Pikachu in Pictures Chapter 23: Promise, if Not Panache

We’re finally onto the final era of the Pokémon anime! It’s been over five months, but we’re in the home stretch! Now let’s see if our exit from the show—and Ash’s exit, too—is worth the wait.

Episodes reviewed:

2301: “Enter Pikachu!” (November 17, 2019). A lone Pichu lives in a forest near Pallet Town, finding companionship in a colony of Kangaskhan before evolving into a Pikachu. Meanwhile, in an expedition led by Professor Oak just missed by a local youngster, six-year-olds Goh and Chloe see a completely unknown Pokémon, Mew.
2306: “Working My Way Back to Mew!” (December 22, 2019). Now older, Ash, Pikachu, Goh, and the latter’s newly caught Scorbunny are studying with Chloe’s father. Wanting to catch every kind of Pokémon in the hopes that it’ll lead him to see Mew again, Goh travels to Kanto and catches Bug-types. A lot of Bug-types.
2311: “Best Friend…Worst Nightmare!” (February 2, 2020). A Gengar is haunting Cerise Laboratory, and Ash and Goh are both unable to catch or defeat it. It’s up to Chloe, who’s unsure of what she wants to do with her life, to force the Ghost-type out of the lab with the help of her pet Yamper.
2312: “Flash of the Titans!” (February 9, 2020). Ash and Goh have tickets to the World Coronation Series, a newly formed global tournament whose finalists—Lance and the Galar region’s undefeated Champion Leon—duel with super-sized Pokémon. Leon wins, and Ash has a new mission: join the WCS, fight him, and unseat him as the world’s Monarch.
2326: “Splash, Dash, and Smash for the Crown! / Slowpoke’s Crowning” (June 28, 2020). In one story, Goh puts himself, Ash, and his gigantic but overweight Magikarp through intensive training to enter a Magikarp jumping competition. And in another, hijinks ensue when a misplaced Slowking crown turns whoever wears it into a British-accented dictator.

On December 16, 2022, The Pokémon Company made a big announcement: Ash Ketchum would, in 2023, be leaving Pokémon the Series. The Pallet Pride has been a world-famous television protagonist since the Clinton Administration. He predates Tony Soprano and Spongebob Squarepants. Pokémon as a franchise regularly employs new protagonists in its media, but Ash has been there for every one of the anime’s peaks, valleys, and changes. It’s hard to see how Pokémon Horizons is working without him (largely because its English release is likely months away at best). Hopefully it’s doing well.

Image: The Pokémon Company. One of the big appeals of Journeys was a crossover element in which characters from across the series could interact. Like letting Lance be a jobber for the new final boss, Leon.

With that knowledge—which we didn’t have until one month after he officially became the world’s greatest Trainer—Pokémon Journeys is very obviously a grand, three-year hurrah for the franchise’s most iconic hero. He beats Steven and Cynthia and reunites with all his rivals and friends (except Max, who even the show recognized was worth no more than two shared, voiceless cameos). We find out what happened to Lillie’s dad, where Gary’s new path took him, and Mewtwo’s ultimate fate. Even ancillary characters like Butch and Cassidy got sendoffs. He catches a Lucario and Mega Evolves it; he catches a Gengar and Gigantamaxes it. His final episode reveals what he means when he says he wants to be a “Pokémon Master.” And that comes after an eleven-episode epilogue that reunites him with Misty, Brock, and a ton of his roster.

But that wasn’t clear from the start. What was noteworthy was the degree to which Journeys was a shift from the previous anime. While Ash’s home base was in Kanto, and the all-new Galar region got a lot of time, he and his new best friend Goh traveled across the eight regions of Pokémon for stories that gave comparable attention to Ash’s quest to be the best Trainer and Goh’s to join the enigmatic Project Mew. You could fly to Unova for a fight with Iris in one episode and travel to The Crown Tundra’s Split-Decision Ruins with Gary the next. This meant that the world of Pokémon Sword & Shield got some short shrift, particularly ultra-popular human characters like Nessa who didn’t appear at all. But taken as a giant goodbye to one of television’s most famous ten-year-olds, it makes sense. I imagine Goh’s quests also help manage the tone, which otherwise would be far too heavy on tournament battles. That final battle with Leon took four episodes; that’s as long as the Venture Bros. movie’s probably gonna be.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Goh in “Working My Way Back to Mew” was challenging and off-putting to many viewers for how obsessed he was with catching Pokémon. It’s unclear how much this being Ash’s final arc affects him as a character.

