Pikachu in Pictures Chapter 6: May b/w Max

While Johto had plenty of new episodes for him, Wolfman Jew is now going off to explore the far more unfamiliar Hoenn region. With only hazy half-memories of Movies 6 through 8, how is Ash’s next adventure gonna look? And most importantly, will he get to finally hear Michael Sinterniklaas’ one-word performance as the poisonous snake Seviper?

Episodes Reviewed:

601: “Get the Show on the Road!” (November 21, 2002). Ten-year-old May is about to start her career as a Pokémon Trainer—despite not actually liking Pokémon. Her trip to get her first Pokémon from Professor Birch puts her in contact with Ash, who needs help from Birch in curing a sick Pikachu, and the two decide to travel together.
603: “There’s no Place Like Hoenn” (December 5, 2002). Having arrived at Petalburg City, Ash challenges the Gym Leader: a snotty nerd a fraction his age. It turns out that Max is actually May’s young brother, the son of the Gym Leader, and after a Team Rocket battle Ash’s next traveling companion.
606: “A Poached Ego!” (December 26, 2002). Jessie, James, and Meowth run afoul of a Pokémon poacher hunting Poison-types—including colonies of Ekans and Koffing. Out of their depth against his Tyranitar, they physically hold the poacher off long enough for a tearful Arbok and Weezing to flee and lead their pre-evolved brethren to safety.
627: “A Three Team Scheme!” (May 29, 2003). While spying on Ash, Team Rocket kicks a young boy out of his Secret Base and steals his Nincada. But expanding the base leads them—and our heroes, who are chasing them—into an ancient ruin being fought over by the mysterious rival Teams Magma and Aqua.
633: “Now That’s Flower Power!” (July 10, 2003). May is relishing her newfound passion as a Pokémon Coordinator, but she struggles to sync with her Beautifly and fails to stop her Torchic from eating a samaritan’s supply of berries. Good advice and a fight against a rival competitor, Drew, help her and Beautifly pull off its new Silver Wind attack.

Every Pokémon Generation is a reboot. I mean, I’m of the belief that all sequels, prequels, and remakes are effectively reboots in some way, but that’s more general. Within the Pokémon franchise, each era invents a new setting, mechanics, ideas, and new characters—most importantly the Monsters. They try to reimagine and rebrand, and because of that every Generation does feel at least somewhat unique and compelling. None of them are a write-off. Some individual games, maybe, but no, not a Generation.

And the jump from Gen II (Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal) to III was big. Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire moved from Game Boy to Game Boy Advance, with its better audio and richer color palette. The improved graphics made the Hoenn region prettier, livelier. That and putting more attention on the new Pokémon made for a cleaner break. Under the hood, the entire mechanical system was revamped; stats were substantially reimagined for competitive play, and passive Abilities gave Pokémon extra utility. And that led to one of the franchises’ great controversies, in that those changes blocked players from transferring their old Pokémon to the new games. Data for all 251 previous Pokémon was hidden in Ruby & Sapphire, but Trainers could legally encounter only 67. You could not “catch ‘em all,” at least until future Gen III games added them, and the series’ Western logo was quietly retired.

Image: Bulbapedia. Lovely Mossdeep City (which we’ll see in two weeks) was prettier and livelier than any Gen II town could be.

Ruby & Sapphire charted a bold path, and I didn’t go with them. To a certain extent my teenage self was disappointed at the cast being cut (mostly because I assumed, incorrectly, that Pinsir would be among the ones culled), but really I was still out of the gaming landscape. I’d only come back via Pokémon Emerald, the expanded version of Ruby & Sapphire. Exciting things, like Hoenn going out of its way to add more Dragon, Dark, and Ghost-types, were pleasures I didn’t experience. Of course, that meant I had no familiarity with the changes to the show, or any of its new characters. I would only watch Movies 5 – 8 after returning, none of which I more than barely remember, and not one episode more.

