Pokemon, Episodes 90-92
Episode 90: Stage Fight
As we continue on the Orange Islands episodes, we're going to have more and more episodes that I just don't have anything to talk about, and "Stage Fight" is one of them. Our main characters stumble upon a certain Cool Thing of the Week, in this case being a Pokemon Showboat where a bunch of seemingly-talking Pokemon throw a play that's a riff on Rocky but with musical elements or something. Except it turns out that the Pokemon aren't actually talking, their trainers are dubbing them in the background. And then the main characters befriends one of the troupe and learns of her problems -- Kei's Raichu is really really shy after a traumatic experience where it accidentally shocked its trainer out of excitement and Kei tosses it into the ground. It's neat to see Ash actually giving a neat little speech or two about being a good trainer, even if his advice does basically amount to 'yolo'. It kind of works, though, in the context of this episode with a trainer basically tossing aside her well-being to protect Raichu during the inevitable Team Rocket attack.
The Team Rocket attack happens basically how you would expect it to happen, although those Magikarp sub missiles are hilarious. Team Rocket tries to basically bully the Pokemon on the boat into working for them, thinking that they're able of speech like Meowth... and apparently the human voice actors are also ventriloquists or something, and they fool Team Rocket enough to counterattack and Fire Punch James in the face. I'm not sure how this really works, wouldn't the Pokemon just attack Team Rocket on their own even without the ventriloquist dub voice? Whatever the case, after a heroic rescue moment (tm), Raichu regains its confidence and helps to take down the bad guys, Team Rocket gets sent flying again, and thanks to one of the actors losing his voice, Ash and his Pokemon get to stand in among the stage performance.
Basically not much really happened, huh? The story is decent enough and is well executed for a standalone story, but ultimately it's very much something we have seen (and will see) several times over in the series. We don't even have the excuse of letting a new Pokemon take the center stage, because by my count this is the third Raichu that ends up being the guest star of the episode.
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Episode 91: Bye Bye Psyduck
Okay, this episode is... weird? Again, this is the first time that I watched all of these Orange Island episodes, and I am somewhat surprised at the title. Okay, so the episode promises to shake up the status quo by seemingly being an exit for one of the main Pokemon cast in Misty's Psyduck. Obviously, that didn't happen, since Psyduck will be with us all the way to Johto and beyond.
And the huge twist is that Psyduck evolves into Golduck during a battle between Misty and a fellow Water-specialist trainer called Marina, and Golduck turns out to be super-duper badass... but it turns out that at the end of the episode, the Golduck is just some random Golduck who likes to show off to women, and good ol' Psyduck is still a good ol' goof, status quo, nothing changes. And I suppose it's a neat enough subversion, but at this point the show's kind of pretty stale and static that I genuinely honestly wished that maybe Misty gets Golduck and gets a pretty powerful fighter on her team, y'know? It's like the show is self-aware, going all "it's my first battle in a while", because... well, when was the last time Misty actually did anything in this show?
The action scenes in this episode is pretty neat, featuring a rare bit of showcase of Misty's party (including Goldeen!) against Marina's Tentacruel, strong Psyduck and Starmie. I just kind of wish they gave Marina other Water-type Pokemon that's not part of Misty's retinue, y'know? The action scenes with Golduck's psychic powers are pretty cool. Oh, and we get a typical Team Rocket action scene too with Golduck absolutely fucking up poor Arbok and blowing up the submarine with a Hyper Beam. Ash also acts like a particularly irritating brat in this one, being all 'left out' just because Misty and Marina are bonding over their love of Water-types.
Anyway, despite the rather m'eh plot twist, this one is a pretty fun episode.
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Episode 92: The Joy of Pokemon
Another one that's just... all right, and I feel like that's going to be a running theme going on with a lot of these Orange Islands episodes. "The Joy of Pokemon" is a solid 20-minute episode, it quickly introduces a concept to us, has a relatively decent story, Team Rocket arrives to muck things up and has a relatively all right conclusion. Everything happened as you'll expect it to, and this episode's guest star of the week is the tanned and "buff" Nurse Joy that goes around on a kayak to all the different smaller islands in the Orange Archipelago. It's interesting to give a Joy some extra screentime and some backstory to distinguish her from the other Nurse Joys, even if she's still ultimately a character of the week.