Of course, Goh is himself… challenging. He’s kind of obnoxious this far in, but he also hits something I think is interesting about the anime specifically. Basically, this is a two-man cast (Chloe is for better or worse a supporting character), and the various aspects of Pokémon are split down the middle. Ash is boisterous and reps the battling side of the franchise; Goh is more logical and, as his Pokémon GO-sounding name suggests, reps the catching. So he snags Pokémon, constantly, and first and most infamously in one of the single most hated episodes of the franchise. “Working My Way Back to Mew” isn’t offensive, even if it is painfully boring and a waste of the series’ single best pun title ever. But it’s still the episode where Goh catches all twelve of Red & Blue’s Bug-types, dumps them in the lab, and over the course of the show they’re mostly treated as afterthoughts. This is how most of us play Pokémon, but that’s not what the anime does. Ever since Johto, it’s tried to make the caught Pokémon feel like animals and not things you catch so your Pokédex has a higher number. It’s not inaccurate to the games, but it is inaccurate to what the anime became, and it did lead to Goh and the show both being viewed as shallow with how he treats his team. Though maybe some of the descriptions of him as a “sociopath” are a bit much, and of course, I haven’t gotten to see how much he grows over the course of Project Mew.

On that note, this is where things get a bit more challenging, now that we’re really nearing the end here. I organized these episodes with the idea that they fit alongside Pokémon: Secrets of the Jungle, as I did for every preceding chapter. Problem is that, well, COVID hit, and Secrets of the Jungle became the last movie. Stuff like Goh and Gary becoming rivals as they investigate Mew, Ash climbing the ranks of the WCS, and the original Twerp Trio reuniting were all out of the question, particularly the stuff that hadn’t gotten officially dubbed—some of which only got even an English language release of any kind this month. Remember, this list was made at the end of 2022. I’m looking at what Season 23 of Pokémon was while under the whole weight of Journeys’ three seasons.

Image: Bulbapedia. One of Journey‘s biggest and earliest revelations, Pikachu’s origin story is also quite well done and thoughtful.

And what I’ve found is sort of a slightly lower rent take on X & Y (focus on gonzo action) and Sun & Moon (comedy antics, some semblance of an ensemble, a fixed home base). It’s also trying to advertise the just-released Sword & Shield, which really needed it given its own controversies, and give Ash the best sendoff he could get alongside that. Pokémon Journeys struggles as a result. It’s far from bad, but the animation has definitely taken a bit of a dive. The pathos isn’t as strong, and neither is the comedy. That partially came in the form of a few episodes that were two eleven minute stories packaged together, like what Cartoon Network used to do before just letting the individual stories sit on their own. I guess you could see it as representative of the show being both a gift to the fans and a patchwork endeavor. Maybe it’s best represented by the change in Jessie and James’s teams: they rent crazy Pokémon from a Pelliper once an episode, none of which carry the friendships they forged with Arbok, Chimecho, or Mimikyu. Something meant to be cool excises something that was a bit more narratively strong.

But I do think there’s at least some strong bones in here. I’m not sure how well Goh and Chloe work as figures who were just outside of Ash’s orbit this whole time (I think Serena did much better in that role), but I do like the idea of this one thing from their barely-remembered past that unites them. Chloe’s episode about not knowing what she wants to do feels distinct enough from the stories the show did for Lillie or Max, and it’s good having people like that around Ash. Mostly, though, I really do like that we’ve changed direction again, even if the “mission” focus is weaker than the last two generations. It lets us see stuff we missed in previous shows, and while I am sad the Generation VIII stuff got a bit less love, it’s nice having the feeling that you could just see any Pokémon. You can have a story just about Slowking! You can go straight to Wyndon to see Lance get bodied! Maybe Goh’s presence as this explorer helps with this more than I realized.

