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rionaleonhart) wrote2021-03-13 08:57 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2021-03-13 08:57 am
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Team Rocket Drifted Down The Stream, And Now We Scream.
The original Pokémon anime is so much stranger and more interesting than I remember. I thought it was just friendship and battling! I did remember the episode where a chandelier falls on Ash and Pikachu, killing them instantly, but I thought that was an aberration; I hadn't realised the whole thing was that wild!
I hadn't forgotten the episode where Ash, Misty, Brock and Team Rocket are all trapped in a sunken ship, but I'm not sure I really thought about how dark it was when I was younger. Still, it definitely stuck in my mind.
That episode also contains my favourite piece of dialogue in the entirety of Pokémon, when Jessie and James come across the burning engine room and conclude that they're going to die here:
Jessie: I'll always remember what a wonderful dresser you were.
James, crying: So will I.
(They're clasping each other's hands here. Jessie and James tend to cling on to each other when they're afraid, and it's pretty cute.)
But there are much weirder episodes. In the games, Sabrina is just another gym leader for you to defeat. In the anime, Sabrina's obsessive psychic training splits her in two, into an adult and a child, and then she shrinks Ash, Misty and Brock to doll size and traps them in a miniature city of dollhouses so her child self can play with them forever. That's quite an embellishment.
I think the most bewildering storyline is the one where James's parents fake their own deaths in an attempt to get him to return home and force him into marriage. When he shows up, they leap dramatically out of their coffins and lock him in a dungeon, where his fiancée chases him around with a whip. I swear this actually happened in an episode of Pokémon.
(Incidentally, while double-checking that I'd got the 'wonderful dresser' quote right, I came across a perfectly preserved Team Rocket fansite made by a fourteen-year-old in the early 2000s and was hit in the face by nostalgia. This is so like all the Pokémon websites I spent ages exploring when I was twelve. The Comic Sans! The tiled backgrounds! The ^_^ faces and scattered Japanese phrases and *actions in asterisks*! Wow. I'm glad to know there are still remnants of the old web around.)
I hadn't forgotten the episode where Ash, Misty, Brock and Team Rocket are all trapped in a sunken ship, but I'm not sure I really thought about how dark it was when I was younger. Still, it definitely stuck in my mind.
That episode also contains my favourite piece of dialogue in the entirety of Pokémon, when Jessie and James come across the burning engine room and conclude that they're going to die here:
Jessie: I'll always remember what a wonderful dresser you were.
James, crying: So will I.
(They're clasping each other's hands here. Jessie and James tend to cling on to each other when they're afraid, and it's pretty cute.)
But there are much weirder episodes. In the games, Sabrina is just another gym leader for you to defeat. In the anime, Sabrina's obsessive psychic training splits her in two, into an adult and a child, and then she shrinks Ash, Misty and Brock to doll size and traps them in a miniature city of dollhouses so her child self can play with them forever. That's quite an embellishment.
I think the most bewildering storyline is the one where James's parents fake their own deaths in an attempt to get him to return home and force him into marriage. When he shows up, they leap dramatically out of their coffins and lock him in a dungeon, where his fiancée chases him around with a whip. I swear this actually happened in an episode of Pokémon.
(Incidentally, while double-checking that I'd got the 'wonderful dresser' quote right, I came across a perfectly preserved Team Rocket fansite made by a fourteen-year-old in the early 2000s and was hit in the face by nostalgia. This is so like all the Pokémon websites I spent ages exploring when I was twelve. The Comic Sans! The tiled backgrounds! The ^_^ faces and scattered Japanese phrases and *actions in asterisks*! Wow. I'm glad to know there are still remnants of the old web around.)