WTF Moments In Pokémon the Animated Series

So yeah, I’d originally planned to tackle this in a video, but since my cold’s still bugging me, I’m gonna take this on old school.

There have been a number of moments in the run of the Pokémon anime that have made me drop whatever I was hold and shout out “WTF?!” Not necessarily bad moments, just…weird moments, or moments that just caught me off-guard. So yeah, because I wanna share these moments with you all, here’s a collection of some of my WTF Moments in the Pokémon Anime.

Misty Almost Let's The Secret Slip

In The Heartbreak of Brock, a girl named Temacu falls in love with Brock in the typical shoe-on-the-other-foot scenario. She even fantasizes the two getting married someday, all the while Ash and Misty are watching, which results in Misty saying THIS…

Now, I THINK the implication is that either Misty let her secret slip that she loves Ash and he freaked out, or she was talking about them getting married to other people and Ash overreacted. However, at the time that I first watched this, my thinking was that I’d missed an episode, they had gotten together, and now Misty was already planning out their china patterns. Naturally, I had to scramble to check to see if I’d missed an episode, and until I had an answer, you better believe I was freaked out.

Pikachu and Swellow's Thunder Armour

In Ash’s battle against Liza & Tate for the Mind Badge, Pikachu and Swellow fly into some clouds and Pikachu fires off a Thunderbolt. The electricity is amplified and shot back at them, and instead of frying them (because remember that Swellow is weak to electricity), the huge electrical surge coats them in something called Thunder Armour that drastically increases their speed and power, even making them able to power through a Hyper Beam with no difficulty. What’s even worse is that Ash somehow knew that would happen and ordered Pikachu to do it. It was never used again, serving as Deus ex machina for that episode. BULLCRAP.

Buneary Defeats Phione and Joins the Beat-A-Legendary Club

I should explain something first: Dawn’s Buneary tends to get on my nerves. Not because of her personality or anything, but rather something a bit more simplistic: SHE NEVER LEARNS ANY MOVES! She knows three moves from her introduction to the series and guess what? She never learns a single new move in the who-knows-how-many episodes that she’s in the show before Dawn leaves the group. So to see her actually join the Beat-A-Legendary Club was infuriating, although as I understand it Phione’s status as a Legendary Pokémon is a hotly contested issue. Me personally, I usually prefer to think of it as one, and don’t really wanna change my mind just because of this episode pissing me off. Would seem lame on my part.

Charizard Loses To Dusclops

This one seriously pissed me off, partly because it’s Ash’s Charizard, partly because his opponent is a Pokémon not even fully evolved, and mostly because Dusclops was winning by pelting Charizard over and over with Will-O-Wisps, a move that should have done JACK-FUCKING-SQUAT to Charizard! And I don’t care that it belonged to the Pyramid King, this still shouldn’t have gone like this. Also, the finisher came after Ash made a bad call to have Charizard use Seismic Toss, but if I saw my best Pokémon at the time getting his butt whooped in a scenario that made no sense, I’d probably pull something stupid outta my ass too!

Pikachu Aims For The Horn

I think everyone has talked about this one. Basically, Pikachu faces off against Blaine’s Rhydon and, finding that Pikachu’s having SERIOUS trouble, has Pikachu aim a Thunderbolt at Rhydon’s horn…and this knocks it out…That doesn’t even match up with the often-times bullshit physics used in the show! We’re told it works because the horn essentially acts as a lightning rod. Ignoring that that’s an ability of Rhydon’s in later games that does the exact opposite, as well as the fact that as a Ground type Rhydon is immune to electrical attacks, 18 episodes later a similar strategy is used on a Bellsprout, and guess what? DOESN’T WORK, because the electrical current is sent harmlessly through to the ground. When you have two episodes that aired less than 20 episodes apart that take the same plan and give two completely opposing theories on what would happen, YOU FAIL! And yeah, I know they were written by different people, but was NOBODY overseeing what they were doing?!

So anyway, those are the WTF moments that stand out most to me. Comment as you like, and by all means, add your own. And with any luck, I should be feeling better soon and can finish work on my newest vid.