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Review JN035: Get Pikachu!!

What a lovely episode and now Go had it own Raichu that are interest Ash's Pikachu. Also, wondering if Female Raichu had different tail since it does not as sharp as the male one.

Overall rating: B+
 
An okay episode with a filler nature if it weren't for the focus capture. The episode started out quite well with a premise of Goh potentially bonding/befriending before having the Pokemon willingly get captured... until Goh did his usual one curveball capture followed by an instantaneous friendship (This Pikachu was friendly and easygoing in the first place so I guess it's okay? It's still the second time it happened with Goh and kind of makes it jarring, the capture happening at the end would have given it more of a feeling of being earned...). The episode soon devolved by rushing into a snooze fest with that Raichu bait followed by an overextended "TRio tries to capture everything in sight" (though at least this time the Gacha turned out to be relatively useless compared to their mechs and some of the shenanigans were interesting like that 'find the Pikachu' with the crane game). My stream froze up for around half a minute early on, so idk if TRio was present then with some characterization or if they popped up out of nowhere so I'll wait on a re-watch.

On a side note, Raboot feeding Sobble is just precious. I wish the series would explore more of these brotherly/sisterly bonds between Pokemon (another similar example being between Pikachu and Riolu) instead of pointless stuff like JN030, JN026 or JN009. Also positive points for the female Pikachu/Raichu having an interesting personality and nature instead of the one shown in the preview.
XY literally explained to Bonnie & Clemont why Pikachu doesn’t want to evolve within ten seconds, why do we need another one.
Exactly this, there's no need to dedicate an entire episode for a concept that's pretty much supposed to be one of the roots of the anime. At most, half a minute can be dedicated to explaining it from Ash's PoV which thankfully is exactly what it turned out to be here.

If new viewers are genuinely interested in the reason Pikachu won't evolve, they can always decide to check up on the past after seeing that half a minute explanation. If they don't, they never cared in the first place.
Also, wondering if Female Raichu had different tail since it does not as sharp as the male one.
That's literally how a female Raichu's tail is supposed to be.
 
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Didn't get off to a good start at all with the instant catch and unironic bait and switching in regards to the evolution (though anyone who actually expected Pikachu to evolve set themselves up for disappointment), but once Team Rocket came into it the quality improved. Watching them trying to work out which Pikachu was Ash's was funny and I enjoyed seeing Gou get some battling in there with Raboot. It wasn't the best episode ever and definitely not top list material, but I enjoyed it once it got going and the whole point of entertainment is to give the viewer enjoyment. Solid B-.

They could have improved it by not having Gou catch her at the start and have her offer to go with him after he helped her save the day, but then he wouldn't have registered Pikachu in his dex, but it would still have been better than another instant catch, instant friendship thing they love to do with him. No Aicholtz catch bonus at least I guess.
 
Team Rocket and the Gacha Pokemon were actually pretty good here, I hope we see Buneary and Minnccino evolved later in the series.

I think it’s character developed of sorts that Goh realised he can evolve his Pokémon rather than catch all members of the family like he did with the bugs.
 
Meh. What can I say? Bunch of Raichu, bunch of Pikachu and Trio. Oh yes and Gou caught a Pikachu who evolved into a Raichu so she shouldnt habe to share spotlight with Pikachu. 2/10
 
Who remembers when this format of episode would be considered boring and reductive? Just goes to show that formulaic TRio stealing shit episodes are much less dull than some of the other dross that has come our way this series :p

A victory at last for all the Raichu fans - a nice girl that we might even see once or twice more in Sakuragi's jailhouse!
 
A lot of people are complaining about Go catching Pikachu at the beginning rather than waiting until the end... however, it seems to me that the writers are planning for Go to complete the Kanto Dex (at least) by the end of the series, so clearly an early-ish capture was needed.

Also, Satoshi's Pikachu didn't evolve? But what about all those clickbait articles saying it would?

It was nice to see the show has apparently got over the ban on seeing Pikachu (as a species) enter and exit Poke Balls. I was getting tired of seeing every single trainer with a Pikachu have their walking besides them like it was suddenly a species wide rule.
 
