Review JN059: The Lost Sarunori! Who is the Trainer!?

[Reborn Talonflame]

The entire series has painted TR as “bad trainers”, not just this episode.

Having the Gatcha Machine just means they know they have a personal arsenal of creatures at their command, and never let them out unless they’re needed.
With Morpeko, and with good reason, they tried to get rid of it, but the main thing wasn’t to bond with it, but use it as a tool in a competition.
They dismissed Chewtle as some tiny creature that probably can’t even battle. When have they ever done that before? They had Mime.Jr for crying out loud.
The rest of the time they’re doing their usual antics.

The only good thing they’ve done, that represents them as the TR we know, is when they encouraged that Ditto.
To think, they were my favourite part of S&M...

 

[FinnishPokéFan92]

They dismissed Chewtle as some tiny creature that probably can’t even battle.

And later, they were impressed by how well it performed in battle.

 

[Reborn Talonflame]

And later, they were impressed by how well it performed in battle.

Yeah, but they still dismissed it to begin with. Doesn’t exactly pain the right picture for what TR is, they’ve always looked at what a Pokemon can do, not judging their appearance (Dustox, Cacnea, Mimikyu, etc.)

 

[swiftgallade46]

The entire series has painted TR as “bad trainers”, not just this episode.

They’ve had some good moments, too. I’m not commenting on the series as a whole, but I definitely have some good memories of them in JN. Especially the Ditto episode which I absolutely loved.

 

[TRNatalie]

They’ve had some good moments, too. I’m not commenting on the series as a whole, but I definitely have some good memories of them in JN. Especially the Ditto episode which I absolutely loved.

^ This. JN episodes 19 and 24 still exist. Even if I hate that it’s confined to the Gacha, I like their interactions with Chewtle and they do show care towards certain mons

It just makes the missteps with them all the more upsetting

 

[Reborn Talonflame]

They’ve had some good moments, too. I’m not commenting on the series as a whole, but I definitely have some good memories of them in JN. Especially the Ditto episode which I absolutely loved.

That’s what I said, haha.

 

[nickdt]

tossing a Pokeball at something that's already being chased for capture by someone else is technically secondary poaching especially if the Pokemon hasn't even decided to join the trainer

they even literally touched upon this back in the Suicune episode though they quickly glossed it over all to make Goh the big hero

Yup. Seems like some people were right in calling Goh a poacher. This episode proved he is.

 

[FinnishPokéFan92]

Yup. Seems like some people were right in calling Goh a poacher. This episode proved he is.

That's very inaccurate. Poachers don't treat Pokémon with the care and respect that Goh has displayed on multiple occasions.

 

[90'sPokéfan]

The entire series has painted TR as “bad trainers”, not just this episode.

Having the Gatcha Machine just means they know they have a personal arsenal of creatures at their command, and never let them out unless they’re needed.
With Morpeko, and with good reason, they tried to get rid of it, but the main thing wasn’t to bond with it, but use it as a tool in a competition.
They dismissed Chewtle as some tiny creature that probably can’t even battle. When have they ever done that before? They had Mime.Jr for crying out loud.
The rest of the time they’re doing their usual antics.

The only good thing they’ve done, that represents them as the TR we know, is when they encouraged that Ditto.
To think, they were my favourite part of S&M...

I did like their interactions with the Pokémon from the Gatcha machine the very first time they used the machine (when they got attacked, Jessie and James clearly showed concern for the pokémon). But in some episodes they just use the Gotcha Pokémon as tools.

 

[Galactic_V]

I'll be frank here, the only reason I watched this episode was because of Gou's dream sequence and how it's caused some commotion here. It's a minute-long basically and it doesn't really influence the plot in any significant way so I think TPC could just go ahead and remove it without major issues if they see fit.

Now for the episode itself, I'm glad I had the luck to pick one where Trio shows up, they provided some really good comedy in this one. I was amused by the scene where Nyasu accidentally translates loudly Sarunori's wishes to be caught by Gou for eg. Sarunori had funny moments too (its fight with Garagara comes to mind). The rest of the episode was kinda meh, unfortunately.

And unrelated, Gorillander's English name has been coming quite often ever since the dream sequence was showed and I gotta say, "Rilaboom" sounds pretty ridiculous in my opinion. It's not the first English Pokemon name I find ridiculous tbh, but it's up there with "Goomy" xD

 

[Sobble Bubble-O-Seven]

Well on the bright side, at least the mystery is over now.

 

[Kurolegacy]

Painting Goh or Satoshi as evil for trying to get the Grookey back from TR makes no sense. They're obviously lovable villains, but they are criminals and thieves who have been stealing pokemon for literal thousands of episodes.. Why would they not try and rescue Grookey, especially after already bonding with it?

Except that in this case, it was already owned by them. Just because they’re villains doesn’t mean that they can just go and smash it’s pokeball and claim it for their own. It’s even worse when it’s not as though TRio were shown mistreating it either. Simply because it grew attached to Go doesn’t mean they have the right to do what they did. To put it into perspective, in almost 25 years, not even the villains have done something like that and they literally try to steal Pokémon. That’s pretty bad. Who died and gave Ash and Go the authority to take someone else’s Pokémon that they had fair and square away from them?

