Pikachu in Pictures Chapter 17: Fire of Fennekin! Fervor of Froakie!

Last week’s boredom? DUNZO! The sudden jump into Kalos has reinvigorated me, and the ever-lovin’ Wolfman Jew Is BACK, baby!! Let’s start.

Episodes reviewed:

1701: “Kalos, Where Dreams and Adventures Begin!” (October 17, 2013). Ash is bursting with energy after landing in Lumiose City, Kalos region’s crown city and filled with new Pokémon. After seeing a mysterious Blaziken-like one and meeting the brother and sister duo Clemont and Bonnie, he battles Team Rocket with the aid of the Water-type Froakie.
1702: “Lumiose City Pursuit!” (October 17, 2013). Badly injured in the fight with Team Rocket, Ash and his friends take Froakie to the lab of Professor Sycamore, who’s studying the new “Mega Evolution” phenomenon. But Team Rocket sets his normally friendly Garchomp on a rampage, and Ash chases it to the top of Prism Tower.
1704: “A Shockingly Cheeky Friendship!” (October 31, 2013). Ash, Clemont, and Bonnie chase down a wild Dedenne, who winds up in Team Rocket’s crosshairs after it and Pikachu wind up lost together. Clemont helps Dedenne fight off the bad guys and catches it for Bonnie, who’s too young to be a Trainer herself.
1706: “Battling on Thin Ice!” (November 14, 2013). After a failed first attempt against Gym Leader Viola, Ash trains with several partners: Clemont, Viola’s sister (and his former traveling partner) Alexa, and his newest companion Serena, a newbie Trainer with whom he shares some history. With the techniques they learn, Pikachu and Ash’s Fletchling break Viola’s terrain altering strategies.
1719: “A Conspiracy to Conquer!” (March 13, 2014). Meowth runs to Ash for help after a woman and hypnotic Malamar take control of Jessie and James. And after it takes Pikachu as well, the gang track the mysterious “Madame X” to a run down satellite observatory and get picked off one by one.

Ostensibly, Pokémon the Series: X & Y is a return to form. We’re done with Unova and its shallower Team Rocket, predatory Champion, and the aggressive extent to which it clarifies that there are devotees for every stupid thing on the planet. Our new female lead leans way further to the May / Dawn “traditional deuteragonist” mold than the Misty / Iris “we’re not gonna pretend Ash isn’t the sole lead” one. The serialization is back, and while it’s not quite as extreme as it was in Diamond & Pearl the show has started seeding things deep from the very start (for one thing, our aforementioned female lead only joins the main cast in Episode Five). Even the original theme is back thanks to a truly dire remix, as is the “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!” logo The Pokémon Company decided to bring back for a hot minute in 2013.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Every new era of the show starts off with a big montage of the new land and its Pokémon. This is Kalos’.

That was something the Pokémon X & Y games did, and in general Pokémon’s Sixth Generation was about slyly moving back to the center after the Fifth one’s experiments. They were the first mainline entries to be animated in 3D, but they still fit their characters on a grid. As the first entries on Nintendo 3DS, but the third generation on a dual-screened system, their gimmicks were mostly independent of any hardware mechanics. There were new Pokémon, of course, but just seventy-two—less than half the number Black & White debuted—due to the difficulty in bringing all 721 Pocket Monsters into the third dimension. So the new ones were made to stand out: upside-down hypnotic cephalopods, haunted jack-o’-lanterns and swords, bunnies whose ears can make fists, and that’s just from this week’s show. Meanwhile plenty of old favorites got a second wind thanks to two additions: Mega Evolutions and the exceptionally cool new Fairy-Type, which was retroactively added to twenty-two classic ‘Mons. The anime had to follow these changes, but I suspect these might have been easier to adapt than the rule about only having new monsters.

Oh, hey, Team Rocket’s goofy again! They rhyme (though thankfully a bit less than they did in Sinnoh), they joke, and James has the super-cool cuttlefish Inkay by his side. As of the Decolore Islands arc from last week they’ve got the classic motto with them, with all the episode-specific line changes you could ask for. Meowth is even speaking Yiddish! The most overt holdover from the last anime is their improved battling prowess, which is more fun than I was expecting. Holy hell, can Wobbuffet dish out some pain now. There’s a value in having them be elastic enough to conceivably power a full episode, and since their schemes are almost universally the same, adding a bit of flair is good. And in another boon from the previous era, the show has remained more comfortable about not using them when the occasion doesn’t call for it. That and the odd high tech tool of theirs are subtler signs the show isn’t utterly rejecting its recent past.

