Retsgip’s Anime Blog

Darkshaunz wants a homicidal croagunk.

Score: 8.0/10 (Gregal is The Bomb)

Holy crap what is happening to Bleach? Not just the anime, but the manga too. In fact, the anime is crapping so hard, I think the butts of the creators are sore with failure. I’ve never seen our friend Danny score an episode so low, truth is, I’d have scored it even lower (he’s really too patient). The manga, I’ve nearly given up on it, to be honest (longfight is longer than goddamned longcat). So in my depression and severe lack of Rukia, I turn to Pokemon Diamond and Pearl for any hope of an anime I could enjoy for the next few weeks, as I wait for Bleach to stop sucking harder than an LG Vacuum cleaner. I was pleasantly surprised, and figured that if an anime had to be filler, they should learn from Pokemon.

Kids don’t go to school in Pokemon. They make cute creatures fight to the death.

To my surprise, the opening scene of Episode 9 of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl was ten times the excitement of the current manga chapter of Bleach and the last two episodes of Bleach. Now, I last covered Pokemon Diamond and Pearl when it was still at episodes one through to three. I haven’t taken the liberty to watch the last six episodes either, but that’s okay, seeing as Pokemon is nearly always filler, it’s not like we’ve missed anything much anyway. Hikari (Dawn) is at the opening scene, with her Piplup ready to slam some Bunny ass. I don’t know why Ash, Brock and Dawn are all aboard the pain train to take down this poor bunny, I mean maybe this adorable pokemon killed her best friend or something and she’s been dreaming of sweet, cold revenge up till this moment (might have exaggerated some events there). Either way, we have Ash and Brock standing at the back of Dawn giving the commentary of the battle. I think Ash is qualified because he has beaten like all the Pokemon Trainers, three times over in the entire world, and Brock is probrably eyeing Dawn’s fine loli ass (he can’t fool me).

This is what happens when Bunnies are sick of being named Mr. Fluffles

Its quite the epic battle between to adorable creatures. I really need to show my future children Pokemon, because they need to learn that despite being adorable, cute things in life can really kill you, either by shooting lethal bubble streams or crazy lightning energy. And they need to know that if you wear an ugly red hat and walk around with an electrical rat on your shoulder, they will never age and can live forever. Parenting guides aside, Basically Dawn instructs her Piplup to shoot bubblebeams, to fly, to dash, to intercept-twirl and then to bubblebeam again, all in under 30 seconds. Holy shit, this is way more intense than the Nintendo DS version of Pokemon, where each attack takes 1000 years to register after the sound effects, animation and SFX. Her Piplup (Pocchama) is ridiculously pro and manouvers like an X-Wing in a Death Star trench run with ease (eat shit, Wedge Antilles), only to have it and the Bunny Pokemon shoot energy waves at each other which causes a massive explosion at the epicentre of impact (new pants required).

Are you trying to IMPLY something there Ash? You sick puppy you.

Togechick goes where?

Wait! Apparently they are doing a, “Lets look at what happened hours before that incident!” thing for this episode (maybe we can finally see why three trainers are ganging up on ONE Pokemon). Viewers are then transported to the campsite, and I notice that only Dawn gets her own tent, whilst the other guys only get two sleeping bags, maybe its because lady trainers need time alone with their Pokemon (uh oh!). Regardless, they decided to use the cliche’ of cliche’s here, where Dawn wakes up with a Bad Hair Day. Wait a minute, whenever I wake up from bed, my hair looks like it was the primary target of operation shock and awe (it does both to anyone who sees me in the morning). That doesn’t constitute a bad hair day in any sense, but I guess in Japan, everyone wakes up with a French Connection Haircut and Hairstyle naturally. If this is the case, then Dawn’s hair looks like a pile of crap stacked on top of ugly.

Ash’s hair looks more like a pair of wings more than anything.

Crazy Penguin Lady.

