"Good luck, 'Ash'."
—Bonnie, to Serena
Japanese Title: Serena Becomes Satoshi! The Strongest Pikachu Showdown!!
Original Airdate: April 14, 2016
US Airdate: July 16, 2016
Ash gets sick after a night of training, so Clemont and Bonnie go off to find some medicine while Serena stays behind to take care of Ash. Unfortunately, a rock star trainer named Jimmy shows up wanting to challenge Ash and Pikachu with his own. Knowing that Ash will accept the challenge if he wakes up, despite being in no condition to do so, Serena does something incredibly desperate and funny, and disguises herself as Ash so she can battle in his place. Hilarity Ensues
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch: When Ash stumbles out of the tent, he falls into Serena's arms, his face all red. The way he's talking, he sounds like he's about to tell Serena he loves her, even stammering and saying "I...I..." before it turns into "Iron Tail, Pikachu..." revealing that he's actually sick and delirious.
- Beat: The heroes had a few seconds of doing nothing but stare before panicking from Ash's collapse.
- Bedhead-itis: Ash's hair becomes even messier when he is sick.
- Call-Back:
- This marks the brief return of Meowth's Boss Fantasy after 100~ episodes.
- When Jimmy's Pikachu uses Dig to hide from his opponent, Serena thinks back to the Lumiose Gym Battle where Clemont's Bunnelby tried the same tactic, and commands Pikachu to try the same counter-attack Ash pulled during said battle: Iron Tail to root the digger out.
- A Day in the Limelight: And you'd think that, with the Showcases over, Serena would be Out of Focus. Nope.
- Disguised in Drag: An inversion of the usual Ash-centric Running Gag in that this time around it's Serena who masquerades as Ash, the circumstances being that he's not in his usual condition.
- Dynamic Entry: After Team Rocket interrupts the battle and makes off with the two Pikachu, their truck was hit broadside by Greninja. Amusingly, Greninja doesn't have any attacks that covered him in water, which indicates he may have attacked the truck while in Ash-Greninja forme.
- Empathy Pet: Both Pikachu's to their trainers. Amusing and worth mentioning if only because, for this episode, Ash's Pikachu was emulating Serena.
- Funny Background Event:
- At one point, all the rapid headbanging caused Jimmy's Pikachu to get dizzy.
- Serena's Pokemon and Ash's Pikachu (the latter more obvious only with Freeze-Frame Bonus) all had flabbergasted looks on their faces when "Ash" shows up to answer Jimmy's challenge.
- Hero Ball: Despite having all her Pokemon conveniently out and at hand, Serena's reaction to Team Rocket taking off with both Pikachu is to panic and try and run after it until Ash and Greninja pull a Big Damn Heroes.
- Hypocritical Humor: Team Rocket, the ultimate Attention Whore team, gets irritated when Jimmy loudly announces his presence to them.
- It Amused Me: When Serena reveals her charade to a returning Clemont and Bonnie, Bonnie is unresponsive and skeptical. Then when they run off to give Ash the medicine, she took the time to sneak back to Serena and snidely remark, just for the heck of it, "Good luck, 'Ash'."
- Keet: Jimmy is loud, he even announces his entrances with a loud guitar string.
- Lampshade Hanging: The fact that Ash makes a quick recovery just from the medicine given by Clemont is explicitly pointed out as strange.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Meowth keeps the rest of Team Rocket in the dark about his Imagine Spot (or that he even had one), mainly because it involves Giovanni praising Meowth and ONLY Meowth.
- Marshmallow Hell: Ash falls onto Serena's chest, before his Non Sequitur, *Thud*.
- Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Ash stumbles out of the tent and grabs onto Serena while falling to his knees, and then he starts saying "I...". Serena starts blushing, thinking Ash is about to confess his love for her. Then he weakly says, "Iron Tail, Pikachu", and faints.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Jimmy doesn't even realize that "Ash" is the very same girl that tried to stop him from challenging Ash earlier, until she took off the hat. All it took was for her to take his clothes, and compress her hair into his hat, and he still bought it. It wasn't so bad, but then Team Rocket had to fall for it, too (until they get a good look at her, at least).
- Ship Tease: Serena went out of her way to pose as Ash just so he would rest and not worsen his condition.
- Also "Iron Tail, Pikachu".
- Sick Episode: Ash gets a fever, and him being out of commission drives the plot of the episode.
- This is only the second time that Ash had fallen ill in the entire series, and the last time he did, "The Stun Spore Detour", was 800 episodes ago.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Serena poses as Ash in his place for a Pokémon battle against Jimmy so he can recover from his illness.
- Tempting Fate: Serena throws Ash, doused after Pikachu's Electro Ball splashed some water on him, a towel, telling him to dry himself up lest so he wouldn't get sick. Ash tells her not to worry about him, but then we wouldn't have this episode, would we? We didn't even have to wait the next morning for the inevitable result..."Ha-CHOO!"