The main story is basically just how super-competent this tanned Joy is, and how much she loves Pokemon, including the gigantic 3-meter Magikarp that she helped cure as a kid and is now her best buddy. Later on, the big Magikarp ends up trying its best to help rescue Joy and Team Ash from Team Rocket's huge Magikarp submarine, before evolving to Gyarados and beating up Team Rocket. Nothing too spectacular, but it's a neat enough 'plot of the week', I suppose. There's a weird bit in the middle where Tracey is so convinced that Nurse Joy is going to drown because she's reckless enough to go out in the storm, and I do appreciate the fact that, hey, just because Tracey's trying to white knight it up doesn't mean that the kids are suddenly more competent than the clearly super-competent Nurse Joy that's been doing this all her life.
Anyway, none of these episodes are particularly special or spectacular, but they're all relatively solid entries, I suppose.
As we continue on the Orange Islands episodes, we're going to have more and more episodes that I just don't have anything to talk about, and "Stage Fight" is one of them. Our main characters stumble upon a certain Cool Thing of the Week, in this case being a Pokemon Showboat where a bunch of seemingly-talking Pokemon throw a play that's a riff on Rocky but with musical elements or something. Except it turns out that the Pokemon aren't actually talking, their trainers are dubbing them in the background. And then the main characters befriends one of the troupe and learns of her problems -- Kei's Raichu is really really shy after a traumatic experience where it accidentally shocked its trainer out of excitement and Kei tosses it into the ground. It's neat to see Ash actually giving a neat little speech or two about being a good trainer, even if his advice does basically amount to 'yolo'. It kind of works, though, in the context of this episode with a trainer basically tossing aside her well-being to protect Raichu during the inevitable Team Rocket attack.
The Team Rocket attack happens basically how you would expect it to happen, although those Magikarp sub missiles are hilarious. Team Rocket tries to basically bully the Pokemon on the boat into working for them, thinking that they're able of speech like Meowth... and apparently the human voice actors are also ventriloquists or something, and they fool Team Rocket enough to counterattack and Fire Punch James in the face. I'm not sure how this really works, wouldn't the Pokemon just attack Team Rocket on their own even without the ventriloquist dub voice? Whatever the case, after a heroic rescue moment (tm), Raichu regains its confidence and helps to take down the bad guys, Team Rocket gets sent flying again, and thanks to one of the actors losing his voice, Ash and his Pokemon get to stand in among the stage performance.
Basically not much really happened, huh? The story is decent enough and is well executed for a standalone story, but ultimately it's very much something we have seen (and will see) several times over in the series. We don't even have the excuse of letting a new Pokemon take the center stage, because by my count this is the third Raichu that ends up being the guest star of the episode.
________________________________
Episode 91: Bye Bye Psyduck
Okay, this episode is... weird? Again, this is the first time that I watched all of these Orange Island episodes, and I am somewhat surprised at the title. Okay, so the episode promises to shake up the status quo by seemingly being an exit for one of the main Pokemon cast in Misty's Psyduck. Obviously, that didn't happen, since Psyduck will be with us all the way to Johto and beyond.
And the huge twist is that Psyduck evolves into Golduck during a battle between Misty and a fellow Water-specialist trainer called Marina, and Golduck turns out to be super-duper badass... but it turns out that at the end of the episode, the Golduck is just some random Golduck who likes to show off to women, and good ol' Psyduck is still a good ol' goof, status quo, nothing changes. And I suppose it's a neat enough subversion, but at this point the show's kind of pretty stale and static that I genuinely honestly wished that maybe Misty gets Golduck and gets a pretty powerful fighter on her team, y'know? It's like the show is self-aware, going all "it's my first battle in a while", because... well, when was the last time Misty actually did anything in this show?
The action scenes in this episode is pretty neat, featuring a rare bit of showcase of Misty's party (including Goldeen!) against Marina's Tentacruel, strong Psyduck and Starmie. I just kind of wish they gave Marina other Water-type Pokemon that's not part of Misty's retinue, y'know? The action scenes with Golduck's psychic powers are pretty cool. Oh, and we get a typical Team Rocket action scene too with Golduck absolutely fucking up poor Arbok and blowing up the submarine with a Hyper Beam. Ash also acts like a particularly irritating brat in this one, being all 'left out' just because Misty and Marina are bonding over their love of Water-types.