Image: The Pokémon Fandom Wki. Surprisingly, this is the less weird half of “Splash, Dash, and Smash for the Crown! / Slowking’s Crowning.” Notice that the animation shift isn’t quite as nice as the ones in Sun & Moon.

So that’s where we are. Promise, if not panache (ooh, maybe that should be the title!). In a way, it feels like the inverse of Battle Frontier. That show was also a nostalgia trip, but the nostalgia was effectively wasted since the show didn’t bother interacting with stuff from Kanto. This brings the references and in-jokes, and it gives Ash a bunch of Pokémon people have wanted him to catch forever, but fans didn’t take to those catches in practice. It made a deuteragonist who comes the closest to operating as a perfect foil to the hero, but he was kinda disliked and perhaps not different enough in practice. But, it also moves fairly fast, and there is a genuine excitement in the idea that we’re getting to go all over the world for this. So if Journeys is a backstep, it’s not a one bad enough that we’re losing all the gains we’ve made in the past six seasons.

Movie reviewed: Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle (December 25, 2020)

Deep within the Forest of Okoya, one Zarude leaves its flock and their territorial hold on the healing Heart Tree to care for a lost human infant as its own. Years later, the child Koko has been raised as a Pokémon, but he only sees his first human when Ash saves him from drowning. As Koko tries to navigate a human heritage it didn’t know it had and “Dada” tries to protect him from humans and the other Zarude, Ash uncovers the boy’s origins and ties to the biotech conglomerate studying the jungle.

On its face, Pokémon doing a blatant riff on Tarzan sounds boring and unsatisfying. I mean, it’s a well trod ground even for cartoons with more imagination. And the franchise already drank from this well before; after all, one of the episodes I had considered for the token “bad Kanto” episode position way back in Chapter 1 was the execrable “The Kangaskhan Kid.” Thankfully, Secrets of the Jungle is far more competent (and played for largely successful drama instead of painful comedy), and the premise gives it a hook none of its predecessors have done before: a movie where a human is part of Pokémon society. Koko only learns that he’s not a Zarude after he meets Ash. His relationship with Dada, the other Zarude, and the other Pokémon are all based around his attempts to compensate for being something he doesn’t realize he isn’t.

Image: Publicity still via The Pokémon Company. Koko and Dada get to have something few Pokémon characters have: a father-son relationship, not just some vaguely gone dad.

Why is this important? Well, for one thing, it’s yet another twist on the most important things these movies can do, which is to find new and more complicated ways Pokémon and people relate to each other. The villain, Zed, is fairly standard for this kind of thing even if he does find interesting shades. But Koko is fairly interesting. Like the better Tarzan riffs, the movie gives him different relationships with each group of Pokémon; Dada is his, well, dada, the other Zarude are enemies he thinks are closer to kin, and the Flygon and Pangoro and Ninjask of the forest are all part of a community to him. Alongside making him generally stronger, it also makes the jungle one of the better Pokémon movie settings. It feels more alive, there’s a hierarchy amongst the denizens that has to change, and that life and tension make it scarier when a corporation starts bulldozing it to steal magical water.

The movie also has interesting riffs on violence in the world of Pokémon, where it’s committed not just from one group on another but within the same group. Zed is straight up responsible for killing Koko’s parents by crashing their car. It’s not a magical laser or anything, just something disquietingly pedestrian. And (if less shocking for this series) the Zarude have a violent control of the forest that’s wrong, cruel, and something they have to learn to stop. The final conflict where the Zarude that rejected Koko before he got to be family and the Pokémon they bully work together to protect their home from human encroachment is cool. It’s just cool. This also makes Koko’s journey more interesting; he’s not just a human learning to be human, or choosing between two worlds, but someone whose place in both worlds is complex.

Secrets of the Jungle does have flaws, naturally. I think the reveals about Koko’s family could’ve been threaded more gracefully, and perhaps it would have benefited from more length (even though it’s fairly meaty as an animated movie). A couple of the songs—yeah, there are about four or five songs, which coupled with the obvious inspiration and tone gives it a Disney vibe—aren’t great. I also… this is super petty, but I do also think it’s weird and a bit of a waste that Koko and the Zarude’s dialogue with each other is translated into English, but all the other Pokémon of the forest just speak their own names. But yeah, this is good stuff! Everything feels quite a bit sharper than the norm, as was the case with the rest of this weird reboot continuity. The action is good; Zarude are basically Spider-Mandrills, which is perfect for an action film set in a giant forest.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Ash and Pikachu’s theoretically final cinematic adventure.

