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Review JN015: Snow Day, Where is Karakara's Bone?

Oh, this episode was good.

At long last, I got the Gou background/character development I was so desperately craving! This episode made me very sympathetic towards Gou. I can appreciate that the root of his personality issue is really quite common and not some big, blown out thing...he's just used to being on his own. I also liked that it was presented in such a way that he was totally fine with it. He never seemed to be very upset when his parents were running late or not around, even as a kid. Instead, they show him as being content to just do his own research, even though ultimately it did hurt his ability to sometimes act properly or make friends (which his parents did express concern about). I thought that was a really great way to portray it.

Not only that, but we got a bunch of other things I've been clamoring for: Gou using several of his Pokemon! Gou actually commanding his Pokemon! Gou catching a Pokemon by bonding with it and not just throwing a poke ball! And guess what? All these things are a huge part of what made this episode so enjoyable!

Cubone was absolutely precious, I felt so bad for the poor little thing, and I love the way Gou bonded with it and ultimately, having Cubone choose to be caught by Gou. This is what I need to see happen with Gou more often! It doesn't need to be every single capture, but this is the kind of variety I wanted. Now I'm always going to remember this capture because it was memorable, which cannot be said for most of Gou's captures where it just involves throwing a poke ball at a relatively static Pokemon. Speaking of which, having this episode built around Gou and his team helping Cubone gave both Cubone and Gou's existing captures some great personalities! Now I feel like I know his Pokemon better, and they're more than just captures; they're actual characters.

Speaking of which, I am so relieved that Gou did not catch any of those Mankey. Every time they showed up, I was afraid Gou was just gonna throw a poke ball and catch one (or all three) which for me would've taken away from the spirit of the episode, and also would've just felt downright wrong considering how jerky they were to poor Cubone. The fact that Gou did not even attempt to catch any of them was perfection.

I really, really need more episodes like this one. From start to finish, it was just a downright enjoyable episode where I actively felt like I was learning a lot about the characters and connecting with them.

Also, Gou's grandmother is the coolest character this anime has ever seen. Everyone else can go home. Please let us see more of her in the future.
 
For the first time in this series, an episode focused on Gou felt worth watching.

Pros:
  • There's something about the way Gou's childhood has been portrayed, showing him as this introverted asocial kid who spends more time with technology (not in a similar manner to Sophocles and Clemont, thankfully) than making friends, that makes me relate to him (being an introvert and a tech geek/PC gamer myself). We needed such backstory for him a long time ago (right after the 5th episode), instead of OOC stuff (at least it comes off as OOC now) that made him look like an inconsiderate and enslaving villain or just a jerk in general. I have this inkling in the back of my head that he became even more asocial after his childhood encounter with Mew, being obsessed with researching about it and what not. Back to the present, Gou finally behaved normally throughout the episode and came off as likable, not once did he channel Pokemon GO and attempt to catch Cubone or Mankey instantly. I hope Ash's comment about Mankey is a small throwback to his own.
  • The entire sub-plot with Mankey stealing Cubone's bone with Gou subsequently helping it was nothing special, we've all seen something similar quite often in the past. It was what accompanied it that made it interesting. Whether it's using his reserves in an active manner, giving them commands and battling with them as well as giving some of his Pokemon more characterization (as much as they'll be able to get given how many he's caught already, and will catch in the future)... or him just going out of his way to help a Pokemon without wanting anything in return or expecting a capture. I guess Ash is rubbing off on Gou after all, that Cubone capture was well deserved and enjoyable to watch. Gou's family was also interesting but I can't really form much of a proper opinion on each of them because they didn't appear much outside the usual "we're too busy to spend time with you, my child" trope but hopefully they'll appear in the future. Weird company name though, wonder if GoGo or Gou came first...
Cons:
  • The only issues I had were not unique to this episode or had anything to do with Gou (fortunately) and have been around for quite a while now, namely the terrible music choice and Aicholtz's overly enthusiastic & pretentious voice acting, otherwise it was pretty clean and a con-free episode (if a bit cliche with the plot of the day). I can't really be bothered to write up anything more about the music composition and recycling, I've done it enough in the past already and it was starting to get exhausting. If the composer wants to continue being lazy then so be it, it's on his conscience. For the latter, I'm not really aware of Marina Aicholtz's other voice acting works; has she always been like that or is it just something special she cooked up for her Pokemon role? If it's intentional then it's problematic (not to mention that her voice is pretty un-Rotom-like, just look at SM's Rotom Dex), in either case I’ll just mute the audio whenever she starts talking.
Additional thoughts:
  • So Ash initially intended to go home but ended up following Gou to his home because of his dropped package. Although I wouldn’t mind Ash not being in this episode, his presence did help it overall. Now I just hope there’s a reverse of this episode with Ash and Gou heading to Pallet Town so that we get to see his reserves (and reintroduce them to new fans so that they are not *ahem* cOnFuSeD). After all, you can’t really hope to stand a chance in the World Championships without using reserves and experienced Pokemon. If the writers can’t get that into their heads then they should not write anymore. Also there's something worth chuckling about when a country boy like Ash is fascinated by technology and starts using his Rotom phone to call like a regular kid in the modern era.
  • The more I think about it, the more I can't get the 7th active Pokemon issue out of my head. I know that it's been discussed heavily (and gotten me and the ones who brought it up being labelled "nitpickers") that there could have been many reasons why Cubone was an active Pokemon like Gou keeping Scorbunny’s Pokeball at the lab (it’s technically a walking Pokemon) or switching out Dewgong via his Dex (since it did not appear after finding the bone, though it seems improbable since his parents appeared right after and there was no time skip/gap). But, they could still have shown it on screen to explain what happened, otherwise it’ll be their writing consistency that’ll come under doubt and would become an actual issue if such scenarios end up being repeated (which given the writing so far, is bound to happen).

