"Feel-Good" Episodes

[Likeitornot.]

Self-explanatory title, but this thread is about the discussion of those episodes that you find yourself returning to whenever you're in a low mood and need something to cheer you up. People sometimes say that they watch Pokemon because it's a care-free, relatively light, uplifting series and I do watch it for those reasons as well.

These could be episodes where you feel the moral message conveyed is a very positive and uplifting one, or where a character clinches a victory that motivates you to keep going as well, or just one where your favourite character has the spotlight/appears and that puts you into a good mood. Whatever reason, really. It doesn't have to be an episode where everyone is smiling and peppy throughout the entire span of the episode, but one where you finish watching it with your mood considerably lifted.

I thought it would be a pleasant idea for us as fans of the series to share episodes that have cheered us up in the past so others can check out these episodes for themselves whenever they may feel like watching a positive episode.

So, what is everyone's favourite "feel-good" episodes?

 

[technickal]

Every Pikachu short ever.

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

Almost every non-SM episode for me.

 

[Nicolas721]

Spoiler: Da list

Seasons 1-4
Pokémon - I Choose You!
Bye Bye Butterfree
Pikachu's Goodbye
Charizard Chills
The Chikorita Rescue
Ignorance is Blissey
(There are more but I haven't seen them recently)

Season 5
Fly Me to the Moon
Just Waiting On a Friend
Same Old Song and Dance
I Politoed Ya So!
Hatch Me If You Can

AG series
Do I Hear a Ralts?
Berry, Berry Interesting
(There are more but I haven't seen them recently)

DP series
(There are some but I haven't seen them recently)

BW series
Oshawott's Lost Scalchop!
A UFO for Elgyem!
Facing Fear with Eyes Wide Open!
Climbing the Tower of Success!
Battling the Leaf Thieves!
The Fires of a Red-Hot Reunion!
The Island of Illusions!
Butterfree and Me!
Go, Go Gogoat!
The Dream Continues!

XY series

To Find a Fairy Flower!
The Cave of Mirrors!
A Campus Reunion!
Bonnie for the Defense!
A Fork in the Road! A Parting of the Ways!
Battling with Elegance and a Big Smile!
Lights! Camera! Pika!
A Fiery Rite of Passage!
Down to the Fiery Finish! (lol no)

SM series
First Catch in Alola, Ketchum-Style!
That's Why the Litten is a Scamp!
Lillie's Egg-xhilarating Challenge!
Young Kiawe Had a Farm!
A Team-on-Team Tussle!
Battle of Fire! Garagara Appears!!
Iwanko and the Guardian Deity of the Ruins of Life!

 

[Jaye]

My picks, using the Japanese titles for more recent episodes since I haven't watched the show in English since DP:

OS:
Beauty and the Beach (OS018 - the original episode, not the butchered localised version)
Holy Matrimony! (OS048)
The Fortune Hunters (OS157)
Can't Beat the Heat! (OS270)

There really should be more OS episodes, but it's been ages since I've gone back and re watched it. It's no coincidence that three of these picks involve James at his flamboyant best and have some of my favourite set-ups and gags in the whole franchise.

AG:
A Hole Lotta Trouble (AG022)
Gone Corphishin' (AG023)
A Poke-BLOCK Party! (AG039)
The Bicker the Better (AG072)
Claydoll Big and Tall (AG104)
The Right Place and the Right Mime (AG133)

DP:
Where No Togepi Has Gone Before (DP142)
An Old Family Blend! (DP182)

BW:
Chillarmy is a Neat Freak?! (BW013)
Pikachu vs Meguroco vs Koaruhie (BW020)
Burn, Lizardon vs Kairyu! (BW116)
Shining Flying Saucer! Onbem's Town! (BW133)

Sun and Moon:
Alola! The Starting Island, the Starter Pokemon! (SM001)
A Small Trio on a Big Adventure (SM016)
Satoshi and Pikachu, the Promise Between Them (SM020)
Alola! The First Visiting Day! (SM024)
Are You Going to have a Nap-mashu in the Nemashu Forest Too? (SM029)

 

[Fan of Jarrus]

Episode 1.
Satoshi protecting Pikachu from the Spearow.

XY Episode 19
Satoshi takes a beating from the brainwashed Pikachu. He breaks the mind control by talking to his partner.

 

[Almonds]

ME special 2 and ME special 3

because Steven Stone

 

[ScienceRules]

''Down to the Fiery Finish'' for me....