Our new characters all take on very familiar roles. Clemont is a toned down Cilan and Brock; he has an obsession like the former (though only one, engineering), does pratfalls a lot like the latter (though not due to being a creeper), but also lacks their somewhat older energy. His hyperactive sister Bonnie is basically the dreaded Max, but while she’s equally annoying the show seems to recognize it and gives her more to do. Dedenne is the mascot, Fletchling the dedicated bird scout that (as of yet) doesn’t do much, and Froakie the edgy starter with a chip on his shoulder. And Serena is…

Image: Bulbapedia. Meowth and the Pikachu robot excepted, here’s the X & Y crew.

Well, the leading lady is a bit weird in some ways. She’s kind of difficult like May, but also bouncy like Dawn. Her profession—Pokémon Showcases, which I haven’t seen—is typically considered a less imaginative take on the Contests the other girls took part in. She also has an overbearing mom like Dawn. Her main thing, and an atypical beat for this franchise, is that she has a past with Ash. He was kind to her when they were much younger, and while he doesn’t remember that the event seems to have defined her life. Her one-sided crush is the most the anime has ever done with romance up until now; she’s the closest the show ever comes to a “love interest” for our hero in the conventional sense. Which still, to be clear, isn’t much. Serena was in no way invalidating your Pokéshipping and Advanceshipping and… you know, relationship-related stuff in this franchise’s fanbase is weird.

Anyway, this is part of a recurring thread of how several characters have these kinds of secrets, traumas, or backstories prepared for the show to employ at any time. Clemont’s got a secret (in fact, that’s literally the title of an episode); he’s the leader of the Gym at Lumiose City that Ash tried and failed to challenge in the first episode, but that’s kept hidden for several episodes and is later used to set up his eventual battle with Ash. The Dedenne he catches in Episode 4 joined the show in Episode 3. Froakie’s capture was a two episode affair, which also sparkled in its backstory as a rejected starter Pokémon too obstinate for most Trainers. It also fits with the character Alexa, who debuted at the end of Black & White to introduce the Kalos Region and showed up for the first few episodes of X & Y. The show’s trying hard to bring back the sense of character interactions and camaraderie that Sinnoh had, and planning so far out in advance is a good idea.

So things are good, they’re pleasingly iterative, but there is something fully new and exciting: the animation. My word, things look so much nicer! The show has been on an upward trajectory when it came to its visuals from the start, but a very mild one (one thing that impressed me last week, an animation of a Golurk crawling, was a rarity). The jump to Kalos has been so much bigger. Characters move and roll and have a physical heft in a way I’ve never seen from an episode of this show. Some of it’s more kinetic than the action in the movies. Fights are more energetic. Ash isn’t necessarily more so, but he’s got this greater weight about him. It also makes toughening up Team Rocket a smart move, since you get to see Inkay, Wobbuffet, and Jessie’s Pumpkaboo be much more animated. And the show has the grace to add far more good examples of strategy. Clemont’s Bunnelby used its ears to control the match, Pikachu and Fletchling executed unique strategies in the Gym battle, and you get to see these come alive.

Image: Bulbapedia. Ash, his soon-to-be caught Froakie, and Pikachu standing atop Prism Tower.

Maybe the best example is the climax to “Lumiose City Pursuit,” when Ash is chasing after the Professor’s crazed Garchomp. It’s rushing through ersatz Paris, blasting Hyper Beam, and the chaos looks super pretty. Ash is rushing to save it, because by this point his ultimate goal (to know all the Pokémon of the world, not that he’s aware of this now) has been established. He has to climb up to the top of Prism Tower, that fun Super Smash Bros. stage, and Clemont lets him into a back stairwell. Why does Clemont know about a secret passage in the city’s Gym? We’re not told this, but the episode is quick enough to not dwell on it. It’s all this building sequence of Ash going after this rogue Pokémon, trying to talk it down, Pikachu breaking the evil brainwashing collar, and all the while it’s being televised just so Serena—who hasn’t actually started her journey—can see it. This is the kind of stuff that, to be indelicate for a bit, “real” shows do more regularly. This isn’t great television, but it is good television, and that’s always a legitimate accomplishment for Pokémon.