Pokémon Advanced is what the show was called over here; it was Advanced Generation in Japan. No matter what it was called, Pokémon the Series: Ruby & Sapphire is a reboot on par with its namesake. Ash is utterly devoid of old Pokémon (other than Pikachu) and human friends (other than Brock, who only returns a few episodes in). The second episode I did has a running joke of him forgetting that Bayleef, Noctowl, and my precious Heracross are all chilling at the Palette Town Ranch. So he’s building himself up, and in a region whose new Pokémon vastly outnumber the old. His new roster is known for having more personality than most of his old ones did—not that I saw any of that this week, alas. And he’s got new partners, one of whom even gets to narrate “Get the Show on the Road!”

That would be May, the most important and intriguing addition. Pokémon has firmly been “The Ash Show” thus far, and she’s their hand at a deuteragonist. She has her own goals—to be a Pokémon Coordinator, a kind of Trainer whose battles are public pageants—her own arcs, and her own recurring rivals (the first of whom, the unbelievably boring Drew, I met this week). She’s also deliberately unlikable in a way I enjoyed; she kvetches about everything and starts her journey not even liking Pokémon. It’s kind of awesome, like when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cast the charming Alexander Siddig as a loathsome lothario who only became great over time. She feels like a more honest take on the kind of person Ash actually was in the first season: dangerously incompetent, whiny, and dependent on everyone around him. But I imagine a lot of viewers, especially the ones who missed Misty, found that less funny than I did.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Max, May, and May’s rival Drew. There’s no way I can show Max’s irritating voice, cadence, or attitude without audio, of course.

May comes with Max, her younger brother who’s… not as bad as I expected but still terrible. I guess the newcomers were meant as a vinyl record, where A-side is the Trainer coming in with literally no knowledge and B-sde the insipid know-it-all who excitedly “um, actually’s” about how Taillow shouldn’t be able to use Tackle or whatever. It’s a big risk adding two new leads who are both meant to be a bit grating. I don’t think we need Max since ~~he’s godawful~~ Brock also exists to explain things in a less irritating voice, but it’s a wide swing nonetheless.

But there is one other gambit that was lurking throughout this week: the committed effort to long term, threaded arcs that could last and even dovetail across the entire region. Ash has his Gyms, May has her Contests, but the most exciting was the adaptation of Ruby & Sapphire’s Team Magma and Aqua plot. They’re rival ecoterrorists vying to unleash terrible beasts, and in the games you fight one and get the other’s help. The stories were silly but exciting, and the Legendaries Kyogre and Groudon especially so. Kanto and Johto had the occasional Team Rocket multi-parter, but the idea of the show seriously adapting the grand world-ending plot, one only half-told in each game (before Emerald finally let you fight both Teams at once) was something new. The more respected Pokémon Adventures manga was doing something similar; the anime following suit would be punching quite above its weight class.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Team Magma in Season 7’s “Fight for the Meteorite.” It and Team Aqua regularly appeared every so often, sometimes together.

And so you had an episode where Giovanni orders Team Rocket to investigate Hoenn’s two main gangs (a subplot that largely begins and ends in “A Three Team Scheme!”). You have an episode where May learns about Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny while Arbok and Weezing leave the cast. And future episodes would go further, where recurring characters and plots could converge at any moment. That’s a big step forward, which is why it’s a shame most of Hoenn’s arcs are deeply disliked. The following series, Diamond & Pearl especially, would iterate on the serialization, so perhaps Advance had to crawl so the others could walk. For the time being, though, that hasn’t yet come together. After all, we’re only on episode 33. Of 131. 192 if you count the Battle Frontier filler arc.

For now, the issues are things we’ve seen before: boring plots, uninteresting animation (which I do feel bad complaining about given how abusive the anime industry is), and an overestimation of Brock’s comic chops. These suck, as they did in Johto, but the inclusion of some extra flavor helps. It’s not a substitute for actually good storytelling, and none of these episodes have rivaled the best of Johto’s, but adding plot progression or character development helps a lot. Maybe May’s rival is bad—okay, maybe he’s really bad—but at least “Now That’s Flower Power!” can give us some good interactions between her and Beautifly. That seems to be where Pokémon Advance is at, mixing and peppering mild improvements while it figures things out. Could be worse.

Movie Reviewed: Pokémon: Jirachi: Wish Maker (July 19, 2003)

The weeklong Millennium Festival kicks off when Max accidentally befriends Jirachi, a wish-granting sprite that only wakes for seven days every thousand years. But the gang’s fun is cut short and they spend the week on the run from the magician Butler, a disgraced Team Magma scientist who wants to exploit Jirachi’s power. He corners them in Jirachi’s birthplace, uses its power to create a clone of the Legendary Groudon, only for “Groudon” to actually be a warped abomination intent on consuming all the life energy of the world.

