Pikachu in Pictures Chapter 10: Darkrai’s Got Legs; He Knows How to Use ‘Em

After all the discussions for the last season of Pokémon, things are a lot calmer for Season 10. Not that calm, not when there’s a new season and castmates. But we’re back to the normal level of crazy, and this is probably one of the shortest chapters of “Pikachu in Pictures.” But hey, it’s a diary! These were always supposed to be shorter.

Episodes reviewed:

1001: “Following A Maiden’s Voyage!” (September 28, 2006). Sinnohan girl Dawn starts her journey, already full of dreams about becoming a Pokémon Coordinator like her mother. After rescuing Professor Rowan’s proud Piplup, whose wild streak might be ill-suited to a starter Pokémon, she chooses him as her partner.
1003: “When Pokémon Worlds Collide!” (September 28, 2006). Ash runs into Paul, a hyper-competitive Trainer, while trying to find Pikachu and Dawn. While he saves Pikachu and becomes traveling companions with Dawn, a three-on-three battle with his new rival ends in an unsatisfying draw.
1007: “Like It or Lup It!” (November 2, 2006). Piplup finds himself unable to pull off Dawn’s first Contest technique, a spinning Bubblebeam that gets him dizzy. He only finds the ability to execute the move while helping two rival groups of Water Pokémon Team Rocket is pitting against each other.
1008: “Gymbaliar!” (November 9, 2006). Team Rocket’s fake Gym gets a ringer in a wild Croagunk, who’s tougher than their crew and gets them to the “stealing the loser’s Pokémon” part of the scam. After their treachery is revealed, he chooses to become Brock’s newest partner—and the next party to stop his advances towards women.
1020: “Mutiny in the Bounty!” (July 9, 2007). Meowth and Pikachu are abducted by J, an enigmatic and deadly Pokémon poacher. Determined to get their friends back, Ash, Jessie, and James sneak aboard her invisible flying battleship.

When Pokémon the Series: Ruby & Sapphire started, it brought a huge shift. Ash’s partners were gone, we got a co-lead in their place, and there were enough other changes that viewers saw promises being made. Four years later, the Advanced Generation ended with many of those imaginary promises kept, many broken, but also a notable loss: surprise. Its wild reboot was now a template. Now, viewers could expect Ash and Pikachu to journey through each region with a new female deuteragonist, a new cast of Pokémon, and a new wardrobe. Pokémon the Series: Diamond & Pearl is simply iterating on what the Hoenn arc built.

That isn’t to say Season 10 is valueless by any means. While she’s not as aggressively disruptive as May was, Dawn’s a perfectly nice—and extremely neurotic—follow-up. Starting as a committed Coordinator makes her a different kind of riff on Ash, who knew who he was gonna be from the word “go.” Her Piplup is also quite cute, and the exact kind of spunky that made it a marketing icon (and subsequently loathed by a certain segment of the viewerbase). Makes me wonder if Infernape really is my favorite Gen IV starter. I think the show also looks a bit nicer, as do its battles. These aren’t bold changes, but pleasing iterations.

Image: The Pokémon Company. The Piplup / Dawn Team. Piplup would later become extremely controversial after turning into a marketing giant.

There are promises Diamond & Pearl are making, though, just like last time. And while it hasn’t come up a lot this week, I’ve already seen it. And that’s darkness—kiddy Pokémon darkness, but darkness nonetheless, a kind that impacted this era of the show more than any other. The biggest source so far is Pokémon Hunter J, an original character who’s by far the best out and out villain the TV show has come up with yet. Giovanni is perfectly fine as a distant Bond villain, but he’s nothing more; other than a TV movie I won’t be doing, he’ll only be an active villain seasons from now. Team Rocket is lovely, but they’re, you know, Team Rocket. J’s surprisingly intense. She’s got a dang Salamence, a wrist gun that freezes living things, and a callous attitude. Tonally, she fits more alongside the movies and probably could headline one.

You can also see the encroaching darkness with Paul. He’s the first serious, long term rival Ash has had since Gary; he ends up Ash’s most consistent rival of any region. His uglier abuses haven’t come up yet, but what we see so far—he’s dismissive and regularly releases catches he finds too weak—is an interesting way to explore an aspect of Training that’s always been there. I mean, it’s in the games. Days before the last chapter dropped, I literally caught a second Pinsir in Pokémon Let’s Go because the first one had a Nature that hindered its Attack. That’s fine when they’re video game programs. But the anime has always taken pains to have a healthier take on Pokémon ownership, while never fully dealing with its own moral implications. Thus far, Paul is only following the laws of his world. And that’s kinda scary.

Image: Bulbapedia. Croagunk’s fun, but Jessie’s Seviper dress is incredible.

