Review BW078: Hachiku Appears! The Holy Mountain of Ulgamoth!!

[Dogasu]

Hachiku Appears! The Holy Mountain of Ulgamoth!!



Animation - Team Kato
Screenplay - Yukiyoshi Ōhashi
Storyboard - Yūji Asada
Assistant director - Takenori Kawada
Animation director - Masaaki Iwane



As Satoshi and his friends make their way through a mountain on the way to Sekka City, an avalanche of rocks comes falling their way! Luckily, the Gym Leader Hachiku is training nearby and is able to step in and save them with his Tsunbear. He later tells everybody that he was once a star in a set of movies known as the "Ice Trilogy" which, of course, piques the interest of Dent the Movie Sommelier. Suddenly, the sky turns dark, so Satoshi-tachi and Hachiku head deeper into the mountain. Before long, they see a Pokemon Hunter named Rinzoh and his two Bluengel going after Ulgamoth, the guardian of the mountain! Satoshi sends out his Waruvil to protect it but Rinzoh just takes it instead! What will Satoshi do now!?

 

[Eitarou]

A cool episode, but it sucks that Volcarona didn't get to do anything.

At least it had this adorable scene.

 

[Ashs Battle Coach]

yea cool ep, though underwelming volcarona debut

 

[Dogasu]

Yeah, the lack of any good Ulgamoth screentime was disappointing.

I also wish Rinzoh was even half as cool as J was. Like, he was alright, but his boring character design pretty much guaranteed that we'll never see him again.

 

[Spindae2]

Love the episode! Was really good done!!
I missed a bit more Ulgamoth action! but what goes around comes around! He will star in an other episode!
Jellicent were quite nice as well! Hopefully Ranzo will reappear but in a one on one against

 

[Hellion]

First half was funny with Dent fanboying and Satoshi trying to imitate Hachiku, but the hunter plot was dull and felt very much like a requisite Rocket plot of yore. So Dent, Satoshi and Waruvile were funny in the beginning, didn't really care for anything else. Hachiku was okay.

 

[Masurao]

Pretty good episode. The scenes with Ash/Krokorok were funny. Meh on the hunter dude. I do hope Volcarona get's another appearance after his lackluster one here.

 

[Appletree]

Why not having the TRio instead of a dull Pokémon Hunter? They have also proven they can fill a worthless half of the episode or even just two minutes.

Episode was okay though. Ash and Krokorok were awesome in this episode.

 

[Kenji-girl]

Dent. That's all I have to say. The opening of the episode was the best part *shot* I like Krokorok in this episode though. Especially the part where he didn't want to go in the water.

 

[Robo-Floatzel]

The episode started out very good, but then just went to disappointing territory with a dull villain character that's not very interesting (the TRio can certainly prove that they are better than that, and they always fail), and Volcarona barely did ANYTHING at all. I'm going to give this episode a 5/10, but the Krokorok scene made this episode somewhat DECENT, I can give you that...

 

[WatcherMark]

SATOSHI USED ROCK SMASH!

 

[Jukain]

It is nice to see Krokorok in action again, but something nags at my mind: this is the Ash that trains alongside his pokes all the time? The one that even trained alongside Oshawott so he could carry the stone scalchop? I know the gym leaders are supposed to be awesome, but somehow I think the old Ash would've at least showed promise, or kept at it until he could pull it off as well as Brycen.

 

[Ampharos King]

This episode, outside of Krokorok finally doing something after its miserable loss in the previous gym, was meh. It simply felt like Brycen wasn't too good of a character to be introduced in his own episode, and that a hunter and Volcarona subplot were added in just to keep the episode going for another ten minutes. I don't care too much that Cilan was "fanboying" over Brycen; he seems to be a Connoisseur of almost anything or anyone that is relevant to the series. Everything went downhill after the second half. Was that Volcarona just captured because it was there? It would have been a better resolution if the Volcarona actually did something relevant to the episode.

One good thing came out of this episode. We finally got to see moments between Ash and Krokorok that did not involve Pikachu in the mix. Even though I welcome this aspect of the episode, I am still surprised that Ash would send out his Krokorok to train with Brycen and his Beartic. Was it ever explicitly mentioned in the episode why Ash made this decision? He could have sent out his newly evolved Pignite or his Scraggy instead, as they seem to be much more fighting oriented.

 

[Araragi-hakase]

I enjoyed Dento's fangirling and the training scene with Satoshi and Waruvile, but the plot with the poacher was really boring. I expected Ulgamoth to fight back a bit more. It would have been more exciting if Ulgamoth had been referenced or seen before it's capture, it like...came out of nowhere.

 

[Hellwarden]

Pretty solid episode to me. Sure the Hunter was just there for the sake of having a battle towards the end, but at least the hunter came off legitimately threatening. Brycen was definitely set up as a strong opponent for Ash in this ep. They did probably spend too much time training with Brycen for it to become a real fleshed out plot.

