Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 190: Holiday Special 2018 - Pokemon's "Holiday Hi-Jynx"

Episode Date: December 28, 2018

It's that time of the year again: when listeners brave the harsh climates, territorial wolves, and malfunctioning home security devices for a chance to visit the Retronauts Holiday Cabin in parts unknown. And, just like in past years, we'll be using this holiday getaway as a good excuse to discuss a video game-related Christmas cartoon. For 2018, we set our sights on the long-running Pokemon cartoon's first Xmas adventure: "Holiday Hi-Jynx." Along with featuring perhaps the most controversial Pokemon, this episode carries a pretty interesting history--one that goes back to the anime series' lowest moment ever. So grab yourself a warm cup of whatever, find a corner to hide away from your family, and join us for this very Japanese tour of the holiday season.

POMAYOR. Oh! I don't know. Oh! I'm gonnae. Oh! Oh! I'ma-woo.

Oh! Oh! ... ... ... ... ... ...

Oh, hello there. I see you've made it past my elaborate network of drones and goons. Welcome once again to the Retronaut's Holiday Cabin and parts unknown for another Retronaut's Holiday special. The weather's a little nippy outside, so I boiled up a fresh pot of gamer fuel, and I think those gingerbread men are almost ready to come out of the oven. And yes, they are men. Check downstairs.

Unfortunately, this year, only one other person responded to my invitation, but he's a good pal of mine who happens to overlook the fact that so many guests and visitors have disappeared into the snowy waste, only to re-earned. emerge in the spring months as beautiful ice sculptures. Oh yeah, and Steve is in the show. Oh, and I think I hear him now. Hello, Henry. Come on in.

Oh, hi. Boy, it's a wonderful holiday season, isn't it? It is. And I've whipped up a batch of fresh gamer fuel. Take it. It's yours. Ooh, ow. You can't keep the mug, but it's made with real purple.

And usually my customary gift is, uh, Mr. Morgoriam's Wonder Emporium on DVD, but we've had so many of these specials that this year I've had to order a new batch of discount DVDs. So I'm giving you a fresh copy of Inspector Gadget 2 standard definition on, not on Blu-ray, but on Divix. Oh, and it's the, it's the crop version too. I prefer widescreen. No, no, that's what the director prefers. It was actually made with TVs in mind, you see. He's like Stanley Kubrick. French Stewart does look better on television. Yes, he really does. And it's some of his later work, which no one appreciates.

So, yes, we're back in the holiday cabin. And every year we watch a Christmas cartoon and talk about it. And we're sort of running out of them at this point in time. I believe there is a Hubert 1 leftover. But you know what? I don't want to watch that right now. But luckily, Pokemon has so many Christmas episodes all about annual Giffman and things wearing costumes and sometimes reindeer.

But we're going to be talking about the first Pokemon Christmas episode, holiday hijinks for this episode of Retronauts. So in case you don't know, Henry and I do a podcast. called What a Cartoon, which is part of the Talking Simpsons Network. And I think, like, sort of secretly, these holiday specials have been pilots for What a Cartoon for the past five years or so. They've been a good time until then, yeah, this is the first one we've done in the What a Cartoon era, really. Yes. And because I still want to do Pokemon for What a Cartoon, we won't go too heavily into the details of the series. We'll still talk a little bit about this episode's history because it's pretty interesting. I chose it just because it's a Christmas episode, but it has a surprisingly deep.

and sometimes dark history. Emphasis on dark. Yes. Oh, geez. Oh, no. Yes, especially considering the content and when it originally aired. There's a lot of stuff going on there that I had no idea until I did some deeper and darker research.

So, sorry, I'll stop saying the word dark. I swear to God. But I want to give a shout out to dogasu's backpack. Go to dogasu.bawabagarden.net. And it has a lot of information, a lot about every episode and, like, dub differences. This website reminds me of what a website. used to be. You know, before there were just four websites. Yeah, it's got, I love its old school layout, too. It's just like it's text and images. I'm not, it's not all like, I don't know,

too busy or whatever. Yeah, or just like the same gawker looking blog as everything else or the same wiki as everything else. I miss old websites. And it appears to be written by a person who actually speaks Japanese and can understand the localization differences better than most, too. So this episode, again, it's called Holiday High Jinks. And in Japan, it's called Rugella's Christmas because in Japan, Jinks is Rugella. And it was originally intended to be the 39th episode. And it was going to air on December 23rd, 1997. But something happened a week before that. One of the most notable Pokemon things ever, which was the Pokemon shock incident with the episode, I think it was called Electric Soldier Poregon. And that is, I shouldn't have to tell you, because I'm sure that's the

first thing you think of when you think of Pokemon, or maybe it used to be, but that was when a certain visual effect caused a lot of seizures in Japanese people who saw that when it originally aired. And that never aired in America. And because of that, I mean, unless you taped it off TV, you never could see it again after the first air. Exactly. It's gone. Exactly. Yeah. I wonder if you can pass a tape around like the tape from the ring or something like that. Never watch this. But yeah, because of that incident, Pokemon suffered a lot of flack. It went off the air for four months. that anime and animation changed a lot of the visual effects they would usually do so now even today when there's a really cool scene in an anime with like lots of flashing colors and movement the screen

will dim a little bit it happens i think too much now but i guess maybe better safe than sorry Pokemon ruined all anime by exposing exposing this mass seizure thing yeah and it was that was how i first heard of Pokemon because in late 1997 it hadn't come to america yet i wasn't plugged in enough online in 96 and 97 to have heard of Pokemon being a cool game that was taking over Japan. So the first time I saw it was clips of Pikachu zapping people on CNN, where they're talking about this crazy pocket monsters cartoon that's killing children. And that is a testament to the strength of a brand, ladies and gentlemen, that Pokemon could injure children and not suffer, in fact, become even more popular afterwards. That is amazing to me. I feel like in any other context,

Pokemon will be taken off the air and it would just be dead. No one would kill a franchise forever. No franchises do not come back from that type of thing, especially in the first year of their existence. And maybe if it had happened internationally instead of just in Japan, like if this episode had aired worldwide and instead of hundreds of Japanese kids, it was thousands or tens of thousands of children around the world, that might have killed it.

would be a Pokemon shock pandemic. So yes, it didn't kill the show. It's still running today. And it's been running for over 20 years. So it's one of the longer running anime still on TV, although it sort of has goes through like generational changes and different protagonists and stuff like that. Well, it's always Ashen Pikachu, but the people around him change all the time each season. And it was, it kind of is how they tell as producers, they tell the kids, your time is over now. Brock and Misty are gone. We're bringing in new people. People stick around if you want, but your old friends are gone. And so every, they kind of have a finale to each chapter of Ash's life. He even just gives up all his old Pokemon except for Pikachu and starts capturing the new ones of the new video game. He did save the most marketable one. But yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of the OG series because I, that was, those are the ones I watched.

And I was way too old to watch them. I was 16 when this show first aired. And I felt a great shame about liking it. But I had to, I kept my secret Pokemon love a secret. And I watched almost all of the original run of this generation of Pokemon. I watched every episode of the original run of Pokemon. Me and my friends would tape it every afternoon. It was, I mean, the launch of it of Pokemon in America was bonkers because they had everything.

They had like, we've got the two games ready right now. We have all these toys we imported from Japan. And we have 100 episodes of anime that we're just going to play five days a week all the time. And it's going to be the biggest thing on television. Yes, having that almost two years of lead time really helped. I think it was like two years on the game and then one year on the anime and all the merchandise. So they were ready out of the gate. It was a huge hit.

