Pikachu in Pictures Chapter 5: Lycanroc III: The Women Called Annie and Oakley

Woo hoo, Johto is done! Five more episodes of Pokémon Master Quest and a movie have gone down smooth. I’m sure the Hoenn and Sinnoh and Unova years will go just as good and with no problems or bad episodes whatsoever.

Episodes reviewed:

528: “As Cold as Pryce” (February 21, 2002). Mahogany Gym Leader Pryce staunchly refuses Ash’s challenge—and anyone who treats their Pokémon as friends. But Ash and Pikachu change his mind after all three fall into a cave and discover the source of Pryce’s anger: his boyhood friend Piloswine, who mysteriously disappeared decades ago.
530: “Whichever Way the Wind Blows” (March 7, 2002). The gang discovers a valley of Oddish and Gloom, whose evolved forms Vileplume and Bellosom are at war over territory. Since all the Gloom there evolve based on the direction of the wind, which carries trace deposits of either Leaf or Sun Stones, each day brings a new fight.
553: “Address Unown!” (August 29, 2002). Larvitar, a baby Pokémon Ash is taking to its birthplace in Mt. Silver, gets merged with an Unown in a chance encounter. Ash, Misty, and Brock find themselves trapped in a world of Larvitar’s memories and discover its traumatic origins.
560: “Can’t Beat the Heat” (October 17, 2002). Ash’s Pokémon League battle against his rival Gary features quick knockouts on both sides. It’s only Charizard’s sheer power and Ash’s unconventional, terrain-focused strategy that finally stop Gary’s first Pokémon, Blastoise.
563: “Gotta Catch Ya Later!” (November 7, 2002). After the Pokémon League ends, Misty and Brock each get hit with sudden family commitments, and the gang tearfully disbands. The morning after, an encounter with Gary makes Ash go for a fresh start; he commits to travel to the exciting Hoenn region with only Pikachu at his side.

The end of the Johto Era—and it is the end; all five episodes came from the season’s back half—was a big one. We call it Season 5 and “Master Quest,” but in Japan they were the last sixty-four episodes of the TV program Pocket Monsters; every future region would be a distinct show (the American version flip flops, but it usually treats it as one giant series). Appropriately, the Silver Conference and its aftermath is rife with conclusions: the hero finally earns a win and respect from a rival who suddenly quits their field, his human partners leave him, and he’s off on a new adventure with nothing but his best friend by his side. Even Ho-Oh shows up to legitimize the conclusion, the equivalent of a canceled superhero comic ending with “Never the End!” Everything after Ash walks up Mt. Silver onward is a giant-ass finale, one that would only be surpassed by his actual (and currently ongoing) exit from the show years later.

But this sense of bigness and finality seems to be everywhere. There are multi-part Gym Battles (including a four-parter, by far the longest compact arc for a single Gym by that point, that I skipped). There’s a short mini-adventure about taking a baby animal back to its home, one that features a dreamlike adventure into a psychic world. Team Rocket gets a new antagonist in the Delibird loan shark who I really wish I had seen more of. Stuff happened. But it happened in weird fits and spurts, and most of that was in an ultra-packed twenty or so episodes. Fans finally got the propulsion they wanted, just well after a bunch of stuff they didn’t care about.

Image: Bulbapedia. “Whichever Way the Wind Blows,” the most hated episode of Johto.

Stuff like the single most disliked episode of Johto—at least, it was when I reentered the franchise in the mid-2000s. “Whichever Way the Wind Blows” is honestly better than any episode of, say, Heroes. Or Naruto, or Dexter, or Bleach, or Smallville, or… god, I’ve watched so much bad TV. Anyway, it’s not them, nor is it those four episodes that let Chris Carter permanently destroy the entire reputation of The X-Files. Hell, it’s above the crappiest episodes of the original season. But it’s not interesting. The idea that the sediment of evolutionary stones could be carried on the wind is kinda cool, but nothing more. The characters are boring. And coming right after Ash’s battle with Pryce was such a momentum killer. That’s why it’s the consensus worst episode of the region; it embodies “Johto dullness” in the way “March of the Exeggutor Squad” embodies “Kanto unpleasantness.” It’s a symptom of a larger problem.

