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marchionessofmustache
Another memorable one. Well, so far, they've all felt pretty memorable to me. I guess it's probably because we watched the reruns so much as kids...?
But yeah, this one starts with both Takeshi and Kojiro falling smitten over a lovely lady they see in the distance after coming into town from a boat. Oh, after a little gag where Takeshi is sad because his summer wasn't full of enough swimsuit girls. Even though he hosted an entire beauty contest full of swimsuit girls, but I guess he forgot that part.
Also, several times during this episode, Takeshi refers to himself as an 'adult.' lol.
Anyway, there's a festival going on in town, and everyone else wants to check it out. The Rockets are excited because crowds mean people dropping money, and they go around searching the ground for money to pick up. When Kojiro finds a 5-yen coin, an Officer Junsa appears to collect it from him, thanking him for returning lost money.
A creepy old lady stops Takeshi and Kojiro and warns them of the lady they saw before.
Then there is a reveal of a treasure, a painting of a woman who died 2,000 years ago. Apparently her love went out to sea (in war or something, I didn't really catch it) and she waited and waited for him on the cliff until she departed. Kojiro and Takeshi recognize the woman in the painting as the woman they saw before, and they're drawn to it.
Takeshi insists on staying at the statue of the woman on the cliff, promising to meet the two at the Pokemon Center at night, but he never comes. Doctor Joy appears and insists that kids have a bedtime and won't let Kasumi and Satoshi leave to find Takeshi once it hits 11PM.
The next day, while searching for Takeshi and Kojiro, Satoshi and Musashi bump into each other. Turns out they were in the little shack by the cliff.
The old woman appears again and tells them that they're being possessed by a ghost who will appear again at night, and sells them ofuda to protect themselves. They don't seem to work however, and Takeshi and Kojiro get spirited away anyway.
Turns out the ghost of the woman is actually a Pokemon, Ghos, and the creepy old lady who sold them the fake ofuda was ALSO Ghos as well.
Satoshi and Musashi try to fight Ghos, but it turns itself into forms that render each of their Pokemon helpless, like a mouse trap for Pikachu and a ball of yarn for Nyarth.
An interesting one, though, is that for Arbo, it turns into a mongoose. Not a Pokemon, but a real-world animal mongoose. Now, it's technically a ghost, not a real animal, but... it's still a reference to a real-world animal in the Pokemon world yet again. I wonder when they got 'good' about not doing this stuff...?
Then there's a gag where Kasumi pulls out stuff like a wooden stake, cross, garlic, etc. to ward it off and it's like "I'm not dracula wtf" lmao.
Eventually morning comes and the Ghos can't maintain its form anymore (something that also doesn't make sense, as they have ghost Pokemon around in the day plenty later in the series, but alas).
The next day, they have a lantern sending and they make one for Ghos. Apparently he was just trying to keep the memory of the young lady who died alive. Her real ghost comes out and thanks Ghos, who says it was just in it for the business (showing a cash register in front of it)???????? I guess they didn't want to make it TOO serious.
Also with the lantern boats, some of them have names and pictures of Pokemon on them. Are these just designs or are some people sending the spirits of dead Pokemon...? Either way, we get another reference to death, whether it's human or Pokemon, something the series says it tries to avoid.
In the end I didn't enjoy this episode that much as an adult. The plot was handled kind of poorly with everything being revealed at the end and it ending happily even though there was no real reason for it to. Why did Ghos get sent off with the lanterns? And how long had it been doing this? Was it just to Kojiro and Takeshi or were there victims before? And what was the significance of the painting reveal? IDK, there were just too many questions and not enough answers for me. Not a BAD episode per se, but just kind of... whatever.
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