Pikachu in Pictures Chapter 11: He’s Still On That?

We have now moved into the second phase of Pokémon Diamond & Pearl, with this week covering some of Season 10 and much of Season 11. Adventures and drama await, along with some surprisingly strong flexing on the part of the anime. Like, wow, some of this stuff was pretty good.

Episodes reviewed:

1040: “Top-Down Training!” (July 19, 2007). Ash, Brock, and Dawn are excited to meet Sinnoh’s eccentric Champion Cynthia, only for Paul to show up as well and demand a fight. He gets crushed by Cynthia and her Garchomp, she chastises him for the lack of care he shows in his Pokémon’s wellbeing, and she departs after giving some sage advice.
1050: “Glory Blaze!” (October 18, 2007). Ash and Paul have been matched with each other for a tag team tournament, but the latter’s only participating to emotionally manipulate his Chimchar into mastering its Blaze Ability. And after Ash takes charge and leads both Pokémon to victory in the second round—without Blaze—Paul decries Chimchar as worthless and releases it.
1101: “Tears For Fears!” (November 8, 2007). Ash has caught Chimchar, but the abused fire monkey struggles to fit in with the gang’s healthier and affirming culture. It only finds its place after a nighttime chat with Meowth and a duel with three Zangoose who trigger its PTSD.
1119: “Crossing Paths” (April 3, 2008). Dustox falls in love with another of its kind right before a mass Dustox emigration, causing Jessie to remember a broken romance in her past. After she, Team Rocket, and the twerps help fix an environmental disaster that would prevent the Crossing, she forces Dustox away to have its own life.
1125: “Strategy with a Smile!” (May 15, 2008). Legendary Hoenn Coordinator Wallace has set up a Contest in Lake Valor, and its entrants include Ash, Dawn, Dawn’s rival Zoey… and May! Dawn and May end up clashing in the finals, with Piplup pitted against the evolution May’s Eevee took: Glaceon.

It’s not quite fair to call this a review of Season 11. After all, two of the episodes are from Season 10, and we’ll have another Season 11 episode next week. Then again, Pokémon has almost never produced shows in a way that line up with what we as viewers understand as Western-style television “seasons.” Elements of production change with each block, but it’s an assembly line. And in many respects, the introduction of Cynthia can be seen as a beginning (if not “the”) of the “second fourth” of the show. Man, does that descriptor suck.

Ignoring the semantics and its sucking, this “second fourth” of Diamond & Pearl—whose title, “Battle Dimension,” is no less dumb than usual—is quite good. Actually, as strict drama and sequential storytelling, this is some of the best we’ve had. Yeah, I’m missing boring fillers and a few probably mediocre Gym battles, but there’s a general consistency to the storytelling in a way that even the comic heights of Johto never hit. One of the things I tried to do with this setlist was to make narrative throughlines that resonated with each other, and we’ve seen no better one thus far than the tale of Ash’s new, used, and tragically abused Chimchar.

Image: Sky Stream. Paul carrying a lot of “what if Sasuke was actually interesting” energy, right down to the boring but practical outfit.

The anime thus far has sincerely if not brilliantly dived into Pokémon psychology and the moral aspects of Training. The brand extension is willing to explore the status quo, if not challenge it. But everything with the Fire-type monkey hits far much harder. Nominally, Chimchar is fairly standard partner for Ash: a cute, fast animal with a secret strength (its Ability Blaze, which gives a huge boost when it’s weak). But Blaze is the source of its trauma. It was assaulted by a gang of Zangoose, used Blaze to fight, but it associates the Ability with the pain. Paul sees this fight, catches it because… why wouldn’t he catch something so strong, but since all that matters is activating this power, their entire relationship is him berating, abusing, and assaulting Chimchar to force it out. It’s not how Charmander in Season 1 was simply abandoned for being weak and then proved its strength with Ash. Diamond & Pearl is tying together ideas more mature than “you should be nice, and anyone can win.” That’s really compelling for this show.

Paul’s also interesting on his own. Unlike the twerps, who sometimes take their losses hard, he’s not phased by losing. Or when his Pokémon lose. It’s all another rung on the ladder, so he can let them get crushed by Cynthia’s Garchomp just to study her weaknesses, his strengths, and manipulate Chimchar. It’s not just him throwing away anyone that fails like he did with all those Starly in his debut. There is a system he follows, a gross and callous and unhealthy one, but it’s there. Throughout Diamond & Pearl he was hated by the fans, not just because he was cruel but because some competitive players saw him as a commentary on them. I think that anger says far more about them than him, and he is ultimately a heel like Gary and Harley, but he’s deeper than the former and given more than the latter.