It was a huge gamble, too, because it was an RPG. And we talked about this a lot of retronauts in the past. This was like the, I don't know, the seventh or eighth attempt for Nintendo to be like, here's an RPG. Will you please like this, America? Nintendo of America tried for 15 years to try to get Americans to like RPG. It was like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, things like Illusion of Gaia. and Earthbound. Mystic Quest,

Super Mario RPG. Exactly. And I mean, a lot of those were more popular than others, but this obviously is what made RPGs break through. Like,

there was a real critical point in history. It was like this and Final Fantasy 7 all happening within the same sort of like 18 month period that made RPG's mainstream. And I think like,

we're old now and I think this has got to be a lot of kids' first RPG for generations. This is a lot of like 30-year-old people's first RPG, I'm guessing now. I think the Pokemon

on anime too. It was a bridge for me from the VHS dubbed anime I was watching a ton of in 98, like including a lot of voice actors I knew from Central Park Media and other shows. Exactly. As a big Slayers fan, it was easy

to fall into this because it's like, oh, Ash is Amelia doing a millhouse voice. And Jesse, I believe, is one of the villains and Slayers next. Yeah, like you hear a lot of Slayer. Like, Gowrie is Brock. Yep. And, and

James. Wow, God. And I think they eventually fired all those people because they presumably they wanted more money because they're like, hey, dudes, you're making like billions on this. Well, yeah. So they were definitely all paying the Pokemon the anime. We've talked about this before I want a cartoon is that we both loved this anime and tons of anime. But the exploitative nature of the American localized anime business of non-union bullshit is what killed the animation we loved of the. the 90s because it was just so cheap and it only got cheaper and these guys got fucked over a lot. In 2006, they just fired the whole dubcast and started over again. Though Ted

Lewis got the boot a lot earlier because of the infamous Leo Burnett and Four Kids are the devil moment from episode. Have you heard this story? No, can you please explain that? Mr. Leno. So there's a funny scene. There was a constant

running gag of James being eaten by one of his Pokemon. And so in one scene for some reason, he's talking backwards, like he's been bewitched and he's talking backwards. Can't tell, can't hear what he's saying. He can't make it out. Somebody in the 90s reversed it. And James is saying, Leo Bernard and four kids are the devil, which is the man who ran for

kids and was paying them so cheaply. So he, once that was figured out, he got the boot a lot sooner. That's why James's voice changed. before all the others. Oh, no. Oh, no. That's too bad. Yeah, I never followed it that far,

but I love all those actors so much. And I want to give a shout out to one of them, because upon watching this again, I'm like, oh, my God, I love this voice so much. It is like an even more intense Bugs Bunny voice. That's a voice of meowth. And let's give a shout out to the late Maddie Blowstein.

Actually, she is related to someone who's been on Retronauts before. What? Yes, Jeremy Blowstein, the localizer for a lot of Konami games still localizes things today. she is his sister and she was the voice of meyouth

and she did a lot of really awesome things so please look her up and I love her performances Meowth just so good I was actually laughing at the dub and I couldn't believe I mean these are all good voice actors but I was like wow I'm laughing at these performances but especially meow no our IP

she's no longer with us Maddie which is sad but it's it makes me sad because now in the social media age she would be getting so much more love than she was getting is kind of an anonymous voice actor in an underappreciated role of meowth. Like, so silly and goofy as meowth. She'd be doing rival of videos as meowth.

But yes, also, you might be interested in this. She was also an editor for Marvel. I did know that, yes. I only saw this now. So, yeah, I want to give a shout out because she has passed away. And I love her performances so much. And she was a great dub actor. But I do want to talk about, so what happened with this episode?

So, Pokemon Shock happened with Electric Soldier, Poregon. By the way, the name Poregon bothers me. Why was it never Polygon? Well, it is Polygon in Japan. But why do they localize it badly? Because it's not really a pun is Polygon. It's just a statement. So they thought it's funny to just take the way Japanese pronunciation is of Polygon and just make it the name. It is one of their lazier names. Normally they're a little more fun with the localized names. The laziest one was Seal, but I think it was just called Seal in January.

Japanese. Yes. So, Pokemon shock happens, right? This episode's supposed to be next. But unfortunately, there's a four-month hiatus as Pokemon decides what are we going to do, how are we going to heal the country, what is going to happen next? So the series went back on the air of April of 98. So December of 97 is when the incident happens. April of 98 is when the show goes back on the air.

Only four months. Wow. And so this wasn't the next episode to air because it was a Christmas episode. And also the episode after that didn't air either. So there was a Christmas episode, and then usually anime takes New Year's off or has like a clip show for New Year's because New Year's is a bigger, you know, take work off holiday for Japan as far as I know. Christmas is date night, New Year's is everybody has it off day. You get that big fat check too on New Year's, as Animal Crossing has taught us all. And then the episode after New Year's was going to be another like winter episode.

So both of those did not air in April. They were moved to October. And then when they aired in October, they were called Extra Episodes. And the Pokemon staff said, these are illusions, these are not canon, these never happened. So I think it's because they were airing out of season. They just wanted to disregard them as non-canonical episodes. Though, I have one of, I have a couple of canon points about Pokemon to bring up later. Oh, please do.

Oh, wait, later. Okay. Yes. When we get to it. But, yeah, well, they still had to air it like this eventually, what, premiered in October. So close-ish to Christmas, but not Christmas. Not close enough. Yeah.

But so this actually did air in the U.S. on December 11th of 1999. And, yeah, so it did air here. And then briefly, Jinks was okay with people. I don't think Jinks was ever okay. No, I can't. The second you see Jinks in this episode, I can't imagine a North American producer going like, whoa. Yeah, yeah. This can't air.

I imagine a lot of people saw maybe Mr. Popo and we're like, if they can get away with that, we can put a wig on that thing. I mean, they barely got away with Mr. Popo. Yeah. He started becoming recolored digitally as well, just like Jinks did. Wow. Yeah. I, for some reason, when I was watching this and I was aware of the Mr. Popo thing, I didn't really think of that when I saw Jinks, but, you know, upon reflecting, I'm like, wow, I really should have, you know, because it is obvious as to what they're going for here. But this episode did air in America on December 11th of 99. But after the sort of, you know,

Jinks backlash happened, and I believe the early 2000s, it was taken out of circulation, though, this is easy to find on the internet. If you want to watch this episode for the podcast, just search for the episode title in Daily Motion, or just search for watch holiday hijinks Pokemon, you'll find it, and you're not stealing because they won't give it to you. So that's fair enough. But this episode was actually recolored for the Japanese audience, but that version was never brought back over here. I think they want to avoid using Jinks as much as possible, even though she is one of the original, or it is one of the original 150 Pokemon. Yes, yeah, I mean, you can still catch Jinks and Jinks appears in games, but, and it got a pre-evolution in a sequel game. A lot of some, by being an original gen Pokemon, Jinks still has a lot of like cultural cachet within the Pokemon fan community, but it's, I mean, it's not one of their removed from even the intentional or unintentional racism of it. jinks is not a great design like i don't really like it and also the the pre-evolution of jinks looks

like a cute bird with a wig i mean they made it less offensive i mean it's hard to be more offensive than jinks they'll even lighten the color even more from that purple so yeah that's that's so weird it's still it's still really weird it's still weird but it's better but i want to talk about the relationship of jinks and christmas and what jinks even is and it's sort of nebulous but there are some direct things you can point to so my theory is is in the theory of the dude who wrote that article, you know, that I'm drawing a lot of this from, is that, uh, jinks is Santa's helper. And there are lots of jinks who are Santa's helper because of, uh, Zwart Pete's. Yeah. I was thinking of that too. Uh, and I

didn't know that, you know, mythology really until college, when as a very smart and very white, uh, English major, I read a lot of David Sederis. Yep, yeah. He told us on NPR all about six to eight black men. He was, he was, uh, he was dirty, but also very smart and Ariadite. He was like Saito Bob. He was your gay friend that you all wanted to have. But I recommend you look up the story. It's called 6 to 8 Black Men, and there are videos of him doing live readings of it on YouTube. It's about him learning about the Dutch legend of Santa Claus, where Santa Claus is skinny.