So to be upfront, I didn’t have the best time with this one. It’s not due to the movie’s narrative content or material; I just had trouble finding a good, nice, high quality widescreen cut. I love Flygon and Absol, watching this for the first time when I got back into Pokémon was probably what made me love them, and I wanted to see them in their HD glory.

Image: unownzone on Tumblr. Flygon rules.

Now, as an actual work of art, Jirachi Wish Maker is pretty good. I didn’t enjoy it as much as some of the others, but it’s narratively more interesting than the standard. And there are several reasons for that, but the biggest is its premise of being set over the course of a week. It doesn’t radically alter the structure, but the presentation shakes things up. The carnival is really fun, adding a chase element is refreshing, and there’s a lot of nice, action-free moments of character work. There’s even a tiny bit of intrigue with the Absol whose intentions are far nobler than they first seem. I really enjoyed the way the cast got to spend time in a place, with Butler and Diane as a fairly compelling and believable couple, and the idea that this is a temporary thing. The circus will surely be back, but the comet, the festival, and Jirachi won’t.

But the biggest deviation, and one that matches the changes to the show, is that after being the sole protagonist for five movies Ash shares the lead role with Max. As… I’ll be nice and say “difficult” as he is, it’s a smart move. Max is the least developed and has the most unique perspective, so he can have the most growth from interacting with a creature like Jirachi. Their relationship was inherently transient in a way kids often struggle to understand. And he probably best matches a creature who can grant wishes, but not in quite the way us older folks might want or expect. It also lets Ash be more mature by supporting him emotionally. Without going too far with expectations, I’m suspecting this is the best the little brother ever gets.

Image: The Pokémon Company. I really liked Butler and Diane; they felt much more real and fun than characters of the day usually do.

Mostly for the better, Jirachi Wish Maker feels like a deviation. It’s cinematic in the sense that it only makes sense as a movie-length story, but it spends that time more on quiet character beats than fans probably expected. Despite that, the climax also feels much longer than the others with the unstoppable (and amazingly gross) false Groudon consuming everything through its giant tentacles. There’s also a requisite tie into the Team Magma plot, but thankfully not in a way that requires you to have experienced an episode of their arc or a second of Ruby. In that way, it perfectly fits as the first movie of Pokémon Advance. This is exactly the kind of flick that should exist for this era. But… hopefully, next time Ash co-leads with someone else.

Conclusion: What struck me the most about Season 6 were the ways it was similar. The visuals are a lot cleaner, and far brighter in a way that mimics the games, but the animation’s still static. Ash has a new hat, and perhaps being around the rookie May gives him a way to be more mature, but he’s still Ash. Hoenn feels newer than Johto was, the English opening is now only thirty seconds, Team Rocket may have a new leitmotif, but it’s not a full jump into the unknown.

Part of the problem is that the biggest changes didn’t show up. I barely saw any of the new main Pokémon (they’re not really in the movie, but I didn’t mind since the human interactions were so plentiful), and one of the big selling points of Advance was that it put more effort into partners like Treecko and Corphish. I didn’t see if the Gym battles were any different. Didn’t see a Contest, the newest addition. Didn’t see any of the huge two-parters that supposedly fell flat on their face. Some of these I’ll get to over the next three weeks, but still.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Treecko’s aloof, cool as a cucumber personality did a lot for viewers.

But these were acceptable losses because this week was all about introductions. I talked about this last time, but this is the point where the project gets more challenging—and exciting—because it’s new to me. I didn’t need episodes diving into Misty or Brock or Pikachu because I know them from my childhood. For the past five weeks, my only criteria was whether an episode sounded interesting, important, or complimentary to the others. But every character, every plot from this point on; they’re all things I only know second-hand. Because of that, they need to be represented, and the best way to do that is to get episodes about them that also fit my criteria as well as possible. So I didn’t see a Contest, but I met a Contest rival that also showed a character training. I didn’t see an official Gym battle, but I saw a fight between Ash and May’s Gym Leader dad that added the hellspawn Max. It’s the only way this project works, because reading bios of fictional characters is not a substitute for meeting them.