Image: The Pokémon Company. And here’s Cynthia, surprisingly not cheered on by a crowd watching this three-camera sitcom.

It’s not all darkness, though; Cynthia’s pretty great! After nine seasons of wasting Gym Leaders, Elite Foursmen, and other plot-relevant characters from the games, the show finally gives us a Champion worthy of their video game counterpart. It couldn’t happen to a better one than Cynthia (a.k.a. Best Girl). By this point in the show, the Sinnoh Champion had unequivocally become one of the most popular characters in the canon. There’s a reason why she got the Dream Smasher article, and relegating her to a one-off like Steven would have been mind-boggling insane. Instead, she gets a lot of buildup, some fun eccentricities, a curbstomp battle against Paul that does character work for both of them, and a sense of genuine presence. Cynthia would end up being one of Pokémon the Series’ most prominent supporting characters, and even beyond her carrying so much hype from the games, it feels earned in her debut.

If Cynthia is helping chart a path forward, May’s return is the show comfortably connecting with its past. She’s a better and more interesting Coordinator now; her Glaceon—naturally Eevee would turn into one of Diamond & Pearl’s new Eeveelutions—is a more imaginative fighter than it was back in “Battle Frontier.” But Dawn’s victory over her also feels fair despite the experience gap. Contests still struggle with some of how they work, but at least the Wallace Cup (hosted by Wallace, the Ruby & Sapphire Gym Leader / Emerald Champion who got utterly shafted in his own region) seems to be good. So did what I saw of the Tag Battle Tournament. If we have to get more giant, multi-part tournament arcs, they at least should be strong.

Image: Bulbapedia. The end of the five-episode Wallace Cup arc.

Also, just as a side note, the animation’s also nicer at points. The tag battle was rather well paced, while the Zangoose were surprisingly well animated (particularly their fluid fight against Seviper). After a decade, Pokémon does seem to have started realizing that some episodes need to get the bigger push. It’s not consistent, like anything is for this show—”Top Down Training” and “Crossing Paths,” both fairly important episodes, didn’t look any better than any other one—they also arguably needed them less than the action-heavy ones. And really, it’s still all part of this slowly improving competence and skill, one the writers and animators are applying to an obscene number of episodes per year.

Truthfully, I’m not particularly sure it’s possible for a show like Pokémon to “fire on all cylinders.” This isn’t me taking my usual crack at it; I mean that a show whose “seasons” can fill a whole year on a weekly schedule can’t be that consistent. It’s not Jack Kirby writing, drawing, even editing four Fourth World comics every month and regularly pulling off some of the best superhero storytelling in history. But this is the most consistently strong we’ve gotten so far, and especially so when it comes to drama. Whether it’s Jessie smashing Dustox’s Poké Ball with her heel to shoo it off to a better life, Ash struggling against someone with no regard for common decency, or handling explicit if not stated PTSD, This “second fourth” is hitting upwards.

Movie reviewed: Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior (July 19, 2008)

The gang’s latest temporary member is Shaymin, an adorable—and painfully haughty—Pokémon trying to find the Flower Paradise. As they take it there, they’re bedeviled by Giratina, the lord of the bizarre Reverse World who seems to have it out for Shaymin. But everyone is threatened by Zero, a villain trying to kill Giratina, capture its power, and use its command of the Reverse World to destroy the real one.

…Aaaaaaand we’ve hit a snag.

Okay, so it is better than Movies 1 and 9 at least, but Giratina and the Sky Warrior is mostly a dud. It’s a blend of confused ideas—some bad, some genuinely good—with an off taste. Consider it a good reminder that the “rising tide that lifts all boats” idiom isn’t only stupid when it comes to real world economics; the boons of the past two season were not shared with Sinnoh’s second movie.

Image: IMDb. If it wasn’t for the movie’s stupid line of dialogue, the title would’ve probably been some kind of “hero to zero” pun.