He lives in Spain, but doesn't really speak Spanish. And he has a friend or slave, rather, called Black Pete, or Zwarte Pete, who will whip naughty children with a tree branch and then carry them away to Spain. They were really afraid of Spain He went from slave to friend But always blackface Always blackface Well yes that's Yeah so it's it's messed up

And I think you can definitely track Some of like Japan they like borrowing lots of customs Not unlike America Yeah And they really enjoy as a culture They really like Dutch culture Like I found out a ton of this

From learning about the 70s popularity of anime series of Miyazaki worked on Hayo Miyazaki worked on like Heidi of the Alps and Dog of Flanders like those were mega popular Japan at the time had a real love affair with that Dutch

culture and in similar Netherlands area stuff. But the origin of jinx I think we can trace it to a lot of things so I'm definitely thinking obviously blackface minstrel kind of character but also things like the Galiwag which was a very very popular

And I think storybook character, which was basically just think of Mr. Popo with sort of buckwheat hair from the little rascals. And I remember like as a kid, I was raised by my grandma and my mom. And my grandma would take me to a lot of craft show, like a ton of craft shows. And I would see gollywog style things everywhere, freshly made. It's that is shocking. Like people my grandma's age thought that was like a quaint. Like they probably had those dolls when they were growing up in the 30s or whatever or like earlier. I mean for that for our grandparents age. They grew up, like, everybody did blackface. Like, it was just, it's just entertainment. And the more innocent reaction or more, the more innocent ignorance of it was just, it's a tribute to black people. It's about how much we like you, like, which it's not, it's horrible. Yeah, that's why. You don't need me to tell you that about minstrelsy listener. That's why most of the crafts I saw at those craft shows, and sorry if this is disturbing, but this is what I actually saw as a kid.

It's just like you are a carving of a black person eating a watermelon or sleeping while you're fishing. It's like these are not like, it's not a Goliwad guy with a briefcase, like getting on a train. I mean, those were also the lawn jockeys of the south that I grew up on too. They're in Ohio too. They were there when I went back and I'm like, what's even, what's even happening guys? How can this still be happening? Yeah, in the north. I thought we had standards, everybody.

But yeah, so there's that, you know, blackface, minstrelsy, goliwag, gongero, which was a huge thing in Japan. when Pokemon was being developed, and that was a brief fashion fad in which women would basically, it wasn't exactly blackface, it was like dark bronze face. Ultra tan, with, like, electric white makeup kind of. So it was about, it wasn't exactly black face. It was more about just trying to have a shock of disparate colors on your face, including having a long blonde wig with your very dark skin. And in some of the Gangadro pictures, they get a little darker than others. And in some cases, it's meant, like, it is meant to evoke blackface. Yeah. But this was a very popular trend at the time, it was short-lived. But whenever I would see these characters in anime, they'd always be like bad girls, you know, the rough girls or whatever.

Well, and, I mean, Japan in general has a difficult history with blackface. I didn't really understand it until Brian Ashcroft. at Kataka wrote several articles about how weird it is how many comedy entertainers on Japanese television today will still be like

well no I'm playing Will Smith in this so I better put on blackface or we're going to be playing a classic Motown singing group we better have wigs and blackface on us it's like huh but I mean it's not just Japan and I'm thinking of like shockingly

recently there's been like a lot of blackface on American TV too. I mean, racism is popular everywhere. And not even when it's like intense and, you know, burning crosses. It could be just very patronizing or I think this makeup looks rather sharp on me. Like, uh, thinking of like, you know, uh, Jimmy Kimmel playing Carl Malone and things like that. And now he's a, but he's a, he's a, he's cool. He's a beloved figure, but. Jimmy Fallon doing his Chris Rock imitation. Exactly. Boy, all the Jimmy's. What's going on? But I don't think those people were like, I hate black people. I'm going to demean them. But it's like, oh, I want to look like this black person.

Let's put some makeup on without realizing like, it's a history of. It's a history of. being harmful and, you know, disrespectful. And, of course, every Halloween, we have to have this conversation again. Halloween is racist Christmas. Yeah, which, like, you know, you don't, there's lots of characters to be. You could even be an African-American celebrity as your costume as a white person. Just don't darken your skin. Like, you just wear the clothes.

There are other ways to be Will Smith for Halloween. Or maybe just get another costume. Yeah, also just get another costume. But if you're really set on being Will Smith and men in black, people will get it without you having to darken your skin. Same with if you wear the jersey of your favorite football player, the name's on it. So you maybe don't need to darken your skin. It's an even better costume. But like we said before, they eventually recolored Jinks even in Japan.

So Jinks is now purple. They made her, sorry, they made, Jinks is a woman, okay? Jinks is a lady. But they made its forearms white instead of black. and like you said Henry their pre-evolution is less of a shocking picture but they did as much as they could

I think they were like well we can't get rid of the giant lips folks so our hands are tied but we'll make her face purple and it's slightly better but it's hard to not think of the history of jinx and you would see characters like this in anime and video games a lot that would still make it over here I'm thinking of like

oil man for Mega Man powered up which is like if you ever see just a dark face with just bright pink lips and like there's like characters in games like Tomba and things like that Like, these things still make it over here. Yeah. But sometimes people don't have the money to take them out or to change them.

But with Pokemon, it's like, you have the money. Oh, they got money for days. I, you are, I just double-checked Pulpity here, Bob. You are correct to use female pronouns because all jinx, you will only find female in the wild. That is, they have a 100% female gender. So, like, Mr. Mime is, okay, because in this anime, it was before they had a gender to Pokemon, they call it jinx it's.

So they called all anime, gender, gender, new, pronouns across the board. Well, that's what's interesting to me in general about the anime. So they have to make up a lot of rules that then will get undone because they're just like, well, how do we tell this story? They don't say, like they don't show what's inside a

Pokemon on the video game, so they just got to make it up and draw it. I like all their crazy rules, but I never thought this discussion of Pokemon would be about racism and gender, but there you go. They're both very important to this episode. No, I can't, I still can't believe they put jinx in this episode. Like, that

They, sorry, I still can't believe that this episode ever got, I wonder if it was just a deal of like, you got to do them all, man. There's no getting out of this. Yeah. Like, this is about jinx and maybe, okay, there's a jinx in the episode, sure. Why not? But there are like 43 jinxes all with their giant pink mouths open at the end of this episode. It's the first thing you see. You see jinx way more than Santa Claus in this. It's all about jinx in it. But I wonder too if maybe they couldn't, they chose not to drop it because one of the strict. rules in American animation is you have a Christmas episode that you air at Christmas time for the kitties. Like, Netflix still does that rule now.

Bojack Horseman, Neo-Yokio, Agretzco, these major shows that just have, normally they just release the full season at once. But for all of those, Netflix sits on a Christmas episode to just release during Christmas and you watch it then. Like, it's weird.

It's crazy. But like I said before, there are a bunch of Christmas episodes. I just wanted to do the first one and I apologize there's so much this is so jinks heavy but it's still lots of fun it's still a fun episode of Pokemon we'll talk about it more when we come back nobody don't like Christmas it's the happy day that everybody loves

it's the snowflakes drifting down as the folks all over town I trim in trees and knitting gloves some people don't like Easter Oh, the Easter eggs, the Easter bunny spring. When the chocolate hits their lips, it goes to...