Like most things in the Pokemon World, crisis aversions are very common. Dawn fixes her hair up with her own mobile hair salon - her piplup. Who’s bubblebeam apparently makes her crazy cat lady hairstyle turn to the lovely straight hairstyle of hers. The thing that made me cringe was, after the bubblebeam hair treatmen, she spun around like a Pantene advertisement, citing, “Bubblebeam fixed my fizzy and dry hair”. I was half expecting to see Piplup on a glass rack with a wave of water bathing it as the slogan, “Piplup, always smooth and silky” come up on the screen. This is where Mimouru (the Bunny Pokemon) comes in, she’s a very shy Pomeon which has a obvious crush on Pikachu. I can understand this, because Pikachu has the ability to destroy pokemon which are 5 evolution forms above him even if they are the type which is Super-Effective against him, he must get hit on by all the other lady Pikachus a lot, he should be called “Pimpachu”. The Bunny Pokemon tries to run off with Ash’s hat, but Pikachu retrieves it after nearly being run over by Officer Jenny. Brock reminds us that all Jenny’s look exactly the same and are all related to each other (Mr. Jenny must have gotten REAL BUSY with Mrs. Jenny).

I wonder if some Pokemon can protect me against girl germs. Ewww!

Pimpachu! Use Pimp Slap attack on Bunnygirl Pokemon!

Gregal is going to rape you (then kill you).

Now, the most entertaining about this entire episode (and possibly series) is Gregal the Croagunk. There’s some things you need to know about Gregal, he wants to use you, he wants to kill you and the only reason you are alive is because he needs to use you as a pawn in his grand scheme of things. In one scene, Brock accidentally drops a Potato to the ground where Gregal was busy meditating (with his eyes open and breathing noisily). Naturally, Brock requested for some help, because friends help out each other right? Fucking wrong, Gregal just doesn’t give two shits. Even if you dropped a dying baby, Gregal would just look at you and smirk saying, “Heh”. There’s some who might claim that Giovanni is “badass” in the Pokemon universe, but those guys really have not seen Gregal yet. And when Brock was flirting with Officer Jenny, Gregal punched him super hard in the guts, because Gregal isn’t cool with other guys hitting on his bitch (he is so dreamy). In addition to this, Gregal would literally ride on a legendary bird atop Mount Everest to take a shit on Mewtwo, just for fun. That’s just the type of badass motherfucker Gregal is. I think I grew another testicle just writing about him.

Gregal isn’t listening to Brock, he is using his Mind Lazer to kill birds on a nearby tree.

Gregal tries to use his Psychic powers to MINDCRUSH Brock and the baby tree Pokemon.

FALCOON PAAANCHHH!!!

Let’s have a look at Gregal on a physical level. He has this smirk on his face 24/7, this is the “I know something and I sure as hell aren’t telling you bastards” smirk, just his alone makes him kind of creepy (Creepily awesome). Also, everytime he breathes, his two orange cheek balloons inflate and deflate, they are like his external lungs. I have one explanation as to why he has external lungs, because the rest of his body is filled with too much KICKASS. Vital organs? Fuck them. They can go outside to make space for the sheer amount of WIN density packed inside this Pokemon. Gregal also slouches a lot, he reminds me a lot of “L” from Death Note, he also has dark rings around his eyes like “L”. That has to be it, this is L in the Pokemon universe, instead of catching Kira however, he is living up his Kira fantasies (AS L), wow, my eyes are bleeding because my brain can’t handle this much GAR. He also has extremely attuned Pokemon senses, like he can sense the Bunny Pokemon in the bush even though everyone else was completely oblivious to it. Never mind that, he actually Dived in to scare the living shit out of the Bunny Pokemon (who revealed itself in sheer terror). I mean who cares about the Boogeyman or the Antichrist? Gregal is the Pokemon that divided itself by zero and then drank a fucking coke after surviving an infinite loop.

Like Solid Snake, Gregal drags Brock out so the other guys don’t notice him.

My Pedo-Stare senses are inflating!

Oh yeah, back to the Potato. After begging and agreeing to sacrificing his firstborn to Gregal, Brock gets his wish. Gregal gives Brock a cold hard stare first though, like the kind of stare which will make you sterile for the rest of your life and make you unable to eat for three months, THEN he picks up the Potato up and throws it at the sky at mach 2 speed. Gregal, damn, even when he is nice….he’s just one massive Pokemon Hate Machine on Steroids. Unfortunately, before I die of a heart attack of just how ridiculously awesome Gregal is, Team Rocket show up to capture Pokemon, in the name of Love and Justice (meowth thats right). According to Officer Jenny, they stole some machine parts for some reason (unknown). I’m a pretty smrt guy, so I figured out they stole MACHINE parts to build a….Robot Machine. I know I’m awesome, stop the applause, I’m blushing. Shucks!.