Zero is the biggest problem. His motivation is confusing, his plan is bizarre (if filled with cool ideas, like an army of Magnemite and a murder attempt so complex it would make the Poker Face writers feel inadequate), and his design is boring. It’s summed up by the part where his former mentor, the hilariously named Nathan Graceland,* shouts “you’re still on that?” as though Zero’s whining about some perceived slight, not planning the destruction of the entire world. That’s Zero. A suit missing a man to fill it, and an ugly suit at that.

* Named “Mugen Graceland” in the original Japanese, to the shock of my best friend with whom I watched it.

There are other things too. One of the big promotional Legendaries, Regigigas (a humongous golem like the bad guys from Movie 8) is on hand, but it only shows up over an hour in; even Columbo would balk at that Slow Start. Despite his wonderful name, Graceland isn’t that special of a human either, as the show kind of undersells his life as a crazed, hermetic researcher. The gorgeous Norwegian landscape that served as the movie’s inspiration goes underused. You know, there was a train battle in this movie. A train battle! I love trains in movies! And it’s totally forgettable.

Of course, there are positives. For one thing, I enjoyed the sheer obnoxiousness of Shaymin, who whines and scoffs and complains like a child of wealth. That was fairly clever for these kinds of things. Far cooler, though, was the Reverse World, an Eldritch landscape where space, gravity, and reality constantly mirror our own in dangerous ways. It spews noxious clouds whenever the real world suffers a warping of reality, while every piece of our side is represented by a bubble. Pop it, and its real world counterpart gets hurt. But that’s another failing. The latter idea is mainly used for only one cool thing—destroying the extra-dimensional anchor points for a mammoth frozen waterfall at whose base lie all of Zero’s enemies—and the former is weak as an allegory. Stylistically, the Reverse World does right homaging Pokémon Platinum’s abnormal Distortion World, a highlight of the Fourth Generation, but it’s hard to not wish it was the whole movie.

Image: Fancaps. Ash’s stupid rivalry with Shaymin is fun, though.

Brock also sticks out like a sore thumb. Ash and Dawn get to go to the Reverse World and fawn over Shaymin, while he gets lines lampshading how uninvolved he is. He’s not even on the extremely boring cover! Sure, a day where I’m complaining about him is simply a day in mid-era Pokémon (“you’re still on that?,” you might ask of me). But I suppose the lampshading is the flick in microcosm. There’s a lot of stuff in Sky Warrior that could be good, and a lot of directions the premise could have taken. You could explore more of the Reverse World and Giratina’s role within it. You could frontload Shaymin’s life as this creature that brings out and also consumes the gratitude of others. And you could do more with the movie’s own kind of serialization, where part of Giratina’s motivation comes from Dialga having attacked it right after (and due to the events of) The Rise of Darkrai. It’s probably for the best that it didn’t do that for the sake of narrative accessibility, but you could. But these roads were not taken, and what we’re left with isn’t great.

Conclusion: So it was some point during the movie, during one of Piplup’s many moments of acting out, that I realized something. Dawn isn’t just a sequel to May; she’s an inversion. May was often whiny and obnoxious and struggled to figure it all out, not unlike how Shaymin is in the movie. It’s what made her interesting, but her Pokémon seemed to all be cutesy and kindly and friendly to a tee. They were all sweet. Dawn’s kind of like that, softer and less difficult, with Piplup taking the role of the haughty, constantly flailing partner with a shocking power behind it. I imagine it made Dawn a somewhat easier sell and gave Piplup a notoriety it might otherwise have not had. Perhaps it’s like the jump from Black & White to Black 2 & White 2, which were safer and somewhat more approachable games.

This isn’t a complaint about originality, to be clear. I think it’s a good idea. Piplup was very controversial for the sheer amount of time the show dedicated to him, but he was also a marketing bonanza few Pokémon who debuted after the original games get to experience. And while what I’ve seen of Dawn is less interesting than with May (partially because I’ve skipped the episodes that cover things like her strained relationship with her mother), she’s perfectly fine. This is a very natural direction when you have a cast with this much turnover. Like classical archetypes, each newcomer can fill the role of the partner who’s sweeter, tougher, caustic, intense, and any other kind of sidekick who can complement Ash.

Image: Fancaps. The beauty and horror of the Reverse World, one of the the movie’s few good and well executed ideas. Normally this space would have an imagine from one of the episodes, like Dustox’s exit, but it’s too cool an aesthetic to not include.

