Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 222: "The Promise with Lugia!!"
English Episode 513:  "A Promise is a Promise"
Pokemon Dare Da?  Lugia (Japanese), Exeggutor (English)
Orchid-Hakase Pokemon Lecture:  Fire
Japanese Air Date:  November 1st, 2001
American Air Date:  December 7th, 2002
Important Places:  Bouze Town (Transit Town)

After Satoshi and his friends wake up Namba-Hakase enters the room and explains his plans to use Lugia to help develop his pokemon strength amplifiers!  He then decides to use Satoshi's Pikachu and Hiroshi's Leon to show off these "Namba No. 5" machines!  Meanwhile, Musashi and her teammates sneak back into the Rocket-Dan's underwater base and hatch a plan to free our heroes so they can use the distractions they'll inevitably cause to grab Lugia while nobody's looking.  They use Osamu, who also managed to sneak into the base, to free our heroes from their cage and allow them to rescue their Pikachu from danger.  Elsewhere, Yamato and Kosaburou catch up with Musashi, Kojirou, and Nyasu and initiate a battle in the room where the parent Lugia's being kept.  The fight between the two Rocket groups results in Lugia accidentally being freed, allowing it to wreak havoc on the base and forcing it to come back up to the surface.  Satoshi and his friends, meanwhile, manage to defeat Namba-Hakase's Eleboo and free the Kid Lugia.  Now that both the Lugia are free the parent and child are reunited but Lugia won't calm down!  Can it ever trust humans again?  Luckily, Lugia decides to shield our heroes from some falling debris, proving that there's still hope.  Later, our heroes bid farewell to the two Lugia as well as Hiroshi and Osamu as they have Luka take them to Bouze Town where they'll be able to catch a ferry to Asagi City.

---

Thoughts
The conclusion of the Lugia arc is actually kind of amazing when you think about it.  It's an episode that manages to wrap up about a bajillion different plot points all without seeming even the least bit rushed or letting us down in any way.  Every scene has a purpose, every character has his or her role, and every event unfolds in a natural way that makes sense.  It kind of makes the Groudon vs. Kyogre two-parter from Advanced Generation even more amazing, y'know?  After all, if the series could do so well at its first attempt at a major legendary pokemon arc like this then why did they drop the ball a few years later?

I think part of what helped is that this three-parter had a very clear structure that really helped guide the writers when they were constructing each episode.  Part One featured the child Lugia being kidnapped, Part Two featured the parent Lugia being kidnapped, and Part Three featured both of them being freed.  You have to get this, this, and this done by the end of this episode.  It seems pretty clear to me that this episode was planned out before the other two were even started and I think that helped things tremendously. 

This episode marks the last time we see a number of these characters in Pocket Monsters.  Hiroshi, Léon, Yamato, Kosaburou, and Namba-Hakase won't be back until the Side Story episodes and Lugia hasn't appeared in-person since this three-parter either.  While I'm not upset with the way the three-parter ended it is a bit strange how anti-climatic some of these characters' departures were.  Especially Hiroshi; he was built up to be one of Satoshi's best friends and rivals and yet his departure from the series is treated like that of any other character of the day.  Shouldn't he get a little bit more?  I'm sure the writers didn't want to do this big farewell scene so they could leave themselves open to Hiroshi coming back but it's been about a decade and a half since this episode aired and the two of them still haven't crossed paths again so I think it's safe to say that ship has sailed.

Yamato and Kosaburou blasting off with the regular Rocket trio, however, was kind of perfect. 

Namba-Hakase seems like a character they weren't planning to ever use again - his battle against Satoshi felt kind of final, y'know? - but he shows up a few more times after this so I guess the writers really liked him or something.  I really liked the way that battle worked, by the way.  Using Light Screen to prevent the kids from aiming for the Namba No. 5 the way they did earlier with Yamato and Kosaburou's pokemon shows a level of strategy that you don't see the villains in this show use too often.  Who would have thought Namba-Hakase was that decent of a battler?

The Japanese version of this arc used a ton of music from Revelation Lugia to help give these episodes a much more theatrical feel to them and also because why not?  Lugia episodes, Lugia movie music...makes sense, right?  4Kids apparently didn't think so because not only did they decide to replace every single track from the movie throughout the entire three-parter (so like 90% of the soundtrack) but it seems like they also didn't use any from their version of the second movie either?  I mean, maybe they did and I didn't notice since the music in 4Kids' version of that movie was just so boring and forgettable?  This episode turned out better than the other two episodes in the trilogy but to be honest that's not saying a whole lot.

Dialogue Edit
This happens right after the title screen:

Oliver:  "Silver...unh!  Don't worry Luka!  Let's help 'em, Lanturn."
Luka:  "Oliver, please, be careful!"

Originally Luka yells at Osamu to wait and not go out.

The majority of this episode's script edits, however, take place during Namba's conversation with our captive heroes:

Professor Namba:  "Greetings, my young friends, and welcome to Team Rocket's command center.  My name is Professor Namba and I'll be your host for the evening."

Namba-Hakase refers to their base as their "secret base" (ロケット団のひみつ基地), not the "command center."  He also adds that he's the head of both the secret base and the project being worked on there, something his dub counterpart neglects to mention.

The "command center" line that the dub comes up with kind of sounds like Professor Namba's telling the kids that this underwater base is a much bigger deal than it really is.

The rewrites continue:

Professor Namba:  "I have now discovered a way to transform Lugia's power into a completely new form of energy that only I will be able to control.  Pokémon are meant to serve us humans, after all."

Everything here's good up until the "that only I will be able to control" part.  Originally Namba-Hakase says that this energy will be used to progress the human race even further.  He doesn't go into any details about how exactly his research will help humans  but he never says anything about him being the only one to be able to control this energy either.  The last sentence is more or less the same as the Japanese version.

Professor Namba:  "You annoying, naive little kiddies just don't have a clue, do you?  Nature's only purpose is to serve all of mankind - nothing more and nothing less."

Here, Namba-Hakase tells our heroes that humans are the chosen ones and that it is therefore only natural for all other creatures to be subservient to them.

The running joke:

Misty:  "What makes you think you're any better than the Pokémon?"
Professor Namba:  "Ha!  I know I'm superior to them!"

Originally Kasumi yells at Fumba-Hakase, causing Namba-Hakase to angrily correct her.

The Rocket trio find out that Ash and his friends have been captured:

See, TPCI aren't the only ones who love alliteration!

Anyway, I wanted to point out that Musashi doesn't refer to the Lugia as "condors" in the Japanese version; she just refers to them as Lugia and the child Lugia, just like always.

Jessie tells Oliver the passcode to the door:


Originally Kojirou called themselves "allies of justice" (正義の味方) instead of superheroes.  It's not a huge change or anything but I just think "allies of justice" is a much more Rocket-Dan type line than the comparatively plain "superheroes" thing is.

Our heroes yell at Professor Namba:


In the Japanese version Kasumi calls the professor Zemba-Hakase.  The professor corrects her by saying that his name's Namba, not Zemba.

4Kids does keep this name joke in, however:


The name Kosaburou calls Kojirou in the original is Kosanjirou (コサンジロウ), which is a combination of Kosanji (the name everyone mistakenly calls Kosaburou by) and Kojirou.

Side Note
Speaking of Kosaburou, the end credits for both this episode and the other two episodes in this arc do something kind of hilarious: they misspell Kosaburou's name!  The Rocket-Dan member's name is usually spelled out as コサブロウ (Kosaburou) but in the end credits it's spelled out as コサブロー (Kosaburoh) instead.


Click on the image to see a larger version.

This isn't quite the same as the gag that they usually do where they call him Kosanji by mistake but it's still kind of funny that they made the same misspelling error three episodes in a row.  Was this an intentional joke or just an honest yet also hilarious mistake?

Either way, you have to feel bad for Kosaburou.

Cut - 1 second
A shot of our heroes running past the unconscious Rocket grunts gets cut from the dub.


There's a huge time cut later in the episode so I'm not really sure why this one was necessary.

Dialogue Edit
Right after our heroes run into the room with the child Lugia:


Does 4Kids enjoy rewriting all these name goof-ups?  Apparently yes!

This time Kasumi refers to Namba-Hakase as Zumba-Hakase.

Cut - 14 seconds
The sequence where the parent Lugia breaks out of its prison and all the named Rocket-Dan members react is played twice in the Japanese version; once before the show goes to commercial and once again after it comes back from the break.  There is no commercial break at this point in the English dub so they cut the first occurrence of this footage to avoid having the same scenes play back to back.

Dialogue Edit
Amazingly enough the script for the entire Namba battle as well as the Lugia learns to trust humans again portion of the episode is pretty decent.  The music choices are atrocious during the latter but script-wise everything's alright.

We don't really get a noticeable change again until we see Professor Namba and the rest of the Rocket grunts floating in the ocean:


Last Namba mix-up of the series:  originally the Rocket Grunt calls the professor Damba-Hakase.

Side Note
I think it's pretty shocking that this line:


...was something that took place in the 4Kids dub.  Usually this dub likes to avoid any mention of religion at all costs but yet here they are, using the word "Heaven" like it's no big deal at all.  Which, I mean, it isn't, but hearing it used in a dub that usually dances around topics like that is surprising to say the least. 

The original Japanese line is more or less the same:  "Grandfather, please look over that parent and child Lugia so that they'll be able to live in peace from here on out" (おじいちゃん、あのルギアの親子が、ずっと平和に暮らせるように天国から見守ってあげてね).

Cut - six seconds
The fading transition shot from the sunset to the boat on the following morning is shortened by six seconds in the dub.

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