Pokemon S01E74-75 Review: Lovely Charmy Tournament

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 74: All Fired Up; Episode 75: Round One - Begin

Finally, after multiple episodes leading up to it, we get to the end-game, the Indigo League, which instead of a complex dungeon-like cave filled with trainers leading up to four dudes and a champion, is expanded upon in the anime, which frames it as a far grander event. After all, it's not just the protagonist and his rival doing this journey, right? It's a lot of trainers from all over the region, and I am always a huge fan of how the anime and various mangas interpreted the Pokemon League as this huge tournament starring all of the best -- and it's surprising that it took them nearly two decades to implement the tournament system in to the games.

It's just such a shame that the Pokemon anime's first attempt at making a proper tournament arc sort of fall short. We'll discuss it as we continue on through the next five or six episodes on how the Indigo tournament is kind of a pretty piss-poor tournament from a narrative standpoint, but episode 74 is... it's all right I guess? It's a whole episode devoted to just our heroes arriving on Indigo Plateau in what's obviously a pastiche of the Olympics -- Japan actually hosted the winter Olympics in 1998, which would explain the fact that an entire episode is devoted to just them mostly running around with a torch.

Granted, while Ash does end up feeling a bit brattish when he stops the torch-bearing procession to beg that he, too, be allowed to carry the tournament flame or whatever, it does lead to a pretty awesome montage of Ash, Misty and Brock running around as the second verse of the Pokemon Theme plays, and I'm a sucker for actually appropriate usages of insert songs. The Olympic flame also gets the pretty neat backstory of apparently being a flame left behind from the legendary Pokemon Moltres, which helps to give the whole thing (and Moltres itself) a bit of a gravitas. Oh yeah, we also meet the very bland chairman of the Indigo tournament, President Goodshow. He exists and has dialogue.

Team Rocket tries to steal the flame, of course, and they set themselves on fire (of course). We do get the prtty welcome return of Victreebel some 15-odd episodes after its debut, and I absolutely love that the first thing that good ol' Victreebel does upon his return to the show is just chomping on Meowth's head before getting set on fire. Poor Victreebel!

There's also a nice bit between the original Team Rocket attack and the final random giant grasshopper mecha attack that's just a quiet moment of Ash meeting Gary and getting mocked a bit, and then Ash just being restless before deciding to take a walk to look at the stadium. It's small, but a pretty great moment showing a bit of vulnerability in our otherwise flat hero. The episode has to end in an action scene, and Team Rocket shows up in a big-ass mech straight out of Time Bokan to steal the massive fire bowl, only for Moltres itself to show up, blow up Team Rocket and then re-ignite the flame. I do like the depiction of Moltres here -- Moltres is ultimately just a bird on fire, but the way that the anime portrays it as this spirit of competition and victory or whatever, and how it appears entirely engulfed in flames seemingly summoned from the torch itself, with what we think as Moltres being used as basically superimposed imagination of the characters of what Moltres should look like? Pretty good stuff.

Ultimately, it's a slow-paced one, but not one that's bad. It does set up this tournament relatively well, and the addition of Moltres is sort of unnecessary but kind of fun... it's just kind of a slow episode, and it's a shame that said tournament is something that leaves something to be desired.
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I did remember episode 75 well, becuase this was where my VCD collection as a kid jumped back in after seeing Giovanni got beaten. I missed out on a bunch of filler episodes! Or episode 75 might've been something that my parents taped for me. Remember 'taping' episodes? Oh, the '90's.

Anyway, starting from episode 75 all the way to episode 80 is the huge tournament arc with Ash joining the Indigo league, and while I'll reserve judgment for the entire tournament arc until after I've finished episode 80, I am going to mention just how... odd the decision was to make most of the Indigo League episodes not be about the tournament. I get that especially this early on animating the Pokemon fighting is probably more taxing, which is why we don't really have a lot of action-centric episodes in the earlier seasons, but you'd think that for the huge tournament that the series has been building up towards they'd give these episodes a bit more oomph?

Episode 75 is... it's all right. The 'filler' parts feel like it makes sense as our heroes find themselves in the Indigo Plateau, and as Ash slowly learns what it means to actually compete in the tournament. The exposition about what's basically the pre-lims, the tournament taking place on four different battlefields, Gary mocking Ash a bit, the little showcase of the Pallet Town Support Squad, and Misty and Brock's insistence that Ash at least strategize are all neat and well-done. That last bit in particular, because, well, we've seen that Ash has done near jack-all training during the 'training montage arc', and his insecurities in episode 74 really end up sort of settling in.

