Pikachu in Pictures Chapter 3: I Only Asked for Heracross

Chapter 3 of “Pikachu in Pictures” takes us to the Johto region of Pokémon Gold & Silver, where the Pokémon anime is undergoing an evolution as slow and fitful as the mighty Ursaring (which Wolfman’s been hankering to use in a team someday soon, but it’s hard to find the right game for it). How have Misty and Brock been treated by the change in scenery? Are Ash’s Kanto Pokémon taking away from his new captures? And on that note, where the f___ is Heracross?

Episodes reviewed. I’ve decided to formally switch to the Pokémon Company’s official episode numbering for the English dub, which treats all of the separate Japanese TV shows as seasons in one big series. Eat that, one of the sites pushing back against Fandom, the conglomerate that’s been choking the life out of independent wikis! But really, it’s fair since I’m playing on the English version’s field. Plus it makes it far easier for me and everyone reading to seek these episodes out.

301: “Don’t Touch that ‘dile” (October 14, 1999). While Ash, Misty, and Brock trudge through the new Johto region in search of Professor Elm, who can help register Trainers for the Johto League, Team Rocket sneaks into his New Bark Town office and steals his Totodile.
313: “Ignorance is Blissey” (January 6, 2000). Everyone converges on a Pokémon Center staffed by a hardworking but inept Blissey. After Blissey risks her job giving the Center’s food stores to Jessie, her old friend from nursing school, Team Rocket doubles back to take the blame for the theft.
318: “Charizard’s Burning Ambition” (February 10, 2000). Despite being an easy trump card for Ash’s battles, Charizard finds himself out of his weight class at a preserve for “naturally training” wild Charizard. He eventually proves his tenacity to the inhabitants of the Charicific Valley, they offer him an invitation, and Pikachu has to give his old teammate a goodbye Ash can’t.
330: “Tricks of the Trade” (May 4, 2000). Ash and friends meet a trainer desperate to trade his weird, eccentric Wobbuffet at the local swap meet. Amidst a Running of the Tauros and a Team Rocket scam, he manages to trade it… accidentally, and for Jessie’s Lickitung, making Wobbuffet the fourth member of Team Rocket.
339: “Forest Grumps” (July 6, 2000). When a horde of rampaging Ursaring mix up Team Rocket and Team Twerp, both sides have to work together while Jessie, James, and Meowth learn how the other half lives.

Wow, Season 3 starts off on a full tilt, don’t it? “Don’t Touch that ‘dile” has all the marks of a comfortable soft reboot. You get a primer on Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny, the ins and outs of Pokémon training are explored, and all of our main players get quick profiles. You wanna know why Ash is being followed by two flamboyant weirdos and a talking cat? Get a bunch of scenes with them! Don’t get this “Pokémon” thing? We’ve got two professors on hand to explain! It’s quite energetic; Brock’s crazy animated compared to our last two batches of episodes. When the great new opening theme calls this a “whole new world, with a brand new attitude” (alongside shouting “Johto” a truly distressing number of times), it feels legit. Frankly, you’d never guess that the “Johto Journeys” were so disliked by the Pokémon fandom.

Image: The Pokémon Company.

But that’s the thing; this was never the problem. The third main arc of Pokémon, set in the land of Pokémon Gold & Silver, was liked when it kept up the pace and pushed the envelope. Cutting Ash’s original starters from the cast (they were taking up too much room and had hit the end of their arcs), letting Team Rocket play hero more, and giving Ash a bit more competence were great. The problem was the filler. And not fun filler, like the delightful “Forest Grumps,” but bad, boring epsides that existed to fill time and debut a Pokémon from Generation II. There’s no reason a one-off has to be bad—in fact, I’d argue that the best of shows like Pokémon is built on the back of them—but these were boring. Ash rolls into town, Brock flirts, Misty grabs him, a bystander gets taught a life lesson, and 4Kids rewrites the Team Rocket motto to better fit the situation. Kanto had a ton of these, too, but it was new and untested. Johto was supposed to be a step up. Gold & Silver were.

