Pikachu in Pictures Chapter 22: Family is the Greatest Region of All

How many synonyms for “first” or “original” are there? Well, Wolfman’s gonna have to find out as he reviews a remake (and also five generally fun episodes).

Episodes reviewed:

2209: “Parallel Friendships!” (December 16, 2019). Ash and Pikachu find themselves in a terrifying parallel world where Melemele Island and the Pokémon School have been destroyed by an all-powerful Guzzlord. They try to work with their counterparts, the older survivor Dia and his aloof Zeraora, to send Guzzlord back to its own dimension.
2216: “Memories in the Mist” (February 10, 2019). Tapu Fini spreads a mist across Poni Island allowing those inside to meet their dearly departed. Torracat learns Fire Blast from Stoutland’s ghost, Lillie and Gladion try to contact their long-missing father, but Mallow is scared to see her mother and relive their last, painful meeting.
2245: “The Wisdom Not to Run!” (September 1, 2019). It’s the semifinals of Kukui’s newly formed Alola League, and Ash is up against the crazed Team Skull leader Guzma. While Pikachu struggles against Guzma’s unstoppable but cowardly Golisopod, the boss is confronted by his lifelong fear of failure.
2252: “From Z to Shining Z!” (October 20, 2019). Ash may have been crowned Champion of the League, but he’s immediately thrown into an exhibition match against a killer combination: Professor Kukui and Mememele’s guardian Tapu Koko. After Ash’s Ultra Beast buddy Naganadel is taken down, Pikachu manages to eke out a win over the Legendary when both execute their mystical Z-moves.
2254: “Thank You, Alola! The Journey Continues!” (November 3, 2019). The school year is finally over, and everyone has plans on how to spend their summer. Lillie and her family travel the world to find her father, Kiawe trains to be a Kahuna, Team Rocket leaves Mimikyu and Mareanie behind to live free in Alola, Rotom Dex gets a job with Lusamine, Burnet is pregnant, and Ash says goodbye to his new, second family.

Much like Dominic Torreto, Pokémon Sun & Moon—not just Season 22, but the Alola years as a whole—is concerned with family above all else. There’s the surrogate family Ash makes with Burnet and Kukui, who end up taking care of his Pokémon instead of them being sent to Oak’s lab in Kanto. There’s the family Guzma makes with the self-doubting members of Team Skull. There’s the weird family Team Rocket has with Bewear and Stufful. There’s the family composed of students at the Pokémon School, and their own personal families and family drama. There are the characters who leave these families through trips or death or greater circumstances. Even Dia and his Zeraora partner, apparently the only survivors of Melemele Island’s destruction in another dimension, fit. Familial themes powered this week.

Image: Bulbapedia. The final cast for Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon. Like X & Y, it emphasized group dynamics, but it’s fundamentally more of an ensemble. Also, check out Gladion’s kickin’ outfit!

This is not abnormal for television. I’ve heard fairly convincing arguments that the medium is defined by stories of found families and communities. That’s certainly true for the sitcoms this anime is following. But perhaps it is abnormal for the Pokémon franchise, since “families” largely consist of the team you make with your Pokémon (and even then, they just interact with you, not each other). You’re an adventurer on a long journey; your “homes” are in one podunk town or a Secret Base you build. There are communities, but the towns are very much rest stops. And only a few of them have ever had that much in the way of personality.

The Sun & Moon games didn’t quite have that sense of family, but the towns and denizens of Alola had far more life, energy, and community than any other Pokémon setting. These were people and cultures that felt real and distinct. You were very much participating in a religious ceremony, stopping an abusive parent, and helping Kukui build his fantasy of a league of your own. The Sun & Moon anime supported this by creating communities of its own, many of which weren’t supported in the games at all. Perhaps you could even see it as more of a prequel showing how Kiawe, Mallow, Lana, and Sophocles became the Trial Captains you meet on your own Island Challenge. Either way, it creates a world you want to live in and save. That’s something the games have often struggled with, but the anime seems to have struggled all the harder, which is weird since it has the opportunity to tell more intimate stories.

I’ve talked a lot before about how much the anime needed this. And I’ve talked about how much it needed to change to make this work, as well as how important it was that it happened here, in the region inspired more than any other by life, societies, and biodiversity. Sun & Moon might not by my favorite mainline entries—at the very least their “something close to sequels” Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon take significant steps back, which is rare for those expanded follow-ups—but honestly, Alola might actually be my favorite region because of how grand and rich it feels. Every Pokémon game has slightly better writing and characters than the last, but the jump Generation VII made was really special. The Pokémon were inventive and weird; the humans were deeper and more charismatic than ever before. If any mainline entries were going to give the anime this kind of push, it would always be this one, even when some of its ideas were altered for the sake of the show.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Show doing its level best to make Golisopod, the extremely fun Bug / Water-type cowardly monk, look cool. As a huge fan of the thing, I approve.

This week’s five episodes showed the value of keeping, twisting, and ignoring stuff for the sake of narrative. Ash still did the Island Challenge and fought ya boy Guzma and won a Pokémon League for the first time, but it didn’t drive his life like the Gym Challenges did in every other Generation. Game stuff that was only hinted at, like the capriciousness of the Tapus or the horror of a Melemele Island ravaged by Ultra Beasts, instead got more attention. And of course, while we lost some of the plot beats Kiawe and Lillie had in the games, they also got to be different and ultimately stronger characters overall. We definitely lost some stuff that would’ve been nice—finally seeing Unova’s amazing Dark-type master turned emo shark surfer Grimsley, for one thing; he was right there—but generally anime Alola got to be the best version of itself.

Thankfully, the episodes were also all quite strong. I don’t know how good the “Ultra Guardians” subplot was (it seemed uninteresting, so I probably should’ve watched one episode to get a taste), but the ones I did pick told fairly compelling stories in different ways. I was worried that the focus on Kukui’s Alola League would wring out the plot too much; instead, it got to have some fun drama with Guzma on top of two exquisite fights. The extremely intense “Memories in the Mist” enjoyed drowning Mallow and Tsareena in existential trauma. While I don’t think it was as good as Kalos’ finale, the last episode was good as well as a sendoff to everyone. But they all successfully pushed this idea that Ash really did build a new home here. It’s why Lycanroc, Rowlet, and Incineroar live with Kukui and not Oak’s lab like the rest of everything he catches. Maybe he won’t see them as much, but isn’t it better for them to be in this tighter family than just a perennial background character like Noctowl or Palpitoad?

Image: The Pokémon Company. Alola became somewhat famous by the end as the show that dealt with death more than the franchise is usually willing to. It’s commendable that it did even this amount.

Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon was a major leap, perhaps the biggest the show had done. Pokémon Journeys would be no less big of a leap. It employed a deuteragonist who’s more on Ash’s level of import than May or Dawn were, played with eight major regions, and had a grand, globe-trotting narrative (one the just-started Pokémon Horizons seems to be iterating on). But regardless of the somewhat mixed reception Journeys got, it was always going to struggle after the successes Alola found. It’s incredible how much life the series got just by changing its genre, to the point where it could still be great as the action show it ultimately still was. I don’t think the show could be a comedy like this for more than a region at a time without feeling too iterative—or too much like a bad spin-off, the Joey or The Tortellis of The Ash Show. But it does make me wish each era could be as distinctly unique as this one. Maybe one could have had a horror emphasis, or been more of a western, or something. Because this was good stuff.

Movie reviewed: Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution (July 12, 2019)

After killing its creators and breaking free of servitude, the Frankensteinian Mew clone Mewtwo tricks Ash, his friends, and other Trainers in a scheme to clone their Pokémon and remake the world. While their greater martial strength gives the clones an edge in a melee between copy and original that even sucks in Mew, Mewtwo realizes that human Trainers are not evil after Ash sacrifices himself to save Pikachu. But this time, it’s in 3D!!!

For what I can only assume is nostalgia bait and absolutely nothing else, The Pokémon Company decided to remake their first and post popular movie. It’s not like most Pokémon projects don’t do that already—the general I Choose You reboot falls under that—but Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution is a slavishly faithful polish of the original The First Movie. The Japanese script is apparently almost word for word the one Takeshi Shudō wrote. That actually gives the English release more of a reason to exist, since it follows it and not first Mewtwo Strikes Back’s notoriously bad 4Kids script (though some lines were retained, like that “circumstances of one’s birth” one you see in a meme every so often), I believe I singled that script out as the worst part of what I consider to be the worst Pokémon movie, so that’s good.

Image: Bulbapedia. Mewtwo, now in 3D.

Unfortunately, turns out that even a Mewtwo Strikes Back without Minnesota Vikings jokes and that woefully out of place “Brother My Brother” song is still the worst Pokémon movie. Mewtwo’s still a limited character with an unsatisfying supervillain plan. The hypocrisy of Pokémon battles is still fully in play. You know, there’s a neat idea that Mewtwo has internalized Pokémon abuse and the worst of battling so much that it’s willing to go further than Giovanni ever could. It’s unexplored, of course, as it was in the original film. I get why it follows that one as closely as it does (this is the benchmark of Pokémon at the cinema; any alteration would basically be heresy), but it’s undeniably a wasted opportunity to make something great out of the original movie’s potentially strong bones.

What is actually interesting about Evolution? How it acts as a remake in the year of our Arceus 2019, when it was released alongside the significantly better Detective Pikachu. Retaining the exact beats of the plot means that outside of a couple attacks (and a reference to Wingull instead of seagulls), there’s pretty much nothing from the Pokémon franchise after Generation I. Ash’s opponent from the opening montage now has darker skin, dreadlocks, and a Drowzee instead of a Golem. Mostly, what’s different is the animation, which is all CGI after two decades of 2D films and episodes buttressed by 3D special effects.

Image: Netflix, who got streaming rights for the movie and labeled it a “Netflix original.” Everyone looks close to a great claymation or stop motion character, but close enough to trip and fall into the uncanny valley.

I’m not a fan. While I love how it gives the Pokémon more visual details and texture—the franchise rarely does that, often leading to them feeling flat in 3D games—the actual animation is frictionless and weightless. The moment lacks any sense of heft, but it also lacks the rubbery or stretchier motions of good 2D cartoons. This has this weird byproduct of making the movie at least visually worse than its original (though I do place it above the first one in my as of yet unpublished ranking because I’m grading their official English releases). One of the few things The First Movie had going for it was a bigger budget and some sense of grandeur. It was cinematic. The scope of Mewtwo’s castle is larger here, the backgrounds are quite nice, but the fights and movements have less power than the ones they’re reimagining from twenty-two years ago.

And that, alongside the problems of the source material, is why going for a reboot was creatively inert. It was frustrating but kinda understandable that Misty and Brock didn’t do anything in Mewtwo Strikes Back, because they didn’t do anything in the show, but there’s no reason to do that again. Team Rocket gets a new bit and wears sailor suits, but they’re still wildly out of place. And functionally, this is a giant backslide after we just got a perfectly good reboot. Maybe they should’ve just done a Final Fantasy VII REMAKE-esque retelling of the original film with that Ash and a new take on his classic sidekicks. Forget the name; Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution is an almost purely lateral move. There are worse things all around, and markedly better things for those of us on the English language side of things, but it’s little more than lipstick on a Grumpig.

Conclusion: In the final analysis, Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon was an experiment more than worth the investment. It told stories worth telling about characters who got to be more than sidekicks for Ash, while the hero also got to do things the other eras of the anime would never let him do. Its setting was great; its humor was a cut above this franchise’s standards. By this point, we all know this. The change in tone, genre, and art style was controversial, but the Alolan adventures ended as one of Pokémon’s most reputable eras. Ash getting a string of big, earned wins helped with the fans, but by the very end of the show that was icing on the cake. While it’s great when an arm of this franchise gets a bad rep and salvages it, I’ve talked up Sun & Moon a lot. Ending on that isn’t interesting, so I’d like to pose a different question: what, if anything, did we lose by having these cinematic reboots and remakes? Could the Alolan cast have powered a movie? And should they have?

