day 1628 they arrive in twinleaf town for a festival, dawn loses a battle with her mother {dp138} day 1630 the twinleaf festival ends and the group heads out for lilypad/sunny shore {dp141}
Hurm, Dawn goes through that whole “hero makes a return journey home but has been changed by their travels” deal. Of course she still hasn't emerged from her mom's shadow, ways to go yet. In 139 James tries to impersonate Pr. Oak for the second time, because it worked out so well the last time back in Johto didn't it? Afterward Dawn does get to finally meet her poetry idol; for his part Pr. Oak is surprised that his fame precedes hm at least in that way.
140 Barry pops in, since he's from twinleaf too and we're introduced to Palmer, Barry's dad and the head of the Frontier Brains in Sinnoh. Also, Ash+Dawn+Barry go through a time warp doohickey, there's some Alice in Wonderland stuff and we get an homage to the ariados scene in dp1 and spearow scene in ep1. Lastly Brock is bored in this, I know this because he says so to the audience, multiple times.
To finish up the festival, the town has a local battle tournament with the winner getting a chance to have an exhibition match with Palmer. Naturally Ash wins, and the 1vs.1 fight is underway, and holy crap did Ash actually think his one pick through? Choosing the grass/ground mini tank to face off against a rhyperior instead of your speedy water weasel precisely because it's unexpected, you notice the day has unfavorable weather for Buizel on account of no rain for swift swim anyway, and you still keep type advantage (2 in fact, one being x4)? I cant believe it, clap-clap-clap congratulations Ash.
Not to mention he still hones his patented “Fuck You, I'm Ash Ketchum” strategy by discovering in the middle of the battle that if your Pokémon are forced to swallow and or absorb their own energy attacks they acquire their type specific kaio-ken aura which boosts all their stats? Dawn will later appropriate this for Contests for aesthetic purposes, as it looks pretty, but credit where credit is due. Ash still loses the fight, since the writers just don't seem to care for giant turtles, sorry Grotle, them's the breaks.
Nobody is ever going to argue that Pokémon doesn't have filler. I've proven that pretty succinctly with my edited episode lists for each region. Yet, as Pokémon the anime has its own separate canon distinct from both the games themselves and the various manga that have cropped up over the years, its kind of difficult to render any one single particular episode non-canon. With that being said, I now add dp142 to that category bringing the total to 5 eps, the other 4, 3 being from Kanto and 1 from Johto, as earlier noted in this liveblog.
As for the events themselves in dp142, TR build a rocket, and there's an evil togepi, and they go to space, and they meet rayquaza but not deoxys, and they never mention it again and I for one just can't believe this stupid shit even from Pokémon... no sell! Good Day Sir.
day 1637 ash breaks the time-space continuum but saves the world anyway... so good job?! {m12}
So Arceus gets so hulk smash levels of angry that the movie character Sheena, a woman who has trained her whole life in empathy, psychology, magical healing, and the ability to calm everything the fuck down, can't stop him from blowing everything to kingdom come for 2 seconds to explain that she didn't really mean to accidentally steal half his power and almost get the creator of the universe killed twice over... and maybe she should changer her job, because I kinda find myself agreeing with the holy horse thing. Why should he listen to her?
Thankfully Ash being the Poké-messiah is uniquely qualified to handle the situation, paradoxes caused by his presence in the distant past are of course non existent because if Ash can safely ignore life threatening injuries done to him as brought forth by the universe, the universe can in turn ignore any mortal peril Ash puts upon it in the same way, it's just common courtesy. In other words...“Fuck the Universe, I'm Ash Ketchum”
By now of course Ash and Brock are both veterans to the whole “world in peril, weird shit will happen” phenomenon and Dawn handles traveling back in time thousands of years to anime!Greece pretty well considering that she's only been through this type of mess twice before. I have to admit, Ash's approach to dealing with actually conversing with what is basically the deity of his entire reality is admirable in a strange way... calm acceptance and then moving right along with his journey no intrusive questions on the nature of life, the universe, and everything just Ash doing what he does like a boss.