We avoided it this week, but our next two weeks in Johto will each have one to give me a taste. And I actually read the plot synopsis for a lot of the Gen II episodes (for an adjacent project); a lot of the worst seem to have been towards the middle and end of the run. It was a perfect storm for a time when people were desperate for Togepi to finally evolve, annoyed at how the GS Ball subplot died on the vine, and frustrated with the lack of attention given to Ash’s new team. I didn’t even get to see Heracross at all this week, and that was the one of his I’ve been wanting to see most! He was Ash’s first Gen II Pokémon, and a delightfully off-kilter one at that. He had the first good Bug-type move!

It’s unfortunate that the discussion of bad filler dominates this week so much when we’ve barely gotten any of it. In fact, I’m gonna try to avoid discussing it so much in the next two weeks. But also, I do want to note that my admittedly very heavily curated look at Johto has been quite good and entirely free of this. There’s a lot of energy, and episodes generally have a bit more going on than they did in Kanto. It feels like the show finally has a stronger handle on the dynamics between its main characters and is more confident in playing with them. Ash “Harry and the Hendersons” Charizard! Jessie does the same to a Blissey! Team Rocket gets poked at! And in general, our heroes and villains feel (at least a tad) deeper and more engaged.

Source: Fandom.

Many of these things are tied to elements of world or character building. Ash repeatedly changes the makeup of his party (even if that involves my beloved Heracross being punted out for Tauros, even if I’ve also been wanting to train one of those). We learn about schools for Pokémon, one that ties into a dramatic backstory for Jessie. Team Rocket gets a fourth member; the Homsar-esque Wobbuffet’s not exactly deep, but he gives a good burst of energy that poor Arbok, Weezing, and Victreebel can’t. It’s a big part of why it’s great to see Team Rocket take center stage more for comedy and drama. The biggest thing I’m missing here is learning more about Ash’s new Pokémon (and especially Misty and Brock’s), who unfortunately don’t get as much screen presence as his old ones.

Though their very existence led to the biggest change: Ash’s ultimately temporary release of Charizard. It’s a generally good episode, a good show of how Charizard’s toughness goes deeper than its fighting acumen, and a good conclusion to a character. This cartoon is meant to promote a franchise, and Charizard being on hand at every turn inherently limits the star power of newcomers like Chikorita and Brock’s Pineco. But keeping him on would also give too much time to a character whose story had pretty much ended, and one who’s so strong that he displaces everyone else (other series, like the DCAU, have managed wildly disproportionate “power levels,” but Pokémon’s different. It’s too much like a sport). For brand promotion, for group dynamics, for real drama, he had to go. And it was handled quite well. I don’t know how well Squirtle and Bulbasaur’s exits compare, though.

This kind of show can’t serve up significant story changes like this all the time. It can’t and it probably shouldn’t. But there’s of course a difference between it happening “all the time,” it happening a decent amount of the time, and it barely happening amidst a sea of nothing. For anyone who watched The Johto arc hoping for something big and new, the latter ~~probably~~ almost certainly wasn’t enough. But hey, at least we have this stuff. The wacky farce of “Tricks of the Trade,” which throws out goofy curveballs at nice pace. The nice backstory work in “Ignorance is Blissey.” And, of course, the sitcom shenanigans from “Forest Grumps.” They’ll always be here—well, unless the copies are destroyed or some David Zaslav-esque dirtbag executive unpersons them. But we don’t have to think too hard about crossing that bridge.

Movie reviewed: Pokémon 3: The Movie – Spell of the Unown: Entei (July 8, 2000).

Upon finding artifacts belonging to her lost father, young Molly Hale accidentally summons a collective of Unown. They create an expanding world where her wishes come to life and an imaginary Entei acts as her violently protective surrogate father. After it abducts Ash’s mother Delia, Ash, Misty, Brock, and their increasingly exhausted partners climb the Unown’s crystalline palace and try to stave off Molly’s cadre of unstoppable, imaginary Pokémon.

It’s extremely stupid full title belies it, but Spell of the Unown carries a certain weight: the “best” Pokémon movie. Unlike the iconic but pretty awful Mewtwo Strikes Back or the more “quest-focused” The Power of One, it’s the one with both a more conscious “heart” in the center and a better plot to support it. It’s got more interesting visuals and imagery. And by being the last one to hit theaters outside Japan for many years (due to its relative underperformance; it was actually quite successful by normal metrics), it has a connotation in the West as the last one that really “mattered.” Hopefully, Movies 4 through 24 will push back against that. But right now, it thankfully lives up to the hype.

Image: Anime BluRay UK.

