Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 024:  "Ghost vs. Psychic!"
American Episode 123:  "Haunter versus Kadabra"
Pokémon Dare Da?  Ghost
Japanese Air Date:  September 9th, 1997
American Air Date:  October 8th, 1998
Important Characters:  Natsume's mother (Sabrina's mother)
Important Places:  Tamamushi City (Celadon City)

Satoshi, now with a ghost-type pokemon, returns to Yamabuki City to challenge the Gym Leader Natsume to a rematch.  When the battle commences, Satoshi calls on Ghost...but it's nowhere to be found!  Satoshi, unable to use his trump card, starts to run away.  As Kasumi and Takeshi follow behind, Natsume's doll uses her powers to transform them into dolls!  It looks like Satoshi is about to share the same fate when the bearded man from before appears and teleports Satoshi to safety.  Once outside, he tells the young trainer that Natsume is divided into two forms:  the adult, who is a serious pokemon trainer, and the doll, which symbolizes her lost childhood.  Since the only way to return Kasumi and Takeshi back to normal is to defeat Natsume, Satoshi resumes his search for Ghost.  He eventually finds his pokemon in the city and returns with it to the gym to another rematch.  However, Ghost refuses to show up for battle!  So, a desperate Satoshi calls on Pikachu to battle in its place.  The electric pokemon is able to get in a few hits, but all the damage it dishes out is undone by Yungeller's Recover technique.  Just as all seems lost, Ghost appears and starts to joke around with Natsume.  Natsume laughs at the pokemon's antics, and Yungeller, who had been linked telepathically to the gym leader, begins to laugh as well.  Yungeller is declared unable to battle, earning Satoshi a victory.  Kasumi and Takeshi are returned to normal, and Satoshi is given the Gold Badge!  The next closest gym is in Tamamushi City, so Satoshi and his friends head in that direction to get Satoshi's sixth Gym Badge.

---

Thoughts
As this particular story arc comes to a close, we also get to see the end of Satoshi's most difficult Gym Leader battle yet.  Sure, Satoshi had been in a number of rematches by this point in the series before, but none of the other Gym Leaders have given him the trouble that Natsume gave him.  While a lot of the ideas here aren't as well developed as, say, the stuff we see throughout the Muro Island arc, seeing Satoshi have a struggle that can't be resolved in just one episode is a really important milestone for the series.

The outcome is kind of lame and anticlimactic since Satoshi didn't really earn the badge, but that's OK because it's Kanto and Kanto is apparently flawless and anyone who criticizes it is crazy.

It's also weird to see Takeshi show a fear of ghost pokemon since it's something that really won't come up too often as the show goes on.  It would have been interesting to see something like this expanded on, wouldn't it?

The dub has a weird rewrite with that Team Rocket scene, but everything else is up to their usual standard, whatever that means. 

Dialogue Edit
This first change occurs right after the recap of the previous episode:

Narrator:  "Now Ash is ready to face Sabrina in the biggest Pokémon showdown of his life."

"The biggest showdown of his life?"  Isn't that exaggerating things a bit, Mr. Narrator?  I could buy "the biggest showdown yet,", but the biggest one in his entire life?  Nuh-uh.

In the Japanese version, the narrator simply says that Satoshi has come back to Yamabuki City.

Paint Edit
When Satoshi first enters the gym, Takeshi and Kasumi are reluctant to enter.  So, they stay behind holding signs to support Satoshi.  Of course, they were changed for the American dub:

For those of you wondering; the sign in Kasumi's right hand says "Guts!" (ガッツだ), the sign in her left hand says "Do Your Best!" (ファイトだ), the sign in Takeshi's hands says "Never Give Up, Satoshi!" (ネバーギブアップサトシ！), and the sign in Pikachu's hands says "Good Luck!" (がんばれ).

Also...check out Takeshi's and Brock's eyebrows in those last images.  WEIRD.

Dialogue Edit
The wording of this next one kind of stuck out to me for some reason:


Takeshi says the same thing, more or less, but the wording is a bit different; he says that while catching Ghost is fine and all, he needs to remember to keep an eye on it.

The different is minor, but it is there.

Also...you know how, in the previous comparison, I said that nobody really used the term "get" to refer to Ghost?  Well, in this one, both Satoshi and Natsume use the term to refer to the pokemon who's following Satoshi around, pretty much telling us that Ghost is considered to be one of Satoshi's pokemon like Pikachu and all the rest.

Yet if that's the case...why didn't it show up with everyone else in Spurt!?  Argh.

Later in the episode, when Satoshi is sitting down with Natsume's dad, he guesses that the bearded man must have been Natsume's next-door neighbor.  This is changed to Ash thinking that he's a photographer for the dub.

The biggest rewrite in the episode, though, occurs during the Rocket-Dan scene.  You know how that egg randomly falls from the sky onto the Rocket duo?  And then James starts going on about how the egg preceded the chicken and all that? 

Well, originally, the dialogue isn't quite so random because the egg that falls on them is meant to be a Columbus egg.  After the humans tell Nyarth about how ingenious it is to use an ordinary net as a new kind of weapon, the Columbus egg falls on Musashi and Kojirou, and then Kojirou gets up and explains what a Columbus egg actually is.  Musashi then answers by saying that she thought the term "Columbus egg" was referring to how Christopher Columbus liked eggs or something.

(For those of you who can't be bothered to click on that link...a Columbus egg is a term describing an idea that seems really easy and simple after the fact.  So here, the "Columbus egg" would be having the vision to use a fishing net as a weapon with which to capture Pikachu, an idea that seems extremely obvious only after somebody brings it up in the first place).

It's an entirely translatable bit of dialogue, but I guess 4Kids didn't want to make it look like the Rocket-Dan actually knew something (see below).  Either that, or none of the employees there had any idea what the heck a "Columbus egg" was.  Sites like Wikipedia didn't exist back in 1998, so it's entirely possible that whoever looked over the translated script was like "what in the world is that?" and decided to just say "screw it" and rewrote it.

Also,


Um...Einstein didn't invent the light bulb, Jessie.  Credit for that goes to Thomas Edison.

Finally,

The d-word?  In this show?  Pretty gutsy, 4Kids.  Pretty gutsy.

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This page was last updated on September 20th, 2010