Battle Aboard The St. Anne – EP015

Last time: Ash achieved something…on merit?!

Wait, St. Anne? What’s the St. Anne? Who is Saint Anne? A quick Google tells me that St. Anne is the grandmother of Jesus. I guess that’s pretty worthy of canonization. The whole Christianity thing technically wouldn’t exist without her.

But where’d the S.S. Anne go? Why was it renamed? The S.S. prefix generally denotes a steamship, it’s unusual for something to become MORE religious as it’s localised. Though who are we to know who St. Anne is in the Pokémon universe. 

Obviously Jesus doesn’t exist in Pokémon canon – Arceus is god here. Unless Arceus had a kid? Maybe this Anne was the mother of Arceus. I think I’m too deep into Pokémon spirituality at this stage. 

Team Rocket have an unusual scheme in this episode. First of all we get our first glimpse at the shadowy figure of Giovanni – I don’t remember Giovanni really every playing a significant role in the anime other than lurking in the background and barking orders at Team Rocket but we’ll see how that turns out.

Team Rocket have handed out a series of free tickets to the St. Anne to lure Pokémon trainers onto the boat. Once aboard they will be trapped at sea and unable to alert the authorities or escape when Team Rocket springs their traps and steals everybody’s Pokémon. There appears to be one fatal flaw in this plan. Team Rocket are also stuck at sea. The St. Anne ends up sinking but prior to that they didn’t seem to have any getaway plan. They’ve gotta up their heist game. 

I really love when Pokémon uses little things from the games in the show. In this episode James is scammed by a man selling Magikarp on the St. Anne just like the crook in the Pokémon Center outside Mt. Moon. And this episode teaches us a valuable lesson. 

A fool and their money will cause a luxury cruise liner to plummet to the bottom of the ocean at the hands of storm.

Stray Observations

– Who’s that Pokémon? It’s Raticate! Rats, didn’t get it. 

– The inconsistency with which Ash and company recognises Team Rocket in disguise amuses me. Sometimes they see right through it, other times the disguise is blatantly obvious and they still fall for it.

– Ash trades away his Butterfree for a Raticate in this episode and has immediate buyers remorse – eventually trading back. MAYBE YOU SHOULD CARE THAT MUCH ABOUT KEEPING YOUR BUTTERFREE LATER IN THE SHOW ASH. WHY?!

– James delivers a depressed version of the Team Rocket anthem in this episode because he’s down over being duped and it rules.

– The Titanic similarities in this episode are a little on the nose.

– This is the first two-parter of the series. Ending an episode of Pokémon on a cliffhanger as the St. Anne sinks to the bottom of the ocean and everybody could be dead seems a little absurd.