It works, and for the most part that’s how the “second fourth” of Sinnoh has been. I’m sure I’m missing episodes where Piplup’s precociousness got too far, and scenes where Team Rocket does way too much rhyming and alliteration, and boring victories. But I don’t care. We’re on a roll. And while I have included a notoriously hated episode for next week, I’ve decided to trade in my cautiousness and be merely “mildly optimistic” for the next two weeks.

Errant thoughts:

The Wallace Cup is my first taste of Dawn’s main rival, Zoey. Historically, I had understood her through fandom osmosis as a distaff take on Harley, a coded “butch lesbian” with a tough personality who flaunted an otherwise very heteronormative environment (Sinnoh Contests have you dress up, and everyone else follows gender norms hard). With my interest in all things queer Pokémon, I was excited to see her. She seems perfectly fine. If she is actually meant to be queer, and after this I’m kinda skeptical that she is, it’s certainly a much more nuanced portrayal than Harley.
- Zoey’s other main trait is being the cartoon’s first “non-asshole” main rival. She’s supportive to Dawn, regularly hangs out with the gang, and is only a jerk to Ash at the start of the show because she thinks he’s a dilettante for tackling Contests and Gyms at the same time. Which he is. It’s good to finally have a character like that after ~~ten damn seasons~~ so many heels and smug know-it-alls, especially with Paul being such a major player.
Oh, right, Ash is a Coordinator now. It’s not a bad idea (it puts more people in Contests, and Ash can approach it casually and not overshadow the other character). Similarly, “Jessilina,” who got a Contest ribbon right before releasing Dustox, was meant as a big step up from Jessie’s Contest game in Hoenn; she actually won—sometimes against the main characters. It’s all part of the greater interest in serialization, stake raising, and character interaction.
I still think Contest battles should have a thing where you can lose even if you knock out the other Pokémon if you do it unfashionably or too forcefully.
“Crossing Paths” was chosen over a separate “Team Rocket releases their Pokémon” episode, “Once There Were Greenfields.” When looking over the list of episodes I made, Hamada recommended “Crossing” over it. Mostly I had wanted to watch the one that was inexplicably named after a Brothers Four song.
Naturally, “Glory Blaze” also gets something out of having a Springsteen pun title.
The stock “throwing a Poké Ball” animation has oddly gotten significantly worse in this region. They’re not even pretending as though they’re being thrown. Maybe it’s the result of using the fancy Diamond & Pearl-era graphics for the Poké Balls in the Contests.
Another day, another crazy bit of comically tragic Team Rocket backstory.
Boo, Max cameo. And yay, Harley cameo!
So the movie came out in English in 2009. Had it been recorded ten years later, Shaymin would’ve definitely been voiced by Cassandra Lee “Morgana” / “Sothis” Morris, right?
I mentioned it in the main article, but Giratina and the Sky Warrior is unique for the Pokémon movies in that it is actually serialized. Dialga’s fight with Palkia in The Rise of Darkrai warped reality enough that it ended up fighting Giratina and trapping it in the Reverse World, which sets up this movie. And I’m not sure how, but this movie will be setting up the plot of the next one. It’s an interesting idea, and one that probably works best with the “Creation Trio” of Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, and their overseer Arceus. It’s not really important for the sake of plot clarity, but it is a neat idea. It’s nice having these movies interact in smaller, more disposable ways.
I kinda wanna train a Magnezone now.
The episode shows us that Cynthia is eccentric because even though she can beat any Trainer who comes her way, she still can’t decide on what ice cream flavor to buy! Not that I needed to be endeared to the best Champion even more, but that’s basically how I order food from anywhere. I can go to the same Thai place dozens of times and still agonize over which new dish to try. So, very relatable.
Man, though, imagine if the show screwed up Cynthia…

Next movie: Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life.

Next episodes:

1138: “Ghoul Daze!”
1213: “Noodles! Roamin’ Off!”
1217: “Stopped in the Name of Love!”
1219: “To Thine Own Pokémon Be True!”
1225: “Frozen on Their Tracks!”

Other movies watched:

But I’m a Cheerleader, whose co-writer wrote like thirty-five episodes of Smallville, including that stupid ripoff of Rebel without a Cause, because I actually can’t escape talking s___ about it.
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice
Collateral

Other television episodes watched: