Wheel of Frontier
"I can't stand up straight for thirty minutes!"
Score: 4/10
The heroes have reached the Battle Arena, upon learning that the Frontier Brain, named “Greta,” is a girl, Ash is legitimately surprised. Good work, there, Ash. Ash is told that she uses fighting pokemon and idolizes Chuck and Brawly. Upon learning this information, Ash rushes to a pokemon center to withdraw a mystery pokemon.
I love how they really play up the Japanese culture in this episode, with the martial arts and even saying a word of Japanese and taking off their shoes, but "Greta" is just about the least Japanese name ever.
Greta brings out a giant wheel that Ash must spin: if it lands on a one, they battle one-on-one, if it lands on a two, two-on-two, and if it's three, Ash is killed on the spot. Unfortunately, Ash gets a two, so Greta throws out Medicham and Hariyama, and Ash responds with Grovyle and Snorlax. Yes, he brought out Snorlax to fight fighting pokemon, under the “Ash is an idiot” clause. You may think that’s weak legal ground to bring out Snorlax with, but they’ve made movies based on obscurer clauses, like the Santa one, so I’ll defend Ash’s move here.
Ash starts with Grovyle, Greta with Hariyama. Ash immediately learns that Hariyama is too dangerous to fight up close and is extremely fast, but can’t actually catch Grovyle, so he has Grovyle use quick attack to get really close to Hariyama and lets it get beaten into submission. Good work, Ash. So I have a question: if Brawly's Makuhita was only a little above Ash's Treecko, and Greta's Hariyama easily defeats Ash's Grovyle, how could Greta possibly look up to Brawly?
"I guess trainers who use fighting pokemon really know how to fight!"
Jesus Christ. Is this just a translator who doesn’t care about his job, or is there a Japanese guy out there who thought this was good dialogue?
Next up is Snorlax.
Ash's plan is to play defensively and use ice punch and protect, because the writers didn't think using Noctowl, a pokemon with no weakness to fighting pokemon and with flying and psychic attacks, was cool enough.
Snorlax gets its ass kicked, but when Medicham freezes it with its own ice punch, Ash has it rest to use the ice as a shield. Medicham is forced to dig it out of the ice to keep attacking and let it finish resting, and when it’s freed, Ash has it use hyper beam on the ground to jump up, and as it falls, use body slam on Medicham.
As the episode ends, Scott tells Ash to go to the Battle Dome and I reevaluate my life.
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Started: July 6, 2005