he's smart enough to not bring out Charizard in front of a bunch of preschoolers. He's the only party Pokemon to miss out on episode 53. 
• Surprisingly, episode 54 does not censor the gun that the fake burglar uses, and even doesn't cut out the shot that zooms in on the gun! 
• The helium-style gas that Team Rocket uses has a Psyduck picture on it, which only really makes sense in the Japanese version -- Japanese Psyduck was a lot more high-pitched, sort of like a less-excited version of Donald Duck, emphasizing the 'duck' part. 
• Dub Changes:
• One of the biggest and oddest change in episode 53 is actually the fact that the wild Meowth that Timmy meets is able to do a special kick, which was what the wild Meowth did both against the Beedrill and the rock in the climax. That was why our Meowth had a such a baffled expression when Timmy asks Meowth to 'rescue' him from Team Rocket. This facet of the wild Meowth is never brought up in the English dub at all. 
• Episode 53 has a lot of specific Japanese-only cultural talks about kodomo no hi. In particular, the whole bit with Misty whacking Ash and Brock was a reference to how Children's Day used to be only about boys (a complement to hinamatsuri) until it ended up being renamed into a gender-neutral Children's Day. A lot of the jokes of James and Jessie also revolve around the holiday-specific kashiwa-mochi, which the dub team tries their best to rewrite to be less about the mochi, and more about the difference between James and Jessie's backgrounds. 
• In the original Japanese, the schoolteacher adopts a somewhat Crayon Shinchan-esque yakuza-style angry speech when she yells at the student, instead of just slightly raising her voice. 
• The original Japanese version of episode 54 makes it more explicit that the policewomen are humouring Ash and are setting up a special training course to let him feel what it's like to be a police officer, whereas the dub makes no such reference. Also, Brock is straight-out opposed to Ash joining the Growlithe-training in the dub, whereas he's more neutral in the original. 
• Dub!53 changes the who's that Pokemon from the obvious Meowth into Wartortle (???), although 54 gets to keep Growlithe.