Pokemon, Episodes 101-104
Episode 101: Get Along, Little Pokemon
"Get Along, Little Pokemon" is... it's a very, very interesting concept, actually, for a Pokemon world, and I'm frankly surprised this didn't show up more what with the first generation already having a Power Plant area and whatnot. But basically, Ash and company meet up with a goddamn lightning farmer-cowboy, who rides around a Tauros and leads a small swarm of Magnemite (who he doesn't keep in Pokeballs for no real reason beyond he likes it that way). The idea of farming lightning from thunderstorms, storing them on Magnemite and selling them to supply cities and towns is a bit of a bizarre idea... but we really don't get to explore it much after the exposition. Cowboy man gets his leg injured, Ash gets to go on a "heroic" run to bring the Magnemites to the city waiting for them, one of them is a bit of a goofball and gets separated from its pack. They fight Team Rocket, and the goofball Magnemite gets brave enough to fight back and evolves into a Magneton.
Again, the concept is nice but it feels like it's the content of around half an episode or something. None of the action scenes are particularly noteworthy and it's not like the plot is anything particularly novel or honestly even fitting with the idea of spotlighting Magnemite and Magneton.
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Episode 102: The Mystery Menace
This is another one that feels all right in a vacuum, but also feels like it has the sense of 'been here, done that'. Doesn't help that we've already done a fair amount of 'abandoned Pokemon' stories far, far more effectively in this series' first dozen or so episodes. The fact that Ash's Bulbasaur is prominently featured in this episode makes it feel like there was going to be some payoff... but nope, Bulbasaur literally just shows up because the other Pokemon is also a Bulbasaur. There's a huge missed opportunity here and I feel like they don't quite capitalize on it at all.
The plot's pretty simple, a take on the 'alligators in sewers' trope, turns out that -gasp- the 'monster' in Trovitopolis is actually an abandoned Bulbasaur! And the abandoned Bulbasaur once belonged to the mayor, who grew up to be an asshole! The mayor himself alternates between being cartoonishly dumb, or being surprisingly dark (by this show's very tame standards), at one point wanting to send a SWAT team to block up the sewers with concrete, and if three kids should starve to death beneath it, well sucks to be them. I mean, it all worked out fine (and even then if it didn't Ash could just Charizard his way out) but still, that was surprisingly a different tone compared to most of the series. At least the mayor's ex-Bulbasaur absolutely loathes its previous trainer, though, which is clearly the best conclusion here.
Overall, a huge missed opportunity, and the fact that we spend so much time dicking around the 'mystery' on what the sewer monster is (it's a Pokemon show, so of course it's a Pokemon) makes this one feel like it dragged on longer than it should.
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Episode 103: Misty Meets Her Match
A gym battle! Which means we're around eight or ten episodes before the Orange Islands season ends! Whether I ever do Johto or not (random Elekid cameo in this episode, BTW) is going to be another matter entirely, but I'm definitely going to try to finish Orange Islands. I know Johto gets real repetitive, though, and I'm barely keeping up with Orange Islands even with this 'two or three paragraphs per episode' deal.
"Misty Meets Her Match" is one of those 'big' episodes that everyone talked about as a kid because shipping. And... and honestly, in this show? It's clearly not meant to be much. Every bit of attempted Ash/Misty shipping goes straight over Ash's head, Misty herself is a bit flustered (what girl her age wouldn't be?) and the supposed love rival, Rudy? He's a complete lunatic, the sort of over-the-top "my eternal love!" sort of trope you'd see a lot in anime. And... and that's really about it to be said. There sure was an attempt, though, for Rudy to offer Misty the chance to stay around Trovita Island, and Rudy's little sister was putting on the wingman charm real strong... but... eh, y'know what? Considering how much it shook the fandom at the time, I'm going to say that it probably qualifies as a success in that regard, but I really don't care about the shipping side all that much.
That aside, compared to the other episodes I'm reviewing today, "Misty Meets Her Match" does have a fair amount of obvious animation budget allocated to it. From the rescue mission in the beginning to the surprisingly large amount of Pokemon Rudy has in his gym, and the battle scene... it's pretty neat, and probably one of the better action sequences in Orange Islands... although that's speaking more about the general quality of the rest of Orange Islands in general than this battle.
That aside, it's a typical gym battle episode. There's the obligatory Island Trial style non-battle element, which... which feels more like an obligatory thing and a vehicle for the writers to show Rudy's hilariously blatant attempts to flirt. The dancing thing doesn't really go anywhere, and ultimately it just ends in a regular battle. It's been a while since we had one of those, though, and we really haven't seen Electabuzz and Exeggutor a whole ton. The episode ends with an interesting (albeit nonsensical, in video-game logic) of Squirtle learning Skull Bash like some sort of secret art, which is pretty cool. It also features a rare case of an anime Pokemon being explicitly highlighted for an unusual TM movepool.