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They know that Santa Is on his way He's loaded lots of toys and good So we are back, and I want to talk about holiday hijinks with all of you, or for all of you, rather. And it is always fun to see how Japan thinks about Christmas in their very secular way. Anime Christmas episodes always excited me as a kid, as a teen, when I'd see them because it was something fun about, like, the cross-cultural exchange, really, because, like, Christmas is borrowed from, for America, too. like we didn't originate Christmas but we did commercialize it so well we're so good at that but Japan's even better yeah they took it from us and they're like oh this how you commercialize it

but it's also just fun to see the things that they do similar to us and the things they do different from us too especially like one of my favorite anime Christmas episodes is the Ronma one half Christmas party okay yeah it's just like well yeah karaoke we got Setsumas boy oh boy Christmas that's how I celebrate my Christmas but I didn't realize so I had to think about this for a while I don't remember does Team Rocket always live on this mansion on top of a like a weird cliff I believe it's made other appearances okay but it's not a one-off here I I love that they live in a in a castle on the cliff and they all sleep in the same bed it's so adorable I love Team Rocket nothing sexual between Jesse and James no I I wanted to ask you Henry I'm not sure if you're tapped into this but like they became a gay icons team rock. I mean, James, the dude is putting on like a very gay voice. Yeah. And he has a rose all the time. I mean, he's a very classical anime pretty boy. And then his voice was Ted Lewis originally defined his voice as a very gay voice. And then meanwhile, you got Jesse who she's a sexy girl, but with power. Like she has a lot of strength to her. So I can see that the gay icon is to them. I, I, I, uh, that, that's, I didn't really embrace them as gay icons as a gay viewer of the show back then, but I totally see it. They've only, like, as time has gone on and the people who watched the show grew up, they realized, like, oh, these are queer characters or something like that. I just was curious.

Well, as we all get horny, we start to explore those things. Everything turns me on now, but I remember my friend and I would watch the show, we're like, James is gay, right? He's got to be gay. And there's one line, like, an early episode is, like, when he gets caught doing something, he's like, times like this, maybe wish I went straight. straight. And I was like, oh, come on! You can't just do that. He means not being evil. They knew what they were doing, but I appreciate that. But yes, they're all sleeping in their same bed. And we see that Jesse has sprung a trap for Santa Claus, but it's all just, you know, they're staging the trap. It's actually James in a Santa Claus outfit, seeing if the trap will work. It's just your classic net trap to get Santa. It's been a long time since I saw this episode. So at the start, I was like, they capture Santa at the beginning of the episode.

Yeah. And the guinea pig and a gutty sack. There's a lot of fun wordplay in this episode that I, you know, I really like that page. You were talking about the local, all about the localization. But they were a little mean to the localized on this. I think the wordplay is so fun and sillyness. I like it a lot. And they added more Christmas stuff to the dialogue, which I thought was fine.

It's like, yeah, I'd lean into it. It's a Christmas episode. But we find out why Jesse wants to capture Santa Claus through this flash. 10 Christmases ago, a sweet, innocent, beautiful little girl waited for Santa. What was her name? It was me. Oh. It's getting late, Santa Claus.

You better bring me presents or else. Ah! That's him! Hmm Jinks Jinks Is that Santa Claus?

Mm. Jinks, jinks, jim. Jinks? Hmm. Huh? I saw it with my very own eyes. Santa Claus. He's a jinx.

So while Jesse was waiting for Santa Claus to show up, she punches her Bruce Lee doll all across the room when it breaks and jinks comes on the chimney and takes it and then leaves so jesse thinks that jinks or is santa claus and santa claus was stole from her it's so weird she has a bruce lee toy i wonder if that's to imply like well if you're an if you're an adult in 1997 you would have been a child in 1977 so you would own a bruce lee toy well that makes sense perhaps that or it's just

a cute it's very confusing though in this episode she's like my dolly it's like this is a shirtless kung fu man you're calling your dolly it's just odd also i think she's got to be like 17 or something right they're like teenagers she says 10 years ago later in this so yeah she's like 16 or 17 i i really like the uh rachel lilis does such a good job as the like evil voice as a little kid like you better bring me something good like got a real angelic energy to her but i mean so so many uh there's been so many bad web comics and bad nerd jokes about like what if video game was real life but i do have to say that a psychic Pokemon freak me out, especially

they all have, in this episode, especially they all have like sultry voices. I say leave them out of the fighting and capturing. If they can like read your mind and project thoughts into you, I don't want to mess with that. It's a pretty horrifying world, the more you dig into it. But you have to just kind of trust

that Pokemon wouldn't do that. Yes. You just have to be like, well, Pokemon wouldn't do that because they're all wholesome. It's the evil trainers that would do, that would try to make them do that. And later in this episode, the Pocodex calls Jinks a human-shaped Pokemon. And I'm thinking, like, where do you draw the line, Pokemon humans? People also bring up that in the early, part of their localization that changed a lot was that they

reference real-life animals that don't actually exist in the world of Pokemon, because everything's a Pokemon. Pikachu in the first episode is called a, like, I believe, a rodent type creature, a rat type creature. Same with Rotata. And it's just like, well, but that's, there aren't rats here rats are these things so you wouldn't say well it's like a rat it's like what's a rat we have ratas we don't have rats in this world sort of like in star wars there's x wings but there's no uh roman alphabet so hey wait yeah you've ruined star owns so james and meath are skeptical about santa being a jinx obviously uh there this testimony is not a reliable i think the 10 year old testimony of a sleepy little girl and jessie's also a liar a lot of

the time. It's true. She is a scoundrel. And as they're talking about Jinks, we cut to Ash and the crew who see a Jinks on the beach holding a shoe. And Dexter describes Jinks as a human-shaped Pokemon with a special attack called Lovely Kiss, which puts its opponent into a deep sleep. Already, we're in the creep zone. This thing wants to kiss you. It has psychic thoughts. It has like, language. It will also break into your home as we've seen too, which actually, that adds even more to the as we find out that's not what really happened and then of course there's that the dark-skinned jinx broke into jesse's home as far as jesse knows and stole her stuff which uh that adds a whole other layer to this yeah it gets a little bit ugly if you think about it like that

one thing we didn't point out though is the in the origin of jinks that you something you pointed out to me henry it's sort of like she's like an opera singer like the prima donna of an opera the quote unquote fat lady she is i mean from the neck down well she doesn't have a neck but But, you know, I mean, she, that also fits with a kind of actually Holland, Icelandic type thing, too, or the, well, more Germanic, I suppose. But, yeah, I think that that's why she, like, sings out, whether as Jinks or Rugella, that doesn't change in the localization, her singing ability. And that's also why she has kind of more of the, like, you know, hangar the horrible type breastplate, too. Yeah, yeah. Helga style outerwear.

And also, Ash, Ash sucks in catching Pokemon. He is so bad at it, he catches like a dozen Pokemon in the Indigo League. And he gives them way too much. Who would give away a butterfree? You caught it. It's yours forever. Well, the kids had to learn a lesson about death or letting go or something like that. So Ash tries to catch this jinks, and it doesn't work, and they find out why.

That's weird. I wonder why it didn't work. One more time. Wait a minute. Huh? Look at that boot it's holding. Maybe it belongs to its trainer. Maybe.

But then what's it doing here all alone? It is kind of weird for a trainer to leave a Pokemon all by itself like that. Jinks, jinks, jinks, jinks. Jinks, jinks. Jinks, jinks. Jings, jinks. Say what? Jinks, jinks.