Verdict: A decent episode overall with some much needed (and proper) development for Gou, I’ll give it 8/10 and hope that such positive development for him stays and is not dumped in favor of the nonsense they were doing before.
 
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... I never made a review on this website before, but I have something to say about this one, and it's not just the N-word.

So...


Lets us chew on this, shall we?
------
The episode opens with Gou and Ash learning from Sakuragi about a system malfunction caused by snowfall.
... About a minute in and I'm already lost. So, according to Gou, snow falls rarelly in this area, which is apparently supposed to explain why Sakuragi did not prepare his equipment for that. But isn't it strange? Wasn't Sakuragi supposed to be, you know, a genius? And what does that even mean for the lab? What do those systems operate? What do they do? Did Sakuragi never heard of anybody experiencing similiar malfunctions? Was he unaware his equipment can be damaged by snowfall? Gou's line about the snow being rare is not a proper explanation. That'd be like people sending an expedition to Mars did not anticipate sandstorms on the surface just because they're rare. Even if they are, we know they happen and we know that our future habitats must be at least somewhat prepared for them. Same holds true here, Sakuragi must've experienced or heard about a snowfall causing mallfunctions at least once in his life!

'Stop nitpicking such tiny detaills! It's just throwaway lines of dialogue!'

Alright, so in the exact same scene, Sakuragi tells Ash and Gou lab is going to be closed for a maitenance, and tells Gou it might be better if he just Goues back to his parent's home. This 'throwaway line of dialogue', m'boy, is the very reason the entire drama in this episode is even possible in the first place, since as we're about to find out, Gou Gouing to his home is tied to the plotlines and relevant setpieces that make this episode what it is. Obviously, it does matter how you setup your framework for the whole f*cking episode, especially if you are going to sacrifice your characters for that. Where's Sakuragi's alleged genius and intelligence?

Kicking on, Ash and Gou are preparing to leave, and we find out Gou's parents are programmers. Ash of course doesn't get it, because it sounds sooo tough. *Sigh*
Don't you love it when comedy stems from the characters being stupid?
We also find out that Gou bought a gift for his parents, and that...
Okay, from this point on I am going to have much more positives to say about this episode. It's actually really cute to find out Gou cares about his parents, and him buying a gift for them after not seeing them for a while is sweet.

Then, they Gou on to a bus stop, where Scorbunny drags Gou inside a bus, which was far more hillarious than having Ash be an idiot, however, Gou dropped the gift he bought for his parents and didn't even notice that. So Ash picks it up and decides to give it back to Gou.

Fast forward and we meet Gou's Grandma. I'm gonna call her 'Gramma' for the remainder of this review, because :wynaut: .
Gou introduces her to Scorbbuny by saying 'that's my partner, Scorbunny'... Aaaaaand confession time.

