Pokemon S01E78-80 Review: Indigo Blues

Pokemon, Season 1, Episode 78: A Friend in Deed; Episode 79: Friend and Foe Alike; Episode 80: Friends to the End

And here we go, as the Indigo League ends not with a bang, but with a drawn-out whimper. Honestly, episodes 78 through 80, taken in a vacuum, aren't terrible episodes themselves. Each makes for a decent standalone viewing experience, each are animated well, and they at least attempted to tell a multi-part story. Hell, I wasn't even angry (even as a kid) that Ash lost -- despite being the hero we root for, he kind of deserved to lost the Indigo Tournament, didn't he? He sort of lucked his way through at least half of the eight badges he got; the narrator made a point of how much he goofed off in the two months leading up to the Indigo League; and a huge part of the moments in these Indigo League episodes is Ash's own uncertainty on whether he can even make it in the big leagues. Plus, it's actually a good lesson to kids -- sometimes you try your best, you lose, and it's okay. Not everyone is The Chosen One, sometimes you just have to keep soldiering on. It's a good moral. And, to some extent, I can agree with the decision on the anime staff's part to at least freaking introduce the person that's going to beat Ash.

That said, though, Richie is flat as hell as a character, and being introduced a mere single episode before the battle barely counts as foreshadowing. And while it's pretty groundbreaking back in its day for having the gall of having the plucky main character dude lose in the tournament he's working up to all throughout the series... it's actually not done well, and the build-up leading to it is pretty awkward.

Episode 78 first. After dicking around a couple of episodes that alternate between focusing on the accommodations for the trainers, the Olympic flame and two fights, episode 78... basically completely ignores the Indigo League for the vast majority of its screentime, because it throws Ash and Richie as they try and chase down Team Rocket, who's stolen a huge amount of Pokemon and sort of become buddies as they camp during the pursuit and look at the stars.

No, that's literally the entirety of episode 78. They basically team up to fight Team Rocket. That's literally it. They meet each other in a faulty elevator, they both got their pokemon stolen, they tr and catch up and then they use their Pokemon to beat up Team Rocket in a truck. The moving truck doesn't really offer any real interesting fight sequences, and the little 'surprise' that Ritchie uses the same Pokemon that Ash does (a Pikachu, a Charmander and a Butterfree) is kind of just there. The Team Rocket antics are also just kind of there. They like try to reaffirm that they're super-duper best friends forever but it falls flat because Ritchie basically has about the same personality and does about the same thing that any guest star of the week would do. I really wanted to try to like Ritchie, but he really is just that flat. 

And then, surprise surprise, Ash is matched up against Ritchie in the tournament. Wow.
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Episode 79 is the big event. Ash's final battle in the Indigo Plateau. And he spends approximately two-thirds of this episode's screentime dealing with Team Rocket in an increasingly infuriating bit of "look at how persistent Team Rocket is in getting in Ash's way lol". Like, we get it, Ash is going to be late and he'll arrive at the last minute, get on with the show already. It's honestly just absolute forced drama. I guess it's meant to be a reason why Ash loses? That Pikachu is tired from fighting Team Rocket and also Pidgeotto (remember Pidgeotto?) is tuckered out from flying Ash back to the League? Like it gives the kids watching at home a bit of solace that Ash didn't lose in a proper straight-up fight? It's just that this bit of forced tension just flat-out doesn't work, and ended up making the actual Ash-vs-Ritchie battle feel rushed and tacked on. I definitely remembered watching episode 79 as a kid and was surprised that considering how long the episode has ran, that the entire Ash/Ritchie fight was concluded within the span of like five minutes or so -- I was so sure that we'd save the final battle in the match for the next episode.

Anyway, Team Rocket ends up sort of trying to shoehorn in this little conflict, pretending to be Ritchie and insulting Misty on the phone to separate Ash from the group, but ultimately it's just a bit of a "oh Team Rocket chases Ash a bit, and then they sort of one-up each other", while Ritchie waits in the stadium from evening till sundown begging the referee to wait a bit longer because Ash surely will come because they're best buddies who made a promise and all. It's... it's way too little content to stretch out for as long as it takes in the episode.

The fight eventually begins with Ash arriving on the remnants of Team Rocket's balloon and after Pidgeotto runs itself ragged, and you'd think "kidnapped by the mob" would be an adequate excuse to delay the match for a day. But eh, whatever, we get the fight on... and it's... very underwhelming? Maybe I was spoiled by the Bellsprout trainer, but the fight between Squirtle and Happy the Butterfree was pretty bland and ends with a sleep powder knock-out ("alseep" means out of the match in anime-league rules, apparently). Ash's tired-out Pikachu take out Happy, before Zippo the Charmander takes out Pikachu with a couple of flamethrowers and a tackle. It's always kind of the laziest way to sort of end a fight when it's just a couple of attack spams ended with "tackle attack!"