Are you trying to tell us something about that boot? Jinks, jing. Let me see. It can't be! What can't be? I think this boot belongs to see. this boot belongs to Santa Claus? To Santa Claus.

Well, what makes you think that? Just look inside. It's got his picture right there. You're right. So Santa Claus exists in this world. And in order to tell the humans what happened, Jinks projects the story into their minds. And I love that, A, if you look at the reality of this and you should, Santa Claus exists for these people. They accept that.

They're like, Santa Claus is real. We all know Santa Claus is real. It's a fact of life. But I love the dialogue of Brock here. when, you know, they're getting the psychic memory from Jinks. And he says, Jinks is psychically projecting his story into our minds. Just like, I can kind of see why fundamentalist Christians would think the show was like,

of the devil. Yeah. Psychic projections, eh? As strategy, though, Ash finally does the, first he goes with an electric type versus ice psychic. But then he's like, no, you go with your fire type against ice. She's like, what is? Is Jinks ice and psychic power mixed? Okay.

She's a dual type. I thought so. And those. are all the accurate moves. So I guess they localize the games and the anime together making sure they had all the accurate terminology. Game Freak definitely had a lot of input

into it. And also you know, Jinks cleaning Santa's boots. That's also a very servile thing. Oh my God. You're unpacking so much more than I ever thought about in this episode, Henry. I mean, maybe Jinks is just her friend his friend doing a nice thing. But

that, well, I didn't know until you until read that article that what they changed with the the picture in his boot is so weird yeah and i guess originally had an in katakana santa claus yeah as a reference to how parents put their kids names and shoes for school as a but that's like a school kid thing so it's kind of a cute like infantilization of santa yeah that he shows his name in his boots the picture is something that nobody does yeah but i guess i don't know why they couldn't have just cropped out the katakana and just wrote in santa or something it seems like less work than to actually get a new picture

and make it look like it was sewn into a boot. Yeah, it's really where he's like, well, it's time for my picture, for my boot. You see a lot of these weird localization changes when they have the technology to add images. It's just like you went way too far. You didn't need to go this far to change this thing, but you had the power.

Like, I like my joke better. They're drunk with power on this. There's a lot of good changes in this too, but some of them are just like, that's weird. The joke, I think, would work, when you see the picture of Santa Claus in his boot, you more go like, huh? Instead of, if you just saw his name written in there,

I think the joke would land a lot better. Yeah, that is true. It just be like, well, just like your name is in your underwear sometimes if you're in Back to the Future or something like that. But, yes, so we find out that Jinks is, she was polishing Santa's boot as she has wanted to do. And while that happened, just through sheer act of nature, she just broke away on an ice flow and floated away.

And apparently this Jinks was just so important. Or maybe, actually, nobody cares about that Jinks, but that boot was vital to Santa's operation. Jan has got one boot and several jinx. It's kind of weird. Just make him another boot. And I do like the gag, too, of the jinx throughout the whole episode is extra amorous to Brock, which is a nice turnabout for Brock, who he's usually the guy who's a little too aggressive talking to all the nurse joys out there. He's a real skirt chaser.

So, yes, it was a real turnabout on Brock. And do not get kissed by those hideous lips. But meanwhile, so Ash and the team are going to say. you know, let's go to the North Pole and let's return this Jinks, and maybe we'll get some presents out of the deal. And meanwhile, Team Rocket is spying on them. Please, no, Jinks, let's call me, please. Oh, it's the twerps again, and it looks like Santa Claus is conning them, too.

It's so close to Christmas, they must be on their way to Santa's Workshop. If we follow them, we'll find his hideout and grab a gazillion gift. That'll teach Santa not to steal from me. We have to figure out a way to get up to Santa's Workshop. I have an idea. Maybe if you use your water Pokemon, they can pull the raft all the way to the North Pole.

And my squirtle will be able to help him out too. Good idea. I should have thought of it. I left that in because it's like total mansplaining from Ash. It's like, hey, hey, water Pokemon expert. We should use the water Pokemon to pull this raft. I love it. Like, I should have thought that. Like, yeah, you really should, Misty.

That should have been a sarcastic reading. Like, yeah, good point, Ash. Oh, yeah, duh. And Misty has to be played more innocent sometimes. I was a mermaid in the video game. I mean, Ash does beat her in the anime, too, for his water gym badge, too. That is true. So after mansplaining, we see Team Rocket pursuing them in their Giardo submarine, and all the Pokemon get tired, and Ash does some sort of strongman competition style feat of strength.

That is insane. A small ball, like, he's this little skinny. He's like a little skinny twirp, too. Like, how's he going to pull that raft? But he does, and he gets tired. A little. And that's when we meet Lapris, another. sultry psychic

Pokemon. I thought maybe we ought to turn that. You're headed in the right direction. Huh? Uh.

Did you just say something? We didn't say anything. You'd better keep swimming or we'll never get there. Yes, I'm hearing things. You've got a long way to go. There's that voice again.

Come with me. Who said that? So yes, Ash gets pulled underwater, and that's when he meets Lappris, who's going to help them? One thing I like about the series... It's a good, it's good act break. But one thing I like about the series, though, is that unlike a lot of anime dubs at the time, they keep at least some of the music. It's easy to tell what they added.

It's the crappy keyboard music. But when there's, like, great orchestrated songs, you know, from the game, it is from the original soundtrack. Yeah, I like that a lot. And the same with when they kept some sounds. I mean, I feel like five years earlier, they would have changed Pikachu's voice. It'd be like, that's too weird or Japanese sounding. Like, so.

That actress has done a lot of stuff. She also plays Chopper in One Piece, and she's played a ton of characters over the past, like, 25 years, but she gets a lot of mileage out of one word. The amount of way she can say Pikachu, the amount of cute grunch she can do, she's amazing. In the localization, it's one of the funniest things they have to change, though, because

in the Japanese version, they're just going to Santa's Island, which is seemingly near -ish-by, but they can't, if you just said, we're going to Santa's Ice Island. That would sound too crazy to kids in 1999, so instead, it has to be the North Pole.

That's where you go to visit Santa, which means they're traveling thousands of miles in the Pacific Ocean. And through like well under sub-zero temperatures. Yes. Yeah. You can't swim naked to the North Pole. No one's, no one's planning this out. They're also pretty cruel to their Pokemon. They're like, hey, quit resting. Get back to swimming. Come on. At least Seiduck didn't have to help, even though Seiduck is a water Pokemon. So, canonically, and I double check this with my husband, uh, who is the bigger Pokemon fan of me. My husband even has he has an ash hat

signed by the original Ash voice actors, Veronica Taylor. Veronica Taylor, yeah. So that's how big a fan he is. But so I was like, boy, does this count is the first time he met Lappres? Does he not pull out the Pocodex when he meets Lappres the next time

even though this is technically not canon? And so we pulled up the episode that's the first of the Islands episodes where they team up with Tracy. Okay. And Oh, the Pokemon Snap guy, right? Yeah, the Pokemon Snap guy who lamely replaces Brock. But so when he

meets a lapris, he's like, hey, that's a lapris. He's not, Pokedex doesn't come out. So this counts as his first time meeting Lapris. Wow, okay. They really should have, yeah, I guess they should have put in the Pocodex if this is like an illusion episode or whatever they want to call it. So there, there's your Canon fuck up right there, Pokemon Company. How did they keep their jobs? So we meet the

Lappris. Apparently the Lappress is one of Santa's Helpers, too, and the Lappress was sent out to find the Jinks, and she's going to help them go to the North Pole, and we get another psychic message protected into a brain, which is happening a lot in this episode. Too much for my taste. This talking psychic Pokemon predates Mew 2 also. Oh, wow. Okay. How come you didn't just introduce yourself when you first saw us? I needed to be sure that your intentions were good. We're just trying to help. Yes, I know. You used all your strength to help bring Jinks back to Santa. That was very very kind of you.