And that problem isn’t just about there being too many bad episodes or too many filler episodes, or even too many bad fillers—from what I can tell, Johto actually seems to have many of the best individual ones. It’s that the show’s simply not good at seasonal plotting. Judging by the several halves of two-parters I saw over the past few weeks, I’m not convinced its strengths go beyond a single episode. Ash’s growth fluctuated wildly; he’d have some wild, brilliant strategy in one episode and send a Ground-type Phanpy against a Water- / Ice-Type Dewgong the next (rarely have I felt more empathy for a TV character in so short a time than that poor elephant being sent out to instantly die). The reticence to let the characters catch or evolve Pokémon kept so many mediocre episodes from being at least slightly memorable.

But those problems are here even in the big, hyped finale. Ash’s big, climactic battle with Gary mostly consists of a series of one-hit K.O.s from one Pokémon to another. It puts all the weight on the battle between Charizard and Blastoise, which is fair; Blastoise was the answer to a question fans had had since the pilot (which starter Gary got; the reveal only came at the end of the 269th episode), and Charizard is… Charizard. Their fight is pretty cool once Charizard makes the terrain so hot that its Type disadvantage is meaningless. But the show’s pretty blunt that Muk, Heracross, and Gary’s other Pokémon are jobbers for a main act. And while the show’s animation seems at least more “energetic” than it was in Kanto, it’s no less static or simple than every other fight I’ve seen. Yeah, this is just one episode, but it’s been true in all fifteen I did, even if this wasn’t the big culmination.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Yeah, it’s just a static screenshot, but it doesn’t look, you know, super exciting.

To be fair, other stuff has improved. “Address Unown!” has a surreal trip inside a Pokémon’s mind, and it’s tied to the third movie in a fun way. It’s part of a whole mini-arc that dives into a character, Ash’s temporary charge Larvitar, in a way that we’ve rarely seen. Ash’s most interesting tactics are things that the games could’ve even dream of incorporating, like the exciting terrain stuff. There does seem to be “a” greater confidence with writing multi-episode stories (or at least a greater confidence in developing them at all, which is still important). I did like Pryce well enough, and it felt like he was a reasonably distinct spin on the stock “human character who needs to learn that Pokémon deserve love and respect” antagonist.

And “Gotta Catch Ya Later!” is a strong finale, one that could send Ash off wild adventures we could only begin to imagine. Putting the hero in a place where they have grown but can grow further is something most endings should strive for. It’s good they did, even if this was never gonna be the end to Ash’s story. His adventures in Hoenn were already far in production, and “Gotta Catch Ya Later!” was only the second to last episode. The last is a boring filler about his boat to Hoenn, which is perhaps on the nose for Johto. But that’s getting away from my actual point being that this show does have at least the right instincts in what to do.

Which is great! But yeah, things do need to change. The show needs to be better at pacing itself and doling out “big” episodes more evenly. If it wants more multi-part episodes and longer arcs, and it clearly does, it needs to handle them with the skill they give to the best filler. It could stand to have a lot more of that “best filler,” while we’re at it, and find more things to do with Ash, his friends, and Team Rocket. And while this is still fiction and you could suddenly make Brock a much better-written character in a second if you wanted to, doing a big cut and run isn’t a bad way to go about this. Fresh blood and all that. Having Ash build himself up with new partners—human and Pocket Monster—in an all-new region would certainly help with that.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Ash in the penultimate episode. Since, of course, the actual finale is an apparently boring nothing of a story.

I mentioned last week that Pokémon, like anything that exists as the promotional arm of a larger franchise, can and should find ways to create art within the many corporate restrictions that burden it. And Ash deciding to take only Pikachu to Hoenn and presumably fill his team with entirely new Pokémon, is all promotion. So was the person who eventually beat him at this season’s tournament arc (he used two Pokémon from Ruby & Sapphire along with my beloved Sneasel, not that I saw that). But the direction also feels right. Johto’s problems stemmed from an inability to consistently move forward. A mostly clean slate with the mascot, the bad guys, and no one else is certainly the quickest way to do that. And hey, it’d even fit what happened in those games!

Except, of course, that Brock comes back. He’ll always come back. But we’ll cross that bridge on Route 119 when we get to it.

Movie reviewed: Pokémon Heroes: Latios & Latias (July 13, 2002)

Seaside paradise Alto Mare falls prey to master thieves Annie and Oakley, who want to capture its mystical guardians Latios and Latias, the Soul Dew that gives the town its water, and the terrifying Defense Mechanism it powers. Ash, who’s visiting the city, saves and befriends Latias. But once the thieves capture Latios and corrupt the jewel, our heroes have to fight undead Pokémon, ancient security systems, and uncontrolled waters to save him.

