Pikachu in Pictures Chapter 20: The Two Faces of Ash

I’ve got a week off work! That means it should be easy to go through the Pokémon anime, right? Wrong! Zelda’s been living rent free in my brain all week. But I’ve made time to check out one of the eras of Pokémon that seemed the most interesting.

Episodes reviewed:

2003: “Loading the Dex!” (November 24, 2016). Ash is on a class expedition as the newest student of the Alola region’s Pokémon School, and Professor Kukui’s given him a gift: a talking Poké Dex possessed by the irascible specter Rotom. Meanwhile, Team Rocket finds themselves more maliciously haunted by Mimikyu, a ghost in a ratty Pikachu costume with an inhuman hatred for Ash’s partner.
2014: “Getting to Know You!” (February 9, 2017). Ash and his classmates—Mallow, Lana, Kiawe, Lillie, and Sophocles—are excited when the Eggs they’ve been caring for hatch into two varieties of Vulpix. But while everyone wants Lillie to catch the Ice-type Alolan one, including the Vulpix itself, she’s unable to even touch “Snowy” due to her crippling phobia of Pokémon.
2021: “One Journey Ends, Another Begins…” (April 6, 2017). A feral Litten has been stealing food from the residents of Hau’oli City to feed its companion, an elderly and pained Stoutland. A trip to the Pokémon Center reveals that Stountland is dying of old age, and while Ash tries to be there for Litten, the fire cat struggles to come to terms.
2028: “Pulling Out the Pokémon Base Pepper!” (May 25, 2017). Everyone in school is captivated by Pokémon Base, a baseball-esque sport where Trainers and their Pokémon both play. Kukui decides to make a class of it with a day of base that brings in both Team Rocket and a celebrity player.
2037: Rising from the Ruins! (August 10, 2017). A battle with Kahuna Olivia has left Ash’s Rockruff in a violent, agitated state tied to its upcoming evolution. It runs off, and a search that ropes in the capricious guardian Tapu Lele, Ash’s mysterious rival Gladion, and the two forms of Rockruff’s evolution Lycanroc ends with the puppy turning into a new third form.

It was because “the ratings sank.” Or maybe it was because “Yo-Kai Watch was such a big competitor,” which is kind of a laugh now. There were a lot of reasons bandied about, but one thing was for sure: people did not gel with the new look. Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon consciously moved away from the light shōnen art style that had powered the Pokémon anime for nineteen years into something much lighter and zanier. In some ways, that was physical; characters looked more simplistic and moved with wild, crazed abandon. This came with a complete genre change, as the anime (while still heavy on action) turned into a slice of life sitcom. Ash did travel through the islands of Alola, the beautiful region from the Pokémon Sun & Moon games, but he spent most of his time in a school on Melemele Island. The Trial Captains were his classmates. He slept in the Professor’s house, looked after his Pokémon, and was treated like family. This was utterly out of line for this show, but it fit how the games tried to get out of the series’ rut. I mean, they literally had your encyclopedia get haunted by Rotom, the cute Poltergeist riff from Diamond & Pearl.

Image: GIFER. Just some of the art styles and visual tics “Pulling Out the Pokémon Base Pepper” appropriates to insane effect. It’s hard to show this without animation, so I really hope WordPress doesn’t make it unviewable.

There were actual reasons for these changes, at least official ones. You’ll notice that alongside the different proportions, the characters’ outfits are toned down to make animation even easier. This was still an expansion of what X & Y was doing, putting the emphasis on movement over static images. As it was in the last show, Pokémon is worlds away from the bland art style that powered it for well over a decade, fitting the lively, Hawaii-inspired archipelago. As for the change in tone, it’s high time. One of the frustrations of Pokémon is that it’s a franchise with limitless storytelling potential that focuses so much on one specific type of action. Given that Ash has long been moving into the track of caring for all Pokémon, making him hit the books is sensible. Plus, the sustained setting has a fun benefit of allowing a much more graceful, standard form of TV comedy serialization. The Alola years feature fewer fillers and characters of the day than any other because can you really call an episode “filler” if it allows the expanded cast to grow together, just a bit each time?