Ah, gee, it's really no big deal. Now to thank you for what you've done, I'll be glad to bring you to Santa's workshop. You will? Yay! Things are very convenient for these characters in this episode. I'll help you. Time for magic.

You earned it through. She's kind of like a blue fairy type thing. Like, through your actions, you've earned the right to meet Santa Claus. You have to. to be pure of heart. Also, as they get colder, I really feel for Misty in her short shorts. Oh, my God, yes.

It reminded me of a last Halloween, or the Halloween of 2017, a grown-up woman friend of mine, who's a huge Pokemon fan. She dressed as Misty, her husband dressed as Ash. And she, about an hour in, she changed into pants because she's like, this shows way more skin than I thought

when I bought these, the items for this. Outfit. Missy's more of a summer costume, anyways. One thing I know is about the Ash's voice, and I love Ronka Taylor's voice. There's a real, like, Kirk Fanhouten style of delivery. Sometimes Ash will be like, ugh, before he starts talking. Yeah, that's true.

I don't know why, but I always think that's very funny. That kind of hesitant anxiety that I feel sometimes. So Team Rocket is still pursuing them and starting to get colder out, and Jinks is, they're taking advantage of Jinks's amorousness by wrapping themselves up in her luxurious hair. Seems pretty warm under that hair. Yeah, I wonder if it can protect you from, you know, sub-zero temperatures and hypothermia, frostbite. Are their feet turning purple? I mean, they should be dying.

They should be dying. That's also why it doesn't make, it only makes sense if they're swimming to an ice island that's near a beach. Like, and they just instantly got cold, the closer they get to it. And normally they're just, though, I mean, not like regular ocean water is particularly warm, but this is colder. Yeah, I mean, taking a journey to the North Pole. be like a at least a two episode arc at best with how normally they approach travel in the show yeah and i can see how they were like let's just not make that can it's weird it's too weird uh when team rocket appears too you get a cool i like this rocket speech because they're just exhausted oh let's hear

it something's wrong prepare for trouble you'll make it double to protect the world from devastation to unite old peoples within our nation to announce the evils of The glove. Extend, reach, stars. Jesse. James. He rocked glassed up at the speed of height. Surrender now, I'll prepare to.

A-to! Me, out that's right. It's freezing out here. Ooh. That's a good time to go under cover. Now that you've led us to his lair, let's have him. Have who? Have who?

Have Santa Claus, that's who? Uh, Santa. That's him right there. What are you talking about? This isn't Santa Claus, it's a jinx. You can't fool me. I know your little secret. Santa Claus is actually a jinx.

They're right to laugh at her after saying that. How stupid are you? We all know Santa Claus. We recognize him by his photograph. We know who Santa Claus is. And presumably Team Rocket works for somebody, right? They work for Giovanni in the Rocking Corporation. Isn't he like saying, like, what are you doing?

Like, what is happening? He has them on a very loose league. guess so until well he's got a lot of every month or so giovanni's got a lot of business interests going on and he's he's trying to clone a mu like giovanni's got a lot uh on his place i guess these are just like two of i mean in the video game team rocket is just like a ton of people yes it's not just two two people uh jesse and james are an invention for the anime to have specific these members of team rocket though you will in some episodes you'll meet the real team rocket or the actual normal team rocket which are blacks outfits with the red are. That's right. And I think they put Jesse and James in Pokemon Yellow, the first post-anime game. Yeah, Pokemon Yellow is, uh, was made as a reaction to the anime to give kids the closer to the anime experience, which Pokemon Let's Go, which just came out on the switch, is really like a remake of Pokemon Yellow. It'll, a ton of ways, including Jesse James and Meowth are a trio you will face in that game, too. I've only played a little,

little tiny bit of it, but it's pretty fun. It's a fun time. Yeah, it is for babies, but you know what i want to play the baby game so team rocket launches a missile and it really just unleashes a net that traps them all under it and while the team ash is trapped under the net they just carry jinks away they're usually pretty bad of kidnapping but they did a good job this time i gotta give them credit i like they carry jinks away like she's a cardboard prop or something she's not even struggling or fighting i love their little like zoop yeah like some really cool like animation smears to they're running around and that's the most japanese joke that stayed in this episode is when meyouth goes under a kotatsu with clementines on top or satsuma's on top of it too which is a very

Japanese winter thing to do yes and actually there were rice crackers there be complete but this is kind of funny because this came up in a conversation I was having with friend of the show Nina Matsumoto um that this thing that meyoth does is a reference to a nursery rhyme in Japanese it's called yuki it's just a traditional nursery rhyme and like the last part of it is like the dog is running in the snow and the cat is under the Kotatsu and that is what Meowth says when he goes into the Kotatsu in Japanese. He says, you know, and the cat goes under the Kotatsu. So the kids watching would know he's referencing the nursery rhyme and Kotatsu's are amazing. I've had the chance to use on recently and every house should have a

Kotatsu. Yeah, they should be normal. I have used a few in my day and they are quite nice. The perfect place to read manga too. What a cold day. To do anything. And so when they, I also love Team Rockets consistent evilness in this episode. When they, the second they get to Santa, they're like, well, time to steal everything. Oh, yeah, let's hear it. Look, it's the real Santa Claus. It can't be. Jinks, jinx, jinx.

Maybe the jinx that took my doll 10 years ago wasn't the real Santa Claus. I hope Lappris gets back in time. Geez If I have to deliver all these presents Without my other boot I'm afraid my toes are going to freeze Maybe this is what you're looking for Oh, thank you, thank you so much

For bringing back my boot By any chance did you find a jinks Look out Santa Claus Those three are on your naughty list What's this? We've got a little surprise for you Santa You're going to be tied up this Christmas That's not too bad

Mowth is ranking their puns. That's not bad. That whole exchange is great. Santa doesn't buy a second set of boots or just make them in his toy making machine. They should have just called them magic boots. Like, Santa needs his magic boots. I don't know if I can deliver these without my other magic boot. And I do like that Team Rocket sort of threatens his life after they tie him up.

It's like, you better cooperate with us where the old man gets it. Yeah. You jigs better not do anything. We got this old man right here. We're going to fuck him up. And in the announcement of the naughty list, too, that's the further, you know, localization of Christmasy things in this, which I really like. I don't think there's a judgmental Santa in Japan. No, I don't think so.

So I think that's more of the Christian influence of Santa. It's like Santa will send you to heaven or to hell. And the jinx, I, for some reason, Jinks makes me think about the servant nature of this more than when I see a bunch of white elves doing it, I'm just like, well, yeah, it's his else. He just makes stuff. Even though it's like, well, do they get paid? What are, what's their relationship to working for Santa Claus? They're celibate immortal beings who are in internal servitude to Santa. I mean, the film Elf told us all about that. That is true. Bob Newhart was involved somehow. Oh, what a cute, what a cute old man. So Santa and Ash both try to intervene in this mad plan by Jesse, but Jesse says she wants to make up for all the Christmas that she never got.

And Santa had no idea what this jinx did to her, which the way they, the way they, the way they use that language, it sounds much uglier. Like, what did the Jinks do to you? Yeah. Yeah. They killed my parents. So, again, another psychic projection happens in this episode where Jinks touches Jesse with its hair and she remembers the night again, like the entire night. It's, well, it's weird one that she is a reliable narrator.