I am fully aware that there was an episode in OS which had a throwaway explanation for how do trainers tell apart each other's Pokemon despite them looking the same. But... Why has nobody from the main cast ever nicknamed their Pokemon!? I am so sorry, but I just can't contain my giggles whenever someone introduces their Pokemon. 'Hey, grandma, this is my partner, Pikachu'. I mean, come on. It's that Pokemon's species name. You know what, you might as well carry around a 'I don't name my Pokemon' flag, you don't have to introduce them by their name anyway, they don't have one! It just sounds so hillariously funny! Do you think those people don't know what a Pikachu or Scor... I mean, Hibbuny looks like? :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
Now just to clarify for all of you; this is not a personall attack on any of the main characters, it is just something I personally always found funny. I think it'd made sense to nickname your Pokemon, given how often other Pokemon from the same species look exactly the same. But if you do that, please come up with a name that's at least creative. There was an episode in the OS where a COTD had three Swinubs she named Swi, Ain and Abel or something in these lines... I have nightmares of that episode.
Where was I? Ahh, yeah...

So we learn that Gou apparently really likes star shaped carrots, and he hands Gramma a souvenir, meat buns. (Where do they get meat from in the Pokeverse, I don't f*cking...)

Speaking of, there is a detail I missed in the introduction wherein after learning of the maitenance, Ash is concerned about where they're gonna get food from. So that's it for our hero, huh? Can't wait 'till they'll make him into a Tarzan living alone on an island where he's gonna eat Farfetch'd ham for the rest of his life, while Gou captures every Pokemon in existence and becomes a Pokemon Master, all the while stopping Team Rocket, who took over the world while Ash's apprientece (son of Brock and Misty) became a crazy-ass contract murderer and Pokemon Hunter serving the dark side of the HORSE...
(Or Big Gay for you Mauler fans out there)

Gramma tells Gou that she's heading to a karaoke tournament, (because of course that's a thing, I thought everything needs to be Pokemon related or the fabric of time and space will be ripped apart oh crap should've placed this joke earlier), and Gou promises that he'll take care of the house.

Cut to Gou's parents, as they are getting worried Gou might've been kicked out of the lab because he caused some trouble.
Then there's a flashback to Gou's youth, wherin his parents tell him they're sorry about having a large job to do on Holliday, and leaving him alone, while he's staring at a computer screen.
Scenes like that give some context to Gou's poorly explored backstory, which is nice to say the least.
But anyway, they get a call and are given a job. There is a system malfunction at the locall hospitall.

... Man, snow is really killing it in this universe... Two major facilities in a single day! Simply WOW!

Another cut, and Gou shows Scorbunny his computers.
Gimme a sec...

There you Gou. *Lures out Heloween Fans*

Gou is informed by his parents about their job, and after he puts down the phone we get the flashbacks of his parents telling him they will be leaving on Holliday...
Again...
Is this Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky or the Pokemon anime!?!?
Gou then decides to give his parents the stew Gramma made, and he Goues to see them through the locall park. And just then, he runs into the star of the episode, Cubone, being tormented by three Mankey.
After Dex delivers information about Cubone's tragic lore background in an unsettingly happy way, the Mankey take Cubone's bone, and run away with it.

Gou swears to find Cubone's bone after seeing him cry. Again... I like that. Endearing, sensicall and sensible. But the reall cake is what happens next. Gou sends out Butterfree, Scyther, Taillow, and Beedrill, and... All four of them begin to shudder and huddle together to keep themselves warm. Gou apologizes to them for bringing them out into the snow!

Remember how one of the arguments in Gou's defense was 'the anime doesn't bat an eye on the logistics of Pokemon living outside of their naturall habitats'? To all who used that one, how does it feel to have Reiko Yoshida spit in your coffé!?

Cue searching montage with all four Pokemon, while Ash is trying to reach out to Gou.
BTW, one thing I forgot to mention was how Gou's parents company name is Go Go, and how when they call him, his phone yells 'Go, Go! Go, Go!', but when he gets a call from Satoshi, the phone litelary yells 'call from Satoshi! Call from Satoshi!'. I found that kind of funny...

But ehh... The whole Go thing...

Look, the interest in this game is falling down. It isn't anymore as universally played and loved as it was during its release, and yet the writers feel the need to completelly Goify the anime... While also not getting a lot of the stuff about this game right, and forgetting it makes no sense in the anime, which I will happily discuss. Why, just why?

Also, am I the only one who noticed Ash's jacket is unfastened throughout the whole episode? Yet another thing to nitpick and laugh about. I mean, come on, dude...