And thus, glimpses. Glimpses of a slightly new art style that is fine but not revelatory. Glimpses of larger plots, and the way they can interact with each other. Glimpses of new things, and things that could use a change (i.e. Brock, who hasn’t grown beyond some new clothes). I think they show a strong foundation that justifies the reboot beyond just being a more accurate advertisement. But that foundation demands deals being sealed, not just really good filler episodes or an occasional new capture—neither of which came up this week. As for how that goes, though… well, we’ll get to see soon enough.

Errant thoughts:

Seviper Watch (because I need to hear Deany V as a Pokémon): no sign of Seviper.
The craziest localization change this time is a bit more toned down (i.e. it doesn’t feature terrible filters or entirely new scenes). Ash’s big speech to Max wasn’t about his friendship with Misty. At all. Presumably this is another example of 4Kids pushing the idea of the Ash / Misty romance. It’s very silly, but I do like Ash openly acknowledging and missing his older friends, and it’s fitting for what Max is going through, so it doesn’t bother me. It’s also fairly well written as far as these things go. Perhaps as I’ve gotten older I’ve stopped being as principled about these kinds of changes.
As for a change I’m far less blasé about, it’s around this point in the show’s life where 4Kids began to add far more of its own music, not just to fill otherwise scoreless scenes (which they always did; they apparently felt kids would stop paying attention otherwise) but replacing significant chunks of Shinji Miyazaki’s original pieces outright. Some are still in, like his fun remix of the Team Magma / Aqua battle music, but almost all is new. It’s, to be blunt, not good music even beyond the needlessness of it all.
- We’ll talk about it a bit more later, but I assume that there was some kind of legal or business reason for this. Maybe 4Kids had contractual demands that its in-house composers get work, or there were restrictions on how the Japanese music could be used.
- On the note of music, dear god is the new opening theme bad. Having listened to them all over the past few weeks, I know that this is when the show’s English themes just start… consistently sucking, with only a few exceptions. Weirdly, Advanced also has a couple of the best of the Japanese openings, which I find mostly very inconsistent otherwise.
Weirdly, though, “Now That’s Flower Power” and Wish Maker both keep a lovely instrumental remix of Advance’s Japanese theme, “Advance Adventure.”
Oh, right, though. Another common change in Advanced is that 4Kids would physically paint over and erase some objects that could be too similar to real life Pokémon products. Toys would be drawn out, and some of Ash’s and May’s accoutrements would have their Poké Ball logos removed. This is also less offensive to me than changing the music or drawing sandwiches over rice balls, because it’s responding to a more serious issue. But it’s still silly.

Image: Bulbapedia. The Zigzagoon and Azurill dolls were painted over for the English release. My understanding is that it was to lead off legal or social complaints of the show being too much of an advertisement, since you could buy dolls just like those.