Like, she, she didn't make things up. It's just the choice she made. But I, I'm on Jesse's side. Me and my husband, both when we were watching this, were like, no, fuck you, Sam. You're wrong. I was going to bring it back. But then you had to stop believing in me. It's all your fault, Jesse.

Sorry. You could have given her some sort of statute of limitations or something or some sort of grace period where it's like, you can not believe in me for the time it takes from me to return the doll. Or I'll mail it back to you and just say it's from the government or whatever. She did not have the context she needed to still believe in Santa. And also, she really believes in Santa. She's more insistent than anybody that Santa is real. but I guess... She believes Santa is real

and stole from her But perhaps I would guess You didn't think I was a human being Yeah this very litigious Santa It's like The loophole says You have to believe in me

The human Santa By believing in Jinks You technically were no longer believing in me So I didn't have to bring you gifts anymore So there You know what you signed But the Jinks walks away

And brings back Jesse's fixed toy And she learns the entire lesson That we just complained about I can't believe it That's my dolly. There, you see, I knew my jinx would never steal anything. Well, if your jinx didn't steal it, how come it had it stashed out there in the woods for ten years, Santa Claus?

My jinx was bringing you your presents that Christmas, so your favorite doll was broken, and brought it back to me so I could fix it. I repaired it in my sleigh, and we tried to go back, but you didn't believe in me anymore, and I'm powerless to go where hearts are closed. Jinks, jinx, jinx. You were only trying to help me after all.

How could I have hurt my best friend in the whole world? What? Forgive me. Oh, Jesse is sorry. I guess bad guys can have their feelings hurt, too. Hey, maybe Team Rocket has a heart after all. Now that you know what happened, you can untie me and give back the presents. I'm not that grateful.

See you later. They're still fun and evil. I love that. I love. I was waiting for a skeletor-like change of heart. Like, it is Christmas. Let's get, let's be nice. And instead of like, no, we're going to steal all your shit. Bye. I like that. It's a little subversive. And also, I really like, I'm not sure if it's the same way in the, um, in the original version. But they really play into the melodrama of Jesse's change of heart where not only does she like Jinks. Jinks is her best friend ever. Yeah. All of a sudden. I mean, the, the emotions and the turn is definitely there in the animation too. So yeah. At least some of that has to be. I just, I love her like, I'm not that grateful. Yeah, I think when she makes the turn to back to evil, like her eyes just turn black or like

her eyes get shadowed over in that really classic anime style. And so that was my favorite moment in this episode, that the villains do not have a change of heart and they do want to steal your shit still. She got her doll back and now it's time to steal all the dolls. But the lapris reappears as Team Rocket tries to escape and uses Ice Beam, which is a level 32 attack. So that lapris is at least level 32. Ice beams pretty powerful. It's a good move. Look, there's better moves. Don't think I've ever had a lot. Don't get in me, these Pokemon fans. I don't know if I've ever had a

lapris in my party, though. Lappris is a favorite of mine. I think I beat, I believe Lappris was in my team when I, on Hart Gold, when I finish that one in my first approach to the Elite 4. I believe she was just because Charzard was my main there. So I needed a a good water, a good powerful water type and Lampras is good at that. What was, what was the OPEC class in original Pokemon? Was that ghost? Like nothing could kill the ghost? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The dragon is pretty awesome too. Right. Oh, yeah, dragon was good.

But now, now there's fairy. And I forget what that does. That was X and Y, right? Fairy is the anti-Dragon. Okay. It's dragon. Dragon wasn't weak to many things. So they created fairy, which can be dragons, which I guess that's like. And they grandfathered in certain things as fairies? Yeah, like Jigley Puff became a half, mostly it was half fairy types, but some became full fairy, yes.

Yeah. Please forgive me, Pokemon fans, if I'm getting some of this wrong, okay? But it's mostly correct, yeah. And also, the way they get out of the ropes, he's like, Charzart, burn the ropes. But not their flesh. Yeah, maybe don't burn the ropes

that are on you, like, completely. Like, it's a flamethrower shot at that. They get, like, sort of cartoonishly scorched. So Team Rocket gets their submarine frozen, and then Charmander thaws them out. It feels like That process wasn't necessary. They just need the laprists to lift the submarine and shake it out like it's a bottle of ketchup.

So that's what she does ultimately. I don't know. Maybe it's like, no, they need to feel pain first. Both kinds of pain. They have to, they, for the compact of the episode to be complete, Team Rocket must be hurt a lot before they're allowed to fly off again. And the jinx use their spooky powers in this next clip. I'm sorry. Don't worry, Ash.

We'll get them back. Huh? All right, everyone, use your scy wave. Hey, we're not moving. We'll just pedal faster. We're battling the waves. Hmm, I think it's time to sine wave goodbye now. It looks like Team Rock, it's blasting off again!

I had to leave that in there. But yeah, Santa had a cool action line, too. But now I figured it out. So the freezing and then the burning was to prevent them from getting away. And then the jinx lifted the submarine and shook out all the presents. and then exploded the submarines. That's right. Just blew it up.

Yes, yeah. They have a lot of those geared up submarines. Them exploding, I mean, Team Rocket blasting off again is always fun. It calls back to the characters. They're really inspired by the time book on characters. That's right, yeah. Is that where the castle in the sky villains came from as well?

That sort of idea, too. Yeah. It's like fun but lovable villains and also Nadia, The Secret of Blue Water, the exact same villains. And a little sexuality to it as well, like the one sexy girl who's also mean. Like, yeah, that Jesse fulfills that perfectly. I wanted to say that the Sun and Moon anime, which Pokemon fans turned on before it came out, but is actually the best anime they've done in the longest time because it's funny and silly.

They have fun with it. I see tons of clips online of just the fun drawings they do with it and just the fun scenes they make of it. One of the coolest additions they did was the new for that, generation of X and Y Pokemon Beware, which is a weird ass pink and black giant bear. He for some reason has chosen that he is going to

grab team. Instead of Team Rocket blasting off again, when they are defeated, beware will just appear out of nowhere and kidnap them back to his cave. That's great. And they find increasingly creative ways to have him appear out of nowhere and grab them. I like how they're now

commenting on, you know, the blasting off again thing. Oh, yeah. That's really great. Because I mean, Getting knocked into the sun was just a common anime trope when you wanted to get rid of your villains who would come back. They just get knocked into like, bing, a little star in the sky. It was great. But I want you to hear this one line again. It's got some real, like, Kirk Van Houten energy. I'm sorry.

You're right, yeah. I'm sorry. Oh, my gosh. That is so Kirkmanhouten. That's right. Well, also, yeah, Ash and the gang don't really do much. this episode like Santa saves the day like Ash isn't very proactive in a poochy style here no one's asking where he is yeah actually Team Rocket could have done all this on their own I guess maybe

they needed to follow Ash just to get to Santa's island his Christmas tree island so in way he made this worse yeah though I guess jinx would have never gotten back home without Ash's help so he he did that I guess and maybe Team Rock could have found their way to Santa's island if Ash didn't do it but you know they're not really they don't need a actually wait they don't need ash to guide them to the, in the American version, they don't need ash to guide them to the North Pole. You just go to the North Pole. We all know where Sanchez is. A magnet can tell you, right? I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So Santa asked Lappers to take Ash and the crew back to where it found them, and then Santa takes off with a single pony tie, and he says no reindeer. So

we talked about this before on previous holiday shows where the marker of quality in a holiday show is how many reindeer are you willing to draw? You see, it's like, maybe Santa has three reindeer this year or maybe there's just one special reindeer in this case it's like just one pony taa they could have drawn several but you know it's it's hard to draw a horse let alone eight and then nine with rudolph i guess ponietar is so powerful they just need one uh well yeah though as as my husband told me that that's also because in gen one there are no reindeer equivalent Pokemon by gen two they create the character the Pokemon of Stantler and so in Santa's future Pokemon appearances, he does have Stantlers driving his sleigh, though, not eight, but...