So fast forward, they team up to capture Mankey... Gou gives us some exposition which doesn't make sense in universe to explain to the audience that Ash is using a Nana Berry to lure out bully tropes... Wait, Nana Berry? Why is he not using peeled chestnuts!!!??!? Plot hole, 0/10 episode.

And of course the bully tropes come in immidiately. There is some combat in which some of the Pokemon come to shine, and I could talk about it for a while, because there certainly is something to say about it. Like, one of the Mankeys at one points just climbs on a tree and is just casually sitting there, and when Gou orders Butterfree to attack him with Stun Spore he just does nothing but is suprised and gets hit? Whaaaaaat the hell?

Then there is a scene which is quite confusing. Ash and Gou are asking Mankey severall questions, and then they seem to understand what the Mankey are saying? How? Since when can humans understand Pokemon langauge? Oh wait, Rey understood the Wookie language... Gou understands Pokemon language... Oh my god... Can anyone say GOU-RY S-
No, not yet.

So the Mankey reveall to them that they have, in fact, no idea where da bone at, because they dropped it and can't seem to remember where.
So everyone begins to look for it. It's getting dark, implying they have been searching for hours... And only now is Gou telling the Mankey to search with them? Okay?

And just then, a randomass Fearow shows up and goes 'I know where da Macguffin at'... Oh, I am sorry, Magmuffin, and so they depart with him. And here's something I actually kind of liked: when Fearow explains where he saw the bone, everything he says is translated via pictures. A nice little detaill, just like in They Might not be Giants from the prior series! I like that!

So it turns out the bone is in a lake. No one dares swim for it when it's so cold, so Gou calls out Mountain Dew Gong and he fetches da Magmuffin. They hand it back to Cubone, and just then Gou's parents arrive (Because they saw Ash and Gou fly on Ash's Dragonite when they were following Fearow to the lake) and throw shade at the previous episodes with the following line:
"I heard you have been relying on Ash quite a lot, Gou..."

I f*cking laughed.

And then Cubone is caught. Now I'm going to say this: the fact that Gou actually done something to gain Cubone's respect? Awesome. The fact that Gou did not immidiatelly expect to catch him after he gave him back his bone? Awesome. But not only that, when Cubone said he wants to be caught, he actually asked Cubone if he's sure about that! I love watching humans interact with Pokemon in this way.
... Aaaaaaaaand then Cubone gets caught by having a PokeBall dumped on his head. One, single throw...
Ugghhh...

And this is why this anime is so hated by the way. Earlier, there might have been individuall examples of Pokemon getting caught without a battle, but they could have been credited to bad writing/memory, while the norm, the universall rule was that at least one of these happens. What used to be rare and could've been accused of being a writing flaw is no longer that, it is now a rulle!
Capturing Pokemon without fighting is how this universe is now supposed to work, it might not always be the first ball that gets it done, but one will eventually.
There were Pokemon that wanted to be caught and still had to be fought earlier, and if there were ones like this Cubone over here I bet it's probably OS. But I'll be happy to hear examples of Pokemon wanting to be caught and getting caught without battle... So I can debunk them, hhehehe.
I'm gonna give two examples of the inverse of Cubone from the top of my head: Ash's Treecko and Litten.
Sigh...
Fortunatelly, this episode isn't exactly guilty of doing it first. It just had to stay consistent with the new direction. But still... Fo Pete's sake...

And the episode ends with Gramma saying she won the Karaoke tournament, Ash is fooling around while the narrator is being annoying as f*ck.

'With more amazing friends to meet, on they... Go!!'. Ughh... Who approved of this!!!!!??!!

*Experiencing perfectly coherent rage, please stand by*
------
And that was my first review ever folks. Time for a summary, because that's how every review ends...

First off, Gou was killing it in this episode. He was being good and nice to everbyody, which only proves him being a bad guy is certainly not the biggest problem with his character. There is certainly a lot to say about that kid from a writing standpoint, and I would love to have that discussion when the mods will finally open a Gou discussion thread, but if you'd watch Pokemon the series: Pokemon starting only from that episode... Well, you'd get quite the positive impression of his character. I hope his backstory is going to be explored more in the future.