 

[Peppermint Phoenix]

THIS EPISODE WAS REDICULOUS!

REALLY?! They had to put the two worst things about the pokemon anime in the same fucking episode. Episode and no one else is noticing FUCKING FUCK SAUCE I'm pissed.


For those of you who aren't aware these are:

1. POKEMON POACHERS AS VILLIANS. Yes they are poachers in real life. Yes it is illegal! But does it belong in Pokemon HELL NO! What exactly did that guy do wrong besides the stealing of Ash's Kokrorok (which he didn't do until AFTER intruded on his business)? Nothing! They do a really poor job of explaining what exactly are they doing wrong. People catch Pokemon all the time the only difference is he's doing it with a net. So why is being put in jail. This also pisses me off when the TRio "steals" wild pokemon. Let's take a good hard look at their justifications of this throughout the series.

Uno: It on a reserve. Okay I understand the importance of reserves but in pokemon the player could catch them all so if these pokemon can be found else where why would we need a reserve. Also half the time it isn't on a reserve so what the fucking hell?
dos: They are doing it for money and Pokemon aren't supposed to be sold. UUUM writers you did things I don't like 4 teh moneyz so why can't they. I assume that pokemon research labs are publicly funded they give out Pokemon so the fed forcing the public to buy Pokemon from them. Fuck you Pokemon world Governments FUCK YOU. Are you doing this to stop the competition? Probably. Go fuck yourself with a rusty spork. And the pokemon league encourages them to catch pokemon so they can get money so in a sense they are doing the same thing and Ash and Co. keep feeding their monopoly. Hey monopolies are apposed by the goverment so, either the Unovian and Kantonian trade commissions are real fucking incompetent or more likely it is owned by the goverment. Three jeers for the hypocritical pokemon fascist state! And hey trainer schools have huge variety of pokemon. So either a the get them all from staff and donations or more likely THE PAY PEOPLE TO GET THEM. Hey don't no battling civilians get pokes as pets so how does a business man get a pokemon for his children. He can either buy some balls and go out with out protection if he's not trainer OR he can pay someone to do it for him. We have pet stores. Also you buy pokemon in the game sometimes it is nessary to catch them all and you BUY the right to catch pokemon in the safari zone so this is demonizing the player which totally violates the purpose of the anime which is to make me a BIGGER fan of the games.

I'll get to the other one later which is super powered people because that took a lot out of me. If you want to talk to me about you can but damn this pissed me off. Bottom line if the "heroes" are going to send someone to jail and call him a monster it better be for a good reason. THANK YOU FOR READING!

Sorry about the swearing but it was a rant.

 

[Trainer Gabriel]

Honestly, I wasn't even impressed with the first half of this episode. It was just strenuous tests and exercises for Ash and Krokorok that didn't seem to go anywhere - though they were amusing.

Once again, Cilan was the best part of the episode.

 

[Grave-E]

I know most people are saying that they only enjoyed the first half of the episode, but honestly? I quite enjoyed the whole thing. I mean, yeah, the poacher dude wasn't really anything special, but he made for good battle fodder for the krok. I like Jellicent, and Krokorok fought well (and got a few funny moments to boot. Locked jaw.), so I felt quite satisfied with what we got.

Volcarona really does deserve another appearance in the future though. Pretty weak debut for one of the most powerful 'mons.

 

[Piplup]

I agree with Gravy, it was a nice ep - I really like Krokorok... also hope it'll evolve eventually
And yeah, Volcarona totally needs a better appearance eventually, which I'm sure it'll get
It's also nice to see Jellicent's two gender versions featured, since we never got to see Hippowdon's female version in DP despite how it was like one of the biggest gender diffences...

 

[Moe]

Am I right in thinking this is about the first time a Dark type has been used deliberately to counter a Ghost type? Moreso, the first time Ash has actually used that type advantage that Dark moves have?

In the past, like with Totodile having Bite it always seemed to be used as if it were still a normal type move.

Previously I'd have just expected him to use Pikachu to counter a water type - of course I suppose Pikachu ending up in a hunter's cage isn't what they want to do with the anime right now.

I do get where Alphaphlare is coming from - so unless the issue is abuse of Pokemon (but how's that different than Ash trying to use his jacket to capture a Pidgey?), this episode consisted of someone trying to capture a wild Pokemon and being sent to jail for it. It wasn't until the battle that coincidently resulted in caging Krokorok that anything unquestionably illegal actually occurred. That said, after 15 years of Team Rocket plots to capture wild Pokemon being treated that way, it's a bit late now to bring that point up.

Still I liked the episode overall, good to see Krokorok getting training, which I think means for the first time in BW all of the Pokemon being used for the Gym battle will actually get training before the battle. Amazing.