Hey everybody, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I could open with another reflection on the darkness in the world today, leading into a paean to Sun and Moon for its levity in these dark times, but the last time I did that I got completely burned by an absolutely terrific (and heartbreaking) reflection on mortality and grief.
So I’m not going to do that, and instead I’ll merely acknowledge that I’m happy you’re all reading, and I hope the week is treating you kindly. For all our overwhelming daily concerns, time always keeps passing, one week follows the next, and eventually things are different from how they are now. Some weeks will possess pain and grief as sharp as that last episode, but other weeks will not, and if we keep muddling through, we can learn to embrace the good times, and take heart during the bad. Today I’m watching some Sun and Moon – if you’re feeling up to it, I’d love for you to join me.
Episode 22
Oh thank god. I was trying to act tough there, but I’m not sure my heart could take another devastating episode right now, and it turns out this episode is called “Beware of Shovels!!!” I am having a hard time conceiving of a way my heart could be broken by an episode called Beware of Shovels
We open on a pan down accompanied by those frantic piano arpeggios, neatly simulating the games’ transitions into battle, as we see Ash and Nyabby preparing to fight
Nyabby can now consistently pull off that fire-charging move he was practicing last episode. Of course, his trainer is Ash, so he’s being forced to try it on a friggin’ fire-type pokemon
Maybe that itself is an intentional effect? One of the important jobs of children’s shows is to promote active learning – to ask children to look at a scenario and think for themselves, by offering clear clues that the characters on-screen seem to miss (this is literally the entire point of Blue’s Clues). Ash basically never abusing type advantages seems like a natural way to provoke this process, by offering the viewers an opportunity to think about how they would have approached this situation differently, and potentially arrived at a better result
The charge-up sadly doesn’t make it all the way to his opponent. Adorable shots of Nyabby ineffectually chomping on this giant lizard tail
Meanwhile, an ominous beach shovel is CREEPING CLOSER
PIKACHU NO THAT SHOVEL’S DANGEROUS
More charming, convincing animal behavior from Pikachu and Rockruff, as they immediately decide the mysterious shovel is some kind of game of fetch
Pikachu is clearly saying “look at this cool shit I found over here.” I’m getting better and better at understanding Pikachuese
And yep, it’s a Sandygast, the sandcastle pokemon. I should have known an episode about these guys was coming – every season of Pokemon is in large part an advertisement for its accompanying game, meaning the show will undoubtedly celebrate many of the unique pokemon of their current generation. And there are few pokemon more explicitly Alola-themed than a sandcastle pokemon!
“If you touch the shovel on its head, you fall under its control.” Jesus christ, and these things hang out on public beaches?
“This is the pokemon you have to be the most careful about when you go to the beach.” WELL THANKS FOR THAT, KAKI
During his childhood, he was actually taken over for a full day, which he spent building an ominous sand tower of unknown purpose. I feel like this entire society is taking these creatures a little too lightly
Rockruff knocks the Sandygast’s shovel off his head, prompting an explosive identity crisis. Ash helpfully chips in by gattai-ing Rotom into the shovel’s empty slot. What is this episode
This in turn makes the Sandyghast so angry that he evolves right there. I’ve never seen a pokemon evolve out of spite before
And then it swallows Ash entirely. Ash is actually inside the Pallosand, waving from its upper window, while the windows to his left and right are used as the “sockets” for its eyes. We’re wading through some absurd body horror territory here, but the episode’s light tone is keeping things from feeling too serious
Serious nightmare fuel, though. I’ve had the “you try to run up a hill of sand, but you keep sinking back down” nightmare before, but I’ve never combined that with actively being inside some awful creature’s stomach
Rockruff foolishly takes a stand against the monster, but Nyabby heroically knocks him out of the way, taking the blow instead. I’m perpetually charmed by how much of our narrative language can easily be conveyed through tiny animals barking their names at each other
The rest of the gang arrives! Kaki’s summation of the sequence of events as “it got mad and then swallowed Ash and Nyabby” feels extremely generous regarding Ash’s culpability in every single stage of this process
Welp, now Pallosand is absorbing Nyabby and Rotom’s life essence to maintain its terrible form. What a day at the beach this has turned out to be
“We have to keep it on the beach and rescue Ash!” Love how easily this show transitions into a full-on kaiju movie
Some nice cuts for Lana as she sends Popplio into battle. I like how the linework gets thick and rougher when her arm moves closer to the “camera” – it’s a neat way of conveying not just energetic motion, but also the idea that we’re seeing greater detail from closer up. As cartoon characters with single, unshifting skin colors, these characters don’t really have blemishes or pores; but they do have lines, and it’s a neat idea to think that if we got closer to them, we’d see the rough edges of those lines
Adding electrical distortion to Rotom’s voice is an effective way to convey him being drained
Popplio and Pikachu in a bubble set off as the Shovel Search Squad. Good, it’s been too long since Popplio got a big role
This is sort of turning into an ensemble celebration of all of Ash’s friends, as well as their pokemon. “Ash got himself trapped doing something extremely stupid, now all of his friends have to take turns trying to rescue him from himself.” Ash is truly destined to bring people together
Another excellent Tough Lillie pose as she explains her plan
I’ve been watching too much Steven Universe. I just saw Rockruff and Snowball communicating and immediately though, “wait, can’t they fuse to save him?”
Incidentally, if you like excellent cartoons (and if you’re here, I assume that’s true), you should give Steven Universe a try. I’m near the end of it now, and it’s grappling with Avatar for my choice of the best American cartoon (well, quasi-American, given the Korean animation teams involved)
It seems like Rotom actually kinda enjoys being included in an adventure, even if it’s as the damsel in distress
Yeah, this really is an ensemble episode. Pallosand is a uniquely imposing antagonist for this series – normally, all conflicts are resolved through something close to one-on-one fights. Here, we instead get to enjoy the satisfaction of watching all these characters we’ve come to know combining their powers to combat a greater foe. And in particular, removing Ash from the equation entirely is very smart – he tends to draw focus, but here, it’s all about his friends
We’re even getting some of the classic shots of the kaiju formula, like the human characters racing towards their destination in the foreground as the kaiju dominates the background, raging out of focus
Top tier reactions for Pikachu and Popplio as they accidentally bubble a Magikarp
Lilly and Snowball are so gentle with each other. All the different cast members have subtly different relationships with their pokemon, and Lilly still treats Snowball like a precious egg
I kinda wonder what composes the Pallosand’s actual “body,” considering they’ve now frozen his sand shell, and are proceeding to punch holes in it from the inside
Nyabby’s mini-arc is cleanly resolved as he breaks them free from their sandy prison
“Hey kids, be careful when you find a shovel at the beach!” Why is this episode trying so hard to traumatize children?
And Done
Ahahah, that was absurd. If not for the general tone of silliness, and the cast’s seeming lack of real concern regarding Ash’s fate, this would have felt like a genuine horror episode – a lurking monster that draws prey into its grasp, a power that turns its victims into mindless slaves, and a final form that outright swallows humans entirely. Instead, it was able to effectively use dashes of horror and kaiju flavoring to season an episode that was most fundamentally about celebrating the unity of all of Ash’s friends, and how far they’ve come as trainers. Alola is apparently brimming with far more terrifying creatures than I’d anticipated, and I’m not sure if I actually want to go to its beaches anymore, but regardless, that was a very fun episode!
This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.