First up was the lighthouse episode. This one kind of intrigued me as a kid, but it really fell mostly flat now. I mean, you know. By Pokemon anime standards and all that. But yeah, I guess it was kind of amusing getting to see Bill, but that's just from a meta perspective. Hearing him rant and rave about how there might be more than 150 Pokemon, and how Dragonite is the only of its kind, really date those early episodes. Not the writers' fault, obviously, but apart from Team Rocket going vaguely sympathetic (and then proceeding to blast rockets at Dragonite...) the writing wasn't all that great in general here. Krabby's intro and Oak's tofu were alright.
In a complete turnaround, the Vermilion Gym episode was spectacular, and a complete riot for all those lovably wrong Pokemon anime reasons. So over-the-top, so terrifically Team Rocket as James and Meowth weep for Pikachu's courage and determination, such good Pokemon-anime banter between the heroes, the cheerleading Team Rocket scene was genuinely entertaining, the rematch was good fun (although I'm continually convinced this episode remains the reason why, fourteen years later, people still ask me if their Pokemon will ever learn certain moves if they evolve, and also, Pikachu has Agility already...!) and it was just an all-around great romp.
The three-part SS Anne story was up and down, but almost entirely up. In the first scene of the first entry, Team Rocket's masquerade as preppy girls was amazing, mostly because James with that wig, that skirt and that repeated jumping forward and going "cool!" was positively the finest hoot he's been thus far this rewatch. The little subplot with Ash and his Butterfree was decidedly weak, however, especially when you meta and realize he's losing Butterfree shortly, anyway. And I do mean shortly, even by this anime's standards. But hey, if he'd lost Butterfree here, then Butterfree never would have found his mate, so that's d'aww, I guess.
The Magikarp stuff was predictably rich, and seeing Giovanni for the first time was cool. Things go south, the captain of the SS Anne proves himself to be about as incompetent as you'd expect anyone written as an idiotic comic foil in the Pokemon anime to be, and in the second episode, Ash and friends -- as well as Team Rocket -- find themselves trapped within the sunken ship. Thankfully, science doesn't exist in the Pokemon universe, so they're completely alright. They work together to escape, leading to a funny little recurring gig where the heroes' Pokemon keep wrangling Team Rocket when they're told to "bring something back". Also, Magikarp evolves into Gyarados because James doesn't know the golden rule about Magikarp -- don't kick them. Of particular note were the honest-to-goodness, non-Pokemon fish floating around through a viewing gallery on the Anne. So they do exist...
The third part, with the Island of the Giant Pokemon, which is conveniently the episode's title, was much better than I remembered from ancient memory. Mostly because of the Pokemon-speech with all the subtitles. I really felt for Ekans and Koffing a little bit here, and I hope to see more of that in the future, but I'm... not counting on it. Squirtle was terrific here as well, and Bulbasaur was an Emobulba, but it worked. My personal favorite, Charmander, was the cute straight guy to Squirtle's prankster and Meowth's... Meowth. Anyway, it worked. I really have to wonder why all those blown-up amusement park Pokemon were allowed to do things like fire thunderbolts and shoot flames all over the island, just in case poor hapless children ever... oh, whatever.
OK, so at this point I'm going to go ahead and rate the first seventeen episodes, because why the f*** not.
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K | H | A | Q | Q | A | H | K
"we're about 50 years behind the rest of western society." -icon on B8