A Rollicking Roll / Eyes on the Goal! (LAoPtS)

plot

A Rollicking Roll…

In Team Rocket's secret base, the evil trio is dozing off. When Jessie accidentally slaps James in her sleep, he mistakes it for Meowth having kicked him in his sleep, and lifts him onto the Rocket Prize Master's coin slot, before going back to sleep. Pelipper, woken up by this, walks up to the vending machine and decides to give it a try. As the cranking mechanism won't budge, Pelipper bumps the machine, and a Poké Ball comes out, releasing a Gulpin. To Pelipper's horror, the machine then starts dispensing Poké Balls uncontrollably, each of them releasing a Gulpin. As the Gulpin start leaving the base, Pelipper does its best to ignore the chaos it's caused.

Meanwhile, Ash and Goh are out jogging, when Goh spots something in a bush. He leans closer to inspect it, when Ash catches up to him and accidentally pushes him down. Goh emerges from the bush with a Gulpin stuck on his head, preventing him from seeing anything. When he touches the Gulpin to feel it, his hand also gets stuck fast on its sticky skin. He and Ash decide head back to the Cerise Laboratory to ask help from Professor Cerise. Just then, Ash notices that another Gulpin has gotten stuck on his rear, and both he and Pikachu end up touching it before they can stop themselves.

On their way back to the Cerise Laboratory, Ash notices an Alakazam doing a juggling act and runs towards it, only for him and Goh to be covered by a huge swarm of Gulpin. The Gulpin gather into a ball around them, and they start rolling, with many Pokémon, including the Alakazam, getting stuck together with them. Dirt, branches, and other materials they hit also get stuck on the ball, until Alakazam starts using Psychic, causing the ball to become airborne. At the Cerise Laboratory, the energy reading from the ball is detected by Professor Cerise and Chrysa, who wonder if they've detected a new Pokémon.

The ball eventually hits the side of a building and squishes together enough for Alakazam to pass out from the pressure, resulting in the ball falling back down and resuming rolling around Vermilion City. To Goh's disbelief, Ash actually starts enjoying the experience. Professor Cerise and Chrysa, meanwhile, start receiving images of the ball from Ren, who's out shopping. As videos of the incident start appearing on the internet, Chrysa rewinds them to find out the cause of it, revealing that Ash and Goh are involved. At the same time, Goh frantically calls Chloe and begs for help. Just then, Alakazam regains consciousness, and the ball starts levitating again. As the ball flies over the Cerise Laboratory, Professor Cerise takes Chloe's Rotom Phone. He explains to Goh that the cause to the situation is the Gulpin's Sticky Hold Ability, and tells Goh and Ash to have the Gulpin use Gastro Acid to neutralize it. They do as they were told, and the giant ball finally breaks apart, despite Goh mishearing Gastro Acid as "Astro Glasses", freeing everyone who had gotten stuck on or in it.

Safely at the Cerise Laboratory again, Ash and Goh explain everything that happened to Professor Cerise, who thanks them for the data they provided for him. Ash says he enjoyed the experience, and Goh can't help but admit that he kind of did too.

Eyes on the Goal!

Back at Team Rocket's secret base, Meowth and Wobbuffet wake up. Before taking Meowth off the Rocket Prize Master, Wobbuffet vends a ball too. When he throws it, Chewtle emerges, and it walks out of the base. Meowth and Wobbuffet follow it, finding out that it's wanting to go play at the park. However, when it approaches the park, a Turtwig appears and starts walking past Chewtle. Angered by this, Chewtle starts speeding up to overtake Turtwig. As they enter the park, Chewtle and Turtwig start bragging at each other about their speed, and end up challenging each other to a race. Meowth is excited and decides to use the Rocket trio's Rotom Phone to record the race, so that he can post it on the internet later. Wobbuffet, meanwhile, runs to the other end of the park to mark the finish line.