If Pokémon 2000 was a significant buildup of what the series could be like as a big screen event, Pokémon 3 weaves together the scale of cinema, the high concept nature of the franchise, but also a far more compelling drama. There’s still a world-ending threat, but now it’s a fantastical crystal palace and creatures rewriting the world seemingly out of inertia. There’s still a dangerous Pokémon in the imperious, imaginary Entei, but his being a product of Molly’s mind and trauma defines both of them better than Mewtwo’s half-baked existential crisis. There’s still a structured list of setpieces, but Brock and Misty “sacrificing” themselves in unwinnable matches just to buy Ash time adds more drama and tension than the search for Lugia could stir up. Team Rocket isn’t as involved as they were last time, admittedly, but they’re still great as a Greek chorus. And no moment in the others hits quite like Charizard’s eleventh hour save. Even Delia Ketchum gets a few beats.

What it all builds to is a story that’s about something Pokémon rarely entertains and did even less so back then: grief and trauma. While young kid characters are never the franchise’s forte, Molly is extremely strong. The loss she feels is real, even if the movie undercuts it a bit by the end. The threat—the captivating spread of the crystal, and the powers the Unown seem unable not to wield—comes from someone who simply doesn’t know how to process issues that all of us experience. The fun and comfort she gets out of the magic, like getting Pokémon friends and becoming a great Trainer, are relatable; they’re emblematic of things we often want, whether or not we engage with the franchise. It meshes pain and danger and a need for comfort from a “villain” who so deeply wants everything Ash has without realizing it.

Even the little details harmonize wonderfully. The film repeatedly notes how our heroes’ Pokémon are getting run ragged over this quest, which is great; it shows the cost of their heroism, emphasizes their vulnerability, lets all of them participate and not just Ash’s starters, and dovetails with this idea that every push Ash makes comes at a cost—every step ascending the castle loses him a friend or precious stamina. Everyone’s Pokémon got their asses kicked in Mewtwo Strikes Back, but here we get to see them use strategy in well animated fights. And on that note, the art direction is such a huge step up (except maybe for the silly CGI used for the Unown) and bolsters each scene or sequence. Molly’s world is creepy and enchanting. I don’t think the main show could ever handle it. I don’t know how well most TV cartoons could.

Image: Letterboxd.

This is, silly Pokémon anime affectations aside, basically just a good movie, no bones about it. It explores my favorite part of this show, the complicated relationships between humans and animals, in ways that are more surprising and complicated than usual. It looks excellent. The dub’s scripting is better than ever, though 4Kids did reorder some scenes and was still replacing the score wholesale (this practice would mostly stop in the movies after this but only get worse in the show). More than anything, though, this is what the Pokémon franchise should look like on the big screen more often than not. A bit playful, a bit scary, great with its action, and confidently emotional.

Conclusion: Here’s a confession: I rewatched “Forest Grumps.” Not out of need or because I needed to make super duper sure Ash hadn’t brought back his PROBABLY AMAZING HERACROSS; I just wanted to. It’s a fun episode!

At its best, as far as I can tell, Johto could serve up this kind of episode with panache. Maybe it wouldn’t be plot relevant (Bulbapedia considers “Grumps” relevant, since it’s the first time James’ Victreebel used Vine Whip, which probably says more about “hard canon” than it thinks) but had more involved character dynamics. It was more comfortable with the idea of an expanded cast that could include Team Rocket, minor recurring characters, and Ash’s stable of Pokémon back home. The five episodes I watched showed this pretty well. Several focused on people or Pokémon who aren’t Ash Ketchum, comfortable with the knowledge that kids will be able to engage with characters other than the hero. And whether that’s due to better plotting on the part of the original writers or a more intelligent dub on the part of the localizers, the storytelling is just stronger—frankly, more so than the season I watched growing up.

But I also can’t deny that I need to take my fun in context. This was some of Johto, and not a minuscule part necessarily, but one that was dwarfed by unsatisfying boss battles, little character development on Ash’s part, and many characters of the day with recycled models. This series is, perhaps, at the expense of the people who dutifully walked every episode, were let down by so many of them, but didn’t let that stop them from writing plot synopses on Bulbapedia or “best” and “worst episode” listicles I could raid for inspiration. I got to quickly pick “Tricks of the Trade” off a list and enjoy it because some poor fool watched “Snubbull Snobbery” or “A Bout with Sprout” or whatever and worked hard to tell people they sucked (and also because that thoroughness let me know when Jessie caught Wobbuffet). I’ve been trying to be conscious of this since the project started. But it was easy when it was covering a season I watched and hard in one I hadn’t that also went on for too damn long. This is why you don’t wanna make fifty-episode seasons.

