Japanese Episode
BW 015







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Dogasu's Backpack | Episode Comparisons | Best Wishes!

BW 015
Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode BW 015:  "The Shippou Gym Battle!  Satoshi vs. the Gym Leader Aloe!!"
American Episode 1415: 
"The Battle According to Lenora!"
Pokémon Live Caster:  Darumakka
Japanese Air Date:  January 6th, 2011
American Air Date:  May 14th, 2011


Aloe, the Shippou City Gym Leader, takes Satoshi and his friends to a restricted area of the museum to conduct their Gym Battle.   After administering a test to determine what type of trainer Satoshi is, Aloe leads the young trainer to the battlefield.  There, she reveals that she'll be using a Yorterrie and a Meeruhog in their two-on-two battle.  Her Yorterrie is up first, so Satoshi calls on his Pokabu.  Before the fire-type has a chance to attack, however, Yorterrie uses Roar to send the challenger's pokemon back into its Monster Ball!  Mijumaru is forced to come out of its Monster Ball unexpectedly, throwing off both the pokemon and its trainer.  Aloe continues her strategy by calling out her Meeruhog and ordering it to use Mean Look.  Mijumaru uses its hotachi to deflect a subsequent Thunderbolt attack, so Aloe orders her pokemon to knock it away.  It obeys, and before long Meeruhog is able to defeat the defenseless water-type with a second Thunderbolt attack.  Pokabu is called out next, so Aloe changes to Yorterrie.  The dog pokemon quickly defeats its opponent with a series of Shadow Ball and Take Down attacks, earning a victory for the Shippou City Gym Leader.  Later, Satoshi sits at the Pokémon Center and wonders how he can win against Aloe.  Joi suggests he go to the Battle Club to train, adding that the Don George there knows Aloe's battle style very well.  Will this training be enough for Satoshi to defeat the Gym Leader and earn her Gym Badge?  To be continued!


Thoughts
We're fifteen episodes into the series and we're already at the second gym.  In Diamond & Pearl, were were just getting around to gym number one.

The writers seem to be rushing things, and I'm not really sure why.  Maybe they don't want to stay in Isshu as long as they did in Shin'ou, for some reason?  Or, maybe they're trying to make Isshu seem like a new Kanto, shitty pacing and all?  I'm not sure why they're doing this, but I do know that I don't really like it.  I still feel like this trio is too new to already be at the second gym, and I feel like Satoshi's team is far too underdeveloped to tackle another gym battle so soon.  The fact that Satoshi uses the same pokemon he did in the first gym doesn't help.

For what it was, though, I thought it was a pretty decent battle.  I really liked the way Aloe set the pace of the battle by using the combination of Roar and Mean Look to catch Satoshi off-guard since it shows how observant she is.  You'd think Satoshi would be over this whole letting his opponent use his straightforward battle style against him thing by now, but I guess not.  Oh well.  At least the loss he experiences here leads him to actually training his pokemon, something we haven't really seen him do since Diamond & Pearl ended.

I also laughed at the random Kyojin no Hoshi reference (the fire in Don George's eyes) at the end of the episode because a) it had nothing to do with anything, and b) because it's like the thousandth reference to that old baseball show this franchise has done.  Will they ever end?

The Rocket-Dan scene in this episode is pretty much one of the only scenes they have that actually advances this boring-as-hell meteorite sub-plot.  So, there's that.  I know a lot of people point to this episode as an example of how much more competent the trio is than they were in the past, but how much "competence" does it take to steal a rock from a museum with its security system dismantled and no human guards on-site?  It's not even like they've never successfully stolen anything before either, so I'm not too sure why this instance gets the praise that it does.  The whole heist does provide a good question, though:  how come the Shippou City museum's super high tech security system didn't detect the Deathmas that was terrorizing the place in the previous episode?

Every now and then, the English version will name an episode after an R-rated book or movie that this show's target audience really has no business looking up.  This time, of this episode seems to be named after the novel The World According to Garp.  And after reading up on the story, I'm coming to a blank as to what TPCI was going for with the allusion.  Is Lenora supposed to be the mother who impregnates herself by basically raping her comatose husband?  Or is she Garp, the son who goes on to cheat on his wife with a transsexual played in the movie version by a young John Lithgow?  And what role does Lenora's Watchog play in all this?

The ending theme, Kokoro no Fanfare, switches to using the second verse of the song as of this episode.  The animation that accompanies it remains the same, however.

Side Note
Aloe's apron gets edited again.  As if we expected anything else.




Just like the last episode, Aloe isn't wearing her apron when she first appears.  She only puts it on once the battle starts.

Oddly enough, Aloe's doesn't put on her apron in the original version of this episode until she gets on the battlefield.  She's apron-less in the library in both versions of the episode.

A grand total of 49 shots were altered in this episode.  Of those shots, three of them were from the previous episode and two of them were new shots that were used multiple times.  So if we omit the recycled shots from the total, we end up with 42 redrawn scenes.  Due to the large number of edits, I had to divide my screenshot gallery into seven pages; you can view the edits here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The explanation of the whys and hows of this edit is a bit on the long side, so I gave them their own page here.

One of the reasons I take screencaps of each and every shot that's been altered is because I want everyone to realize just how much work went into this edit.  A fleeting statement like "Aloe's apron got erased" doesn't really convey the time and money that went into making this change happen and kind of degrades the whole thing into some forgettable piece of trivia.  And, well, I think this deserves more than that.  Even if you disagree with the reasoning behind the edit, you have to at least admire the fact that the animators actually did the work necessary to make it happen.

Dialogue Edit

The script for this episode is actually really good.  There's still a bunch of annoying dub-isms throughout - characters using douchey slang like "stoked" and end almost every command with the words "let's go!" - but, by and large, almost everything here's accurate. 

Aloe's nickname for Dent, for some reason, is "Sommelier Boy."  Since Cilan is no longer a Sommelier in the dub, Lenora's nickname for him was changed to "Connoisseur Boy."

As Lillipup charges toward Tepig with Take Down:

Ash:  "Why won't Ember work!?"

Satoshi simply exclaims that it doesn't work.  He isn't really concerned with why.

Ash:  "Come on, don't look so sad."
Pikachu:  "Pika Pika."
Ash:  "Truth is, it was my fault, not yours, that we lost this.  I'm really sorry you've got a weak trainer, like me."

Ash is a lot more down on himself than Satoshi was.  Originally, Satoshi tells his pokemon that he's no good, but he doesn't go as far as calling himself a weak trainer. 

Finally (told you there were only a few of these!), after Ash thanks Lenora for the battle:


Lenora:  "I like your attitude, Ash.  You really got spirit.  Come challenge me anytime."

Originally, Aloe tells Satoshi that she didn't hate their battle, implying that she wasn't 100% happy with it.  Lenora is a lot more cheerful about how the whole thing worked out.


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