Japanese Title: Pokémon Fortune-Telling!? Battle Royal!
Original Airdate: July 27, 2000
US Airdate: May 19, 2001
"I AM THE FLAME THAT BURNS BRIGHTEST! A FLAME THAT LIGHTS THE NIGHT! A FLAME THAT SHATTERS THE DARKNESS! I AM A FLAMING MOLTRES! MWAH HAH HAH HAHHH!!!!"
— James
A Pokémon Fortune Telling book turns out to be a Team Rocket plot to steal Pokémon from local trainers with a fake daycare center. The engineers of this plot, though, are not the Team Rocket regulars, but by the formidable Butch and Cassidy.
Tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch: Before seeing her fortune in the book, Misty fantasizes about getting some sort of cute or elegant Pokémon as her type, before seeing it to be Gyarados and getting agitated. When Jessie gets her hands on it and begins doing the same, viewers would expect her to get something just as insulting. Instead, she's pleasantly surprised to find that she's an "Eevee" type.
- Berserk Button:
- As usual Butch gets a bit antsy when the cast keep getting his name wrong.
- Misty's reaction to the fortune telling book labeling her personality to be Gyarados is one of pure, atrocious rage that even her friends are taken aback. And like Gyarados, she goes out of her way to make the authors of the book pay dearly for it, which ironically led them to uncover Butch and Cassidy's secret operation.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Misty instantly blasts off the regular Team Rocket trio with Staryu's Water Gun in their first raid. She and Ash later decimate Butch and Cassidy without the latter so much as getting in a hit.
- Curb-Stomp Cushion: Even after James' bubble is burst, Jessie's Wobbuffet manages to get a good Counter against Cassidy's Raticate. They are quickly blasted off by Butch's Primeape however.
- Incoming Ham: "I am the flame that burns brightest!"
- Flat "What":James: Hear me! From this day forward, you will be my subjects, and I will be the mighty Moltres-like monarch for whom you will obey and revere!Jessie: What?Meowth: Revere you?
- I Resemble That Remark!: Misty gets very irritable about the fortune book labelling her a short tempered Gyarados.
- Large Ham: James was already hammy. When he takes on the Flaming Moltres alias, however, he takes it to a whole new level.
- Latex Perfection: This is how Butch and Cassidy disguise themselves as a kindly old couple running the daycare center that gives out the fortune telling books.
- Only One Finds It Fun: Neither Ash nor Misty like their fortunes from the fake book very much (although Ash basically ignores his while Misty is outraged at hers), but Brock likes his since it says he is like an Onix, a Pokémon he has. At the end of the episode when they take a look at the real fortune telling book, he is visibly nervous and asks if it says anything about Onix.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Butch and Cassidy's operation would have gone off without a hitch had they not written two entries in the fortune book that would draw in the Team Rocket trio and Ash's group into the fold: Gyarados for Misty (which enrages her enough to storm their Daycare) and Moltres for James (which gives him a huge confidence boost to raid the Daycare for the stolen Pokémon). To be fair, they wouldn't have known these two's birthdays but still.
- Sanity Slippage: The Moltres fortune makes James a teeny bit delusional. He completely loses it when he finds out it's fake.Meowth: What're you sittin' there for? We gotta battle these bums!James: I am mighty. Just like Moltres. I will prevail in triumph.Meowth: Have it your way, bird boy.
- Serious Business: Misty treats her fortune reading of being Gyarados to be an unforgivable crime, the point that her primary objective at the Daycare Center is to punish Butch and Cassidy for this entry, with freeing the Pokémon being a secondary concern.
- Took a Level in Badass: Briefly as a result of the fortune, James gains a huge confidence boost, becoming physically stronger and showing battle competence. He even gets his Victreebel to stop fooling around in trying to eat him.
- The Unreveal: When James finds the real Pokémon fortune telling book at the end, he finds his birth date, and is horrified by what Pokémon represents him, but the episode ends before we can find out what it is.
