ITALUKE

This episode was complete filler, it contributed almost nothing, but what it did was made in a good way. In this episode we get to see Ash grow more responsible, similarly to him sacrificating himself for Pikachu during the storm in the previous episodes, this time around he does something similar for his Metapod. We get to see an hillarious fight with a Samurai where both use a Metapod and the only attack they use does no damage but only increase defense, which was pretty funny, I remember seeing a sketch about pokemon in real life where they had that same battle take place. Anyway, nothing much going on plotwise, but we get characters changing.

This episode was nice, it showed what we all felt when catching our first pokemon, and the love we had for it even if it was just a small bug. Ash love for pokemons is so great that even Misty at one point notices, and it is something she admires of him. This episode also showed what an evolution looks like, and it explained why the Team Rocket are after Pikachu (which is something I think they are mistaken about) so props for that too. I do not know how the opening songs sound like in other languages, but every time I hear the Italian opening I have to sing it aloud because it is so good. Listen to it yourself.

I believe that this episode was made only to introduce new characters, such as the Team Rocket, the policewoman and the nurse. Also, other than introducing new characters, it tries to introduce a lot of new things related to the pokemom universe tech. For example how the pokedex can serve as an identification document, how the pokemon centers have some kind of teleporting method that allows for pokemon to be transferred elsewhere in case of some kind of attach to the building, and we also get to see videocalls happeng in the pokemon center and how it gets electricity...which I find kind of weird, like are those pikachus theirs or do they belong to some trainer and they just borrowed them?