If there is a problem with Diamond & Pearl, it’s that it doesn’t quite feel as new as it could, at least not now. As much as I already love his unsettling Croagunk, Brock’s presence feels even more superfluous than ever. God, I even remember when his return was a spoiler. The Pokémon Company had this Japanese poster for the show, which hid Brock and positioned Paul as the third human lead. People were excited (because by this point, it was clear Brock’s story had long ended), and then boom! Just like in Advanced Generation, he sneaks in after being absent in the premiere. From what I can tell, his Sinnoh Pokémon are his most interesting ones, and he does finally get a direction, but that direction’s in the penultimate episode and he’s otherwise still doing what he always does: being a boring, pervy, older male presence.

I’m giving Brock a hard time, but he’s ultimately just the biggest sign of that main problem. The animation is still limited, the plotlines are fairly standard (if better told), and it’s still Pokémon. It’s probably always gonna be on this level. But mediocrity is not a line. It’s an entire space unto itself, and staying mediocre but getting much stronger is still welcome. So far, the Sinnoh era of the show has just been a bit more interesting and a bit more fun. Which is good, especially since it is also the longest era of what is already an insanely long show.

Movie reviewed: Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai (July 14, 2007)

Ash and the gang travel to Alamos Town, which is under attack by the dream-weaving demon Darkrai. As they try to stop Darkrai’s nightmares, they navigate a love triangle between mob-rousing Baron Alberto, balloonist Alice, and bookish Tonio, each of whom sees the Pokémon differently. But everyone discovers too late that Darkai was trying to stop an extra-dimensional battle between time deity Dialga and space deity Palkia, whose fight traps the city in an ever-shrinking pocket universe.

The tenth Pokémon movie contains a suspicious number of plot points done by its nine predecessors. A despised and monstrous Pokémon is attacked by three Trainers, each of whom packs one of the region’s fully-evolved Starters. There’s a kaiju battle between two Legendaries, stopped only by a song and elaborate, building-sized puzzle. They come out of the Unown Dimension. There are human / Pokémon transformations, a heroic sacrifice, and a romance. And there are plenty of smaller things, from balloon travel to flashbacks to even cameos by characters from other movies. You could consider this a laziness or a lack of creativity, but I’d prefer to think of it as tribute. After all, The Rise of Darkrai still manages to feel new.

Image: Bulbapedia. There’s a world where Darkrai and Baron Alberto are the main, dueling antagonists in the movie. I think it would be better, but Darkrai’s still amazing here.

It feels newest throughout the best part of the movie, the first half. That’s before Palkia and Dialga formally join the plot and it’s about a monster being hunted like Frankenstein. If the Pokémon movies need to explore the relationships between humans and Pokémon (and I’d like to think I’ve proven that), then a Pokémon that terrorizes a town, secretly cares for one of its number, and gets chased by a violent mob is rather novel. Some episodes had done similar things, including the sixth movie, but it’s different with Darkrai. The Mythical nightmare beast is spooky and dangerous. It traps people in warped nightmares, even if the more extreme ones—like a man being turned into his own Lickylicky—are revealed to have been boosted by Palkia’s influence. A witch hunt over a smoky nightmare monster, one who’s carrying a secret kindness? Fantastic stuff. Honestly, it could’ve powered the whole movie.

But it doesn’t, Darkrai gets the quaint redemption and heroic sacrifice, but at least the more conventional battle of Dialga vs. Palkia vs. Darkrai (coincidentally, the far stronger Japanese title of the movie) is still fun. The setting is gorgeous, thanks to Alamos Town heavily adopting the architectural innovations of Antoni Gaudí. I generally like the human cast this time around; Dawn’s Coordinator rivals do what they need to do, while the main trio of Alice, Tonio, and the very Gaston-esque Alberto bounce off each other well. And as Dawn’s first outing in the theater, it does well to keep her—and, for that matter, everyone’s Pokémon—part of the plot. Buneary and Buizel get to make a frozen staircase, Staravia gets to pull off a daring aerial rescue, and I get to be shocked by how early the latter evolved. Just eleven episodes after it was caught??

The Rise of ~~Taj~~ Darkrai’s greatest flaws are really no different from the flaws of any other Pokémon picture, namely that it doesn’t take its ideas as far as it could and has too long of a climax. Darkrai’s nightmare powers are exciting, but all we get is one dream sequence and a bit of fun once Palkia literalizes the dreams of Alamos Town’s Pokémon. Palkia and Dialga feels a bit obtrusive, and while that is kind of the point (kaiju need to be obtrusive; otherwise we’d be, you know, used to them) it does pull us a bit from the better mystery of what Darkrai’s deal is. And the English title sucks.

Image: Bulbapedia. Lifting the Gaudí architectural style was a brilliant move. Alamos feels quite distinct, and the Space-Time Towers are a great space for a climax.