Image: Bulbapedia. Perhaps let me add to this question: why can’t we get Pokémon movies that ape the art style of Pablo Picasso?

I mean, it feels inevitable that a twenty-plus film franchise would want to do a reboot, especially since the films were starting to feel less relevant around the halfway point. I also do like the idea of Ash (albeit the main one, the one from the show) transitioning into just being a cinematic hero and leaving the show to new protagonists. Plus, I suppose it could be harder to make conventional Pokémon movies with the Alolan casts; they primarily stay in one place, and every one of their Legendaries are part of the story’s bedrock. Can’t do a story like Sun & Moon without the Tapus and the Ultra Beasts and Team Skull, even if the show rarely did them all together. You’d either have to work exclusively with all three of Generation VII’s Mythical Pokémon or have the movies be more firmly in continuity. That would be harder.

At the same time, it is sad that Ash’s best (by virtue of being his largest and deepest) coterie didn’t get to step into movie theaters. I think you could’ve done movies about them, though they might have to be a bit different from the norm. You could have a mystery movie, like Detective Pikachu, but again that wouldn’t be the kind of “Pokémon movie” the anime seems to want to make. More to the point, these are strong characters, a stronger flock than I’m used to from this show. They “deserve,” insofar as a fictional character “deserves” anything, to get at least one movie of their own. I mean, even Max got to be in four movies and even star in one of them. No fiction character ever really deserves to be the star of anything, but Kukui and Kiawe and Lillie paid their dues well. And hell, maybe following the somewhat stricter setting could have led to some interesting stories.

Image: The Pokémon Company. The end of Sun & Moon does admittedly lean more into being Ash’s story, but it still does it with panache. Ash won, which fans wanted for two decades, but even then the show made the exhibition match the real victory.

Of course, this is beyond pointless. The Sun & Moon games did well at having every part of its world feel real, and the anime incorporated that well enough that there wasn’t anything big left out. The show’s general camaraderie and intimacy worked great as television, and it still had all the big, grand arcs anyway. All we really lost was an admittedly great opportunity to have cinemas project scenes of Professor Kukui wrestling some animal for scientific study. But it is kind of sad, I guess, that the best and most competent era of the show didn’t get to take part in its giant film history. Fortunately, that’s a good thing to lack, and Ash’s Pokémon School chums can still dine out on the fact that they got to make references to Revolutionary Girl Utena and Gundam and have fun doing it.

Errant thoughts:

