The Rising Volt Tacklers arrive in Galar, and decide to park the airship in the Wild Area as they don’t want to stick out too much in case the Explorers might spot them on their way to see Liko’s grandmother. The trains are out of service for today, so Liko, Roy and Murdock go explore Motostoke City for shopping and visiting the Battle Cafe at the request of Dot who wants to use their famous Swirlix Cotton Candy as a prop for her next video. It turns out that the owner of the Battle Cafe is none other than Mitchell, an old friend and former business partner of Murdock whom he parted with on bad terms. They used to work together in a small sweets shop where their sweets were super popular thanks to Milcery’s milk. One day, Milcery played with a strawberry and spun around, causing her to evolve into the Ruby Swirl Alcremie that is with Murdock in the present. While she enhances Murdock’s strawberry sweets, she does not fit well with Mitchell’s matcha sweets; this caused them to have a falling out after Mitchell lashed out against Alcremie and Murdock. Their tension continues in the present.
Right off the bat, why does it seem like Murdock’s backstory with Mitchell and Alcremie seem like divorced dads in a way? Is it just me who thinks this way? The way it was executed seem like two dads having a falling out after their daughter went through puberty and changed in a way that Mitchell didn’t want her to be. I’m sorry if I made things fruity, but that was how I saw their interactions with each other. I’m glad that they managed to resolve their issues in the end. I think the best part of these backstories for the Rising Volt Tacklers is that they leave so much more about them yet to be revealed. Murdock’s backstory only showed a portion of his life, and I hope that more about him will be revealed in the future.
About Murdock, I really like that despite being an adult, he’s still emotional and sensitive. Adults are still people at the end of the day, so it’s normal for them to cry or feel angry in certain situations. I’m glad that children like Liko understand that; it will be a good lesson for kids to learn if they were watch this episode. I really like Kenta Miyake’s voice acting in this episode; he knows how to nail Murdock’s sensitivity to show how the issue still bothers him.
Mitchell, the character of the day, is quite the character. It seems like he's intended to be the anime counterpart of the Cafe Master in SwSh given how he owns a Slurpuff and runs the Battle Cafe as the owner. I do like how flawed he is because he’s still human at the end of the day. He knew it was wrong to hurt Alcremie but he couldn’t help but to feel envious of Murdock’s talents. The food industry is a competitive field, after all; it makes sense if there are tensions and rivalries. I also liked how all of his Pokémon are based on desserts in a way. I’m actually surprised he is voiced by the one and only Hikaru Midorikawa. If you’re not familiar with Midorikawa, he voices N in Pokémon Masters EX, and provided voices for two characters of the day, Damian and Mandi, in the original series of the Pokémon anime. His non-Pokémon roles includes Sakamoto from Haven’t You Heard, I’m Sakamoto, Zelgadis from Slayers, and Garou from One Punch Man. He’s a seriously famous veteran voice actor, so hearing him as a sudden character of the day for this episode was a welcoming surprise from me.
While it was nice seeing what Alcremie could do and seeing Appletun using Apple Acid on screen, the battle between Mitchell, Liko and Murdock ended up being a silly one. My favorite part was Alcremie using her cream to make a terastal-like headpiece on Sprigatito’s head. I didn’t mind the battle transitioning into a sweets battle, but I did want to see them actually bring out a table and start making the sweets rather than doing slideshows. All of the sweets they make look delicious however; this is perfect for people who love sweets - I just love matcha sweets!
I love how this episode ended, however. Roy was looking around for clues about the black Rayquaza and one lead he got was asking Kabu, the Motostoke City’s Gym Leader, since he’s from Hoenn. The episode ended just as Kabu got introduced. I think it’s a good way to end off the episode as Kabu will be the star of next week’s episode. What are your thoughts about this episode? Did it make you crave for sweets like how I did?