Movie reviewed: Pokémon the Movie: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction (July 19, 2014)

After the diamond that powers her home begins to die, the regal but flippant diamond princess Diancie sets off on a mission to improve her Fairy powers from life-giver Xerneas. Over the course of her journey, she befriends Ash and runs afoul of not just Team Rocket but four rival thieves. They all converge at the All Earth Forest, where Diancie meets Xerneas but inadvertently unleashes its counterpart, the destruction lord Yveltal.

I’ll confess this is probably my weirdest criticism ever for this series, but I think Diancie needed more weight. This isn’t, to be clear, me complaining about a person’s figure on the internet like an asshole. Or that her story wasn’t interesting, even if it kinda wasn’t interesting. I mean that she moves in a weightless, unsatisfying way. She (and her Carbink minions) basically hop everywhere instead of float, but there’s no heft or sense of movement to it. It’s very odd for a figure of royalty who is literally made of rock and diamond, and is one way in which this movie feels less “real” than the anime episodes that preceded it. Other than Yveltal’s laser attacks, you can see this everywhere. There’s a less tangible feeling to the world of the movie.

Truthfully, Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction is not that interesting, which is why I end up going off on tangents like this. Its pacing is too quick, but it’s also overstuffed. Outside of Yveltal (who the movie itself explicitly delineates as an outside threat), you have four separate villain factions: Team Rocket, Merilyn, Riot, and the daughter / father duo of Millis and Argus Steele. It’s largely due to the fact that we “need” three new villains to each rep one of X & Y’s new Starter Pokémon. But it does mean that you have four characters with half-formed character arcs on top of all the other characters. The human villains have shades of fun, but since they crowd each other so much we don’t get to enough of the cool ninja or punk wizard, or get to experience the perfunctory romance they’re forced into at the end. At least those two got the best Gen VI starters; the writers knew what was up giving our two leads Froakie and Fennekin, two of the series’ best Water and Fire-type starters.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Diancie is perfectly fine as a lead, but like the rest of the movie, she lacks a particular… something. I dunno.

You know, this is a movie that makes me wish we had something we haven’t had since the Johto era: a movie without a Pokémon antagonist. This isn’t to disparage Yveltal, who is rad as always as the franchise’s dedicated death god and does give the movie the biggest boost. But basically, this is a story about a princess who goes on a journey to become stronger, and while the eagle does represent the destruction she’s trying to stop and provides a climax, the idea of her staving off thieves (and having them fight each other) is more interesting. It also helps hide the fact that the potentially relationship between Yveltal and Xerneas—they’re not rivals, but they each represent forces that both oppose and need each other—is barely a factor. Maybe we could have stayed longer with Diancie’s old diamond, the one that powers her kingdom whose slow death kicks off the plot.

This and the Genesect movie back to back have, unfortunately, made it clear that while the movies aren’t embarrassments or awful or anything, they have slowly become less essential. It’s been a slow process on that front. You can see it start with the Manaphy movie, then form into shape during the Zoroark one, but the innovations or new ideas have gotten both less frequent and less substantial. Mostly this one has… simple stuff. Ghost swords. A “trying on dresses” montage. A Legendary Pokémon who is a leader in training, not a newborn like Manaphy or an elder sage like Lugia. These aren’t bad things, but they don’t give adequate power to the seventeenth entry in a film franchise.

Conclusion: I didn’t exactly hide my frustration last week. Truthfully, the past few chapters of “Pikachu in Pictures” have been tiring. This is the fate of a series that goes on this intensely and this long. This series has been much easier to go through than “Dispatch from the Dive”—for one thing, I don’t have to spend upwards of two hours a day on a single crappy boss fight—but it’s still a lot. These take time and effort, and with how quickly the turnover is I end up spending more concentrated time with them than a normal article that might be worked on for months.

Image: The Pokémon Company. It’s not like the episodes are necessarily better written or anything; they just have so much more energy.

Having said that, and I don’t want to jinx myself by saying this, this was a much better week. Well, the show was; the movie was exhausting to watch. Just so tiring, even if it wasn’t as bad as some of the others. But those five episodes were rather strong. It makes me feel confident about the next few weeks, and the general future of this series. Hopefully the Hoopa movie will be at least eye-catching with all the Legendaries that show up (and the Magearna one with all the Mega Evolutions), but even if it isn’t, the episodes should be compelling if this is the direction we’re on. And hey, some of the episodes I’ve picked out for next week should hopefully give us some stuff to discuss.

