Pokemon S01E57 Review: Code Pink

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 57: The Breeding Center Secret

And we're kinda back! Sort of. I sort of took a long break from reviewing the Pokemon anime series -- I actually finished the entire Indigo season all the way back last September, but just didn't quite have the energy to write words for them. I still do plan to finish up at least all of the Indigo season, and maybe if I do go on, I'll do the Orange Islands and the many Johto seasons as a "five/ten-episodes-in-a-page" recap style similar to my Power Rangers episode reviews. I'll try to keep this streak of episodes to show up in a more timely fashion.

Anyway, it's neat to come back to this episode in particular. Depending on which American DVD box set or episodic listing you have, "The Breeding Center Secret" is marked as the finale of 'season one' of Pokemon, although nowadays people consider the end of the Japanese version's "Indigo League" to be, well, the actual end of the Indigo League. In any case, though, this is an episode that's a bit more exciting than your typical Indigo League episode. In that... we get new antagonists? Well, antagonists of a sort, anyway. I feel like this episode has a fair bit more going for it compared to the previous couple of episodes ("K-9 Caper", "Pokemon Paparazzi", "Ultimate Test") in that this episode's not exactly one-note. We've got the concept of the Day Care Center, we've got Snap's final hurrah and actually contributing to the plot, we've got a B-plot of Misty and Psyduck, we've got the introduction of two more 'serious' rivals for Team Rocket, and we even get the higher stakes of our heroes actually trying to both stop a Pokemon smuggling ring and even prove their crime. It's still freakin' Pokemon, so the stakes aren't, like, ground-breaking or whatever, but it feels like it's a lot more exciting than the past couple of episodes.

(And we also get the debut of James' Victreebel, the most important Pokemon in all of the Kanto/Johto season, but it's frankly kind of shoehorned in and a very lackluster debut)

The episode starts off with pretty typical stuff, with our little group coming across the concept-of-the-week, and this time it's something lifted straight from the games! The Pokemon Day Care Center, translated into the "Breeding Center" in the dub (which has to be less PG than Day Care Center, but eh). It's ran by a couple who advertises how they'll help out all those trainers who are too lazy young to train their own Pokemon to help evolve their cute Charmanders into mighty, powerful Charizards, with the power of love.

Interestingly, it's not so much Ash that becomes the impulsive kid that ends up trying to use the Day Care Center to get his Pokemon to evolve quick, but it's Misty! A lot of people complain how Misty has been reduced from the more fiery and violent original characterization to basically "Togepi's Mom" by the time the little egg-baby shows up, but I do appreciate the couple of times where she is allowed to do this. Misty decides to very aggressively show up in the Day Care Center and leave Psyduck behind, wanting to fix Psyduck's expression at the very least so it's not so dopey.

And... and it's an interesting thing to do, considering how Psyduck's been portrayed as sort of a one-note gag. I do appreciate the conversation we get later on with Ash telling Misty that if she doesn't like Psyduck so much, he'll be happy to raise it for her... but Misty is adamant that she will keep Psyduck. She just wants it to look a bit cooler is all.

While our characters wait around, they sort of come to an all-you-can-eat-restaurant, and like so many side-quests in later Pokemon games, the restaurant owner will only give them all-you-can-eat food if they bring him his favourite Pokemon. Wouldn't you have it, it's Psyduck. Our heroes, driven by Misty's desire to consume all-you-can-eat omurice (or ice cream, according to the dub), run back to the Day Care Center. It's closed, but Misty tries the back door and finds it unlocked...

And they find a dark room with sad Pokemon locked up in cages and stuff! How brutal! It's a conspiracy, a nice front that kidnaps the Pokemon they're supposedly taking care off, and stealing the best of them while making vague alterations to the ones they don't deem useful -- Misty's Psyduck, for example, only becomes 'fiercer' with the aid of taped-up eyebrows. Todd Snap even ends up being actually useful for once, taking pictures to help prove the existence of these abused Pokemon. Turns out that the proprietors are actually Butch and Cassidy, a different duo working for Team Rocket, and they're reporting to Giovanni, who praises their far more efficient method of crime compared to Jessie and James.

In a hilarious coincidence, Jessie, James and Meowth take that exact time to show up and steal the Pokemon, not aware that this is also a Team-Rocket-sponsored criminal activity. Team Twerp and Team Rocket confront each other, and there's your typical exchange of snarky dialogue, until Team Cassidy (Butch's honestly just an accessory) show up and deliver their own bastardized rendition of Jessie and James' motto. Butch and Cassidy may be more 'serious', but they're still prone to the hamminess that our Team Rocket's up to, which I did like. I also do like how Cassidy and Jessie immediately goes into a bit of a catty fight, apparently the two of them having been rivals or something? Also, while everyone's trying to escape and stuff, we get a random sequence of James noting how he left his Weepinbell in this Day Care Center. This, by the way, is apropos of nothing and as a kid I always thought that I missed an episode where James had a Weepinbell. James' Weepinbell has evolved into a mighty Victreebel, and in the first time of many, James gets nom'd on by his massive giant pitcher plant.

