Pokemon S01E97-100: Alpha of the Group

Pokemon, Episodes 97-100

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Episode 97: Tracey Gets Bugged

It's been a while since I did one of these, huh? I do want to get at least the Orange Island adventures done before going into a far, far shorter version if/when I ever watch the Johto seasons... and that is if I don't just jump off to the newest season of Pokemon to review instead. Anyway, these are actually not particularly terrible episodes as far as Orange Island episodes go. "Tracey Gets Bugged" ends up focusing more on Tracey, because after his debut episode... he kind of gets reduced into a literal background presence, even moreso than Brock. I actually wonder why they didn't capitalize more on this and give Tracey a lot more to do in the Orange Islands... but oh well. 

Arriving on Murcott Island where it's famous for Bug-type Pokemon (and I do like that the writers remembered Misty's distaste for bugs) our heroes end up finding a badly injured Scyther. And, again, the story is simple and it's a variation that'll be repeated several times down the line (the one I can think on top of my head is Ash's Treecko) where our heroes comes across a member of a local group of Pokemon that gets injured, our heroes help it out, and it joins our heroes. Scyther's story is a bit different, though. It's an older specimen, the former alpha male of its pack, and like many other wild Pokemon it's distrustful of humans. Tracey ends up putting Scyther to sleep with his Venonat and catching Scyther in order to get it some help in a Pokemon Center. It's a classic case of a Pokemon not trusting humans and Scyther is not trustful of Tracey at all, and a good chunk of the plot ends up being them trying to figure out ways for Scyther to regain his confidence. 

Our old Scyther's tribe, meanwhile, ends up running afoul of Team Rocket (who crash-lands thanks to a swarm of good ol' Beedrill). Its new alpha, who has two scars on its face, ends up really pissing off Jessie by cutting off her hair -- a hilarious gag that rightfully drives Jessie angry and actually got Team Rocket whipped into competence as a result. A glue bazooka later, and they actually manage to capture the entire Scyther swarm in one go. The cries of his tribe ends up attracting Tracey's old Scyther, and between the animation and the voice-acting, they actually do a decent job at illustrating just how wounded and tired Tracey's Scyther is. 

We also get a pretty cool scene of Team Rocket actually bringing out all their manpower. The lesser-seen Lickitung and Victreebel joins in on Arbok and Weezing, and even Meowth joins in on the fight. Despite being outnumbered five-to-two, Old Scyther has something to prove -- not just to its tribe, but to itself. To this end, Old Scyther ends up shooing Pikachu away from the battlefield... and while this is an Orange Islands episode so the animation isn't anything particularly special, I did enjoy this a lot. Ultimately it's just Sychter doing a lot of speed-blitzing and slashing, but seeing it take down five enemies after spending the entire episode being weak and struggling is certainly nice to see. I do like that the anime doesn't quite go over the top. Scyther takes out like four out of the five Pokemon before he gains the respect of the new alpha of his tribe, the scar-faced Scyther, and together with Pikachu they send Team Rocket blasting off again. And the episode closes off with Tracey's Scyther making peace with Scar-face and leaving the tribe to him. Again, the plot is pretty basic, but honestly it's a lot more than we receive for a Pokemon captured by someone that's not Ash, and I'm a huge fan of this episode. 

Episode 98: A Way Off, Day Off

The follow-up, "A Way Off, Day Off", is a pretty interesting one as well. It's an episode that I don't think is the sort of thing you'd see in the seasons post-Johto, but ultimately the entire episode is sort of our characters decompressing and having lunch together. I don't think it works particularly well since the Pokemon anime isn't like anything super-tense, but it sure is thematic! There's some sort of vague plot about the Farfetch'd migration, a bunch of fruit on the island, a Jigglypuff cameo and an obligatory Team Rocket fight, but ultimately it's just a nice way to see the full parties of Ash, Misty and Tracey out and interacting with each other. 