Ash decides to go for the big gun against a single Charmander. Does he take out Kingler, who has been all but unstoppable in the Indigo league? Muk, perhaps, or Bulbasaur, or maybe one of his three dozen Tauroses? Nope, he goes for Charizard, who, at this point, has been MIA ever since the Blaine fight and also completely unreliable. It's not until later on that Charizard ends up actually being the proper mascot-like staple of Ash's team that we rememer him out to be... Kanto-era Charizard is a giant prick! It sort of scares off Charmander a bit because it's a fire-type, but plops down and refuses to battle Sparky the Pikachu, dozing off and disqualifying it and Ash out.

And I suppose there's some karmic balance to the fact that Ash lost not because of his lack of battling skill or reliance on dumb luck, but ultimately because he didn't take the time to train his Charizard properly... but it's so poorly executed. There's no real tension and Ritchie's team isn't as threatening that you really feel like Ash needs to pull out Charizard as a hail mary, so instead of losing due to his hubris or whatever, Ash just looks like a complete moron. Maybe if episode 79 instead set up either Ash's lack of training and his previous over-reliance on dumb luck, or even set up the Charizard conflict, it'd amount to something? Instead what we got was a rather shrug-worthy plotline of "hey, at least if you lose while fighting to a friend, you should be happy that he won", which is a neat enough moral, I suppose, but again, felt kind of shoehorned in due to the genuine lack of investment the Ash/Ritchie friendship is.
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Anyway, Ash lost, and it was kind of a terrible episode. Episode 80 is a bit better in that it at least attempted to give the characters some actual progression and development, in that Ash isn't taking his loss in stride. Which is to be expected, of course -- the Indigo league episodes doesn't really have a proper character development thoroughline or any sort of theme, but it did have a bunch of short scenes connecting Ash's little ball of anxiousness and panic all the way through as he tries to work through his self-doubt and go "all right I can do this" every second scene or so. Seeing him depressed and locking himself in his bed and getting into a squabble-fest with Misty is definitely one of the neat highlights of the episode.

And then... Ritchie loses, which is, I guess, a neat move, by showing that even someone who can beat our hero Ash can still lose... except Ritchie didn't really beat Ash in a fair fight, did he? Which makes me honestly wish that Ritchie actually did beat Ash in a fair fight, to make this moment feel more poignant. Anyway, Ritchie's team gets beaten up in a 6v6 fight, with Sparky being Solarbeam'd by an Ivysaur. Yay Ivysaur!

And then we get this nice bit of Ash and Ritchie hanging out near a lake and sort of reflecting on their loss. It's very simple and not particularly deep, but it's a neat case of maturity on Ash's part, even if, again, it's not particularly anything groudbreaking character-wise. And then Team Rocket shows up and gets blown away by two Pikachus, a Pidgeotto and all three base Kanto starters. Everyone returns to the Indigo League, Ash gets a participation badge for ending in top 16, and we get the closing ceremonies. Team Rocket gets blown away by another bomb. Woop-dee-doo.

And... and that's Kanto. As much as I evidently disliked episode 78 and 79, episode 80 is at least a decent, mellow ending to the whole journey? I knew what was going to happen, and yet it still kind of felt somewhat disappointing nonetheless. It's hardly a proper 'end' for a season, though, because Pokemon is the sort of anime that's meant to be hyper-episodic and it's not meant to have huge ground-breaking plot changes the way that Digimon or Dragon Ball are, but honestly, for all their flaws, later seasons would be able to handle tournament seasons a lot better.

Anyway, that's a wrap on the original Kanto saga. Of course, it's not the end of the First Generation anime, because there's still, like, 30 episodes or something before we actually debut with Generation II's Johto, and it's something that's sort of unique to this leg of the anime where the gap between the Pokemon generations is long enough that they sort of had to scramble to make up a new side-region on their own in the Orange Island episodes -- and it's kind of ambiguous depending on the version of the show you watch whether episodes 81-83 are counted among the Kanto episodes or the Orange Island episodes. I'm following the Japanese ordering, so I'm shoving them in the second bit.