Anyway, despite the rather m'eh plot twist, this one is a pretty fun episode.
________________________________
Episode 92: The Joy of Pokemon
Another one that's just... all right, and I feel like that's going to be a running theme going on with a lot of these Orange Islands episodes. "The Joy of Pokemon" is a solid 20-minute episode, it quickly introduces a concept to us, has a relatively decent story, Team Rocket arrives to muck things up and has a relatively all right conclusion. Everything happened as you'll expect it to, and this episode's guest star of the week is the tanned and "buff" Nurse Joy that goes around on a kayak to all the different smaller islands in the Orange Archipelago. It's interesting to give a Joy some extra screentime and some backstory to distinguish her from the other Nurse Joys, even if she's still ultimately a character of the week.
The main story is basically just how super-competent this tanned Joy is, and how much she loves Pokemon, including the gigantic 3-meter Magikarp that she helped cure as a kid and is now her best buddy. Later on, the big Magikarp ends up trying its best to help rescue Joy and Team Ash from Team Rocket's huge Magikarp submarine, before evolving to Gyarados and beating up Team Rocket. Nothing too spectacular, but it's a neat enough 'plot of the week', I suppose. There's a weird bit in the middle where Tracey is so convinced that Nurse Joy is going to drown because she's reckless enough to go out in the storm, and I do appreciate the fact that, hey, just because Tracey's trying to white knight it up doesn't mean that the kids are suddenly more competent than the clearly super-competent Nurse Joy that's been doing this all her life.
Anyway, none of these episodes are particularly special or spectacular, but they're all relatively solid entries, I suppose.
Featured Characters:
- Episode 90:
- Pokemon: Mr. Mime, Chansey, Pikachu, Togepi, Hitmonchan, Clefable, Machoke, Abra, Jynx, Raichu, Meowth, Victreebel, Weezing, Marill, Squirtle, Psyduck Staryu
- Humans: Ash, Misty, Tracey, Jessie, James, Professor Oak
- Episode 91:
- Pokemon: Staryu, Togepi, Pikachu, Lapras, Psyduck, Tentacruel, Goldeen, Marill, Squirtle, Poliwhirl, Kingler, Poliwrath, Horsea, Wartortle, Seel, Seaking, Dratini, Dragonair, Dragonite, Tentacool, Meowth, Golduck, Starmie, Arbok
- Humans: Misty, Tracey, Ash, Jessie, James
- Episode 92:
- Pokemon: Lapras, Pikachu, Togepi, Chansey, Magikarp, Kingler, Sandshrew, Vileplume, Onix, Mankey, Bulbasaur, Gyarados, Jigglypuff, Shellder, Dewgong, Squirtle, Marill, Staryu, Psyduck, Meowth, Seel
- Humans: Ash, Tracey, Misty, Nurse Joy, James, Jessie
Random Notes:
- As the dancing Pokemon in "Stage Fight" shows us... Jynx has foot! These bizarre bare-footed-human feet! This facet has basically been retconned with all of Jynx's other appearances, with the games that allow you to rotate the model showing us that Jynx's lower body is this slug/dress thing.
- "Stage Fight" is removed out of some international collections, likely because of the appearance of the black-faced Jynx and the fact that this is kind of an inconsequential episode they could remove without really depriving the audience of much.
- So I guess Psyducks can swim naturally, and it's Misty's Psyduck that's, uh, special. I'm not sure if I've ever seen a Psyduck in any subsequent anime episode or the games or the various mangas swim, though.
- We get a return of the Misty Lure, which first debuted in the Aupoculo episode, and will make brief, recurring appearances in subsequent episodes.
- Episode 91 is actually Goldeen's battle debut, almost ninety episodes since its first appearance. Poor fishy.
- Episode 92 shows off perhaps yet another example of how sizes in the Pokemon anime world is basically arbitrary, yeah? Pokemon Go in particular would take this concept and run wild with it.
- Some of the pokemon that Joy visits clearly have trainers, but I am curious just how the system is for Joy to visit Pokemon like that random Shellder or Seel that are just living in the wild
- Jigglypuff makes a brief cameo in 92, but our heroes wisely kayak away before she could take over the plot and Jiggly-ex-machina.
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