I’m sure there’ll be more anime movies eventually, whether or not Ash is in any of them. I get the unavoidable circumstances around this movie’s general commercial problems—being pushed back from summer to winter of 2020 did it no favors escaping the shadow of COVID—but it is still sad this did poorly. Certainly the far worse Pokémon films got far better box office numbers. Culturally speaking, Movie 23 seems to be more of an afterthought, a straggler at the end of a series that went on for way too damn long. It’s a shame. This is one of the stronger films in the series, and it’s sad that the reboot seems to have largely ended after this and a single episode that may never even get an official localization. They had stronger writing, pacing, even a better idea of a world full of Pokémon. But at least we have this.

Conclusion: I am at a quandary, dear readers.

On one hand, as much fun as I’ve had and as proud as I am of “Pikachu in Pictures,” I want to be done. Doing a weekly series is hard! Despite the fact that these chapters are more casual, they all end up far longer than the more “prestige” articles I’d like to think I’m better known for. And with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom completed, it might be nice to do this and simply my one more week. I can end June and move on to other things, like the two Zelda articles that are already well underway. But before then, we are missing one movie.

See, while it’s not within the continuity of the Pokémon anime and lacks Ash, I can’t not do Detective Pikachu. I adore that picture, and reviewing it allows me to do something fun: a grab bag of five fun-sounding episodes from across the series. Consider it an epilogue, kinda like the final chapter of “Dispatch from the Dive.” Voyager asked if I was doing it, and they were also generous enough to make me a few extra number images for the headers. I have enough room for two more chapters, and the initial plan was to cut off after that—just with the out that I could do more if I wanted, even knowing how tiring this would end up.

Image: Bulbapedia. The Gengar Chloe fights would be caught by Ash five episodes later, fulfilling a major fan request that he get the ultra-popular Ghost-type.

And the thing is, I do want to do more. I got a taste of Pokémon Journeys, but only that. It would be weird just ending things right now, before seeing if the promise paid off. Ash is now fully gone from the show. Not watching at least a little bit more would be like, say, dutifully reading every entry of A Series of Unfortunate Events as a child until the final book comes out, then simply deciding not to keep going to the confusion and exasperation of your own family (I did finally read it a few years ago). Maybe I do want to stop, but if I pull out before the end, I’m just gonna have that gnawing at the back of my head forever. Even if I end up watching those episodes anyway, which I might do. I’m intrigued by this show.

So here’s the plan. Netflix packaged a four episode miniseries together and sold it as a movie titled The Arceus Chronicles. That’s what I’ll be watching, along with the customary five episodes: one from Season 23, one from 24, and three from 25, the big ending and victory lap. Perhaps it’s less fair than the ones that were actually made as TV movies from the start, but I think it’s entirely fair. So see you then.

Errant thoughts:

After many, many years of mostly nigh-unlistenable English opens, Journeys knocks it out of the park with “The Journey Starts Today,” one of the best American Pokémon themes there is. Of course, thanks to the weird edict that’s been in place since 2003 or so, it’s cut to shreds for a thirty second length.
- On the Japanese side of things, their equivalent, the excellent “1 2 3,” has a… darker side to it. Unlike previous eras, Journeys used only one Japanese theme for almost the entirety; it was just four remixes of the same opening that increased in intensity. The composer of the second and final of those remixes was later arrested and convicted as an admitted serial child predator. The Pokémon Company erased his credit from his remixes… but still includes them in all of their episodes.
Speaking of music, “Slowking’s Crowning” featured an extremely goofy reggae number named “Slowpoke Song,” which was made to celebrate a 2014 week declared to the adorable little hippo / lizard thing. I’d like to think of that as another way Journeys could incorporate just a bit more of this franchise’s massive breadth.
Oy, Netflix, how you vex me. The channel literally only has the first twelve episodes from Seasons 23, 24, and 25. Thankfully Pokémon TV has everything up to a point from the Journeys era, which also means I don’t have to deal with Netflix’s hideous and overproduced UI. Just let me quietly scroll through what I want!
The understanding I had always been led to have is that Goh is the more logical one, the thinker compared to Ash’s shōnen hero abrasiveness. So, naturally, in the first episode where he’s a proper main character, he and Ash kick a tree in the hopes of knocking out a Pokémon they think is there. Maybe Goh’s a lot more like Ash than I was led to believe, like how the two Jean-Claude van Dammes of Double Impact are basically the same character.
- Here’s our next evidence: Goh is more excited to see a Caterpie than anyone on Earth has ever been.
Eternatus, the outer space Arthurian lore monster that’s an allegory for the dangers of nuclear power and fossil fuels, is hinted as the source of the Dynamax phenomenon from the early on. In Sword & Shield it’s cool but sometimes feels a bit of an afterthought in the mythology, so it’s nice that the show built it up a bit.
In the anime, Lance’s signature Pokémon is the red Gyarados from Pokémon Gold & Silver, which he caught in one of Johto’s painfully rare arcs. Weirdly, the announcer describes it as having been born a Shiny Magikarp when it’s actually red from the Team Rocket experiments.
Fun detail: In Sword & Shield, the Dragon-type Gym’s members wear outfits inspired by Lance’s. “Flash of the Titans” inverts this by revealing that anime Lance chose his outfit to honor his past training at the Hammerlocke Gym.
James explains that the episode with the very long title is gonna be a two-in-one dealio. Fourth wall breaking is customary for the anime, but I think it’s interesting here that it’s done in a way to explain the temporary change in format.
Cameo of Diantha on a magazine cover. It’s a fun callback and a hint of the small role she’ll play in the big final tournament arc.
For actors, Zed and one of Professor Cerise’s subordinates are played by the late Billy Kametz, the irreplaceable Ferdinand von Aegir and Josuke Higashikata. It was nice hearing him play a bad guy so removed from the roles I associate with him.
- Another one of the movie’s scientists is played by Michelle Ruff, the woman called Fujiko Mine for the past many years (she’s also the female lead in Bleach and delivers one of that exhaustingly bad show’s few strong performances). It’s not a huge role, but as always, anything even tangential to Lupin makes this show all the better.
Notable that the movie features a Celebi in its backstory that only shows up at the very end, and it’s Shiny to boot. Thematically, it fits, since this is kind of a redux of Celebi: The Voice of the Forest (maybe with a bit of Spell of the Unown, too). It’s cool using a Mythical Pokémon this softly, though the vertical integration of it all—it exists to be Shiny so they can make a special promotion for it—is fairly obvious.

Next “movie”: Pokémon: The Arceus Chronicles

Next episodes:

2345: “Sword and Shield… the Legends Awaken!”
2422: “Take My Thief! Please!”
2523: “Chasing to the Finish!”
2538: “Partners in Time!”
2545: “Must Be Our Heroes and the Witch!”

Other movies watched:

Ginger Snaps
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
Re-Animator
Shakedown

Other television episodes watched:

Adventure Time 604, “The Tower”
Cheers 321, “Executive’s Executioner Hines”
Cheers 405, “Diane’s Nightmare”
Frasier 202, “The Unkindest Cut of All”
Frasier 205, “Duke’s, We Hardly Knew Ye”
Frasier 211, “Seat of Power”
Frasier 304, “Leapin’ Lizards”
Frasier 406, “Mixed Doubles”
Frasier 503, “Halloween”
Frasier 515, “Room Service”
The Good Place 301, “Everything is Bonzer! (Part 1)”
The Good Place 302, “Everything is Bonzer! (Part 2)”
The Good Place 303, “The Brainy Bunch”
The Good Place 304, “The Snowplow”
The Good Place 305, “Jeremy Bearimy”
Justice League 205, “Only a Dream: Part 1.” Also featuring Roz! But that’s not why I chose it. I just think it’s neat.
Justice League 206, “Only a Dream: Part 2”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 205, “White Out”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 206, “Light Spinner”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 207, “Reunion”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 301, “The Price of Power”
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 302, “Huntara”
Steven Universe 403, “Buddy’s Book”
The X-Files 317, “Pusher”