Errant thoughts:

Probably the weirdest thing about the X & Y anime is that after the games introduced the Fairy Type, Ash never caught one (other than his Mr. Mime, his only Psychic-type which he never uses and was retconned as part-Fairy). Maybe the writers felt they were too cutesy for him, to which I say “bah!” Give him a Klefki! Or another one of the old Pokémon that got the Type, like Mawile!
Clemont’s main “gimmick” is his Clemontic Gear, a bunch of all-purpose science fiction devices to suit the plot of any episode. They all function the same, which is to say that they invariably malfunction and explode. But I’ve enjoyed some of them. My favorite is the one used to heal a weakened Dedenne by exploiting the principle of generating electricity through friction. As always, I love when the anime uses real science. After all, Pokémon is, if we’re being fair, light speculative science fiction itself.
Yet another note: this is another time where the movie’s soundtrack had to be mostly replaced for the dub.
In one of Pokémon’s few overt references to culture outside of itself, former soccer legend Atsuto Uchida has a cameo in the movie as a porter.
One sign of several of how the movies have been in a decline: the fanbase clearly cares less about managing their online resources about them. Riot’s actor isn’t even named on Bulbapedia for either the movie’s page or the character’s (it’s Marc Thompson according to IMDb).
Team Rocket has a tendency to catch really fun Pokémon, and James’ Inkay is proof positive. It’s a flying cuttlefish that trips up and flips around its enemies, and it’s adorable to boot. I’m a bit impressed it has Foul Play, the kind of tough move the anime would normally shy away from.
In contrast to the animation bump, the new Poké Ball screen wipes are incredibly silly.
This is largely unimportant, but it’s weird that Clemont and Professor Sycamore only meet for the first time in Episode 2. One’s the Gym Leader of the country’s biggest city; the other’s the preeminent expert on Pokémon.
More importantly, I want to emphasize again that the strategies are much more satisfying here. The anime has historically gone heavy on trying to depict strategies and conditions the mainline Pokémon games can’t do, which has always played into Ash’s smarter moments. It just feels stronger here, especially since Ash isn’t the only one pulling this kinda thing. His first fight with Clemont is a great show on both Trainers’ parts.
After the twenty-three anime movies, I’ll be ending this series with Detective Pikachu and five bonus episodes. As of Saturday I wrote down a tentative list. I considered doing another set from Journeys, as we’ll only have one week for that, but I decided to instead have them be a selection of stuff I missed from across the series’ history… including one of the movies’ Pikachu shorts (which I had considered devoting a whole week to, but I’m not sure that’d be interesting). I might do that, or a second week just for Journeys, but I’ll see how the remaining six weeks go.

Next movie: Pokémon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages

Next episodes:

1736: “The Cave of Mirrors!”
1737: “Forging Forest Friendships!”
1806: “Facing the Grand Design!”
1812: “A Showcase Debut!”
1819: “The Moment of Lumiose Truth!”

Other movies watched:

A Country Doctor
Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives (or Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part 6)
Hands of Steel
The Most Dangerous Game
Odds Against Tomorrow

Other television episodes watched:

Cheers 110, “Endless Slumper”
Cheers 119, “Pick a Con … Any Con”
Cheers 213, “Battle of the Exes”
Cheers 509, “Thanksgiving Orphans”
Cheers 524, “Cheers: The Motion Picture”
Cheers 909, “Bad Neighbor Sam”
Frasier 109, “Selling Out”
Frasier 117, “A Midwinter Night’s Dream”
Frasier 123, “Frasier Crane’s Day Off”
Frasier 223, “The Innkeepers”
Frasier 302, “Shrink Rap”
Frasier 319, “Crane vs Crane”
Frasier 406, “Mixed Doubles”
Frasier 408, “Our Father Whose Art Ain’t Heaven”
Frasier 1116, “Boo!”
The Good Place 201, “Everything is Great! Part 1”
The Good Place 202, “Everything is Great! Part 2”
The Good Place 203, “Dance Dance Resolution”
The Good Place 204, “Team Cockroach”
Mobile Police Patlabor: The Early Days 105, “The SV2’s Longest Day (Part 1)”
Mobile Police Patlabor: The Early Days 106, “The SV2’s Longest Day (Part 2)”
Mobile Police Patlabor: The Early Days 107, “Go North, SV2!”
Poker Face 103, “The Stall”
Poker Face 104, “Rest in Metal”
Poker Face 105, “Time of the Monkey”
Poker Face 106, “Exit Stage Death.” I felt certain before, but this rewatch has only confirmed: this really has gotta be the best season of TV this year.
Star Trek 309, “The Tholian Web”
Star Trek 315, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”
Star Trek 223, “All Our Yesterdays”