Moments later, the Potato spontaneously combusted under the sheer pressure of Awesome.

We has teh binokularz.

Apparently, Team Rocket still have their McGuvyer status from the previous seasons. They are always able to make an Anti-Pikachu robot from some stolen machine parts, all in under one day. I always wondered, why don’t they just apply for a job in Robotics or open a machine shop? They’d be bathing in dollar notes, instead of starving every day hunting for Ash’s Pikachu non stop. I accidentally fast forwarded here, because I was bored to tears at the typical “We’re finally going to catch Pikachu today” speech they were giving. Naturally, they manage to catch Pikachu, because Meowth promises to hand over the Bunny Pokemon after they swiped her. It was like some kind of terrorist-prisoner exchange program in a kid’s show (probrably doesn’t help that I’m 10 years too old for the target market of this show either). Naturally, when you deal with Terro-Team Rocket, you are bound to get screwed, just like poor old Pikachu did. Now Team Rocket has BOTH Pikachu and Mimouru! Oh no! whatever will our heroes do to save those cute adorable pokemon?…..Can’t fool you huh? Yeah, nothing to worry about, obviously they will be saved.

Understand the concept of love.

Who the heck designed this garbage?

We’re all expecting Dawn, Ash and Brock to rush in to save the day here, but thats not the case, as they are all too busy chilling (literally). Seems that when I fast forwarded, I forgot to see how they got frozen, but I’m willing to bet that Bunny Pokemon did it because it can use ice based attacks (Pokemon expert, heh). So who will save our heroes from freezing to death? That’s right, it’s Gregal time. Gregal doesn’t even look concerned at all, in fact he takes a second or two to “Heh” at the gang in the huge ice block. He can’t imagine how useless they all are, unlike him, who eluded capture and avoided getting frozen. The next thing we’d expect is Gregal straining to perform some kind of high level attack to break the ice cube…but no, Gregal just lights up his fist and taps on the cube, causing the entire to collapse like a house of cards. I’ve longed celebrated Ash’s Pikachu like a Jesus Pokemon, but Gregal must be the Satan-Lucifer-SuperDeath Construct equivalent, but with ten thousand times more malice and ire than Sauron, the Dark Lord of Middle Earth. Gregal, he’ll kill your family. Twice.

Even Gregal can’t believe the uselessness of his masters.

Saved by the psychopathic croagunk.

Anyway, to wrap up the episode, Pikachu tail whips out of the glass chamber prison and then rescues the Bunny Pokemon, Ash commands Pikachu to use “Lightning attack” and Dawn commands the Bunny Pokemon to use “Ice Beam attack”, this equates roughly to Team Rocket getting their machine completely bashed up by enough firepower to level a small city (bad luck dudes). The Team is then chased away from the woods by Officer Jenny, who is trying to arrest them, but she’ll never catch or arrest them. Dawn battles the Bunny Pokemon to make it hers forever (back to the beginning of the episode), and we see the finale - Piplup pecks the Bunny Pokemon into submission as his finishing move. This results in Dawn throwing a Pokeball shortly after and successfully capturing the Bunny Pokemon. The gang then set off on their epic adventure to beat some random guys with pokemon and stuff.

Pikachu’s little hind is so cute and fluffy (Put your furry tazers away).

When things get tough, just use the most overpowered attack available.

In closing, I was very much entertained in this episode, moreso than what I expected. Especially by Gregal the Croagunk. You’d never expect to see such an emotionless, cruel, sadistic and arrogant character in a kid’s show like Pokemon, let alone the fact that it is an actual Pokemon travelling alongside some of the kindest/happiest heroes there are in the anime world. Gregal is forever plotting, as he breathes disturbingly loudly and I wish him all the best in his constant non-physical spitting on his fellow journeymen. Now where did I put my Nintendo DS Lite? I really need to catch me one of these Croagunk pokemon. In the meantime, whilst Pokemon has provided me with a nice distraction thus far, Im going to forget about it until maybe episode 20 something (who knows?), I just secretly hope that I get to see my Rukia nee-san before I go absolutely insane.

We salute Gregal the Croagunk, may he copulate furiously so we may bask at his progeny.

Cheers,

Darkshaunz