Side note, interesting historical query if Pokémon were originally called “magical creatures”, the name “Pocket Monsters” must have began use when said storage was actually possible. The modern Pokéball/Pokédex were invented by Kurt and Pr. Oak respectively but when young Sam Oak gets brought forward in time in {m4}, he's got some kind of steam-punk device that operates in the same way, and those flashbacks to long ago that were shown in ep95+ep232 still showed pokeballs of some sort. Therefore, we can conclude that to the scientists of the Pokémon world, computers and the internet are techno marvels to behold while mass spatial compression is something learned in grade school.
Canon hints for this movie are as follows: absolutely nothing. I mean sure, nothing in the anime says it didn't or couldn't happen and since all the other movies are at least tangentially canon (1,8, and 10 explicitly so) and since it ends the movie trilogy for D+P it must be canon but no name drops, or cameos/references, or anything in the show so far.
Similar issues crop up when placing it in the time line, as ambipom is absent it has to take place after snowpoint, and it has to happen before the Lyra arc starts as Dawn gets a new Pokémon immediately, as such it has to take place right before or right after the twinleaf festival. Thus for thematic reasons I placed it after Team Galactic make their penultimate appearance in dp136 and after Dawn leaves home again in dp141, under the assumption that not everyone has an immunity to trauma like Ash does, and the events of the movies might affect her at least for some amount of time, but honestly it could be squished into anywhere between 133-138 and 141-143 if my placement seems off.
day 1646 they meet lyra+khoury, dawn defeats her and wins an egg, which hatches into a cyndaquil {dp143}
This 5 episode mini-arc was created for two reasons. To promote the two remakes that were coming out even though Pokémon the anime has always been an advertisement for the games and to shove as many Ash/Dawn shippy moments as they could at the audience even though D+P had been doing that off and on since it started. Claims of redundancy aside it's a good set of eps and hey, better than filler.
Anyway, after the above happens Lyra wants to follow them around for a time, learning how to be a better trainer and she drags her beleaguered beau along with her. Apparently, according to the Internet, Khoury is voiced by Kirbopher that one guy who does stuff on Newgrounds if actually true, that's pretty cool.
144+145 can be summed up easily as Cyndaquil gets acclimated to the group, Piplup is jealous for some stupid reason, they get locked in a room, cue shipping. Ash and Khoury have a contest to catch a gible Khoury wins, they get lost in a cave, cue shipping.
Also Dawn follows in May's footsteps unbeknownst to her and copies part of Ash's old team. What are the chances this one will ever evolve either, somewhere between slim and none? Regardless it's time for the return of an old trademark that I didn't even know was missing until I watched the next episode.
day 1651 jessie (james) gets 3rd ribbon {dp146}
TR episode time! Jessie is sick and Meowth and James want to help her feel better/get out of her way, so James finally cross-dresses for the first time in D+P and along time before that, last occurrence was I think sometime in Hoenn. The best part about this, it's not that he suddenly became uncomfortable about the prospect of doing so that underlines the joke, no he's fine with that. It's who he's dressed like, apparently getting into a tutu is fine, but dolling himself up like his partner Jessie gives him the willies.
147 finishes up the arc, Lyra asks for a double battle to commemorate their farewell with Brock acting as a referee. Not much to go off on, time for some filler. Tragically 148+149 are again nothing to write home about in their blandness. As this will award no entertainment to sum up, let's press on and say hi to evil!Goku instead.
Next time... "The villians are vanquished, the day is saved, and we still don't see the Sunnyshore skyline." "Well maybe we'd get there faster if you wouldn't narrate every morning Ash." "How else am I supposed to kill time while you're making breakfest and Dawn's getting ready?" "Point taken." Eps 150-164
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