Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’ll hope you pardon me for engaging in what has become one of my favorite traditions around here, by rambling my way through another episode of Pokemon Sun and Moon. Traditionally, this would be the week where I’m frantically rushing through new premieres, suffering through the worst indulgences anime has to answer for, and ultimately doing things like jogging in place or jumping jacks while watching, purely to stave off the onset of full brain death.
Instead, I’m not doing that. Due to the support of you folks, I can now mostly spend my time working on projects I enjoy, tackling shows I’d appreciate even if it didn’t pay my bills. Sun and Moon is one such show, and I’m eternally grateful to you all for letting me celebrate shows like this every day. Without further ado, let’s see what Ash and his friends have been up to on the shores of Alola!
Episode 26
Sophocles opens the episode with a pretty solid Kotori corner face. If the Kotori corner face ends up being Love Live!’s most enduring cinematic legacy, I think I could live with that
“Which of these is the tragedy that looms over me during this episode?” Sophocles, are you hearing yourself talk? Why are you so excited about this
Oh my god, Togedemaru tearfully leaving home with a little traveling bindle over his shoulder. This is gonna be a good one
Really, any episode that opens on “guess how the narrative will torture me today!” has a high chance of being excellent. There’s no better use of charming characters than doing terrible and terribly amusing things to them
Sophocles has programmed up a digital Togedemaru with selectable expressions
Togedemaru waving his little arms to reach for the donuts in Sophocles’ thought balloon is a nice gag
Sophocles learns that the family is moving, though it’s clear enough that he’s interpreting this in a more dramatic fashion than his family intends. It’s easy for the show to tonally support Sophocles’ read of the situation: just hammer on those panicked violin strings, and zoom in menacingly on everyone’s faces
Oh gosh, Togedemaru is basically a night light, with his yellow spots glowing in the dark
His parents are being remarkably vague about the details of this move, which in a narrative sense implies it’s such a non-issue that explaining even one detail more would dispel Sophocles’ current sense of despair. Sun and Moon isn’t trying particularly hard to hide that, but in general, you can discover a lot about a show’s narrative intentions by honing in on what it refuses to initially clarify. Many narrative conflicts could be resolved with a frank, honest conversation, but frank, honest conversations don’t make for fun stories, so you can often divine a story’s path by pinpointing what productive conversations it’s steadfastly avoiding
In contrast, from a writer’s perspective, it’s important to do your best to conceal what you’re trying to conceal – that is, make your characters’ conversations seem natural, even though you’re intentionally withholding key information. Otherwise, the audience will be clued into something the characters are not, and this kind of unintended dramatic irony generally results in a lack of immersion in the text – rather than feeling the protagonist’s emotions alongside them, the audience is somewhat detached, waiting for the protagonist to catch up with their own understanding of the situation
Togedemaru doesn’t really understand what’s happening, so Sophocles makes a little slideshow of him being separated from Pikachu. Why would you make him cry, Sophocles!?
Togedemaru trying to hold in his tears while reuniting with Pikachu. BE STRONG, TOGEDEMARU!
Pikachu just casually chilling in a Popplio bubble
A graceful little beat here – Sophocles deduces that Kukui is intentionally avoiding talking about his move, and thus decides to avoid mentioning it as well. A clean enough way to prolong his misconception
Sophocles and Togedemaru are far too emotionally devastated to enjoy this relay race
Lana has a good suspicious face. I mean, Lana has a good everything face – I love how her minimalist design can be contorted in all sorts of creative yet emotionally parsable ways. Her design embodies Sun and Moon’s pursuit of maximum expressiveness through simplified yet incredibly flexible character designs
Sophocles has a bit of that, too – I like how his eyes are drawn as black lines with no white space or irises, which contrasts dramatically with the rest of the cast, but still feels natural here
Sophocles’ friends finally corner him after school, and get the truth out of him
Ash quickly realizes that Sophocles doesn’t want his friends to be brought down by his mood, and thus suggests they continue like always. Once again, Ash demonstrating the kindness and emotional perceptiveness that this show clearly sees as part and parcel in being a pokemon champion
Aw, this trip he goes on with Kaki is so touching. Kaki is clearly the worst of them at directly expressing his feelings, and so he shares his private spot with Sophocles, instead. These little personal moments are one of the things that make this show so special; characters frequently put the ongoing conflict on hold, just to share a nice moment with their friends
And at last, the inevitable reveal: Sophocles is only moving three houses down, and only until his roof repairs are complete. I’m glad they didn’t drag that reveal out all episode – as I said, when you’ve divined more than the audience is technically supposed to, you’re frequently left simply waiting for the characters to catch up
Of course, you can’t really calibrate your work so that all potential audiences will get the “intended” experience. By making things more obscure, and asking more of the audience, you can get some of them invested and feeling like their intelligence is being respected – but other audience members will end up confused, failing to draw the intended conclusions, and thus deducing that the work is either meaningless or incompetently constructed. By making things more clear, you can ensure the audience understands everything – but certain members of the audience will see that as clumsy and condescending, and end up bored by their own ability to predict the course of the narrative. One of the things that isn’t necessarily clear as a viewer, but becomes immediately clear to a critic, is that all media must to some extent choose who it is trying to speak to, and that our perception of that work will naturally be colored by how closely we resemble its intended audience. Things parsing as clever, obvious, or insightful is a reflection of the viewer as much as it is is a reflection of the text
In this case, I think this is a very good turn for this narrative – rather than getting hung up on the initial misunderstanding, we’re going to explore Sophocles’ emotional turmoil over having accidentally mislead his friends, a conflict which makes much more meaningful use of Sun and Moon’s excellent relationships. It is important to center your conflicts around things your narrative is good at!
In Sophocles’ imagination, all of his friends abandon him for his reckless lie. This has to be the meanest that Lillie has ever or will ever look
Oh no, now Lana is taking him on a delightful, friendship-affirming goodbye voyage! He can’t possibly break the news now!
They go whale watching together, watching the Alolan sunset from the back of a Lapras. This show contains such love for Alola itself, and naturally expresses that love through the passions of its cast members. Some really nice cuts here, with Lana’s turn to Sophocles possessing a great sense of volume due to its intricate shading
While Ash is trying to think of a goodbye present, Rotom reminds him that Sophocles’ passion is electricity. Do not electrocute your friend as a goodbye present, Ash
Oh no, now all his friends are getting hyped up about his goodbye party! THIS IS A DISASTER
Kaki lifting Hoshi up so she can hang flowers from the ceiling. My heart is nourished
Goddamnit Sophocles, you can’t just start digging into the feast they made without explaining things
They definitely took particular care with the character art during these goodbye sequences. There’s a buoyancy to their hair that gives the designs a great sense of physical presence, and their expressions are unusually precise, as well
Ash caught him a Charjabug, as expected
Ooh, also some really nice cuts for Togedemaru’s attacks here
And of course, in the end, his friends are just happy to know he’s not going away. They care about you, Sophocles!
And Done
Aw, what a charming episode that was! Though it was very much a Sophocles-focused episode, it also served as a lovely affirmation of the group’s overall bonds, as well as a quiet celebration of Alola itself. Sophocles gained a fair amount of texture here, as we got to see both how he tackles conflicts on his own, and also what specifically his friends like about him. As someone with less of a dynamic, identifiable personality type like Kaki or Lillie, Sophocles has been a bit harder to pin down within the group, so this was a welcome jolt of characterization for him. Top that off with plenty of expressive character art, and you end up with a fine episode that once again proves the merits of Sun and Moon’s character-first drama!
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