Ultimately... it's not my thing, but I did definitely appreciate them highlighting Rudy's antics in this 'love triangle' . It sure fits some grade school tomfoolery if these characters are supposed to be in their early teens! I didn't love this episode, but it was definitely a decent one.
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Episode 104: Bound for Trouble
Yeah, throughout this episode there was definitely a huge sense of "Island of Giant Pokemon did it better", and so did some equivalent Pokemon-only or Pikachu/Meowth episodes either in the mini-movie OVA's or in like the later seasons. "Bound for Trouble" is reasonably solid, though, anything with Meowth in the spotlight -- particularly one where he interacts with Pikachu -- is definitely neat to watch. It's just that... well, it's sort of what we expect. After the two of them get bound together with some bizarre waist-to-waist cuffs, Meowth gets absolutely bullied and is the butt-monkey of the show. Pikachu acts like a bit of a dick (which is something that's definitely rare after the first dozen or so episodes) but we laugh because we're supposed to root for Pikachu and jeer at Meowth. Then there's that brief moment of Meowth being all melancholic and thinking about how different things could be if they weren't on opposing sides or whatever. Again, this honestly won't ever go anywhere since this is a static show, but it does make it feel just that much more special.
The setting of this episode isn't terrible, either. Fairchild Island's gimmick are larger-than-normal Pokemon (well, specifically just Rhydon and Pidgeot, according to Tracey). No reason why they're all dicks to Pikachu and Meowth, but we do get some neutral antagonists here. The English dub that I watched did have a fair bit of fun with the dialogue, too, particularly everything surrounding the fake fruits and pitfalls early on in the episode. Ash's acting at being separated from Pikachu and with his companion possibly in mortal danger isn't quite that distraught (probably because of that out-of-place background music) as it would have to really tug at the heartstrings, though.
So this time around we've got two decent solid episodes and two forgettable ones. We have less than ten episodes before Orange Island concludes, so we'll see just how it really ends.
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Featured Characters:
- Episode 101:
- Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Magnemite, Jolteon, Tauros, Meowth, Chansey, Arbok
- Humans: Tracey, Ash, Misty, James, Jessie, Officer Jenny, Nurse Joy
- Episode 102:
- Pokemon: Togepi, Pikachu, Meowth, Bulbasaur, Weezing, Muk
- Humans: Tracey, Misty, Ash, James, Jessie, Officer Jenny, Nurse Joy, Professor Oak
- Episode 103:
- Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Seel, Staryu, Lapras, Meowth, Charizard, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Elekid (image), Exeggutor, Electabuzz, Starmie, Hitmonchan, Golem, Alakazam, Venomoth, Rhydon, Pidgeot, Ninetales
- Humans: Ash, Misty, Tracey, Rudy, Jessie, James
- Episode 104:
- Pokemon: Pikachu, Togepi, Meowth, Arbok, Weezing, Pidgeot, Bulbasaur, Staryu, Marill, Persian (vision), Rhydon, Snorlax, Victreebel, Psyduck
- Humans: Misty, Tracey, Ash, Jessie, James, Giovanni (vision)
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Random Notes:
- Episode 101 has Team Rocket show up with anti-electric-attack gimmicks. I think this is one of the more blatant ones among the ones they showed up with.
- So yeah, the anime and games are pretty consistent at having a single Magnemite become a single Magneton, despite what pokedex entries say.
- I feel like this batch of episodes features a fair amount of the Game Boy games' music, like the cave theme.
- Muk! It's nice to see Muk show up, even if he shows up for like ten seconds and could definitely have been utilized more.
- Apparently there was a lot of talk about how episode 103 added more romantic subtext to the dialogue, but really, from what I can glean it's like extremely minor stuff and mostly on Rudy's part, but it's overblown by shippers.
- Rudy's Starmie being able to use random TM shit like Thunderbolt reaaaaally is something that I wish that the video games actually did more of.
- More regional variants on the Orange Islands, although these are just bigger variants than usual. Pokemon Go, anyone?
- In Japan, the second movie debuted after "Bound for Trouble". Which... reminds me that I really need to review the first movie.
- At this point Elekid would've definitely been finalized since he's going to show up in the little 'bundled' mini-movie in Pokemon 2000, so he gets a brief cameo in episode 103 as a silhouette of a mysterious Pokemon not in the original 151 that Tracey glimpses.
- Good lord, though, Rudy's gym seems to be utterly dangerous. Not just for Ash's Pokemon, but for Rudy's as well. If Bulbasaur hadn't vine whipped it, that poor Exeggutor probably would've been smashed. It's not even like Blaine's volcano or whatever where Blaine's Pokemon would be fine if they fell into lava.
- It's never said out loud but there was definitely the heavy implication that Pidgeot's bringing Meowth and Pikachu to feed to its chicks.
- Jessie really just sent Arbok to bonk onto Pidgeot mid-air. Somehow Arbok is absolutely fine after landing to the ground off-screen.
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