Ash and his friends cross paths with Pokémon Hunter J, a ruthless bounty hunter out to steal Pokémon and sell them on the black market. Both Ash's Pikachu and Team Rocket's Meowth are stolen by J, leading the two groups to team up to get their Pokémon back.
Tropes
- And I Must Scream: J captures Pokémon for her clients by using a gun-like device to turn them into stone. Her dialogue also implies that some of them will never be unfrozen.J: You should be grateful, Gardevoir. Your beauty will be preserved for eternity.
- Bad Boss: When things get out of hand, J drops the entire section of the airship that Ash and Team Rocket are in, not caring one bit that several of her own men will die as well.
- Big Bad: While J captures Gardevoir for a client, she captures Pikachu and Meowth on her own initiative, leading Ash and Team Rocket to get involved to stop her.
- Bittersweet Ending: The episode ends on a rather dark note, as even though the Pokémon were saved, J still got away, and all the main characters are very disturbed by their encounter with her.
- Cool Airship: J has a massive levitating ship with a cloaking device.
- Crazy-Prepared: When Melodi calls out to her Gardevoir to escape using Teleport, J turns out to have a setting on her goggles that makes Teleport-using Pokémon visible.
- Enemy Mine: Ash teams up with Jessie and James to infiltrate J's airship, after she captures both Pikachu and Meowth.
- Establishing Character Moment: As Ash and his friends are enjoying the beautiful day, J suddenly rides over them on her Salamence, blotting out the sun. She then crashes onto an innocent girl's property, assaults her, and steals her Gardevoir while she's powerless to do anything. This very aptly establishes J's role in the series.
- Even Evil Has Standards: When J orders one of her henchmen to detach part of the ship to get rid of Ash, the henchman is taken aback and protests that they still have men in there, but J overrides him.
- Everyone Has Standards: Just about everyone is disgusted with J's antics, from beginning to end. At the end of the episode, we see both Team Rocket and Ash's group similarly ranting about J's crime spree.
- Normally, Brock would simply fall in love with an Officer Jenny or the pretty girl of the day (Melodi). In the end, he places his full trust on Officer Jenny to capture J once and for all.
- Even Team Rocket of all people are disgusted by J's poaching. They consider her and her men "the lowest of the low" in addition to hating her for kidnapping Meowth.
- Fake Defector: Meowth makes a fake offer to work for J, saying he could tell her the feelings of other Pokémon, so that he can win her trust and ditch her as soon as he gets the chance. It fails because, being The Sociopath, J couldn't care less about Pokémons' feelings.
- Foreshadowing: When Ash is angry that J got away at the end, Brock states that nobody gets away with this kind of thing forever.
- Hostage Video: A variation. One of J's henchmen tries to videotape Meowth in order to show potential buyers that he can speak human language. Meowth doesn't make it easy for him.
- Knight of Cerebus: Needless to say, J is one of the darkest villains in the usually light-hearted Pokémon anime, and she's played completely seriously with zero humorous moments or redeeming qualities.
- Police Are Useless: When Officer Jenny learns where J will strike next, she radios for backup to surround her location, but they don't do this in time to stop her. She is then unable to stop Ash from rushing past her and trying to take on J himself, despite warning him that it's dangerous. She does make up for it by arresting some of J's men at the end.
- Power-Strain Blackout: Melodi's Kirlia collapses after using its psychic powers to conjure a vision of J's next destination. It's also possible that merely seeing J had a harmful effect on it.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Meowth offers to work for J, saying he could communicate what Pokémon are feeling, J turns him down, not because she sees through the ruse, but because she doesn't care about their feelings.
- Save the Villain: Melodi's Gardevoir saves everyone trapped in the dropped part of J's ship, including her henchmen. Of course, they're still arrested afterwards.
- Taken for Granite: J's favored method for capturing Pokémon. For added cruelty, they can be partially unfrozen, leaving them aware of their situation but still trapped.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Ash, Dawn, and Brock react this way when Officer Jenny explains how J petrifies Pokémon and sells them on the black market.
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: J rapidly establishes herself as this with her ruthless capture method, willingness to harm and even kill Ash, and her sociopathic disregard for her own men. Dawn lampshades this, saying it's shocking someone could actually be this evil.
- Would Hurt a Child: J attacks both Melodi and Ash directly in order to steal their Pokémon. And when a fight between Ash and her men damages the part of the ship they're in, J immediately jettisons the entire section. Given the massive explosion when it hits the ground, everyone inside would have died had Gardevoir not saved them.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Hunter J discarded one of the ship's sectors when that sector was damaged, even if the sector included some of her men. This was to ensure the ship wasn't receiving any more damage while keeping cloaked.
