The Lost Grookey! Who is its Trainer!? (1148)

[Zweilous]

Team Rocket may be bad guys, but let’s not forget all the **** these 3 went through in their lives before joining Team Rocket. And even afterwards they still have their moments of sympathy. Remember the episode “Ignorance is Blissey”? And that’s not even mentioning the episodes where either A: they outright help Ash and the others or B: at least one of them doesn’t do anything wrong while at least one of the others are causing trouble.

So because they had tragic pasts and have done good things in the past, that excuses their actions here? They all KNEW Grookey didn't want to go with them, and they didn't care.

And honestly, this whole "TR is being misrepresented" thing is something I don't get, either. They care about their own Pokemon. They don't give two shits about other Pokemon, unless they personally identified with them. These are people who jam Pikachu into small containers, trap Pokemon in bundles because it's easy, hold Pokemon hostage, and do other evil things. They have a level of decency (they wouldn't outright abuse or kill a Pokemon, and I'm writing off Jessie's capture of Seviper as comic relief), but other than that, they embrace being villains.

To make things even worse they never had a chance to bond with Grookey because he ran away.

They weren't going to bond with it anyway. It's a Gacha mon, they don't really care. Looking at the professional subs, they were more focused on getting Grookey because losing a Gacha mon would make their boss furious. They didn't even have a good reason to leave it out of its PokeBall at the HQ, and didn't even try to bond with it - it was just left out because the writers are lazy and wanted it to escape.

 

[Almighty Zard]

this is one of those episodes that could and probably should've been executed in a better manner than it was.

kind of gives me Rowlet vs Decidueye vibes, in terms of you know what's coming, but it's not going to end well.

I think if Grookey had been wild all this chaos would've been avoided, but that's just my take.

because being a gatchamon basically made everyone else look bad in the eyes of one person or another in some regard, leading to the debates and conflicts all day.

 

[Morax]

wow, this episode managed to produce more salt than Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0.

 

[Leonhart]

In the era of both Pokemon Go and milking nostalgia, promoting the current gen specifically just isn't quite as big of a priority as it used to be.

Yet they showcase Gou's Aceburn and Messon quite a bit, not to mention Koharu's Wanpachi as well. I understand that the writers have more flexibility in this series and that they can promote older Pokemon more than ever, but they clearly still try to promote Gen VIII Pokemon whenever they get the chance.

 

[Missingno. Master]

I get why this is causing some controversy, but my honest take on this- I'm cool with it. Yeah, in all technicality Goh kinda stole Grookey from Team Rocket, but it's clear they didn't have the best of intentions towards it, and more than that, Grookey didn't want anything to do with them. Pikachu might have knocked the ball out of Jessie's hand, but Grookey's the one who destroyed it, knocked away the new ball TR threw at it, and willingly went into the one Goh threw. And how often in the history of the series has it been established that what the Pokémon wants matters immensely? Ash had legitimate claim to Togepi, but it wanted to go with Misty. Froakie had developed a reputation for rejecting Trainers who picked it, and then actively chose to go with Ash. If they were trying something similar to get Goh to catch Jessie's Wobbuffet, that'd be a different story, because Wobbuffet sticks with Team Rocket willingly, but Grookey wanted nothing to do with them.

 

[Tabasco Boshi]

My only complaint is that the TRio just lost a Pokémon from the hq and I bet there won't be any consequences.

Oh, and that it feels weird to see Jessie trying to catch a Pokémon with a Poké Ball. Almost out of chracter in this particular series. How sad.

 

[Zoruagible]

I don't care that Goh got Grookey but how he got it was just ****ing stupid and almost as bad as Sobble's capture. "Herp derp, time to break my Pokeball so the Gary Stu can catch me!"
A Team Rocket Gacha Pokemon joining up with the twerps was an interesting concept but extremely underutilized. How'd they even get a Grookey in there when the TRio were the only ones in Galar? They never used a Galar Pokemon apart from their Chewtle until this point
And if it had to be Team Rocket's, why not make Matori or Butch/Cassidy the antagonist? The TRio are good guys and I'm sick of them being written OOC just to benefit an episode, especially a **** episode such as this!

And much like them abandoning Wailord and presumably Bellsprout, there'll likely be zero consequences for losing an official TR Pokemon!

Also why does Gengar randomly show up for gags yet when there's action to be had they seemingly forget it in favor of Pikachu or whoever the currently focused upon Ash mon is?
0.5/10 Pure trash

 

[AznKei]

wow, this episode managed to produce more salt than Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0.

Meh, I'm seeing heated debates in popular franchises not only in the Pokemon anime. People just seemed to be obsessed with politics and ethics more, while I'm like "I don't care. I just want to be entertained and get over with this". Although I do admit that the writing of this episode is controversial.

 

[mystreon]

I mean, it may technically be "stealing" to brake a pokeball of another trainer and to catch the toher trainers mon, but that totally ignored the whole plot of the episode and that grookey wanted to be with an dbe caught by go.

Y'all going through so many hoops just to make your anger justified when its really not, theres a person you forgot to ask here and thats grooky and they wanted to be with go, they bonded and liked go alot.

 

[ibelinssj]

And why not? Chances are a villain's Pokemon were stolen to begin with

Stealing from thief will make you a thief unless you returned the stolen thing to the original owner.

To be fair, Grookey broke the ball on its own. So it's more like taking other person's boyfriend/girlfriend rather than stealing things.

 

[Red and Blue]

On a side note it was pretty funny seeing Mimey troll Grookey and not take it seriously.