Ash was also decent here. He was the one to set up the trap for bully tropes (wasted opportunity to make a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon refference ), he immidiately decided to give Gou back his gift when he dropped it... However, I gotta say it's kind of bad he seems to be kind of disconnected from his interests as they relate to Pokemon. For example, in the opening scene, I thought for a moment if he's gonna ask Sakuragi how will the system malfunction affect the Pokemon inside the Institute... But he's worried about food instead. It also bothered me how they made him stupid for laughs, both when Gou explained to him who his parents are and when Fearow talked about where he saw the bone at.

I like some detaills, such as that when Fearow talked about where he saw the bone which I already mentioned, but then you have things like Ash's jacket being unfasted...

You know, I thought someone would point that out to him at any point, or that he'll notice he's suddenly feeling cold, but the thing stays unfastened for the whole fucking episode! It's the stupidest f*cking...

I didn't pay much attention to the music, which is kind of weird for a self proclaimed music theory nerd, (but I'll try to get back to it and give my views on the soundtrack) but the visualls, the animation were quite decent.

Gou's familly had very little bearing on the plot, but from what little we have seen of them, they felt... Believable enough. Genuinelly concerned about their kid which makes sense with what we were led to believe about Gou, Gramma was quite funny but... I am worried she might join the same category of characters I have put Oluolu in as this show goes on...

Overall, I will say that the virtue of this episode that it finally makes a Gou capture feel deserved and earned and builds up to it through it's nearly whole runtime almost outweights all the smaller and bigger discrepancies and flaws (such as humans understanding Pokemon speech for some reason)... Even though there was no battle with Cubone, which can be attributed to this series operating with new rules, it is certainly an improvement over earlier episodes. I'll give it a...
7/10. Watchable.

Hopefully I brought out some detaills which will sparkle more discussion about this episode's content and merits. I would also be more than happy to face scrutiny.

And roll credits.
 
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Why thank you; I recieved some feedback 'bout the post's being too lengthy though, so don't expect me to write anything as large and bloated again. I will try to keep the humour though, but I'll try doing so without as many copypasted lines from E;R and/or other youtubers.

We will need humour to get through this hell
 
Why thank you; I recieved some feedback 'bout the post's being too lengthy though, so don't expect me to write anything as large and bloated again. I will try to keep the humour though, but I'll try doing so without as many copypasted lines from E;R and/or other youtubers.
How about you do episode 10?
 
I think "hell" is bit of an exaggeration.

It will be until I get the Rocket episodes we Team Rocket fans deserve.

As the series is threated as Go and his friends show, it will be not good to me.

I will say that we are better than we were at January I will give you that.
 
... Aaaaaaaaand then Cubone gets caught by having a PokeBall dumped on his head. One, single throw...
Ugghhh...
But I'll be happy to hear examples of Pokemon wanting to be caught and getting caught without battle... So I can debunk them, hhehehe.
Well, this is one of those episodes I don’t have any issue with this happening. It’s a different story for other captures made by Gou but this one seems perfectly valid to me. Imo either bonding or a battle must happen, and there are many examples where Ash didn’t battle his Pokémon and just bonded:
Ash's Charmander, Rowlet, Dragonite, Rockruff, Meltan, Chimchar, Squirtle among many others.
 
Well, this is one of those episodes I don’t have any issue with this happening. It’s a different story for other captures made by Gou but this one seems perfectly valid to me. Imo either bonding or a battle must happen, and there are many examples where Ash didn’t battle his Pokémon and just bonded:
Ash's Charmander, Rowlet, Dragonite, Rockruff, Meltan, Chimchar, Squirtle among many others.
Meltan's a tricky one; technically speaking he didn't form a bond with Ash, but much more so with Rowlet on top of being a mythicall, so Ash probably should've fought him. Same goes for Charmander; some people have brought it up already, but Brock has done more for it's sake than Ash did, so that's confusing.

If we accept the that bonding with Pokemon allows you to catch it without fighting it is an in-universe rule, then I see nothing wrong with the other examples you've made; bond of friendship does seem to have physicall effects on the Pokemon world which I, f*ck me kind of forgot about. Litten might've wanted to be caught, but he didn't form a deep bond with Ash yet, so that might have been it.
 
Everyone's talking about the Pokeball thing but you know what I find weirder? The snow. Someone must have pissed off a Legendary.
 
Lets Rewiew!!!
Goh Development :love: :love:
Goh Backstory :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
Boring:sleep:
They Spent An ENTIRE EPISODE Dedicated to a Pokemon Goh Wont Use At ALL.
Decent Episode 6/10
 
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