I also don’t necessarily think it’d have been creatively helpful to keep chasing Kalos’ energy for too long. The sheer amount of action and serialization was a lot for a show whose seasons have more episodes than many great TV stories get in their entire lives. The giant arcs were cool, but they were also big. If you kept going down that path uninterrupted, you’d be forced to just make things bigger; the villain would have to threaten more, the allies Ash accrued would have to jump in number, and the show would probably hit the excesses of the long-running shōnen it’s been following. I know the big climax of Journeys involves a four-parter followed by a five-parter. That’s a lot. You’re basically watching multiple single battles each run the length of a movie, potentially over the course of months.

And, frankly, I’m enjoying this specific change. It was fun spending time in Alola and meeting the cast (if, of course, not nearly as fun as tearing through Hyrule). We’ve had three to four person teams for so long that an actual ensemble, each with only one or two Pokémon so none feels too crowded out, is refreshing. I haven’t really gotten a strong sense of the cast beyond the basics—Kukui is assertive, Litten aloof, Lycanroc friendly, Mallow aggressive, Kiawe serious, Lillie skittish, Sophocles obnoxious, and the Rotom Dex especially obnoxious—but it seems to work well. It helps that, by having Ash only as the most important character of a larger cast, characters can have greater interactions with each other and aren’t filtered through him so much.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Mimikyu is one of the defining Pokémon of Gen VII, and giving it to Team Rocket was a great move.

On the moral flipside, Team Rocket got the most memeable, casually morbid Pokémon of Gen VII—a Pikachu doll whose true form kills anyone who sees it and an affectionate cartoon bear who accidentally breaks its loved ones’ spines by hugging them—and they’re the better for it. Mimikyu is a warped, gross delight, Bewear is a perfect kind of moderately unhelpful ally, and Jessie’s friendship with both is sweet. The toxic starfish Mareanie is also good as the designated teammate who loves James and attacks him. Team Rocket is now spending most of their time in relaxed, casual beachwear, because why wouldn’t you here? The show does a lot to make Alola feel friendly, enchanting, but also real beyond Ash’s current tourist trap.

I’m liking the animation a lot, too. There’s a great physicality to it that’s so nice and different from the physicality of X & Y, like how you get to see Wobbuffet’s weird little leg stumps move like an old timey American cartoon character. The title card’s more engaging. The crazed bodily movements are intense, particularly in the baseball episode where the show zealously riffs on one new anime cliché after another (and Sun & Moon would take it even further as it went on, including an episode that momentarily turns Ash into a Picasso canvas). It does take some getting used to, and you can hear the actors struggle to adequately match these body-warping shenanigans, but it is more than just fresh. It’s good on its own, even removed from how it bolsters the franchise.

Best of all, though, is just how willing Sun & Moon is to be something new, and that includes exploring new ideas. Sport! School! Daily life! And, yes, death. “One Journey Ends, Another Begins” got instantly famous for its willingness to tell a good (and yes, abstracted for the sake of being pitched to little kids) plot about grief and mortality. This is the flipside you needed from a reboot that was very silly and zany, but also more thoughtful about the world in which it takes place. The episode is good, and I doubt it would have been nearly as good had it not happened in this specific setting. You need to spend more episodes with Litten and Stoutland as members of the cast. You need to have a story willing to do episodes without a traditional Pokémon battle, too, even if the battles still look great. Alongside the subject of death, which it would return to, Alola told stories about culture and more pedestrian struggles; one of our episodes next week threatened Kiawe’s family with the loss of their farm, not a Gym battle or the soul of Pokémon battling. For all of the highs I’ve seen from the Pokémon anime thus far, none of those shows could consistently support this, whether or not they even did so momentarily.

Image: Bulbapedia. “The death episode” is surprisingly realistic in how it depicts grief. A bit disarming, really.

So, sure, Rotom Poké Dex is an utterly obnoxious jerk and a stain on the charming version of the character from the Sun & Moon games. And Professor Oak’s principal, Pokémon-imitating cousin Samson is no great shakes neither. But so far I’m liking the characters, loving the setting, and feel excited to keep this project a’moving. Not that it can compare with Zelda of course. I mean, I got body slammed to death by a tree in Zelda. First day! They’d never let Trevenant do that.