No remix of the English opening theme? COWARDS! I was so excited to see them try to make a catchy, full-length song for that terrible Season 6 theme.
- Surprisingly, the English cut mostly keeps the original ending theme, only including English lyrics alongside the preexisting Japanese ones. It seems like the kind of thing that would drive former 4Kids owner Al Khan to madness.
I’m finding myself less enamored with Eric Stuart’s performance as James. I can’t really point to the change, but it feels… broader? Maybe that’s just the result of the change in tone.
4Kids staple and Dr. Eggman actor Mike Pollock has now replaced Rodger Parsons as the narrator, holding the role until 4Kids lost dubbing rights (and The Pokémon Company brought Parsons back as the first major cast member to reprise their role).
Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod, Frank Welker did the dubbed roars for Salamence? The guy who still plays Fred from Scooby-Doo after fifty-four years? I’m shocked any time an actor I actually know pops up in one of these. Though I couldn’t find anything on it beyond an unsourced Bulbapedia line, so…
During the Johto shows, I liked the change 4Kids made to “Who’s That Pokémon,” where they showed a random Pokémon instead of one featured in the episode. It was a bit more interesting, but now I’m reconsidering. We’re in an era focusing so much on new Pokémon, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single one in the segment.
Okay, that is enough dub talk. We’ll be talking about it a lot for the next few weeks as it is.
Well, okay, there is one thing, but it’s only adjacent. We get to see the top Magma and Aqua lieutenants, Tabitha and Shelly (who are mistakenly given different names in this episode). It’s weird seeing them without the amazing redesigns they and everyone else got in the Ruby & Sapphire remakes. Those games aren’t that old, but it’s weird seeing Tabitha as a boring muscly dude and not the Patton Oswalt-looking motherhubbard he is now.
It’s extremely rare for Pokémon to try a more hard science fiction or fantasy concept, so I loved the detail that Jirachi can’t actually magic things into existence and just teleports them from somewhere else without thinking. This franchise can be pretty heavy on wish fulfillment (I was literally just given a Jirachi and a Mew in Shining Pearl), this counters that a bit, and it also drives the theme about wishes not being a be-all and end-all.
- And hey! It’s way better about exploring that theme than Wonder Woman 1984 was. Man, what a letdown. It had Pedro Pascal and everything! Yo, Games Junn, when you do that reboot, shoot his character into modern times.
While I’ve described the past two movies as being direct to video affairs, that wasn’t fully correct; both did get very limited theatrical releases. Wish Maker was the first one to have no release in American theaters.
Brock’s girl-crazy behavior was driving me nuts in the movie. Like, it’s never good, but it was really bad here.
“Over three hundred known Pokémon,” narrator? How quaint when we get a trailer for number #1,000 (who is, coincidentally, my favorite Gen IX’er). God, though, imagine hearing that line, then finding out that Sword & Shield cut the National Dex and still had a roster of 400.
Ash is no longer pulling his hat backwards. At least in the Anglophone world, it was seen as a betrayal of his most famous move. But it was always a blunt trick to eat up time and cut down animation costs, so I don’t miss it constantly repeating.
Good move evenly distributing the starters among all three leads (sorry not sorry, Max). It made sense that golden boy Ash would get the whole batch the last two times, but giving each human one of the Gen’s three most important Pokémon works. Well, it works for May and Ash. She gets the one that had by far the biggest promotional push, which helps legitimize her as co-lead, while Treecko ultimately rivaled Torchic as an icon thanks to being Ash’s ace for this region. Poor Mudkip basically does bupkis for the show thanks to being under Brock’s ownership.
I had a sense he wasn’t particularly great during my time lurking on the Serebii forums as a teen, but I am still shocked at how bad Drew is as a rival in admittedly one episode (I’ll see more of him in later weeks). They somehow managed a redux of Gary that’s both more obnoxious and more forgettable. And his outfit sucks, which I think is important since Coordinators really should look iconic. They’re performers.

Next movie: Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys.

Next episodes:

640: “Watt’s with Wattson?”
Pokémon Chronicles Episode 13: “Training Daze”
704: “A Togepi Mirage!”
726: “Exploud and Clear!”
729: “Love, Petalburg Style!”

Other movies watched:

The Maltese Falcon
The Shape of Things to Come
The Snob
Something in the Dirt

Other television episodes watched:

Cobra Kai 202, “Back in Black”
The Owl House 111, “Sense and Insensitivity”
The Owl House 112, “Adventuring in the Elements”
The Owl House 113, “The First Day”
The Owl House 114, “Really Small Problems”
The Owl House 115, “Understanding Willow”
Poker Face 101, “Dead Man’s Hand”
Poker Face 102, “The Night Shift”
Regular Show 728, “The Button”
Smallville 222, “Calling.” For full context, I had these on in the background on Wednesday night, while I was scrambling to even barely finish the Nintendo Direct news roundup. I am so grateful that this awful, awful show (which you should never watch, certainly not over actually good Superman media) was more boring than offensive and took little of my attention. Even if the finished product is grossly below my standards, to the point where I’ll be editing it today to fix some of its mistakes.
Smallville 223, “Exodus”
Smallville 301, “Exile”
Star Trek 113, “The Conscience of the King”
Star Trek 114, “Balance of Terror”
Star Trek 116, “The Galileo Seven”
Ultra Q 101, “Defeat Gomess!”
Ultra Q 105, “”Peguila Is Here!”
Ultra Q 113, “Garadama”
The Venture Bros. 705, “The Inamorata Consequence”