 

[Unbeatable HoennMon]

OS, AG and DP were full of them ( actually, my favourite type of episodes).
Especially AG- I'd say that series generally was carefree...just feel-good. That's why AG was so good and cool to watch.
OS, especially
. A tent situation..
Pokemon fashion flash.
The ghost of Maiden's Peak.
Holy matrimony- I'll never forget James telling his ,,story"
A Kangaskhan Kid
...And much more- just like The Heartbreak of Brock and others.
AG- just like I said- the most carefree series ever, for example:
A Poké-BLOCK Party!-
Gone Corphishin'
Having a Wailord of a Time
Love, Petalburg Style!
The Bicker the Better
And much more- that was real Hoenn- style!
DP- Dawn and Brock- they made a lot of episodes feel-good.
Malice In Wonderland!
Tanks for the Memories!
A Full Course Tag Battle!
Where No Togepi Has Gone Before!
A Rivalry to Gible On!
XY- series practically without that kind of episodes but there was the one...The best in this series:
Party Dancecapades!
SM- I think it's to early to say about this.

 

[Gabo2oo]

I always return to the Sceptile vs Greninja sequence at the Kalos League.
Also "Seeing the Forest for the Trees!", "The Moment of Lumiose Truth!", and "Noodles! Roamin' Off!".
All episodes taking place in Pallet Town, sans the pre-Indigo League arc.

 

[AtragicFairytale]

Can't remember the episode title, but the one where togepi gets lost and is protected by houndoom. Feels

 

[SonansuMan]

Dues and Donts

The Bicker the Better
Sweet Baby James
King and Queen for a Day!

Jumping Rocket Ship!
Noodles, Roamin Off!

Meowth's Scrafty Tactics
Honey, Sweet as Danger!

A Fork in the Road! A Parting of the Ways!?
A Factory Frenzied Fiasco!
An Explosive Operation!

The Sun, The Scare, The Secret Lair!
A Team on Team Tussle!

 

[Islander Princess]

For me, OS and AG are full of the most feel-good episodes. I can watch both of those seasons over and over again and never get bored with them. Not every episode is my favorite, of course, but those are the specific seasons that pretty much always put a smile on my face. If I had to pick particular episodes, however, I'd go with:

Spoiler

OS
Snow Way Out
The Misty Mermaid
It's Mr. Mime Time
Pallet Party Panic
Misty Meets Her Match
Charizard Chills
The Stun Spore Detour
For Cryin' Out Loud
Forest Grumps
Air Time
unBEARable
Sick Daze
The Perfect Match
An Egg-Sighting Adventure
Hatch Me if you Can
Gotta Catch Ya Later

AG
You Never Can Taillow
Gone Corphishin
Brave the Wave
Now That's Flower Power
Win, Lose, or Drew
Love at First Flight
The Princess and the Togepi
A Togepi Mirage
Love, Petalburg Style
The Bicker the Better
Let it Snow, Let is Snow, Let it Snorunt
Do I Hear a Ralts
The Right Place at the Right Mime
A Real Cleffa-Hanger
Sweet Baby James
Time-Warp Heals All Wounds
Gathering the Gang of Four

DP
Cooking Up a Sweet Story
All Dressed Up With Somewhere to Go
Buizel Your Way Out of This
Tears For Fears
Tanks for the Memories
Pika and Goliath
A Full Course Tag Battle
Chim-Charred
Doc Brock
Strategy Begins at Home
Sticking With Who You Know
Teaching the Student Teacher
An Old Family Blend

BW
Here Comes the Trubbish Squad
A Connoseur's Revenge
Cottonee in Love
Movie Time! Zoura in "The Legend of the Pokémon Knight!"
A Call for Brotherly Love
Cilan Takes Flight
A Village Homecoming
The Fires of a Red-Hot Reunion
To Catch a Rotom
Butterfree and Me
The Path That Leads to Goodbye
Capacia Island UFO
Survival of the Striation Gym

XY
Breaking Titles at the Chateau
To Find a Fairy Flower
The Cave of Mirrors
A Keeper for Keeps
Battling at Full Volume
Seeing The Forest for the Trees (only for Ash's scenes, I fastforward through Serena's)

It's too early for me to pick out my SM episodes just yet, but honestly a lot of them are feel-good to me. Even if every episode isn't necessarily top notch, I find myself smiling through most of them. I loved "Yo Ho Ho! Go Popplio!" enough to buy the episode for a trip. I also absolutely adored "Alolan Open House" because I'm all for family-oriented episodes (as I think my list shows.)

 

[RetroPokeFan]

Anything with Alain or Kiawe for me, ha ha. Oh and some Pikachu shorts too.

