Review S23 EP03: Ivysaur's Mysterious Tower!

[Yash]

It's called a prize master though not too sure.

Seen the episode and for the music I'm surprised that they use Ash's theme (tentative title) and Hayashi's rendition of the Pokemon theme as well as the new TRio theme.

The Team Rocket motto theme seems to be bulletproof in terms of whether or not TPCI will keep it. The only time they've ever swapped out motto music is when it features vocals, and they'll keep it even if it's not the usual motto theme.

Counted one track in the first episode, two in the second episode and it sounds like three in the third episode (though I haven't watched it yet)... At this rate maybe by episode 20 or so we'll have 100% bgm retained! (lol) The episode title card jingle getting replaced is weird, but TPCI gonna TPCI.

edit: watched the episode, it was four tracks retained. Basically everything from TR's entrance was retained until the final scene of the episode, which is nice, but that does seem to be TPCI's m.o. sometimes (keep everything in the climax of the episode, but use nothing in the "unimportant" bits of the episode). I'm not going to go through the Japanese version and count the number of tracks total though, because I know the "percentage retained" figure will make me sad, lol.

Kind of interesting how this is basically Pokemon Go the Anime moreso than anything to do with Sword/Shield, but hey, can't blame the producers for chasing the trends. I haven't really been following the Japanese version outside of Ash's captures, so this is all new to me.

 

[Alola]

I love how the title is a reference to Bulbasaur's Mysterious Garden.

 

[Islander Princess]

I liked this episode more in English than I did in Japanese, probably because this time around I just enjoyed it for what it was instead of being miffed that it was kind of clickbaity, although it still wasn't a groundbreaking episode by any stretch of the imagination.

What this episode did well was further establish Ash and Goh's relationship, and showed part of why Goh doesn't have many friends to begin with (which is something I also enjoyed in the original Japanese). I think the English VAs did a great job emoting for the characters and reflecting their personalities in those scenes especially.

Didn't love the lab assistants' voices in this episode, they sounded too caricature-y. Hopefully when they're given more dialogue they sound more natural.

The "Rocket Prize Master" is still terrible. I groaned when it showed up.

Line of the episode goes to Chloe towards the end, where she deadpan calls Ash and Goh "a couple of creeps." I love her so much.