Image: Tenor. But that’s not all bad. Without fifty-episode seasons you don’t get James dressing up as Moltres, one of the saddest cuts I had to make when setting up my list.

But even if the bad by consensus episodes I picked out for the next two weeks are as bad as they say, they’ll still be exactly what I want. Because this week, far more than the episodes of Pokémon I had seen years ago, held the appeal of this project to me. Other than “Charizard’s Burning Ambition” I don’t know if I saw any of The Johto Journeys because, Movies 3 and 4 aside, I was drifting from Pokémon. Not because I disliked it; I was simply drifting from video games. Oh, I read the first English reports about the Ghost-type gym with the pit of souls, or the twist that you could go back to Kanto, but that was it. I eventually got Pokémon Crystal and a Game Boy Advance, but that was its own thing, divorced from other players beyond a friend helping me with the evolutions I needed to fill out my team of Typhlosion, Politoed, Victreebel, Sudowoodo, Alakazam, and Sneasel. By now I know Johto well thanks to Crystal and HeartGold, but seeing it this way is new. And the show making (slight) strides is nice, too. Now I know I could have stayed just a bit longer back then and gotten something out of it… though, looking at those hyper-detailed online synopses, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten that much.

Errant thoughts:

I didn’t want it to clog up the discussion even more, since we already have so much filler talk, but I just wanted to vent my frustration with some of how it’s discussed over the internet. Filler arcs are often terrible, and we all know they exist to pad airtime. But ultimately, the problem is just that they’re bad. Plenty of shows, Pokémon included, have found ways to use the disposable nature of episodes or even whole arcs to their advantage. That’s especially true of one-offs, which can explore unfamiliar territory or show a new side of characters. And they can relax the tension, which is important if your hyper-serialized show goes on for hundreds of episodes (often with plenty of “real” arcs that are no less bad).
- That being said, I’d also be remiss to not mention that a lot of filler is crap, if largely because a lot of episodes in general are crap. Writing for TV is hard! And it doesn’t help when you know as a fan it’s holding off an important arc that may not even be good.
- Also, and this is just a personal note, but a ton of the episodes I’m most excited to see are one-offs, as were several of the ones I almost picked. They sounded unique and fun in a way the plot-relevant stuff often can’t be… though they were still a minority because, again, a lot of any season that lasts this long is gonna be bad.
- And for one last bit, and I did mention this last week, but Pokémon should have smaller, slightly disposable arcs more often and plan them better. The franchise really needs to put the increasingly large and ambitious mainline games on longer production cycles, which means making Generations longer and pacing out merchandising. I liked Scarlet & Violet, but it’s insane that the series is getting less polished with each mainline release. Stretch everything out, put Generations on at least a four year cycle, and lean on that.
- Okay, I promise I’ve gotten this out of my system.
The other major thing this week was the controversy regarding Takeshi Shudō, the anime’s head writer and the writer of the first three movies. The implication that Molly’s mother was alive was far more explicit in the dub, but it’s in the Japanese version and supplemental material as well. This rewrite went against his script and was done without his knowledge, and it was a major factor in him giving up on the movies (and, three years later, the anime entirely). He was done dirty, to say nothing of how absurd the change is when Mewtwo obviously murdered people two pictures ago.
- This would be far from the furthest divergence from the final release; though. The original pitch had a dinosaur—like a real life dino—being brought back to life and terrorizing the world of Pokémon. It’s a fascinating idea, but I think it would probably be untenable by this point in the franchise’s worldbuilding. Probably for the best to keep our world and its at a healthy distance.
This is my first and possibly only time in this rewatch seeing “that” Jigglypuff, the one who sings and then scribbles on everyone’s face. It’d have been nice to see more of the inspiration for one of Super Smash Bros.’ most underrated characters.
Is this when Meowth starts calling James “Jimmy?” Because I’m a fan.
“Straighten up and fly right” reference? Honestly, I’m generally cool with the dub’s addition of weird puns, pop culture references, and fourth wall breaks. Yeah, it’s not fully accurate, but that’s okay. I mean, that’s what I’d do in the writers’ position.
It is fun to see Charizard go back to being goofy and silly in “Charizard’s Burning Ambition” after being so entrenched in the culture as the “best ‘Mon” and Ash’s toughest partner. It wouldn’t be sustainable, though, which drives home why it needed to go. Plus, it did eventually come back to Ash for good; that’s more than Primeape can say. Hell, that’s more than Greninja can say. Still mad Journeys went out of its way to not bring it back.
I haven’t really talked about the music much, but I just want to say that the remix of Gold & Silver’s “Route 26” featured in “Charizard’s Burning Ambitions” was rather spectacular. One of the most unmitigated successes of the show (if not the most) is its sumptuous remixes of the various songs of the Pokémon games. The games have strong music, and these are excellent arrangements. And it’s just as big of a shame that the dub would soon cut so much of it.
“Sub-maritime sandwiches.” Just a fun turn of phrase.
Given the cultural editing for which it was already infamous (to say nothing of what it’ll be doing in the Hoenn years), it’s genuinely surprising to hear a 4Kids script referencing Bento box lunches and “sushi on a stick.”
Apparently, I’m now going to have to work hard to find an entry where I can conceivably get an Ursaring. Maybe I can restart my Shining Pearl copy and find one before hitting the National Dex? Hell, let’s throw Heracross in there, too—and Milotic; I’ve been wanting to add one to a main team forever. Let’s call it “Wolfman Jew’s team of totally style-types who can’t catch a break.”
What is up with Gary’s cape?