Of course, Ash ends up going in with the mindset of "oh yeah, I have Krabby", asking Professor Oak to beam Krabby over, and then hyper-fixating on his trust on Krabby to pull through his match. It's not that dumb, since Ash does acknowledge that he has two backup plans in Pikachu and Squirtle, but the show never really gives us any adequate explanation as to why Krabby (who the show has established multiple times is pretty under-trained) can suddenly wipe the floor with Mandy's entire party.

Of course, unless you subscribe to the fact that Krabby/Kingler is secretly a freaking badass that Ash under-utilizes. Having watched episode 75 many times as a kid, that's sort of the notion young me ended up getting from this episode. Not that Ash and Krabby waltzes through the first round of the tournament by pure dumb luck and plot armour, but because Kingler is that dang great.

Watching the episode again a couple of decades older... it's still kind of a fun fight. The fact that these tournament fights take place on different battlefields makes it a lot coler by having the Pokemon utilize the battlefield, even if it's something as simple as Krabby diving into the water or Exeggutor creating a gigantic whirlpool with its psychic powers. There's a neat bit of tension when Ash can't even recall his Krabby into his Pokeball, but with a well-timed vice grip and a kamen rider kick stomp, Krabby manages to kick a mutant psychic coconut tree to unconsciousness and then evolve into Kingler. I'm still not sure why Kingler's bubbles somehow cause Seadra to get thrown into the air, but that final fight against the Golbat is pretty cool, with a neat sense of Golbat and Kingler making use of their favoured terrain against each other, and both Golbat's double team and Kingler's hyper beam are animated relatively well.

Ultimately, though, as much as I do have my own personal attachment to Kingler's badassery in this episode, this episode is kind of basically Ash lucking his way through his first fight.

Oh yeah, 75 also has a little B-plot of Team Rocket masquerading as news reporters to steal the Pokemon of the other competitors, but eventually lost track of their scheme and ends up hijacking the announcer's MC box to cheer on Ash. While this is consistent with how Team Rocket's going to be portrayed in most future end-of-season tournaments, it is kind of in harsh contrast to what they'll proceed to do in the next batch of episodes.

Featured Characters:

• Episode 74:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Hitmonchan, Moltres, Meowth, Victreebel, Squirtle, Vulpix, Pidgey, Weezing, Bulbasaur
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, Officer Jenny, Charles Goodshow, James, Jessie, Gary
• Episode 75:
• Pokemon: Mr. Mime, Pikachu, Togepi, Meowth, Venomoth, Pidgey, Gloom, Krabby, Tentacruel, Seaking, Exeggutor, Kingler, Seadra, Golbat
• Humans: Delia, Professor Oak, Ash, Misty, Brock, Jessie, James, Gary, Officer Jenny

Random Notes:

• So, uh, I've never thought about it until Ash received Krabby and didn't have to send a Pokemon back to Oak, but Ash doesn't have a sixth Pokemon for a while, did he? It's just been Pikachu, Pidgeotto and the three starters for a while. Poor Krabby and Muk must kind of feel like shit. 
• The "Lovely Charming Network" is in both the original and the dub version -- it's part of the Japanese Team Rocket's motto, which has the line "lovely charm-y villains", with the first two words being explicitly spoken in English.
• Dub Changes:
• Ash's monologue in bed was a lot more about general anxiety about the competition in the original, whereas the dub has him be bothered by Gary's tauntings specifically. In the original, Ash also resolves to fight the only way he knows how, whereas the dub has him be a lot more optimistic about winning. 
• James, in the original version, was a lot more excited about piloting a giant grasshopper mecha, saying a lot of things in English and just parodying hammy giant mecha anime in general. All of this is changed to generic "stop backseat driving" dialogue in the dub. 
• A dub-only error is Meowth mis-identifying the Pidgeys that Mandi summons in his magic trick as Pidgeotto. The original version doesn't have Meowth name the Pokemon at all.
• This shot from the original is cut from episode 75, probably for the best. A fair amount of the Japanese version also end up writing "Pockemon" in various background shots that had to be erased.
• Gary is a bigger dick when interviewed by the reporter, having a none-too-subtle insult onto Ash. In the original version he has a response revolving around the fact that he's relieved that his battle plans worked. 
• James's Victreebel finally regains its loud EEEEEEEEE screech from the Japanese version. All is right with the world, even if it only glomps down on Meowth this episode and not James. 
• So that is why Moltres hangs out in the Victory Road in the original Generation I games? Maybe? I've always thought it's kind of a random spot to plonk ol' Moltres in.
• Krabby evolves into Kingler mid-battle, which normally isn't possible in the games -- evolution takes place after a full battle is complete, and with trainers, this means beating all of his Pokemon. 
• I did complain about many of Ash's tournament enemies not having a personality. Mandy does have one, and it's that he's a colossal dick.
• The stage selection makes use of the water and grass TCG symbols, but the ground and ice fields have original symbols done for them.