[16] Pokemon Castaway Tale

[marchionessofmustache]

This episode starts out with Junsa giving a speech to mourn the deaths of Satoshi, Kasumi, Takeshi, Musashi, and Kojiro lol. Series over!



Of course, they're not really dead... they're trapped in the ship under the sea, which seems to be teetering on some spire thing over a giant underwater chasm.

Musashi commands Arbo to burn a hole in the floor (er, ceiling? they're upside-down) which causes the ship to start filling up with water. Noooot sure what she thought was going to happen lol.

The episode is fun because they use the Pokemon in unique ways, instead of battling. When the good guys group (ggg) gets to a flooded area, Kasumi uses Tosakinto to search for an exit under the water, telling it to bring back something from the ocean if it can find a way out. Instead it just fishes up half-dead Rockets.

And of course the first thing everyone wants to do when they see each other is battle??? LOL At least this time Satoshi sends out three Pokemon to fight them. The weight of the Pokemon cause the ship to teeter more, and there's a gag where the Pokemon keep running back and forth from one side of the ship to the other to keep the ship from tipping over. I don't know how they even know what's going on with the ship from the inside. Maybe in their situation it would actually be beneficial for it to tip? I mean, they don't know.

Apparently, it's only the weight of the Pokemon that makes the ship tip, though, and when the Pokemon are returned to their Monster Balls, the ship just... returns to centered and everything is fine. Because that makes complete sense.



The groups finally agree to work together to escape. Musashi is the one that shakes Satoshi's hand -- I think it's kinda cool she's kinda low-key the "leader" of the group. Even the narrator refers to the Rockets as "Musashi's group" at points. Pikachu and Nyarth shake hands (paws?) and Pikachu gives Nyarth a shock, to which Kasumi scolds him. Pikachu is a bit mean lol.

Takeshi calls out Iwark to make a bridge as they try to climb up to the upturned bottom of the ship. Why doesn't Iwark's weight cause the ship to tip again? This really is a sort of nonsense episode...

There's also not much of a sense of urgency. The characters take time to argue and think and stuff, and other than the ship tipping part, they don't show the ship filling up with water or anything to give you that excitement. They seem to have all the time in the world to escape, which kinda dulls the feelings you get from the episode.



I mean, it's not like the episode is without its dangers, like this part where they use Fushigidane's vines as a bridge to cross a pit of fire. But the way they go about it carefully and slowly somehow takes away from the excitement for me.



Eventually everyone makes it to the topbottom of the ship, where they burn a hole to escape from. Everyone ties themselves to a water Pokemon to swim away. Amusingly, while Kasumi makes sure Takeshi can use one of her Pokemon to escape, she doesn't bother to make sure Rocket Co. has a water Pokemon of their own, and they just kind of abandon them there.

Of course, luckily, Kojiro had Koiking, and makes Musashi and Nyarth regret scolding him for it lol. But it's very slow to rescue them, and they end up washing up unconscious.

The ggg thinks they are dead, says a little prayer for them, and then proceeds to shove their bodies back in the water. At the last second, they jump up and declare that they're not dead. Nyarth jumps back onto the flotsam raft they're on, and Pikachu snaps his fingers annoyedly as if to say, "well, shoot." How cruel! Pikachu, you are one dark little bastard this episode, wishing Nyarth dead like that...



The gang (aside from Kasumi, who seems to be the only steady-minded of the group) gets so hungry they imagine eating Koiking in a variety of ways. While it could just be that they're going crazy out of desperation and fear, the question of "Is it okay to eat a Pokemon?" doesn't come up. They just act like it's normal and they've probably eaten Koiking meat before.



Eventually Kojiro kicks Koiking into the water and claims he disowns it, and then it evolves into Gyarados, now free from Kojiro. Gyarados calls its buddies and uses Dragon's Wrath attack to send them all flying in a whirlwind.

And with that we get yet another cliffhanger ending! Everyone seems to get blown off in different directions -- they tried to hold hands but got separated.

I think the next episode, if I remember correctly, is the one where the Pokemon are on their own and they speak with subtitles on the screen lol. So this little subplot lasts several episodes, huh?

Overall this episode... another OK one. I think it's nice to see them using the Pokemon in a variety of non-battle ways to overcome obstacles, and it's always nice when the Rockets have to team up with the ggg or do something nice or something. I think that's why the Rockets were such popular characters -- they had a little more depth, and had both good and bad sides. Aside from just being funny and iconic.

When I was a teen, I used to draw a red R on my hand with pen and my friend and I would call each other "Jesse" and "James" and recite the motto in front of our classmates and stuff. We even got a teacher to say the Mewoth line lol.

It's kind of fun remembering those times alongside watching this show. When Pokemon was such a popular thing that pretty much everyone played it, and you could battle and trade with friends and make new friends along the way... at least, that's how it was for me.

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