Belch's Brief Reviews--Aug 11, 2001

[DR. BELCH]

POKJJ#351: "The Psychic Sidekicks"
Ash and crew find themselves outside of a town infested with ghost Pokemon, and a sign outside city limits advises all travellers in the area to pack a psychic Pokemon. Ash and Brock don't have any, but then they excitedly realize Psyduck is a water Pokemon who can use psychic attacks. Talk about desperate.
Meanwhile, Team Rocket is watching the twerps, and Jessy announces she has a scheme to catch Pokemon...and holds up a makeup compact. "you're going to put on more makeup?" asks Meowth, and I figure the scene where she kicks him a new bumhole must have been removed, becasue it cuts back to Team Twerp.
They discover Girafarig, the Palindrome Giraffe Pokemon, whose name is spelled the same backwards or forwards and what has a second head growing out of its butt (that Ash mistakes for a Haunter in a bush)...and its trainer, a lovely young lass who selected this Pokemon because of its odd look and special attack. Now if I understand correctly, it can shoot a ball of energy outside of time several minutes into the future, which really comes in handy in catching its enemies off-guard. She also believes that a trainer and a Pokemon become one with each other and know how the other thinks...and note in that scene how Ash and Pikachu's mannerisms are in sync (berry-eating, head-scratching, etc.--sort of an odd take on the one about dogs and masters looking alike after a while).
At a lake outside of town, a Giant Gengar shows up and makes trouble, even going as far as to eat one trainer's Mr. Mime like a peanut (a disturbing sight for the kiddies, but as we see later, it wasn't really eaten). Brock and Ash--conveniently forgeting that jumbo Gengar in "The Lost City of Pokemopolis"--admit to never seeing such a thing.
Actually, it's one of Jessy and James' robots--and you have to admit, it's one of their most well-thought-out plans yet. The monster not only reflects a psychic beam using mirror eyes but--as James says--uses a psychological approach to crush its spirit. Frankly, I'm pleasantly surprised--I didn't think Jimmy-boy knew an Oedipus complex from an enema.
Girafarig uses telekinesis to float Pikachu up and out of reach of the Gengar robot, and no matter how much it pants and heaves and strains its long supple pink tongue to the limit, it--
You know, I think I finally figured out why they held this one back so long.
Girafarig's trainer, finally reaching that ultimate connection, precognitively sees what the creature has planned ahead of time, and a few seconds later a time-delayed fireball goes right up the bum of the Gengar robot, sending the Rockets--who misinterpreted the meaning of the attack's name and saw their own victory a little prematurely--blasting off again.
Interesting query: if Ash needed a psychic Pokemon, why didn't he call his mom in Pallet Town and ask her to use Oak's machine to send him Mr. Mime?
Also, watch for the bit where Psyduck wusses out and jumps back into his Pokeball when he sees Girafarig's butt head.

CRDCPTRS#26: "Running Out of Time"
Here is where one of Sakura's lapses of judgement and exuberance cost her severely, and it was a good thing Yue didn't see this mistake, or he might have reason to strip her of her cards.
Worried that the cards feel cold and distant, and upon hearing the news from Kero that the cards might leave her in search for a new master if she hasn't transformed them into Star Cards as soon as possible, she freaks. She calls them all forth and nearly drains herself revamping them--but the Dash Card doesn't get transformed and goes into a panic. It possesses Tori's bicycle (which Eli touches earlier, "magnetizing" it, for lack of a better word) and runs about town like it's gone mad.
Kero chides her, saying a Clow Card can't just be summoned without a task to do, and feeling directionless just made Dash a very dangerous animal. Since Sakura's cards and Kero are too slow to catch the panic-stricken rabbit creature, Sakura uses the Loop Card (though she's visibly sapped) to let it run out its frustration until it's tired enough to calm down and evolve quietly.
Madison is upset because she's missed all the fun, and Eli and Ruby are watching the precedings (from a distance) with glee. Eli, unlike Mxylzptlk or Ken the Digimon Emporer, doesn't seem to get upset when he loses (he commends Sakura on her good work), so I have my doubts he's really a villain in the strictest sense--as I've said, he's more like a puckish child, or maybe a scientist of sorts who likes to set up an experiment and watch the results. Though I don't think Sakura much enjoys being a lab rat.
Note the way Li blushes when he answers the phone and hears Sakura's voice, or when she touches him while in the field. He's trying so hard to keep it strictly professional...but I say why fight his emotions? Yue and Kero have said the Cards must eventually pass on to someone else, and it seems fitting that it be the children of the chosen one and a grandson of Clow Reed.
(Edited for mistakes, gracias to L.L. Jojo. Still, any card, no matter how cute, running wild is a still dangerous one. I suppose Sakura's lucky it wasn't a rogue elemental like Fire or Earth, or like I've said before, that Reed never created a Plague Card....)