When I started the film—hell, pretty much when I started this project—I had mentally labeled this as a blowoff film. Pokémon Heroes was one of the lesser tier entries by my memory and seemingly by consensus. At least the English-language consensus; a Japanese Twitter poll two years ago put it as the most popular of the original series movies. But… yeah, it was less big than Voice of the Forest; it was certainly less big than the movies that got worldwide theatrical releases. Latias and Latios, weird Legendaries from the upcoming Ruby & Sapphire, had neat designs (they’re rare feathered dragons) but weren’t nearly as ~~totally rockin’~~ memorable as Celebi or Entei. And maybe people didn’t like a movie that ended with Ash getting a kiss from someone who might be a girl or a Pokémon. It’s the one that’s easy to ignore.

Image: Anime Planet. Our villains in their flying spy car.

And, honestly, it might deserve that. The CGI is pretty unattractive and more plentiful than it’s been the last couple weeks. The plot is a bit mixed and probably could’ve stood to be a bit longer. Misty, Brock, and most of the gang’s Pokémon are underused, though when is that news. And it lacks a character as rich as Molly or Entei, or a scope as big as the Shamouti Islands. But honestly, I… really liked this one! I really did. It’s not Movie 2, it’s certainly not Movie 3, but honestly it might be second on the “how much fund did I get out of this” tier list.

Most of this is, admittedly, because it has shades of something Pokémon never tries outside of some Team Rocket episodes: a heist story. One of the quickest ways to my heart is to be as much like Lupin III as possible, and Annie and Oakley are kinda two slightly different (and far more kid-friendly) versions of fiction’s best femme fatale, Fujiko Mine. Their ingenuity and toughness is a blast, and I’d kinda be down for them being recurring villains. So far, these movies’ antagonists are fairly imperious and all-powerful, and ones that are so much scrappier, complete with a villain plot that mostly starts as thievery and just sorta ramps up into world domination, are fun in a very different way. They’re more on Ash’s level than the previous villains in some ways.

Of course, having a cool setting is paramount, and Alto Mare is arguably the most compelling and rich location we’ve gotten so far. A spin on Venice is perfect for Pokémon; the canals make for pretty imagery, fun water racing challenges, and one of the better opening montages we’ve gotten so far. The secret garden for Latios and Latias was gorgeous. It’s not quite as striking as the Unown tower or as “real” as Shamouti Island, but it’s another example of a setting that feels so fun, pretty, and natural that it’s almost crazy it didn’t come from the games. It made me realize that the movies should lean into their disposable nature and be full-on vacations in picturesque settings. Certainly the movies seem to agree, seeing as this one actually started the trend of them often using real world cities and locations as major inspiration.

Image: Bulbapedia.

The non-villain characters—the “Eon Duo” of Latios and Latias, their old caretaker, and his granddaughter—are not as compelling. Lorenzo and Bianca are nice enough, and the Legendaries are good at managing that combo of playful sprite and fierce protector. They don’t really stick in your mind beyond the romance that was probably memory-holed even further than the romances of any of the other movies. And there’s an argument to make that Annie and Oakley don’t do anything quite as memorable as throwing evil Poké Balls or rewriting reality. The CGI isn’t great, either, especially in the chase scene where Ash is running through Alto Mare. But I think these deficits are also countered to some extent by fun heist shenanigans and a great soundtrack and a really cool setting.

So… yeah. I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Pokémon Heroes (and I refuse to call it “Heroes” for obvious reasons) snuck up on me. It’s not as solid as Spell of the Unown or quite as grand as The Power of One, but I found myself quite satisfied with it. After Movie 4, I was worried that I had seen Pokémon develop a formula I’d be stuck with for the next twenty weeks. I’m happy that while I’m not convinced I’m wrong, I am convinced that whatever formula exists is no impediment to neat ideas and fun setpieces…

…Oh, wait, I’m sorry; did I forget to mention that DEAN F___ING VENTURE is in this movie?!

Conclusion: What was Johto, in the end?

Okay, I’m being a bit too broad here, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about. Was this leg of the anime a “new world” like the first opening said? Was it a continuation of Kanto (which it was at least legally due to being part of the “original series”). Every franchise that gets to the point of its life where it has multiple concrete eras needs to start figuring that out, and it took a while for Pokémon to fully figure itself out.

