Original Title: Pochama Goes Astray!
Original Airdate: February 18, 2010
US Airdate: July 17, 2010
All Piplup wanted was for Gible to be punished. But sometimes, you can't always get what you want.
When Piplup runs off, fed up with being the Butt-Monkey for Gible learning Draco Meteor, Team Rocket sees an opportunity to use him to finally get Pikachu.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Animal Wrongs Group: Team Rocket poses as a group dedicated to caring for mistreated Pokémon and reprimanding their abusive trainers. The downside is their intent to steal Pokémon in the process.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: As usual, Meowth acts as translator, this time blabbing to Team Rocket about Piplup dealing with Gible.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Piplup learns Hydro Pump at the episode's climax. Sadly, Gible's success with Draco Meteor continues to elude it.
- Innocently Insensitive: Ash and Dawn fall into this, as their attempts to encourage Gible to continue working on Draco Meteor causes them to ignore how Piplup was always getting hit with it and how it felt about the issue. The final straw for Piplup was Dawn happily petting Gible and saying that it “didn’t mean to harm anyone”, resulting in Piplup deciding to run away and return to Professor Rowan’s. It takes Jessie and James calling them out for not scolding Gible and revealing that Piplup ran away because of it for Ash and Dawn to realize they had disregarded Piplup’s feelings and that they need to apologize.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Regardless if it was an act or not, Jessie and James do rightfully point out to Ash and Dawn how they had disregarded how Gible kept on hitting Piplup with Draco Meteor and how Piplup felt about it, ultimately driving the Penguin Pokemon to runaway when they refuse to scold Gible for its continued bad behaviour.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: It's really amazing that Jessie and James can get away with these so often, but they manage to fool Piplup.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Piplup runs away from the twerps when they console Gible for not perfecting Draco Meteor, instead of punishing him for repeatedly striking Piplup with it.
- Spanner in the Works: A Rhyperior repeatedly shows up and Hyper Beams the other characters at the precise times to interrupt their current plans. It has also been in a fight with its trainer.
- Took a Level in Badass: Piplup learns Hydro Pump.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Team Rocket slam this on Dawn and Ash for rudely ignoring how miserable Piplup was. Whether they were faking it or not is up to the viewer, as they were reduced to tears after Piplup tells them everything of what happened, each of them understanding what it is like when nobody cares. At the very least, Ash apologizes during the climax for getting it mixed up in Gible's failures.
