A random blog where I ramble occasionally about completely pointless stuff. Oh, and all the titles are are lyrics for some reason :P
Beauty and the Beach!
Posted January 2nd, 2011 at 3:55 PM by I Laugh at your Misfortune!
Ok, first things first here - some facts we need to get straight. The infamous version of this episode is indeed the Japanese version. Since we all know that I'm too stupid to learn Japanese and too lazy to read subtitles, I've rewatched the dubbed version and that's the one I'm talking about here. That said, in an episode like this, we do need to at least consider both versions. To those of you who have little experience of the earlier anime episodes, here's the quick rundown: this episode was originally not aired outside of Japan because of overly sexual content. Mainly, James wears inflatable breasts and a bikini. No, really. And then Jessie teases Misty for being more flat-chested then James is now. No, REALLY. It's times like this that remind you how different a culture can be even if it seems superficially similar. Now I'm not saying that this episode went down perfectly fine in Japan, but it aired happily and without any of the heavy editing which took place when we were finally allowed to see it.
Anyway, was the episode much good? Well, it's...ok. Even after the edits, it certainly seems a lot more risqué than other episodes and Misty finds herself the object of rather a lot of unwanted attention, first from Ash and Brock and then...Moe. Yeah, that's not weird at all.
Gary's appearance was also a little random. I get that it's still early in the series and the writers want to establish him as the main rival, but it would have been nice if he'd done a bit more than turn up, insult Ash and then leave. This would've been a great oppurtunity to demonstrate his (current) superiority to Ash - Ash tries and fails to chase off Team Rocket with their Gyarados sub, so Gary steps in and beats them with ease. That way we could get some real rivalry going on. Still, it works pretty well both as a self-contained episode and within the greater continuity. So, I'll leave this here and I'll leave you with my ELoT:
Spoiler:
Next time: Tentacool and Tentacruel!

Total Comments 3
Comments
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Posted January 2nd, 2011 at 4:01 PM by Aquacorde
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Posted January 3rd, 2011 at 11:11 AM by I Laugh at your Misfortune!
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Posted January 3rd, 2011 at 1:10 PM by Aquacorde