CUBIX#1: "The Unfixable Robot"
It's basically Pokemon meets Zeta meets Max Steel meets the ill-fated Brats of the Lost Nebula. Although there was some nice human interaction--like between the kids, or the meeting of the hero's robot-hating father and the lady robot mechanic (now there's an intersting couple) in the doughnut shop--it seems most of the focus was on the machines and on the frog-faced villain who sounds like Meowth trying to imitate Gilbert Gottfried. Time and scripts will tell if it lasts a season or goes the way of BotLN....

RH:GRT#17: "Underwater Nightmare"/The Eye of the Storm"
For an action show, this one really bored me to sleep today. The first short was about an underwater theme park built next to a dormant volcano (brilliance on the part of the city planners) and a boy who's terrified to swim but overcomes it when his life is in danger (with the help of a cute dolphin. There was this one woman who kept badmouthing one of the heroes (she msitakes a comlink for a handheld video game at one point), and I was waiting for him to give her what for, although he never did. Pity. At least that would've made things more interesting.

ZETA#12: "Kid Genius"
Bucky's back...and he wants Z and Ro to help him find his parents, who are pains in the butt but he loves them anyway, even if he won't say so. Turns out his old nemesis the doctor kidnapped them to fix his latest invention. which grants youth at the biomolecular level.
First off, it seems cars of the future have an automatic device that will pull off to the road if inclement weather is coming. As we see here, that has good or bad applications (imagine carjackers with remotes like Bucky's that can hack into and fool the system--more folks would get hurt than helped. And why has Bennett never considered using anything like that against Z?) Second, did the doctor's spa remind anyone else of Poison Ivy's in the Batman ep where she turned rich folks into trees?
Anyway, it seems that the first experiments turned people into rejects from Dr. Morrough's island, and the second turned them into toddlers, including Bucky's folks. It gets worse when they stumble into the machine and turn it on, nearly turning themselves into embryos before Z manages to turn it off.
It seems the doctor has lost his mind, blaming Bucky for destroying his life and ruining his last attempt to go legit (though if he has anyone to blame, it's himself--and Mother Nature's little geothermal hot spots, over which the spa is built.
The ending, in which he winds up trapped in a bus filled with screaming kids, was right out of the Freakazoid short "Hero Boy", with Guitierrez trapped in the stolen Freakmobile with hte singing garage mechanics.
Bucky's dilemma reminds me of something I once read on a T-shirt: "Raising parents is hard work...but somebody's gotta do it."
Watch for the scene where Bucky, Ro, and Zeta try to sneak into the spa disguised as an old woman--with three sets of legs? You think someone would've noticed....

[BourgeoisBuffoon]

Geez....so Rocket gets a good plan....eh...it woulda failed anyway. Pity that Ash is too dumb to remember Mr. Mime...and that Gengar "eating" a Mime? Disturbing, yet gets past the censors apparently? I shoulda seen it...and yeah, they have done the "one with pokemon" lesson all the time before...just my little opinion on Pokemon; the others I have indifference to...

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

CC--It was the Dash card that ran amok, not Jump. IIRC, she used Jump while trying to chase Dash.

Rescue Heroes--Gotta love your enthusiasm for this show. Your reviews get shorter and shorter for it each week. The corniness is amusing, though.

Cubix--Look, it's spot the Pokemon VA! That professor chick sounds a lot like Misty/Jessie's VA doing her "Utena" voice...and you spotted Meowth...seeing as this is a 4Kids production, it's amusing to see them try to construct an Ash/Misty dynamic between the two leads.

I was under the impression that Ripping Friends was supposed to premiere on Fox Kids today. I don't think it aired--if it did, then it aired too early in the morning for me to see it. I think Fox just used the show's clips as bumpers for the regular schedule. Talk about misleading...