The three seasons of Johto—Johto Journeys, Johto League Champions, and Master Quest—were essentially watching a show try to… slow walk a reboot. Ash, Misty, and Brock are back together, Ash needs to get more badges, but the badges are in a new region. So are the new Pokémon. But he’s got his old ones with him, so the writers slowly have to find ways to get Ash to give them up. Charizard wants to gain strength he wouldn’t find in Ash’s party, Squirtle follows the call of its old and reformed gang, and Bulbasaur… discovers that it’s a political leader? And many of his new partners are effectively stand-ins for his last ones, and mostly less defined ones at that. It’s the same… but different. It’s different… but the same.

That is in its own way a fair adaptation of Pokémon Gold & Silver. I’ve talked about it a bit below, but the Gen II games had an odd take. They were sequels, full-on “set X years later” sequels. They were also the games that essentially invented the concept of a “Pokémon Generation,” essentially a soft reboot that retells the premise and adds a ton of new characters. They threw in a ton of brilliant ideas, and that included their new batch of monsters, but it was the originals who got the biggest bump. Half of the Johto Gym Leaders (and their Champion) lack any Johto Pokémon, and several new ‘Mons—including almost every one of the all-new Dark-type—are only accessible in Kanto after you’ve hit the end credits. It’s weird, and as a kid I was only one of many who noticed it.

Of course, this was something Generation II could handle. Gold, Silver, and Crystal after them were drowning in amazing ideas. Day, night, and weekly cycles! Item holding! Rebalancing the entire stat system with Special Defense! The Dark and Steel types! Weather! Bringing back the original region! A female player character! More explicit friendship mechanics! Breeding! How crazy is it that a bolstered score, (slightly) more interesting characters, and more environmental types were the less big additions? These were wildly imaginative games that innovated and refined at the same time. They’re the ones that everyone calls the best Pokémon games, and they earned that place as well as any game could. And for all the improvements it had made by this point, the anime simply didn’t have those huge evolutions to rely on. It was still struggling to be consistent.

But for all of my complaints here, there’s at least one thing I think is worth saying, and that is this: the best of the Johto I got to see was a helluva lot better than the best of Kanto. Better writing, better plotting, more general imagination. I got to enjoy it because I got to cherry pick, and because “Johto dullness” was the main problem, but I also got to cherry pick the Kanto episodes and had the benefit of knowing them. Again, for all the very fair criticism about the amount of filler it had, Johto is still home to many of the most well liked and regarded one-offs of any region. And filler or not, in a one-to-one match up, I’d guess that the best episodes of Seasons 3 through 5 more than hold their own against the best of the far more iconic original season. Certainly I’ve heard and read plenty suggesting I’ve got far worse in store than some admittedly bland half-hours.

Image: Bulbapedia. All these people? I barely know any of them!

And that brings me to the next challenge. We’re now coming up on new regions with characters I barely know outside of Bulbapedia articles and “best / worst of” lists. Many of these are far more serialized than Kanto and Johto were; the biggest benefit I have going in is that their best and worst stories are ones I had heard about for years lurking on the Serebii forums as a teenager or reading other people’s writeups. It’s going to be tougher learning each new cast when all I have is five episodes per whatever movie they got to be in (or whatever movie aired opposite their seasons). It’ll be even harder for the Unova, Kalos, and Alola shows, since they each had only three movies while Hoenn and Sinnoh got four. But that’ll be exciting, too. Much like Ash, I’m going through new and exotic territory.

Errant thoughts:

I hadn’t put much thought into it, but I think I might have to do a week for all the Pikachu shorts that historically went in front of the feature films. That’ll be fun, right?
While there were some 4Kids movie editing controversies du jour (or should it be “de la semaine?” Or “de l’année?”), the big one was for “Gotta Catch Ya Later!” Misty’s original ending montage showed scenes about her various achievements; the localized one scrapped every one that didn’t feature Ash and was instead entirely about their times together. 4Kids was as enthralled with “Pokéshipping,” the most popular Pokémon fan pairing and one of the single most popular ships on the internet, as many viewers were. As someone who was a kid there at the start, I get why.
- Oh, dad, if you’re reading this, “Shipping” is a term used to describe the way fans romantically pair fictional characters. So Scully and Mulder, Kirk and Spock. It comes from “relationshipping,” though when I heard the term as a teen I assumed it came from a romantic fan-fiction premise of having the two characters fall in love on a ship. That is not a joke!
- Of course, the movie had its fair share of changes, too. Annie and Oakley were rewritten as Team Rocket agents for basically no reason, and the backstory was entirely changed, seemingly to get rid of a very pretty storybook intro.