Through all this hullabaloo, Cassidy and Butch activate their D&D-style cage traps, trapping everyone except for Misty, Pikachu and Togepi and then calling the cops on them, framing Team Twerp and Team Rocket as robbers trying to steal their Pokemon while also stealing Snap's evidence-filled camera. Misty ends up disguising herself as a customer trying to get her Psyduck back, while sneakily sending Pikachu in to steal the camera, which Misty later brings to Officer Jenny to get her to arrest the real villains. It moves a bit too fast and is way too comedic, but Misty and Pikachu do get to pull some funny faces. I like it.

The actual confrontation is relatively fast, since all Cassidy has to fight the heroes is a Raticate that falls to a single thunderbolt from Pikachu. Cassidy and Butch immediately get arrested by the police, while our heroes get the neat ending of eating free food, before splitting ways with Todd Snap while they go off to get the badge from Cinnabar Island. We also get the little gag of our Team Rocket manage to sneak in shovels and are digging their way out of jail.

Ultimately, it's still an episode that's pretty much typical Indigo-League fare, but I do like how they attempted to do a fair amount of things here. I feel like this episode even has enough elements to be stretched out over two episodes if they had wanted it to, with the first part ending at around the time our heroes get arrested for false premises, and the second episode being more focused on Misty trying to clear our heroes' name -- because that part of the episode felt like it went a bit too fast and rapid-fire. It's still a pretty solid one among the generic 'episodic' ones. Also, hey, Snap finally gets a decent episode where his cameraman gimmick actually proves useful right before he leaves. Neat. 

Featured Pokemon:

• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Charmander, Charmeleon, Charizard, Sandshrew, Cubone, Voltorb, Staryu, Caterpie, Bulbasaur, Weepinbell, Paras, Oddish, Nidoran M, Mankey, Psyduck, Squirtle, Pidgeotto, Onix, Geodude, Zubat, Vulpix, Goldeen, Starmie, Horsea, Poliwag, Persian, Poliwhirl, Meowth, Raticate, Victreebel, Exeggcute
• Humans: Todd Snap, Ash, Misty, Brock, Cassidy, Butch, Giovanni, Jessie, James, Officer Jenny

Random Notes:

• Presumably the in-game equivalent of this episode is the Day Care Center in Route 5 of the original Kanto games, which is where you could leave your pokemon to gain experience while you travel.
• The dub renames it to "Breeding Center", and I'm not sure if Gold & Silver was already in development that the dub team would know that the sequel games would add the breeding functionality? I guess they just didn't want to shine a bad light on real-life day care centers or something?
• The American airing of this episode moves it much earlier than its original spot, airing it after "Princess vs. Princess", which, of course, is kind of bizarre considering Snap's presence among the group.
• Butch doesn't get a lot of lines in this episode, but, jeez, Eric Stuart pulls off a hoarse-sounding voice that makes even my throat feel uncomfortable.
• Butch and Cassidy's names, of course, reference American train robber Butch Cassidy, in a similar vein to how Jessie and James' English names are a reference to another infamous American outlaw, Jesse James.
• Cassidy's Japanese name is Yamato, a WWII-era battleship that has a sister ship called Musashi -- Jessie's Japanese name, named after famed swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. 
• Butch's Japanese name is Kosaburo, which is derived from James's Kojiro. "Kojiro" has the kanji for 'second son' in it, whereas Kosaburo has 'third son' in it.
• Dub Changes:
• Butch and Cassidy's breeding center was left unnamed in the entire dub episode. The Japanese version prominently features the tacky "Oneesan's Day Care". A large the tone of how Yamato and Kosaburo are basically being a cute lovey-dovey-couple running a business is also cut, but we do get the 'love power' stuff left in, as well as Brock's... reaction to said phrase. 
• The Omurice (rice with omelette on top) is referred to throughout the episode as 'ice cream', which is particularly bizarre that they had to change this -- onigiri, sushi and sashimi, okay, maybe the localization team thinks the kids are too stupid and closeted to figure out what those are, but rice-with-egg is apparently among those craaaazy exotic meals that Eastern people dine on. Because "ice cream with ketchup" is so much more normal.
• Omitted from the dub is the fact that the "bring a Psyduck and get an all-you-can-eat meal" is good only for a day because it's the restaurant's anniversary, giving a sense of urgency to Misty's panic to get Psyduck back. 
• James's Victreebel gets a terrible dub voice in this episode. I'm not happy about it. Thankfully I know enough about the dub to know that Victreebel's glorious EEEEEEEEEE cry will eventually make it into the dub. 
• Butch and Cassidy's motto in the English dub is basically a far more villainous take on our Team Rocket's motto ("to infect the world with devastation" instead of "to protect"; "to blight the people" instead of "to unite the people"), which actually is a lot more thematic as these are theoretically more 'serious' villains than Jessie and James. Yamato and Kosaburo's themes in the Japanese version, on the other hand, is more obviously just "copy the homework with a couple of details changed" version of Kojiro and Musashi's motto. SHOCKING PINKU. 
• Unchanged by the dub team, surprisingly, is the name of the restaurant they go to, "Restaurant Hungry".