 

[ii kanji]

My feel-good favourites have a combination of:
- Humour, the sillier the better, ideally unsullied by sentiment or drama
- Healthy dose of TRio
- Artistically +++ (music & animation, though you might notice a Takeda episode has somehow slipped through the net)

NB: Many of my favourite episodes of Pokemon make me feel like I have been steam-rolled flat, set on fire and then doused in tar to lie glued to the floor like a 50-year-old piece of chewing-gum. These are obviously not included.

The Ghost Pokémon and the Summer Festival/The Ghost of Maiden's Peak
A mischievous Ghos parades as both a lovelorn dead maid and a ratty old hag at a distinctly Japanese festival and gullible fools Takeshi and Kojirou fall into its trap. Classic, unreproducible Kanto fun with one of the best/funniest feminist rants of the series courtesy of Musashi.

Fierce Fight! Pokémon Girls' Festival/Princess vs. Princess
Kasumi and Musashi as sparring partners always made enjoyable viewing and this is the episode in which we really get to bask in this. I love watching the boys take a back seat and get trampled on (literally as well as metaphorically) by their respective girls. Even the significance of the dolls, whilst poignant (especially the final scene), in the context of the episode is comic enough not to veer into the sick bowl of sentimentality.

Pokémon Fortune-Telling!? Battle Royal!/The Fortune Hunters
Kojirou loses his sh*t in the best possible way.

Tag Battle! Satoshi VS Haruka!?/The Bicker the Better
I love a bit of harmless infighting and this is my favourite example of it throughout the show. It's just so fun to see both gangs go girls vs. boys, and the part where their battle careers into mayhem (when Musashi lets all her mon loose into the fray) makes me laugh ever. single. time. Without fail.

Seal the Giant Nendoll!!/Claydol Big and Tall
Everyone loves this episode right?

Chaotic Melee in Mio City!/Jumping Rocket Ship!
Chaos, Jun on the loose and Mukubird falling in love. Plus Nyasu doublecrossing the twerps and briefly himself and then the twerps again *sigh* Mid-DP was so enjoyable!!!

The Worst Togepi Ever!/Where No Togepi Has Gone Before!
So much good crammed into 22 minutes, but I think this episode was especially impactful for those of us who grew up with Kasumi's baby Togepi - to be hit with this ball of bad behaviour was just too much!

Ta-da! Fake Satoshi Appears!!/Heroes - Friends and Faux Alike!
"I'm Masara Town from Satoshi!" "And I'm Serena from Asame Town!" "And I'm Eureka nyaaaa!"
A scheme so ingenious, so hilarious that it's surprising that it took them 17 years to enact it on screen. Maaiika battling as floating Pikachu (and the subsequent gag that it loved that costume so much that it wore it several times after this scheme) is probably my favourite scene.

The Explosive Heat at the Mechanical Festival!/A Gaggle of Gadget Greatness!
Kojirou loses his sh*t in a slightly different but also best possible way.


It's too soon into SM for me to start wanting to rewatch episodes, but I think the Ganballoon! and Hidoide capture episodes might make this shortlist in future years.

 

[_Dog]

I don't believe I can enjoy this anime ever again, so there isn't a single "Feel-Good" episode for me.

 

[Minnale101]

Ag and sun and moon are feel good for me

 

[Cresselia92]

As a battle aficionado, most of my "feel-good" episodes are battle-related ones. Whenever I'm disappointed about how a battle has been scripted or if I have lost some "battle" in real life, I fondly look back at these episodes to cheer me up and give me some more confidence. Here are some of the most relevant to me.

• "Familiarity Breeds Strategy!" | "A Real Rival Rouser!" | "Battling a Thaw in Relations!"

The absolutely best battle in the whole anime, imo. Packed with great action and good strategies, it really showed the skills and different battling styles of Ash and Paul. This alone has raised my standards for future battles, and I never grow tired of watching it. Sure, there were some things that could have been handled better, but overall I find it top notch.

• "Volcanic Panic"

This match is what gave me a passion for battles as a child. A classic battle between two fiery creatures, and one of the few times in which Charizard listened to Ash during his puberty "disobedient phase". The part where Charizard was plunged in lava gave me chills as a child, since I was fearing that Charizard was dead (since I thought that Magmar could survive in magma, but Charizard couldn't), but I was rejoiced when Charizard emerged and threw Magmar in the lava. That was a golden moment for me, and when I want to see a sun ray in a region filled with "pity Badges" (which I despised even as a child), I always look back at this episode.