Movie reviewed: Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! (July 15, 2017)

Ten-year-old Ash Ketchum starts his journey as a Pokémon Trainer by befriending the difficult electric mouse Pikachu and catching a glimpse of the Legendary Ho-Oh. The two meet fellow Trainers Verity and Sorrel, and they all decide to find Ho-Oh, whose Rainbow Wing seems to identify Ash as a chosen hero. During the trip they meet the enigmatic ghost Marshadow and run afoul of Cross, an abusive Trainer who leaves his Charmander for dead and resents Ash’s kindness towards Pokémon.

On a surface level, this movie, the start of a rebooted continuity largely exclusive to cinema, is very much a greatest hits album. The original episode, “Pokémon – I Choose You!,” is remade in half the time. Ash gets a rambunctious Pikachu who hates him, only to quickly win his favor by risking his own life. He gets an abused Pokémon who proves its power against its abuser; it’s Charmander again, the fan favorite. He gets—and later releases—a Caterpie. He hides out in a cave, meets a girl with a Piplup, and gets hounded by a Team Rocket who never interacts with him. The past even leaks in the details, like cameos of characters from the movies or small moments. The biggest divergence is that I Choose You puts Ho-Oh front and center. In the anime, the rainbow phoenix is a plot device to symbolize Ash’s journey, but this is all about their relationship. It’s a smart role to take if the show is incapable of really working with Ho-Oh (as it wasn’t until the very end of Ash’s time as a protagonist).

Image: IMDb. This movie’s take on Ash’s gang of friends. Sorrel and Verity are perfectly fine.

And that does lead the way for the show to handle new ideas, and old ideas with which the early phase of the show stumbled. For one thing, there’s a greater investment on the idea of trained Pokémon having autonomy, with several instances of ‘Mons acting independently and Sorrel (a better riff on the Brock role than pretty much anyone before) arguing that they’re not instruments of humans. His backstory in particular involves the death of a pet Luxray that didn’t magically revive or disappear into the ether; you just see its lifeless, snow-covered body as a reminder of how it searched for Sorrel and tried to keep him warm. The movie does believe, whether or not it can fully prove, that Pokémon and people live entirely symbiotic relationships. This also helps with this new Ash revealing a goal our Ash had never fully articulated, that he’s a Trainer because he believes that’s the best way he can communicate with Pokémon. Between that and the poor Luxray, I think that’s what this movie is best at: doing things the classic continuity can’t, or won’t, or couldn’t. Of course, that also fits the Sun & Moon anime.

Verity and Sorrel are fine if openly secondary, as befits the Ash sidekick. Cross, the antagonist, isn’t as good as Paul, but he’s certainly a fine enough personification of the bad Trainer. And Ash’s loss to him is great; it’s a much better handling of his immaturity—Ash whines and sulks and pushes his Pokémon away because he hates a world that “let” him lose to someone that cruel—than the show usually was. Our hero has gone through these plot points and several others over time, but seeing them all together is a bit special. If the boy from Pallet Town has been on a twenty-year character arc, the movie allows much of that growth to happen in one big go, which is interesting.

So the travelog structure makes sure to play the hits, and it does use its room for some good ideas, but… well, to be honest, I Choose You is f___in’ weird. For one thing, at one point Marshadow gives Ash a nightmare (or maybe Marshadow is stopping the nightmare? The ghost’s role is extremely confusing and a huge weakness for the film) in which he lives in a world without Pokémon. That was gonna be in the Darkrai movie, but they reused it for here, presumably because both were round number movies. More bonkers is the end where Ash dies and Pikachu—using actual, extraordinarily unsettling human language—explains that he’s refused to get in a Poké Ball for twenty years before he doesn’t want to leave Ash for a minute. There’s not a whole lot else in this movie that bizarre, or blatantly insincere for that matter, but those are monumentally so. Though I suppose you can say the same for its very role as the start of a reboot series that has thus far consisted of an interrupted trilogy.

Image: Bulbapedia. Cross and his Lycanroc. It’s interesting how much the franchise pushed Lycanroc and Rockruff—though that’s not a complaint.