But it’s otherwise quite strong. The main trio’s one of the better casts in these movies. Darkrai’s really cool, though I’ll confess bias here as it’s my favorite Mythical Pokémon. It’s got those shadowy powers and disconcertingly long gams, and a nicely quiet backstory. And in general, the first half is great, dynamic, and fresh (and while the second is a step down, it’s not bad, just not as interesting). Ash’s voice work even sounds a lot more engaged than it’s been for the past two seasons. Movie 10 is typically treated as the best of the Diamond & Pearl era, and while that would mean our cinematic Sinnoh journey is only gonna go down from here, it also implies that we’re still in good hands. I mean, this was pretty good stuff. I’m happy to be cautiously optimistic.

Conclusion: And that cautious optimism of mine is probably my overarching feeling here. Season 10 is starting strong. For the most part, it does feel like a refinement of the things the last four seasons started. And that itself is a perfectly fair direction. The problem with the Hoenn years was never that it tried to be more serialized or ambitious or packed with ideas. The problem was that it struggled to pull off what it was doing. Consensus seems to claim that the Sinnoh era of the show largely handled itself better, particularly when it came to Ash and the world-altering Team Galactic plot. We can’t see that now, but the show seems perfectly poised to bear that out. And, admittedly, perfectly poised to choke again. Remember, the reason to be “cautiously” optimistic is so you can hope for the best and brace for the worst.

Image: The Pokémon Company. The extremely cool J, proving that even anime OC villains can still be neat.

But there are some differences to Diamond & Pearl, and the greater threat and danger is the most exciting one. Paul and J represent distinct challenges to Ash that visibly shook him, and because of how the series works, that means they’re challenges to the show as well. Knowing that they frequently return (and that their stories are generally considered to be strong from start to finish) helps, but there’s already a gravity to their debuts that “A Three Team Scheme” or “A Togepi Mirage” utterly lacked. Paul was the smarter Trainer in his fight, and the rescue mission barely succeeded. Hell, J all but told her Drapion to kill Ash’s Pokémon. It’s not, like, super dark, it’s not the kind of edgy Pokémon fan content that some fans desperately crave, but the tone has changed just a bit. And honestly, I’m pretty intruiged to see snippets of how it plays out.

Errant thoughts:

With 4Kids gone, there’s no real “crazy dub edits” corner to juke the size of this section. Like, what am I supposed to comment on, that the dub consistently rewrote one of Ash’s Starly’s moves as Whirlwind because Starly can’t actually learn Gust in the games? That’s not fun!
Ludicolo, the pineapple duck Pokémon that edges a bit too close to a Mexican stereotype, sounds kinda sorta like… bored Ernest Borgnine? There are far, far worse directions to take that voice, so I’ll take it.
One of the things I’ve always found interesting about Paul, and this was of course not part of his introduction, is that his core Pokémon actually do like his miserable, mix-maxing lifestyle. It’s an interesting way to approach that kind of character. I don’t think we’ll get to see much of it (the famous episode where his evolution of Turtwig councils Ash’s evolution of Turtwig isn’t in my list), but hopefully.
“Carnivine, I am not some piece of fruit! No matter what anyone says!”
Given how often the different Pokémon continuities influence each other, I’d like to propose having J show up in other things. She’s an evil middle-aged lady who petrifies Pokémon with a laser wrist gun, rides a dragon, has an amazing team, and lives in what is in essence the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Why the hell is she not in Masters?
Uniquely, the theme song for the movie isn’t an original piece, or a remix of Season 10, but a remix of the theme from Season 11. It’s certainly smarter than the fool’s errand of trying to remix that terrible rap song.
- But lord help me, I think I actually find that terrible, miserably bland, atonal rap opening a bit better than the intro from the last season. I mean, I’d never choose to listen to it. It’s awful. But “Battle Frontier” was just so bad.
The movie has a scene where Dawn buys a Lunar Wing off the merchant from Jirachi Wish Maker. She ends up using it in Darkrai’s next appearance, when another one of the Pitch Black Pokémon is fighting Cresselia. It’s one of the only times the movies actually impact the show, so it feels like a natural product of the increasing serialization.
It’s fun that fifteen years after The Pokémon Company released a movie set in an ersatz Barcelona, Gen IX went to Spain in full.
“Okay, we’ve got this boorish, pushy nobleman who’s gonna start a lynch mob. What new Gen IV Pokémon can we give him to promote?” “I got it: the super-ugly joke evolution to Lickitung!” “I love that we can work while we’re on cocaine!”

Next movie: Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior.

Next episodes:

1040: “Top-Down Training!”
1050: “Glory Blaze!”
1101: “Tears For Fears!”
1119: “Crossing Paths”
1125: “Strategy with a Smile!”

Other movies watched:

G-Saviour
Hijacked: Flight 285
High Life
Lady Mobster
Munchie Strikes Back. Thankfully, Munchie would not return to save Bill Clinton, almost certainly played by Bill’s brother Roger, in Munchie Hangs Ten.
This Is Spinal Tap