• "The Symbol Life"

Look at that, another Charizard episode! This one I appreciated because Ash had actually managed to beat a Legendary Pokémon for the first time, one of those Pokémon who are deemed almost unbeatable in the anime. This made me start cheering for Ash even more, and it's still a good match to look at even after all this time. Whenever I felt like wanting to see Charizard at his best during Episode N in the past, I always looked at this episode.

• "The Ties That Bind" | "Can't Beat the Heat!"

This surely couldn't have been left out. A classic rivalry finally solved after Ash spent months trying to reach and surpass Gary. Even he was stunned when he managed to beat his original nemesis. This, in a sense, is a metaphor of real life challenges: it doesn't matter how difficult an obstacle may be, you can surpass it if you put effort and willpower.

And now, for some non-battle episodes…

"Snow Way Out!"

This certainly couldn't have been left out! Seeing how Ash was willing to keep his Pokémon safe and sound and how his Pokémon huddled together with him to keep warm and survive the blizzard was a truly touching moment. Very few episodes have managed to reach this level of feels and heartwarming power.

• "Giving Chase at the Rhyhorn Race!"

I know that many people hate or are at least annoyed by AmourShipping, but you have no idea how many times I have rewatched this episode. When it first aired, I watched it like twenty times in a single afternoon, due to how much I loved it! :3 Nevertheless, the sheer amount of warm and kawaii feelings in this episode always manage to bring a smile to my face, as it can bring out the romantic person in me.

• "The Chikorita Rescue" | "Current Events"

Chikorita/Bayleef is one of my most favorite Pokémon, and these episodes truly touched my heart. How Ash ended up first saving Chikorita, and how Chikorita later saved her beloved Trainer by evolving truly shows the strength of their bond. It is really sweet to see how affectionate Chikorita is toward her Trainer, and these are among the episodes where she showed it best, alongside the reunion episodes. Speaking of reunions...

• "The Right Place and the Right Mime" | "An Old Family Blend!"

Reunion episodes are among the best, in my humble opinion. Seeing past and present blending together and seeing the interactions between every character is truly a treat. I rejoice every time I see a reunion done well, so I can only hope that the incoming reunion will be handled properly.

• "Houndoom's Special Delivery"

A quite odd choice, but this is one of the most interesting Togepi-related episodes. The care that Houndoom showed toward the Baby Pokémon was truly heartwarming, and I especially like how the focus wasn't too much on the main characters (aside of Togepi, of course). It showed well another point of view of the world of Pokémon, and it showed that beautifully, I daresay.

These episodes are the ones that stand out the most to me, but if I can recall some other episode I'll make sure to add it.

 

[zvinko]

I don't know if this counts, but the second movie, the one with Lugia and Kanto birds, is my favorite and I can watch it (and have watched it) a hundred times. It's the first (and the only) pokemon movie I saw in the movie theater a very long time ago, when I was still just a kid, and I think that's why I love it sooo much and that's why I keep coming back to it.

 

[techitisJ]

I only have a few episodes I look to purely as "Feel-Good" episodes actually. These are episodes I loo back on very fondly, because of all the nostalgia I have for them.
The first one is my favorite episode of the anime, Pokemon Shipwrecked, and the next feel-good episode is the one thait airs right after it, The Island of Giant Pokemon. These two were the first two episodes of the only VHS of Pokemon I ever truly owned, and because of that, I hold them very fondly to my heart. The jokes are good, and even with our favorite trainers in grave peril at some points, I just find it so enjoyable.
These final 3 episodes are all tied together, for a somewhat similar reason. I loved the first episode as much as the next person, but to me that wasn't the first episode. The first episodes to me (at the young age of 3 or 4), the first episodes of the show were actually the ones where we met Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle. These, like the first two episodes on this list, just make me feel like a kid again. It was amazing being able to see Ash connect so well with these three pokemon.

But my true feel good Pokemon episodes, actually aren't episodes. I admit it, I'm a sucker for the pokemon movies, and out of all of them, I think the only two I haven't fully seen was the Genesect one, and the Hoopa one. And I find myself very rarely completely hating them, in fact I don't completely hate any of them. There are some I like more than others, an there are some I'd rather not see again (the Deoxys movie really didn't suit me, it seems). But I find things in them all that I can like. I don't mind the fact that nearly all of the protagonist Pokemon (mythical or not) can talk using telepathy. I don't care that some of them recycle almost the exact same plot (I'm looking at you Manaphy movie(don't get me wrong, I still like this movie)). The point is, these movies just make me feel happy. There are so many animated movies that can just do that to me, even as I become an adult. If I am really looking for a good feel-good story, than I look towards the Jirachi movie or the Celebi movie. Sometimes I'll go for the more heart tearing ones like the Lucario one, the First movie, an the third movie.