 

[swiftgallade46]

That’s what I said, haha.

Sorry I wasn’t clear, I was agreeing with you about the Ditto episode but I was making the point that they’ve had several good moments and I don’t really feel like they’ve been ruined. I do dislike the Gatcha Machine, though. It was an interesting way to debut Grookey.

 

[Black&White]

Except that in this case, it was already owned by them. Just because they’re villains doesn’t mean that they can just go and smash it’s pokeball and claim it for their own. It’s even worse when it’s not as though TRio were shown mistreating it either. Simply because it grew attached to Go doesn’t mean they have the right to do what they did. To put it into perspective, in almost 25 years, not even the villains have done something like that and they literally try to steal Pokémon. That’s pretty bad. Who died and gave Ash and Go the authority to take someone else’s Pokémon that they had fair and square away from them?

Grookey was the one who broke the Poke Ball. It chose to leave TR by itself

 

[Hidden Mew]

Except that in this case, it was already owned by them. Just because they’re villains doesn’t mean that they can just go and smash it’s pokeball and claim it for their own. It’s even worse when it’s not as though TRio were shown mistreating it either. Simply because it grew attached to Go doesn’t mean they have the right to do what they did. To put it into perspective, in almost 25 years, not even the villains have done something like that and they literally try to steal Pokémon. That’s pretty bad. Who died and gave Ash and Go the authority to take someone else’s Pokémon that they had fair and square away from them?

Grookey clearly chose to leave Team Rocket by itself. Goh wasn't trying to take Grookey away from Team Rocket, but just to give its stick back the following day. Goh wasn't thrilled about Team Rocket getting it back when he reunited with Grookey and did try to shield it, but Grookey already showed that it didn't want to be a Team Rocket Pokemon when they first encountered them and it was still running away from the Pokeball. Neither Ash or Goh smashed the Pokeball or even came up with the idea. That was all on Grookey because it wanted to go with Goh. Claiming that either Ash or Goh decided to do that or that they literally tried to steal a Pokemon is completely inaccurate.

 

[Eitarou]

Except that in this case, it was already owned by them. Just because they’re villains doesn’t mean that they can just go and smash it’s pokeball and claim it for their own. It’s even worse when it’s not as though TRio were shown mistreating it either. Simply because it grew attached to Go doesn’t mean they have the right to do what they did. To put it into perspective, in almost 25 years, not even the villains have done something like that and they literally try to steal Pokémon. That’s pretty bad. Who died and gave Ash and Go the authority to take someone else’s Pokémon that they had fair and square away from them?

Grookey clearly chose to avoid the Poke Ball's return beam. If Goh is bad for "stealing" Grookey, then TR is far worse for trying to keep it against its wishes.

 

[Kurolegacy]

Grookey clearly chose to avoid the Poke Ball's return beam. If Goh is bad for "stealing" Grookey, then TR is far worse for trying to keep it against its wishes.

As opposed to basically every trainer who catches a Pokémon against its wishes? There was literally nothing within the episode that created a reason why Grookey wanted to get away from TR and go to Go, especially when we’ve seen Pokémon flat out abused in the past and stay with their trainers. It was literally just the show bending over backwards for Go and in a show-don’t-tell medium, there’s no excuse for that kind of bad writing.

 

[Black&White]

As opposed to basically every trainer who catches a Pokémon against its wishes? There was literally nothing within the episode that created a reason why Grookey wanted to get away from TR and go to Go, especially when we’ve seen Pokémon flat out abused in the past and stay with their trainers. It was literally just the show bending over backwards for Go and in a show-don’t-tell medium, there’s no excuse for that kind of bad writing.

The difference between Grookey and the Pokemon you mentioned is that they actively choose to stay with the person who caught them. Grookey didn't and it was well within its right to leave the Trio

 

[FinnishPokéFan92]

As opposed to basically every trainer who catches a Pokémon against its wishes? There was literally nothing within the episode that created a reason why Grookey wanted to get away from TR and go to Go, especially when we’ve seen Pokémon flat out abused in the past and stay with their trainers. It was literally just the show bending over backwards for Go and in a show-don’t-tell medium, there’s no excuse for that kind of bad writing.

Grookey got lost, met Goh, came to like him, lost its stick when retrieved, escaped to find its stick and reunite with the person it had bonded with, and rejected its former Trainers to go with one it had actually bonded with.

 

[Mijzelffan]

Great episode, I was wondering at first who would get the Grookey but it was clear pretty quickly that it was gonna be Go which I do think is the best choice for it (though koharu getting it would've been interesting as well haha). It being a gacha rocket pokemon caught me by surprise but it's a solid explanation as to how a galar pokemon would get to kanto. I also do like the additional insight of the interaction between the rocket trio and their gacha pokémon, they were gonna catch grookey at first but as soon as they found out it was escaped company property they treated it as a liability and just wanted to get it back to headquarters asap.

The Galar starters are all so cute in the anime, can't wait to see more of them.