But more than one. Yes, yeah. Come on, guys. You had eight months to work on this episode to make it even better. But yes, we get the nice little ending where they learn a meaning of something. Looks like we're going to have a white Christmas. Big Cautou. I forgot.

Forgot what? I forgot to tell Santa Claus what I want for Christmas. Oh, Santa's. For us, jinx, jeans. For us? Merry Christmas. Oh, thanks, rappers. Don't forget Santa Claus.

And jinx too. Well, this is one Christmas our friends will never forget. And I think Santa's going to remember it for a long time, too. Very uplifting music and the super saccharineer. I think it's a real crock that we didn't get to see what their gifts were. It tells a lot about the character to see what they get for Christmas. Did they even open them? They just get a gift box.

They just look at it. Yeah, like, wow, a box. A wrapped gift. I mean, maybe they're respecting like, well, it's not Christmas Day yet. It better not open it. But no, it would have been such an opportunity for like another joke or just interesting of like, what does Brock want for Christmas? What does Ash want for Christmas?

I don't think I want to know what Brock wants for Christmas. Yeah. It would be like, I could see in the Japanese version, he got like a dirty magazine or something. Oh, yeah, a classic Toriyama dirty magazine. Yeah, with a big H on the cover. I would, and I really wanted to see what Pikachu got because I wanted it to be ketchup. As we all know, Pikachu loves him some ketchup. He does?

Oh, yeah, you haven't heard of the Pikachu and the ketchup? Don't you have a ketchup Pikachu in here somewhere? I do have a ketchup Pikachu toy. Well, it's, I believe it's related to omel rice being, omelette rice being a popular thing, especially for kids. And so Pikachu loves it too And that's why he loves ketchup Which you put on It's one of only a few

I think typical Japanese dishes That's just like Well you have ketchup on it It's an omelet Which doesn't necessarily follow for me I mean people put ketchup on their eggs Sure I used to when I put ketchup on everything

But I don't do that so much anymore Well I don't get eggs in Japan I'll have much because they like them A lot more runny than I like I want dry eggs Those eggs are for dipping But we get one last Scene in which annual gift man comes down from the moon and visits Team Rocket with Jinks.

You might as well take that stocking down after that stunt, Santa's never going to visit us. Well, it doesn't hurt to hope, does it? Santa won't visit if we stay awake all night. Huh? Oh! Gee! Mwak. Oh.

Oh. So did Santa put them to sleep so he could deliver presents? Is he forgiven them? Yeah. Or he's just like just trolling them? So my cultural reading at first was that Jinks is employed one of the many things Jinx does as a partner of Santa's is that she uses her abilities to make kids go to sleep so Santa can give the presents because as we know the rule is the child must be a

sleep for Santa Claus presence. They should have done a lot more with that. Well, but that's, I feel like that is my viewpoint on it because that's the rules we know. Yeah. But the anime production maybe doesn't know the rules of like, well, you have to be asleep for Santa Claus. And so it was, I could see it more as one final punishment to them that they think they're getting a gift. And Jinks instead attacks them basically with a sleep attack. They're getting a good night's sleep, which is the greatest gift of all, especially if you're an adult. As long as you're wearing your new Christmas socks during that night. So thanks again for joining us for this Retron's holiday special. We'll do this every year until the end of time or until they ban Christmas. I've heard that's happening. I've seen those Starbucks cups. I mean, there's still a few holiday animation specials left for video games. Not a time.

I know we've probably missed like five or six of them. I mean, the next three years could just be Pokemon ones if we really want. And they might, yeah, let us know what you think. But any final thoughts on this episode, it's fun. Like I said before, I love seeing Japanese takes on Christmas because they more aligned with my take on Christmas, which is just like, you know, fun party gifts and... Highly secular. Yeah, none of that church for me. Yeah, we're a regular Charlie church is by comparison.

Now, yeah, Japanese Christmas is a ton of fun to me. I love fried chicken as well. But the, well, I am too when I went to, I went to Japan twice during the holiday seasons and just seeing like, the Christmas decorations around Tokyo were so cool. I just, I loved it. It warmed my hearts. And it got actually cold there, way colder than here. So I got to feel Christmas even more. I do want to do Christmas in Tokyo or Japan in general just to see what happens. I just, the sheer decorations is what I like about it. I want to, you know, packed. We can do that. 2019, a Christmas trip to Tokyo, my husband. But we got to stay till January 4th to go to the

Russell Kingdom event at the Tokyo Dome. That's my Christmas. I enjoyed this episode too once you finally get over the basically being dropped into a hot bath of seeing jinks and I'm like oh my god this is I'm going to see this whole episode once you get a nerd to it you're like well this is a fun little Christmas episode yeah just make sure you're not watching it with people that might be offended and you might they may not care about the context you're giving them alone inner room don't watch it at work but like I said it's on daily motion it's not hard to find it's not in circulation I don't think it will ever be in circulation I don't think it will ever be in circulation again in America. I highly doubt that. But it was an insanely popular show that everyone watched, so it's not hard to find if you look hard enough. And you don't have to look very hard. So yeah, just look for it online. Watch it, enjoy this episode. And yes, have a happy holiday, everybody. It's been a great year. I should say that more often. It's been a super great year for retronot. Not so many great things have happened. We're going to be at Magfest in 2019. I can't wait to see you there. And yeah, it's just been a

great year of lots of good opportunities for all of us and a great year for podcasting in general. So thanks again for listening. And thanks if you are a patron. If not, please consider it. If you go to patreon.com slash retronauts and check that out, for the low cost of $3 a month, you can get every episode a week ahead of time and add free, and at a higher bit rate. That's the ideal way to listen to Retronauts. And I think it comes out

to like 50 cents per episode if you break it down because I think we do like six episodes per month. So yes, that is the best way to listen and it helps us support the show. It pays for everything that we do, travel, renting studio space, our equipment, everything like that. Dinner for guests. We like to, you know, pay back our guests a bit.

So, yes, if you're interested in helping the show. And if you like our show and you want the ideal way to listen, please go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts. And Henry is here to tell you what we work on, because if you like this episode of Retronauts about Pokemon, we've got like 40 similar things going on on our own Patreon right now. Yes, me and Bob on the Talking Simpsons Network do two weekly podcasts. One, Talking Simpsons, where we go through a different episode of The Simpsons each week in chronological order. Season 9's about to roll around. And secondly, we do every week. What a Cartoon, where me and Bob take a different animated series and go with a specific episode that we break down in fun style with clips in history, just like we did on this episode.

If you especially are a fan of 90s anime, you'd love to hear our episode about Cowboy Bebop. And also a ton of other ones like Batman, the animated series, Stephen Universe, and our holiday episodes that include the Rugrats, Hanukkah, Clone High Snowflake Day, and American Dad. the best Christmas story never told. And if you really, really want to hear us talk about anime, on our premium podcast of What a Cartoon, the Movie podcast, for $10 a month, you can get access to our brand new Kiki's Delivery Service one where me and Bob talk a ton about the classic Studio Ghibli film.

So support us at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And as for me, I've been one of your hosts for this, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And that's about it for me, folks. I hope you have a great holiday, no matter what you celebrate. and please enjoy the rest of the year and we'll see you next year for a great 2019. Goodbye. The Mueller Report.

Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officer started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's

funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police, they acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.