Next movie: Pokémon 4Ever – Celebi: The Voice of the Forest.

Next episodes:

402: “A Dairy Tale Ending”
403: “Air Time!”
407: “Carrying On!”
502: “Fly Me to the Moon”
518: “”For Ho-Oh the Bells Toll!”

Other movies watched:

The Amazing Mr. X
Carol
The God of Cookery
M.D. Geist
M.D. Geist II: Death Force
Out of the Past
Sherlock Holmes and the Woman in Green
Sunset Strip (the RiffTrax serial killer breakdancing movie, not that idiotic Aaron Sorkin thing)

Other television episodes watched:

Assassination Classroom 206, “Before & After Time”
Assassination Classroom 207, “Reaper Time, Part 1”
Assassination Classroom 208, “Reaper Time, Part 2”
Assassination Classroom 211, “End-of-Term Time, 2nd Period”
Assassination Classroom 212, “Think Outside the Box Time”
Cheers 204, “Homicidal Ham”
Cheers 217, “Fortune and Men’s Weight”
Cheers 301, “Rebound” (1)
Cheers 302, “Rebound” (2)
Dungeons & Dragons 207, “The Dragon’s Graveyard”
Frasier 206, “The Botched Language of Cranes.” So Confession Time #2: I can’t help but imagine crossovers when doing these long form writing projects. Before I deleted my account after it became an officially-sanctioned cesspool of Holocaust denialism, racist conspiracies, and mass data thievery, I had a plan for a gimmick Twitter account pitching the most idiotic Kingdom Hearts crossovers I could imagine (“Gawrsh, Sora, we’ve gotta stop that there Marlo from taking over the New Day Co-Op!”). And now I can’t help but think of sticking characters like Frasier and Niles into Pokémon. This is what Source Gaming does to me.
Frasier 213, “Retirement is Murder”
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero 138, “Eau de Cobra”
Inhumanoids 110, “The Evil Eye”
Littlest Pet Shop 212, “Commercial Success”
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 125, “Life’s a Masquerade”
Regular Show 318, “Eggcellent”
Regular Show 327, “Busted Cart”
Regular Show 425, “Carter and Briggs”
Regular Show 432, “Country Club”
Regular Show 201, “Ello Gov’nor”
Regular Show 719, “Chili Cook-Off”
Regular Show 815, “Space Escape”
Regular Show 816, “New Beds”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 416, “Bar Association”
Transformers Animated 207, “A Fistful of Energon”

Games played

God of War: Ragnarök (though sadly, I’m kind of less invested now that the main plot’s done)
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD
Pokémon Let’s Go, Eevee!

Read all of “Pikachu in Pictures” right here!