 

[WaterShuriken]

Hmm. This episode combined two of my biggest problems with Journeys. The first one being how convenient they make everything for Goh when it comes to catching Pokémon. They couldn't just have made a Galar episode with them visiting Magnolia again and Sonia giving Grookey to Goh? Grookey JUST happens to be an escaped gatchamon and Goh JUST happens to have a Rillaboom dream? You know, at least besides Riolu's egg being in Kanto and even that was eyerolly, Ash's captures have all been in the same region the Pokémon is found.

The second problem is how Team Rocket has been flanderized in terms of caring for Pokémon. Due to the gatcha, they don't form special bonds with Pokémon on their team...because they don't belong to them! Even then, the attempts of making the audience care about Morpeko and even Chewtle fall flat because Morpeko kinda showed up out of nowhere and Chewtle is a gatcha mon they added themselves. I miss the days where James pampered Chimecho and Mime Jr. or Jessie showing genuine compassion for Mimikyu or Dustox.

Sure, Goh has Grookey. Yay I guess? Like what is he gonna do with it?

 

[Blue Saturday]

Sure, Goh has Grookey. Yay I guess? Like what is he gonna do with it?

The narrator ends the episode speculating how Sarunori will develop. More or less foreshadowing a character arc. based around its inherent built-in personality like Messon, Hibunny-Rabbifoot before it, so we can definitely expect development. This episode showed off Sarunori as a rambunctious and child-like toddler Pokémon who gets itself into trouble. Like how Rabbifoot is solemn and cool like a angsty teen or Messon is a crybaby who is learning to be brave and stronger.

 

[RafaSceptile]

Ok, finally time for my thoughs on this episodes.

Guys I know you like so much TRio and dislike so much Goh, but for Ash and Goh, they are still evil people, they care about their but not exactly about other's Pokémon. Grookey was not their Pokémon, it was a gacha-mon. Also, this is not the first time TRio is "disrespected" if you want to talk what happened as it, I remember Ash talking about how TRio were evil people in the same episode where they released Arbok and Weezing (at least in the dub, idk if that is the original line).

 

[Power Up]

THIS. Anyone here who identifies with GMax Helios, PLEASE drop Journeys already. Or at least stop watching it until you hear that stuff’s happening that you actually like. At this point, you’re just torturing yourselves and making the show less enjoyable for everyone else.

I'd hope people don't drop Journeys because echo chambers are bad.

 

[RafaSceptile]

Ok, so I knew I would not like this episode at all since Go catches Grookey. Little did I know, that was the least of my problems. Are the writers really trying to write Go and Ash as sympathetic in this episode? The moment when Grookey whacked the Gatchaball into Jessie’s face was possibly the biggest **** you in the entire series. Team Rocket may be bad guys, but let’s not forget all the **** these 3 went through in their lives before joining Team Rocket. And even afterwards they still have their moments of sympathy. Remember the episode “Ignorance is Blissey”? And that’s not even mentioning the episodes where either A: they outright help Ash and the others or B: at least one of them doesn’t do anything wrong while at least one of the others are causing trouble. To make things even worse they never had a chance to bond with Grookey because he ran away. Why did he even run away in the 1st place? The only bad thing they did was throw a net on him and Pikachu. And that was before they figured out Grookey was theirs. Hell, after Grookey went back in the Gatchaball they didn’t even try to catch Pikachu like usual. They just turned tail and left. And I haven’t even watched it with subs yet. Mainly because all the subbed versions I looked at had awful translations in the 1st 2 minutes. Overall, this has to be the absolute worst episode of the entire series and besides the rematch with Leon I have no desire to watch any more episodes of this show ever again.

Here we go, less than 1 year ago people were claiming that Pikachu and Mimey's episode was the worst episode, and 1.5 years prior to that, Ash VS Hau part2, and like 5 years ago Ash vs Alain just by the outcome of the battle (and this was a great episode regardless of that), and before of that Ash vs Elesa, etc.

Yes, TRio can be good trainers with their Pokémon, but not only Grookey is not their Pokémon, how is supposed Goh to know that? Even Ash probably doesn't know it because most of the time when that happened, he is not with them. Also, TRio are still part of an evil organization, with evil intentions of stealing Pokémon, and they never showed to have good intentions with Grookey.

 

[dman_dustin]

Not to mention, they didn't even know it was "their Grookey" until Jessie jokingly recalled it.

They had every intention of stealing it just for the sake of stealing it (aka its a RARE Grookey)

And yet somehow we're supposed to believe Team Rocket care about every Pokemon that comes their way. puh-lease they keep trying to steal Pikachu.

 

[Cradily17]

Also, let's try to look at a writer's perspective:

It's a show aimed at children. It doesn't matter if their parents or grumpy grown-ups like us watch it. It's for children.

Since it's for kids, lessons need to be handled in a straight-forward way.

Not this excuse again... Kids aren't stupid. They deserve well-written shows (and quality entertainment in general) just as much as adults do. I don't hate Goh, but the stars were aligned way too perfectly for him here in this episode.

 

[ShadowForce720]

Not this excuse again... Kids aren't stupid. They deserve well-written shows (and quality entertainment in general) just as much as adults do. I don't hate Goh, but the stars were aligned way too perfectly for him here in this episode.

That could literally be said about any main character in Pokémon ever including Ash. So stars aligned way to perfectly for a character to catch a Pokémon in a episode is nothing new.

 

[Deleted member 384931]

It was weak tbh