This episode was... more entertaining than I expected, frankly speaking, and I think that's mostly thanks to Team Rocket. While I tend to dislike it when the trio are simply used as generic villains-of-the-day, their appearance here was quite fun to watch (especially the crane machine gag). Also, as much as I dislike the Gachat machine, the choice of Pokemon dispensed in this episode was quite interesting. It's probably been ages since the last time we saw either a Bunneary or Mincinno get much action in the anime. Also, I always like it when the Gachat dispenses unevolved but powerful Pokemon (eg. Bellsprout, Chewtle).

Unfortunately, I don't really have much to say about the rest of the episode. Once again, Gou gets an easy battle-less capture, but aside from the fact that it was rather rude of him to interrupt the female Pikachu when it was just chilling with Ash's Pikachu, I think this was probably one of the better battle-less captures in this series. Gou failed to catch 2 Pikachu prior to catching the female one, the female Pikachu was distracted by Ash's Pikachu, and it was already established that the female Pikachu was very friendly, so honestly, I'm kinda fine with this free capture.

Also, a bait-and-switch doesn't count as a bait-and-switch if you see it coming from a thousand miles away. This wasn't like the Ho-Oh episode where the bait was actually somewhat tangible. Dunno bout the rest of you, but I don't consider this a bait-and-switch episode at all.
 
If new viewers are genuinely interested in the reason Pikachu won't evolve, they can always decide to check up on the past after seeing that half a minute explanation. If they don't, they never cared in the first place.
None of the target audience was around during the explanation in X&Y. They'll repeat this again in Generation X, as their audience is currently in the process of being born. Remember that this anime is aimed at young children, and most don't find out about earlier seasons during this time.

A lot of people are complaining about Go catching Pikachu at the beginning rather than waiting until the end... however, it seems to me that the writers are planning for Go to complete the Kanto Dex (at least) by the end of the series, so clearly an early-ish capture was needed.
That's not going to be an easy journey with the issues involving Kadabra and Porygon. And then there's Mewtwo...
 
That was a pretty fun episode, in my opinion. I’m not too bothered by Goh catching Pikachu early. She was already so friendly and outgoing that it seems like she didn’t have a problem with it. When they want to focus on a Pokémon that will Goh will catch, they seemingly flip through bonding and then catching (Cubone and Heracross) and catching and then bonding (Sobble and Raichu). Still, like I said, Raichu was already so friendly that she was happy to go anyways, so it’s not like they needed the whole episode for Pikachu to warm up to Goh considering her personality.

Raichu has a great personality, it’s the complete opposite of most of the Raichu we see, though she’s on the other side of the extreme where her politeness crosses over into inconsideration. I’m happy we have a Raichu on the main cast and I hope she shows up more (even though she’s not in the opening like the other main Goh Pokémon).

Team Rocket were good in this episode. Even though I’m not the biggest fan of them since they can be unbearable a lot of the time, when Team Rocket are written well into the plot, they can be good. It was nice to see them use one of their more classic machine-plots to capture the Pikachu instead of summoning the Gacha immediately. The claw-machine gag was also pretty fun, seeing how the TRio couldn’t tell Ash’s Pikachu from the rest of them. Shows how much they’ve actually been paying attention to what they’ve been trying to steal for so long.

Buneary and Minccino were unexpected. I was expecting some other electric rodents. The “small but dangerous Gacha Pokémon” has only been used twice now so I hope they don’t overdo it. I’m surprised Team Rocket didn’t run away in fear when they saw the Pikachu stacking themselves, they should’ve known what was coming. It’s gonna take a while to walk that thunderbolt off, lol.

I wasn’t actually expecting Goh’s Pikachu to evolve, at least not in this episode, but I’m not that upset about it. I’m not upset that they went over the “Pikachu doesn’t want to evolve” plot. It only took a couple seconds at most since they didn’t include flashbacks, and there are always going to be new viewers.

Raboot and Sobble continue to be adorable together. I forgot which Gacha Pokémon hit Sobble, but they deserved that giant Pikachu lightning-rod thunderbolt for hurting Sobble. Sobble did get in a solid hit, though.

I wonder why they waited so long to have Raboot use Quick Attack since he’s known it this whole time.

Exeggcute finally saw the light of day.

Gengar continues to just be in the background. Nice to see him interact with the Pokémon at Sakuragi Park, though. It shows that he’s opening up to rest of the Pokémon.
 
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