Pikachu now knows Electro Web. I made the point about Electro Ball last week, and while it doesn’t let Pikachu use its species’ signature move, Electro Web is a much more fun substitute. It’s the kind of tricky attack Ash would’ve never bothered with years ago.
In “Memories in the Mist,” Mallow found a Shaymin that lives with her for a while. In the finale, she releases it after it attains Sky Forme. Again, the show was just regularly weaving these characters and plot points in and out because that’s easier with a committed setting.
Golisopod has an amazingly weird filter to its voice.
One reference I only just consciously noticed: Ash’s constant grinning and chuckling over the past three weeks is very Lupin-esque.
The Dia episode’s title card had a different song than the remix to the Pokémon Center theme that’s usually used. I appreciate having one that’s new given the much darker tone.
“From Z to Shining Z” is the second episode I’ve done for this project where Ash deliberately used a move on a Pokémon immune to it (in this case, having Naganadel using Dragon Pulse next to the Fairy-type Tapu Koko to destroy the terrain). Were this franchise just a teensier more “online,” I’d consider it a rejoinder to all the complaints about Pikachu hurting Ground-types and “aiming for the horn.”
- Personally, I’m fine with stuff like immunities being treated a bit liberally in the show. Like, I don’t think there’s a problem with a Ghost-type being hurt by Hyper Beam or whatever.
For a inverse of this, in one of the recaps Torracat one-shotted Guzma’s Scizor because its intended target, Golisopod, fled using Emergency Exit and shoved Scizor out into a four-times super-effective Fire Blast (ouch!). This kinda thing I always love, recontextualizing Abilities to fit this non-JRPG format.
Well, goddamnit, now I have a great idea the remake should’ve done. The movie never bothers to show why Mewtwo’s style of Pokémon battling is worse, right? So what if, after its first brutal battle, Brock steps in and referees the next match, since that’s standard for the show. Mewtwo would easily win, of course, Brock would declare it the winner, but it wouldn’t bother listening and instead keep shellacking the Blastoise and / or Venusaur. This would show what battles are “supposed” to be, why Mewtwo is scary, how it exists outside the respectable sphere for Pokémon ownership, and it gives Brock something to do!
Wait, why wasn’t Misty’s Staryu in the film at all after they got to the island?
But, fair’s fair; Jessie and James’ 3D models are terrible, as are every human’s, but they do look good in sailor suits. If only I could find an image.
And, here we go: Wolfman’s Favorite Generation VII Pokémon: Nihilego, Mimikyu, Golisopod, Salazzle, Ribombee, Lycanroc, Tsareena, Araquanid, Wishiwashi, Drampa, Decidueye, Primarina, Incineroar, Lunala, Tapu Koko, Tapu Fini, Silvally, Nekrozma, Buzzwole, Pheramossa, Kartana, Guzzlord, Marshadow, Naganadel, Zeraora. A smaller list this time; like Kalos, Alola had a much smaller crew. But they did go hard, from dominatrix berries to murderous sand castles to the whole concept of regional forms. The latter is one of the series’ single best ideas ever.
- This is complimented by my list of favorite Alolan Forms: Ninetales, Marowak, Muk, Rattata, Meowth, Exeggutor. It’s just great all around. You get to reuse a design somewhat, it reflects a real aspect of evolution, and it can allow an old ‘Mon to get a new style.
- There are a few Pokémon I’d love to see get some. My precious Pinsir could be a Bug / Dragon-type prehistoric beetle with a focus on special moves! You could do a Johtonian Mimikyu that pretends to be Marill! Or, ooh, maybe Luxray, but it’s a Water-type jaguar?

Next movie: Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle

Next episodes:

2301: “Enter Pikachu!”
2306: “Working My Way Back to Mew!”
2311: “Best Friend…Worst Nightmare!”
2312: “Flash of the Titans!”
2326: “Splash, Dash, and Smash for the Crown! / Slowpoke’s Crowning”

Other movies watched:

Demonic Toys
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
Lupin III: The First
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
The Red Spectacles

Other television episodes watched:

Cheers 209, “They Call Me Mayday”
Cheers 409, “From Beer to Eternity”
Frasier 224, “Dark Victory”
Frasier 314, “The Show Where Diane Comes Back”
Frasier 403, “The Impossible Dream”
Frasier 422, “Are You Being Served”
Frasier 502, “The Gift Horse”
Frasier 703, “Radio Wars”
Frasier 717, “Whine Club”
Frasier 815, “Hooping Cranes”
Murder, She Wrote 105, “Hooray for Homicide”
Regular Show 304, “Terror Tales of the Park, Part 1”
Regular Show 305, “Terror Tales of the Park, Part 2”
Regular Show 604, “Terror Tales of the Park IV”
Regular Show 618, “Benson’s Suit.” Wow, MAX really is just so, so much worse than HBOMax. Great job there, Zaslav…
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 201, “The Frozen Forest”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 202, “Ties that Bind”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 203, “Signals”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 204, “Roll with It”
Smallville 509, “Lexmas.” There really is some chutzpah in doing the worst adaptation of Superman, ever, and then deciding to do an episode where your mealy mouthed protozoan of a Superman saves a drunk, suicidal Santa Claus.
Smallville 512, “Reckoning”
Smallville 515, “Cyborg”