Image: Bulbapedia. This is the exact kind of thing a Pokémon movie should have more of, not less!

- It’s not good losing this kind of imagery, but the worst change in localization comes not from 4Kids but Miramax, which won the distribution rights for the Pokémon movies starting with Voice of the Forest (and ending with the seventh). They applied a painful blue tint to, as far as I can tell, most to all of the film. It’s ultimately really low on the list of that company’s sins, but it does make the film look quite a bit less good in English.
A weirder change was that the “welcome to the world of Pokémon” intro from Movie 4 wasn’t reused in this movie; it came from this movie and was retroactively added to the dub of Voice of the Forest. Dubbing takes a long time.
Speaking of 4Kids edits, we’ve got Brock calling his onigiri an “onion.” Though I guess it could have onion in it.
It’s actually really odd that the Master Quest and Johto League Champions themes don’t go in reverse order. The first one’s lighter, the second’s darker and all about how this is the big culmination of Ash’s rise to the top, but the former’s what plays in the last season.
After four goddamn weeks, I finally get to see my first “boss fantasy,” the running gag where Meowth imagines Giovanni getting some demented use out of a Pokémon the trio are trying to abduct. These are some of the most popular and kooky parts of the entire franchise, so I’m glad I got to see at least one.
- Technically, I would have seen the two Kanto boss fantasies as a child, but I don’t remember them, that was decades ago, and they were much more milquetoast than the one in “Whichever Way the Wind Blows,” which as far as I can tell is when the structure and zaniness of the format actually came together.
You know what, Misty? No, it’s not cool that those Gloom evolved into the wrong form. They can learn ways to come to terms with that, but they shouldn’t feel like it was some sort of destiny to not get the body they wanted. Especially the ones who evolved into Bellossom, because let’s be real; Vileplume is way better.
I’m a big fan of the trope where seemingly innocuous things turn out to be significant, and I did really like the bit in “Gotta Catch Ya Later!” where Ash uses Misty’s handkerchief and Brock’s cutlery, their parting gifts to him, to stop Team Rocket.
I damn near got a conniption with how the characters kept pronouncing it “Larv-ay-tar.”
The Venture Bros.’ Michael Sinterniklaas, who presumably played Ross due to 4Kids being a client of his recording studio NYAV Post, will return next chapter as Jessie’s Seviper. God, if only they cast him as May’s Beautifly…
Perhaps it’s time for another Wolfman Jew fandom rant. So “Mary Sue” is a deeply idiotic, awful term. It sucks, it’s meaningless, it often has a lot of weird sexist undertones, and we all know this. But as bad as it is, someone inventing “Gary Stu” just because they don’t want to call male characters “Mary” might be even worse. The whole concept sucks; why do we need to make it suck even more with some “gender essentialist” terminology? I say down with it, bury it, salt the earth, and use Mary Sue as a progressive gender neutral term. Except… don’t do that either because we should kill it, too. Just atrocious.
- Unsurprisingly, this is due to me looking up information on episodes and the show as a whole online. Media illiteracy is a real problem, especially within Pokémon fandom.
F___, let’s send off Johto with a list of some of my favorites: Heracross, Sneasel, Marill, Ampharos, Typhlosion, Gligar, Scizor, Ursaring, Politoed, Xatu, Suicune, Smeargle, Celebi.
- We didn’t do it for Kanto, so here goes: Pinsir, Starmie, Gengar, Venonat, Vileplume, Ninetales, Aerodactyl and Kabutops, Dragonite, Hitmonlee, Porygon, Nidoking and Nidoqueen, Scyther, Magmar, Mew.
- …What? I like a lot of Pokémon!
As a final note, that paragraph on “Whichever Way the Wind Blows” makes me wonder what the equivalents are in other regions. Like, would the legendarily bad two-parter that ended the Team Magma and Aqua plot symbolize Hoenn’s greatest problems? Would that early episode with Goh I have on the list be the same for the Journeys era? I do suspect the very first episode of Black & White set the stage for viewers in a bad way, so maybe that?