The highlight of this, of course, has to be the meeting between Charizard and Scyther. Charizard is ill-mannered and a big asshole, but Scyther is an old dinosaur-lizard that's the leader of its own pack. I do like that the two of them would glare at each other and basically try to size each other up as the 'alphas' of the group, but they don't actually end up fighting and basically sort of ignore each other with a huff... and when the two of them work together to fend off Team Rocket, they have a manly mutual eye-contact-nod. Also, between Charizard's assholishness and Snorlax eating everyone's food, yeah, Ash isn't a particularly good trainer, huh? 

Not a whole ton takes place, again. We do have Ash reminding the audience about the GS ball and how he's totally wondering what's in it, but the foreknowledge that it's going to be a plot point that's ultimately dropped does make this feel even more pointless in an already filler episode. 

Episode 99: The Mandarin Island Miss Match

This one has Lorelei on it (renamed Prima by the dub), in an episode that was kind of famous for, uh, some cleavage-y fanservice. Honestly? It isn't really that bad. It's sort of a bland episode, though, another one of "Ash learns to be humble, sort of, but he's also a dunderhead so it passes over his head" episode. After a string of victories in Mandarin Island, Ash and company ends up coming up on battle extraordinaire Prima, who happens to be Misty's idol. 

And the episode basically has our hero interact a lot with Prima, whose personality is... kind of an airhead? Sort of a zen-spouting character, but also an easily-distracted airhead. She's unfazed by Ash's excitement and battle-battle-battle mentality, but when Ash tries to show off his battle skills to the super-perfect Prima, an attempt to pull out the big guns and toss out Charizard ends predictably when Charizard ends up rampaging, beating the Tauros... and also burning everything in sight until Prima and her Slowbro disables Charizard and takes it down. Ever since the championship, there's this vague bit of 'oh no, Ash, you can't control Charizard, when will you learn?' storyline sort of going on in the background... but, again, that isn't actually resolved here. 

The episode sort of goes around to show that Prima is, of course, an elite trainer that defeats everyone she meets, and there's an attempt where Ash thinks Prima is doing some reverse psychology on him... but Prima's personality is just really very easygoing. Prima beats up Pikachu with her Cloyster, before one-shotting Team Rocket with her Jynx. And... and again, there is a setup in this episode for something, and I don't know if it's just something that got lost in translation or what, but ultimately the meeting with Prima ends up being kind of a dud episode that ends up with "oh hey look at Prima, she's badass" and the moral of the episode being... uh... be like water my friend, I guess? A Bruce Lee quote?I dunno. Kind of disappointing. 

Episode 100: Wherefore Art Thou, Pokemon?

One that is a guest-star-of-the-week episode and perhaps one that isn't particularly memorable. It's a Romeo and Juliet spiel, but instead of Romeo and Juliet it's a pair of Nidorans owned by a young rich boy and a young rich girl who also happen to be neighbours and very, very competitive. Except the Nidorans love each other, because they're cute baby rabbit-porcupines who really couldn't care less about their owners' feud and they just want to frolic and make Nidobabies. The Nidorans being treated as basically prized show-dogs or show-cats are pretty neat, and the vibe of the episode is pretty interesting for one of these filler, guest-of-the-week episodes. 

The episode doesn't actually do much, but it's pretty sweet. It flows basically how you expect it to -- Misty is the one that catches on the quickest on the Nidorans and the one that's the biggest shipper; the two owners realize their Pokemon's feelings are more important and end up building a house for the Nidos between the two big houses and stuff. We do have a bunch of fun moments here and there, too, like Meowth convincing the two Nidorans to elope (when they wanted to capture the Nidos) or Misty trying to play matchmaker with letters and gifts and making things worse. Oh, and Team Rocket also cosplays as a bride and groom at one point, which is fun. Ultimately, of course, the two trainers learn to work together with their Nidorans, who end up fighting to protect each other and later fighting together to beat up Arbok and Victreebel. Nothing super exciting or notable, but not a terrible episode. 

