Pokémon Journeys: The Series

Episodes 9-10

It is quite possible, dear readers, that trying to untangle the knots of Pokémon's canon, not to mention the basic internal logic of Pokémon Journeys: The Series, will be what drives me off the deep end once and for all. Now, I am well aware that I am taking the job of critically analyzing the world building and plot consistency of a decades-old perpetual motion machine of Brand Awareness™ a little too seriously, but this is a fine-tuned engine of franchise consistency we're talking about. After all these years, we can get a little goofy with how we break down the series. It isn't like Pokémon has turned into a Simpsons-esque scenario, where you can level all sorts of commentary on how the franchise just decided to give up and stop trying years ago—Pokémon is far too savvy to make a mistake like that.

Or is it!?

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that Pokémon Journeys has been terrible or anything, because it hasn't. It's perfectly fine, at least so far. However, the episodes we've covered so far do suffer from a kind of weightlessness that I feel are very specific to this iteration of the anime, a sense that the creators of the show aren't even pretending to take it very seriously as anything other than a box to tick on the checklist of Things That Pokémon Fans Expect to Exist. Pokémon Journeys tries to include things like “plot” and “stakes” —at least, sometimes it does—but it trips itself up by ignoring what was once the show's basic sense of forward momentum: Ash and co. start in Point A and eventually make their way to Point B. Here in Journeys, Ash and Goh can go basically anywhere, at any time, to see or do whatever it is they want with minimal effort.

Take “Finding a Legend," our first episode of the week, for example. The premise is fairly straightforward: Ash and Goh want to confirm the sightings of Ho-Oh that have been popping up in Ecruteak City in the Johto Region. At first, I was baffled as to why this would be such a big deal, since I had vague memories of Ash already having a whole adventure with Ho-Oh already, and his memories of catching a glimpse of it on the first day of his adventure seem to confirm that we're still in the original continuity after all… but then I discovered that the Ho-Oh movie isn't canon. Though most of the others are.

“Okay, fine,” I said aloud, to nobody in particular. "But when Ash and Goh arrive in Ecruteak and discover that the sightings were the result of some kid named Chad making his Cyndaquil fly around on a Fearow, Chad's grandpa makes a big deal out of Ho-Oh not even being real. How would anyone in this Pokémon universe have a hard time believing Ho-Oh exists when Lugia just made an incredibly public appearance in the middle of a busting city just a few weeks ago? Ash and Goh freaking rode on the thing, and it might have even spoken to them!” Once I realized that having extensive and loud Pokemon-related conversations with myself was probably a bad sign, I decided it to try reminding myself that this is a show for children, and the search for Ho-Oh is a good excuse to have Ash, Goh, Chad, and Gramps mess around in a spooky temple haunted by a Stantler and a Misdreavus. That was pretty fun.

But then, at the end of the episode, none of the kids even see the Ho-Oh, even after using the rainbow feather to summon it! It's just the Grandpa that gets to see it, and the audience too, I suppose. Any fan of Pokémon already knows that Ho-Oh is real, because they can catch one in the game… so what was the point of this adventure? I mean, I know that the answer is “To pay a visit to Johto and stuff," and that is a fine idea on paper. I just wonder if the occasion couldn't have had more justification than “Ash and Goh try and fail to see a Ho-Oh"? Oh well; Goh catches a Sentret, and Pikachu gets a pretty nifty looking Thunderbolt when they fry Chad's Fearow and Cyndaquil. So that's something.

I had way too many words originally devoted to my quibbles with the episode about finding a Dragonite Island, “A Test in Paradise”, because Ash mentions "always wanting to meet a Dragonite," when I know for a fact that the boy has done so on several occasions. But this review is already running long, and besides, "A Test in Paradise" is a lot more satisfying than "Finding a Legend," and is a lot more fun to boot. Ash and Goh get to see all sorts of Dratini, Dragonair, and Dragonite hanging out on their island, and Scorbunny and the gang spend a long time playing with discarded Dragonair skins, which is also fun (and kind of weird). Plus, Team Rocket shows up to fail spectacularly, giving our heroes something to do other than wander around until they stumble upon their goal. The best part of the episode is maybe when Ash insists on using Pikachu's Electric Web as a kind of trampoline to help this one Dragonair learn to Dragon Dance in the sky, despite Goh's insisting that that isn't how electricity, trampolines, or the basic laws of physics work.

Ash and the Dragonair keep frying themselves anyway, and of course the plan somehow succeeds, and Ash even gets a new Dragonite friend for his troubles, which is more work than Goh has put into any of his recent catches. I'm not even going to get too worked up about Professor Cerise just deciding to keep the Dragonite Island a secret at the end of the episode. That's a really dumb thing to do, but Pokémon Journeys is allowed to be a little dumb when Ash and his friends get a satisfying adventure out of the whole deal. The show should just put in more effort to keep from making things feel so easy and devoid of consequence. That's how you turn into what the Simpsons has become, and nobody wants that.

Rating:

Odds and Ends

• The Weird World of Pokémon: This may be an occasion where I'm out of the loop on the movies and stuff, because I know Mewtwo erased everyone's memories in that first movie, but do similar things happen in all of the movies? Or is it established that the events with all of the different mystical god Pokémon are only known to, like, five people in the world? Because no Pokémon Professor should be that skeptical about the idea of a Dragonite Island, which doesn't sound any more outlandish than that one Charizard island that I vaguely recall being a thing.

• I was so excited when it looked like Goh wasn't going to catch Dewgong, because it would have meant that Goh was going to have to put in some kind of effort to catch 'em all, but nope, he just had to use a couple more Pokéballs.

• I loved the self-referential dig at the nature of evolutions when Ash and Goh reflect on how Mylotic makes more sense for a final stage of the Dratini/Dragonair line, what with its lack of arms. Still, I don't get how that could be much of a mystery when evolution is basically magic, and that a lot of other Pokemon have equally nonsensical changes occur when they evolve.

Pokémon Journeys: The Series is currently streaming on Netflix.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.