Featured Characters:

• Episode 78:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Meowth, Weezing, Drowzee, Slowbro, Magikarp, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Arbok, Pidgeotto, Butterfree
• Humans: Ash, Brock, Misty, Delia, Professor Oak, Ritchie, James, Jessie
• Episode 79:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Chansey, Meowth, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Weezing, Pidgeotto, Butterfree, Charizard
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Brock, Ritchie, Nurse Joy, James, Jessie, Professor Oak, Delia
• Episode 80:
• Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Charmander, Rhydon, Butterfree, Venomoth, Spearow, Tentacool, Ivysaur, Meowth, Pidgeotto, Bulbasaur, Weezing, Squirtle, Hitmonlee, Poliwhirl, Venonat, Oddish, Mankey, Gloom, Parasect, Raticate, Cloyster, Staryu, Moltres (flashback), Exeggutor (flashback), Krabby (flashback), Kingler (flashback), Golbat (flashback), Nidorino (flashback), Beedrill (flashback), Bellsprout (flashback), Muk (flashback) 
• Humans: Ash, Professor Oak, Delia, Misty, Brock, Ritchie, James, Jessie, President Goodshow

Random Notes:

•  The ordering of Pokemon 'seasons' is a weird thing and if I ever continue this all the way through the Orange Islands, I'll probably go with "S02E01" or something along those lines? Or maybe just "S02E81". Or maybe just "Pokemon E81". We'll see. If I ever do Orange Islands and Johto, though, expect something more along the lines of MMPR, where I lump 4-6 episodes in a single review session. 
• Richie, a.k.a. Hiroshi in the original Japanese, is voiced by Minami Takayama, a pretty high-profile voice actress most famous for voicing Detective Conan Edogawa himself. Hiroshi is named after Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamaguchi. 
• For what it's worth, I did love the absolutely random bit in episode 78 where Ash's mom just hijacks a hotel restaurant kitchen to cook for their little party. 
• Dub Changes:
• "Sparky" and "Happy" are named "Leon" and "Papi" in the original Japanese version respectively, but "Zippo", amazingly, is also called "Zippo" in the original version. 
• Ritchie recognizes Team Rocket as criminals in the dub, whereas in the original he's just as clueless as every other guest star when faced with Team Rocket. 
• The dub of episode 79 has both Oak and Brock mistakenly refer to the Fire-type as Flame-type.
• The original version of episode 79 has Brock mention Ash holding back his tears because he's a man, whereas the dub works in a far better tie-in (and a less sexist remark, too) to an earlier Nurse Joy line about how Ash is happy for his friend that he won. 
• In the original version, Ritchie as a bit more apologetic, blaming his own inexperience and apologizing for losing even though Team Ash was cheering him on. Dub!Ritchie is a mite bit less humble, noting that he lost due to tough competition, and also pointing out that he and Ash now have losing in the Indigo League as one more thing in common. 
• I laughed way too hard at James's "turn attack!" line in episode 78. That's probably the highlight of that episode for me. 
• I didn't mention it throughout the episode, but Ritchie's Pikachu Sparky has a little tuft of hair. 
• I did find it a bit odd that Ash makes such a big deal of looking for one of his Pokeballs when Ritchie has all six of his available to him, and also Pikachu's out and about, ready to thunderbolt the truck to hell. 
• Those poor Magikarp being used to determine the match, though -- like, those poor Magikarps! What do the Indigo league staff have against just drawing lots or pulling out strips of paper with names?
• In addition to 'asleep' apparently counting as being knocked out in anime league rules, switching out your Pokemon also eliminates it from further use in the tournament, because that's what happens to Ritchie's Zippo. It's not something that has been mentioned before, but will apply for subsequent league-rules episodes. 
• Squirtle really got the short end of the stick when it comes to the Indigo league, huh? All he got was a short, truncated fight against Nidorino in episode 76, and then he got beaten pretty quickly here. At least he got to participate, unlike poor Pidgeotto. 
• Apparently, sleeping Pokemon is considered equivalent to a knock-out in the anime's Indigo conference? Shit, no wonder Ritchie's been blazing through his fights with that Sleep Powdering Butterfree. 
• Episode 80 is the first time a proper full six-on-six battle is seen in the anime, albeit in montage fashion -- most official fights in the anime up to this point has been three-on-three or one-on-one.
• We're not sure if Ritchie owned the Spearow or the Tentacool in that little montage, but seriously? Either way, Ritchie, at least evolve the dang things.
• Things that could be better than Ritchie, and I'm spitballing -- maybe have Misty or Brock be the one that show up in the final part of the League as the 'friend' that Ash fights? Maybe turn it into a redemption arc for Gary Oak as he befriends Ash and ends up being a worthy opponent? Maybe introduce Ritchie a bit earlier and give him more of a personality than 'generically friendly'?