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Featured Characters:

• Episode 97:
• Pokemon: Lapras, Pikachu, Togepi, Marill, Venonat, Beedrill, Caterpie, Pinsir, Scyther, Meowth, Weedle, Venomoth, Paras, Metapod, Chansey, Arbok, Weezing, Lickitung, Victreebel
• Humans: Tracey, Misty, Ash, Jessie, James, Nurse Joy, Professor Oak
• Episode 98:
• Pokemon: Lapras, Pikachu, Togepi, Jigglypuff, Staryu, Goldeen, Farfetch'd, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Snorlax, Charizard, Marill, Venonat, Scyther, Psyduck, Meowth, Arbok, Victreebel, Weezing, Lickitung, Seadra (flashback), Blastoise (flashback),  Nidoqueen (flashback), Electrode (flashback), Geodude (flashback)
  
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Tracey, James, Jessie, Cissy (flashback), Danny (flashback)
  
• Episode 99: 
• Pokemon: Bulbasaur, Butterfree, Togepi, Pikachu, Meowth, Squirtle, Persian, Tauros, Charizard, Slowbro, Machamp, Marowak, Dewgong, Alakazam, Cloyster, Jynx
• Humans: Ash, Misty, Tracey, Prima/Lorelei, Jessie, James
• Episode 100:
• Pokemon: Togepi, Pikachu, Nidoran F, Nidoran M, Marill, Pidgey, Vulpix, Caterpie, Raticate, Oddish, Meowth, Arbok, Victreebel, Staryu, Nidorino, Nidorina
• Humans: Misty, Ash, Tracey, James, Jessie

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Random Notes:

• Tracey's Scyther is one of the few members of a member of a main character's team in the anime that has a non-standard design; with the little side-burns that denote its age.
• Lost in the dub is the joke at the end of episode 97. The very non-catchphrase-y "I caught <insert name here>" pose that Ash does is actually a catchphrase in the Japanese version, where whenever Ash catches a Pokemon he goes "<insert name here> getto da ze!", basically going "Pidgeotto GET!" Tracey is attempting to basically copy Ash's quirky pose and catchphrase, which is why Ash looks so snotty in teaching Tracey how to properly do it. 
• Dub Changes:
• A big one! In order to fit with the lip flaps of the episode, Lorelei gets given a brand-new English dub name as 'Prima'. Lorelei's Japanese name is 'Kanna', which has two syllables instead of Lorelei's three. Also, all references to the Elite Four is removed in the dub. 
• A dub error related change in episode 97 is "Poison Sting" being dubbed as "Poison Needle", which is the literal meaning of Poison Sting's Japanese name.
• Episode 99's English dub ends up giving a Kadabra the cry of an Alakazam. The dub also mis-dubs Jynx's Ice Punch as Ice Beam. 
• Episode 100 has a fair amount of dub changes where Misty is angry at Ash who keeps pointing out that she's "a kid" too in regards to romance, whereas the dub changes this to Ash just completely missing any sort of romance from anything going on and making him a battle-obsessed kid.
• It's really, really interesting that Swords Dance, in anime-land, can be used to clear smoke. 
• Based on Generation 4's gender differences, Tracey's Scyther (and all the pre-Gen-4 models) actually has the larger abdomen of a female. 
• In episode 97, Ash references his Caterpie by noting that he hasn't captured a Caterpie 'in a long time'. 
• In a bit of an error, Misty is happy that Marill and Venonat aren't gross Bug-types... despite Venonat, y'know, being one. 
• Persian can learn Thunderbolt and Thunder via TM even from Generation I. 
• The Who's That Pokemon segment for Episode 98 features Porygon, in the single time in the entire run of the English Pokemon dub that Porygon's English dub has been heard. 
• Episode 99 has since been removed from active rotation due to its featuring of Jynx's original design. A scene zooming in on Prima's breasts is also removed from some versions of the international dub. 
• There is a joke regarding CD's and $18.95 cassette tapes in the Prima episode that I actually found pretty funny. 
• The real-life country, England, is mentioned by Misty early in episode 100. 
• Episode 100 refers to "Pokemon Contests", although it's a fairly long time before the genesis of Pokemon Contests as an actual part of the Pokemon lore in Ruby & Sapphire. I guess it's just them adapting pet contests?