So if I Choose You is a poor story (and it is, since like a lot of movie adaptations it kind of becomes a weird string of constant plot beats, like some insane, kid-friendly version of David Lynch’s Dune), it is also a welcome addition to the Pokémon animated canon. New Ash allows us to get a picture of regular Ash that the anime rarely shows. The action is generally fun. Best of all, it manages to feel interesting and complimentary, not redundant or taking Season 1’s place. I think it reveals stuff about the show that the show can’t, or perhaps couldn’t prior to the Sun & Moon era, show. So good for it. Plot issues aside, this is one of the best of these. Even an utterly unearned talking Pikachu moment can’t bring it down too far.

Conclusion: I’m just gonna come off of the fence I’ve been straddling: thus far, Sun & Moon isn’t quite as strong as the X & Y I saw. It’s mostly just due to the fact that a couple characters don’t work as well, and the show seems to be taking a bit longer to acclimate. That being said, this is basically where I want the Pokémon anime to be right now, and I ultimately respect this era of it more as television. Actually being willing to make such a huge shift in tone and narrative is commendable, and the show goes whole hog. There’s probably a reference to FLCL in the baseball episode. You see a willingness to imagine what it’s like to live in the world of Pokémon and not simply be traipsing through a million identical, Ursaring-riddled forests.

The Sun & Moon games often felt like that, letting you have a part-time job throwing washed up, adorable sea cucumbers into the sea and having a more scarily realistic, abusive villain. The Gym Leaders were sort of low level religious officials caring for minor patron deities, and they had lives outside of that work. Characters like Kiawe and Nanu and Lillie felt greater than their counterparts from older games. The world felt richer. And it was only one avenue in which the broader Pokémon franchise was exploring this, particularly through odd spinoffs. Today, Detective Pikachu, New Pokémon Snap, and Poké Toon all give you glimpses I never got of what a world of Pokémon could actually be like.

Image: Bulbapedia. I didn’t talk about it, but the episode dealing with Lillie’s phobia also fits in with this. It’s a depiction of Pokémon and of Pokémon-related trauma that would’ve never flew in Gen I.

Whether or not Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon succeeds (and it does) is less important than what it succeeds at attempting: to let Ash have a bit more maturity. It seems odd, what with the comic absurdity, but the twentieth season is a lot softer of a power fantasy than it’s been for the last nineteen. It’s better for it. We needed X & Y to be what it was, a show that took Ash’s standard adventures as far as it could probably go. Now, we need this new thing, at least for some time. And while the timeline on this probably could’ve been trimmed a year or ten, at least it’s happening with Mimikyu. Love that little creepazoid.

Errant thoughts:

Speaking of, time for a segment I call The Mimikyu Corner:
- While there have been changes in the dub since TPCI took over (including Sun & Moon having the first banned episode in forever, since it involved Ash wearing blackface-like makeup, which… eesh), some of the stuff with Mimikyu received edits that are evocative of the 4Kids era. A running gag in Alola is that Meowth will look under Mimikyu’s cloth and die. Some of their excesses, like a famous moment in a later episode where his lifeless body floats on the water, were cut. I mean, if that’s what it took to get on Disney XD…
- This one also featured a classic fourth wall break for the American audience, when Meowth explains that he won’t translate some of Mimikyu’s comments because “this is a family show.” So Mimikyu’s still f___ing intense.
- I’ve had this written down for months, and it’s nice to finally use it: “Loading the Dex” debuts one of my single favorite Pokémon moves, Play Rough. The user—our gross doll friend in this case—just whales on the target in a giant cartoon violence dust cloud. Given that it was one of the major Fairy-type attacks introduced in the last Generation, it’s surprising it only showed up now, though given the tone change it fits.
- Its pronunciation (“meemee-kyu”) is odd to me. Like, the “mimic” pun is right there; it’s even its name in Japanese, because they tend to do that for ones they think will be big stars.
This has been on my mind for a while, but it’s surprising how long Electro Ball has been on Pikachu’s moveset, right? I get replacing Volt Tackle with it in Black & White because Electro Ball was a big new move, and it is a different projectile than Thunderbolt, but the Pulseman homage is Pikachu’s signature deal.
Narrator cut in partway through “One Journey Ends” to bring us up to speed on Ash’s and Litten’s relationship, as opposed to using a “previously on” segment. I found it surprising, and maybe it’s part of how more intimate the show is now.
- The episode also had a fun metaphor where Litten projects its fear onto a nearby tree who’s losing its remaining leaves one by one. I’ve maybe dived into the “it’s almost like a real show!” well a few too many times, but I’m still not used to Pokémon doing this kind of thing.
But seriously, why isn’t Pokémon Base at least as big as Contests or battles?
He’s only in it for a bit (his Lycanroc takes center stage), but “Rising from the Ruins” features Gladion, the second and best rival of the Sun & Moon games. The show doesn’t adapt all my favorite parts of that plot, disappointingly since I think the original Lillie / Hau / Gladion / Lusamine stuff is some of Pokémon’s best writing, but it’s smart making sure he was front and center. It’s also notable given how few of the games’ rivals have a serious role in the show.
I Choose You is the last dubbed movie to lose access to the Japanese music, and it’s much more notable a loss this time. The original score primarily consisted of wonderful remixes to the songs of the show’s first season, and even if you didn’t know that you can feel the absence of at least those original pieces.
One of Team Rocket’s contractually mandated scenes in the movie involves them being attacked by an Onix in a way that made it seem like they were being attacked by a Taulus and oh, goddamnit, I just wanna play more Zelda.
At least with the ones I’ve seen so far, I Choose You is the first installment of the anime franchise to indicate that being a Pokémon “Master” is distinct from being a Pokémon “Trainer.” It was only with Real Ash’s exit from the show that we finally got his definition for it, though the series’ creators have always been open that a “Master” is an idea Ash mostly made up. It’s a kids’ dream.
The movie and the show both had Fire Fang, but it looked much cooler in the movie. It involved Incineroar’s cool gimmick, that in lieu of breathing fire (like almost every other Fire-type) it blasts flames from its belt. When the leaks started coming about Incineroar’s starring turn in Smash Bros. Ultimate, I remember being excited to see that be depicted. Of course, Smash would do something even crazier by making it full Zangief.

Next movie: Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us

Next episodes:

2042: “Alola, Kanto!”
2110: “Rescuing the Unwilling!”
2112: “The Professors’ New Adventure!”
2126: “The Young Flame Strikes Back!”
2135: “Showering the World with Love!”

Other movies watched:

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Other television episodes watched:

Cheers 203, “Personal Business”
Frasier 509, “Perspectives on Christmas”
Frasier 513, “The Maris Counselor”
Frasier 607, “How to Bury a Millionaire”
Frasier 618, “Taps at the Montana”
Frasier 712, “Rdwrer”
Frasier 1108, “Murder Most Maris”
Gravity Falls 213, “Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons”
The Legend of Zelda 105, “Sing for the Unicorn.” Perhaps it’s unsurprising I watched some of this in the wake of the game. It’s bad. It’s not that interesting. It is significantly more competent than The Super Mario Bros. Super Show with which it was paired, but it’s been basically impossible for me to watch it ever since I did the first time and not see it as terrible fantasy Cheers. Much in the vein of me viewing Sonic Boom as “appreciably mediocre furry Cheers.”
- But seriously, watch Boom and it totally fits. Sonic is Sam, Amy Diane, Knuckles Woody, Sticks Carla, Tails Frasier, Orbot and Cubot Norm and Cliff… see?! I’m totally right about this, on top of it also obviously being “appreciably mediocre furry Simpsons.”
The Legend of Zelda 107,” Doppelganger”
The Legend of Zelda 112, “The Missing Link”
The Legend of Zelda 113, “The Moblins Are Revolting”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 110, “The Beacon”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 111, “Promise”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 112, “Light Hope”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 113, “The Battle of Bright Moon”
The Simpsons 506, “Marge on the Lam”
The Simpsons 510, “$pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)”
The Simpsons 512, “Bart Gets Famous”
The Simpsons 513, “Homer and Apu”
Smallville 501, “Arrival.” If nothing else, and there is nothing else, Smallville is always helpful in reminding me that it can always be worse than two decades of animated mediocrity. Far, far worse.
Smallville 502, “Mortal”
Smallville 504, “Aqua”