PokeRecap - The School of Hard Knocks

To celebrate the Pokemon anime's 20th anniversary, we're recapping an episode of the series every Saturday!

Episode Title: The School of Hard Knocks

Original Air Date: May 27, 1997 (Japan); September 18, 1998 (US)

Episode Synopsis: Ash, Brock, and Misty continue towards Vermillion City and come across a group of students from the prestigious prep school Pokemon Tech. Students who graduate from Pokemon Tech can enter the Pokemon League without earning gym badges, although the standards are extremely high.

When Ash sees the students use an especially brutal form of tutoring on a boy named Joe, he demands to meet the head student of the beginning class, a beautiful girl named Giselle. Misty, jealous of the attention Giselle gets from Brock and Ash, challenges Giselle to a battle but her Starmie loses to Giselle's Graveller despite the type disadvantage.

Ash ends up battling Giselle after she repeatedly insults his intelligence. Although Giselle's Cubone has the type advantage on Pikachu, Pikachu ends up pulling out the victory by pulling Cubone's skull helmet over its head when Cubone throws its Bonemerang and then pummeling it until the Bonemerang returns and hits Cubone in the head.

Afterwards, the student body of Pokemon Tech scare Team Rocket (who were Pokemon Tech dropouts) away and Joe decides to quit Pokemon Tech to begin a more traditional journey.

Ash's Episodic Moment of Idiocy: Ash challenges an entire group of Pokemon Tech students to a fight, even though he's clearly outnumbered. Had the kids actually taken Ash up on his offer, Misty volunteered to drag his dead carcass away.

Characters Introduced: Joe, Giselle

Locations: Pokemon Tech

The School of Hard Knocks is a pretty inconsequential filler episode for the most part, although it does show that Ash is a better battler than Misty. Misty couldn't defeat Giselle even when she had a type advantage, but Ash could beat Giselle's Cubone even though Pikachu couldn't use his Thundershock attack. This is probably the first episode in which Ash really improvises to win a battle, something that becomes a recurring specialty for him. Ash might come off as an idiot at times, but he's something of a savant at battling when the odds aren't in his favor.

This also marks the first time that Ash really shows some romantic interest in a girl. Although Ash has had a string of suitors over the years, he seems either oblivious to their interest or he's still holding a torch for Giselle.

The other weird thing in this episode is that Pikachu's voice is all weird. While the anime typically uses Pikachu's original voice actor Ikue Ohtani, the show occasionally used Rachael Lillis (Misty's voice actor) when they didn't have access to the original audio.