At Meowth's signal, the race begins. Unexpectedly, a Torkoal also joins in. However, the Torkoal turns out to be very easily amused by Meowth's commentary, and bursts out laughing, covering the racetrack in thick white smoke. Chewtle and Turtwig turn off from the main path to get out of the smoke cloud and head through a playground, climbing up the stairs of a slide. Turtwig ends up accidentally pushing Chewtle off the stairs, but narrowly manages to save it, before tossing it to the other side of the slide, willingly putting itself at a disadvantage to help its fellow competitor. Next, they arrive at a sandpit, where a Tirtouga enters the race, moving swiftly through the sand. However, it ends up going too fast and collides with the edge of the sandpit, taking it out of the race.

As Chewtle and Turtwig make it back to the main path, Turtwig collapses, and Meowth notices that the leaves on its head are wilting. Despite Turtwig insisting that it's not thirsty, Chewtle still uses Water Gun to rehydrate it. Turtwig is thankful, and the race continues. Out of nowhere, multiple other turtle Pokémon also join the race, and Wobbuffet flees in panic to avoid being trampled by them. He ends up tripping and falling down, but just before he can be trampled, an old man appears and tells all the turtle Pokémon it's time to go home. Meowth realizes that this man, the Shell Sage, must be the Trainer of all of the Pokémon that joined the race. With Chewtle left as the only competitor, it easily wins, bragging to Meowth that its victory was a certainty from the start.

Trivia

• Get Inspired! Let's Solve a Poké Riddle!!: Gulpin
• The English dub was released on the iTunes Store in Australia the day before the episode aired in Canada.
• Wobbuffet replaces Pikachu for the second segment's title card, which is read by Jessie and James.
• Ash and Goh do not appear in the second segment.
• This is the first episode in Pokémon Journeys: The Series in which none of Goh's Pokémon appear since he caught Scorbunny in Mind-Boggling Dynamax!.
• At the beginning of the episode, Jessie is shown to have a mug with an Arbok pattern on it. This is a reference to the Arbok she once owned.
• Multiple Gulpin getting stuck together and turning into a ball that gets bigger as it collects Ash, Goh, a variety of Pokémon, leaves, grass, and rocks is a reference to the Katamari Damacy video game franchise.
• This episode marks the first appearance of a number of Pokémon species in the main series after long absences:
  • Tirtouga and Carracosta, both of whom last appeared in A Restoration Confrontation! Part 2, 410 episodes earlier.
    • This also marks the first main series appearance of the two since their main series debuts in the aforementioned episode and its first part.
  • Grotle, who last appeared in The Journalist from Another Region!, 352 episodes earlier.
  • Torterra, who last appeared in The Dream Continues!, 344 episodes earlier.
• This episode marks the first appearance of a Turtonator in the anime other than the one that belongs to Kiawe.
• Goh, Ash, Jessie, James, and Pikachu narrate the preview for the next episode.
  • In the preview, Goh says "One morning, when I woke from strange dreams, I found myself transformed into a Rillaboom," which is an almost word by word quote of the opening line of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka ("One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin").

Transcript

A Rollicking Roll...Eyes on the Goal! (LAoPtS)/Transcript

Characters

Pokémon

• Pikachu (Ash's)
• Meowth (Team Rocket)
• Wobbuffet (Jessie's)
• Mr. Mime (Ash's; Mimey)
• Rotom (Professor Cerise's; Rotom Phone; ×2)
• Magnemite (Ren's; Francois)
• Turtwig (Shell Sage's)
• Torkoal (Shell Sage's)
• Tirtouga (Shell Sage's)
• Squirtle (Shell Sage's)
• Wartortle (Shell Sage's)
• Drednaw (Shell Sage's)
• Grotle (Shell Sage's)
• Torterra (Shell Sage's)
• Carracosta (Shell Sage's)
• Turtonator (Shell Sage's)
• Blastoise (Shell Sage's; ×6)
• Pelipper (Team Rocket)
• Rotom (Team Rocket's; Rotom Phone)
• Chewtle (Team Rocket's)
• Gulpin (Team Rocket's; multiple)
• Alakazam (Trainer's)
• Raticate (Trainer's)
• Clefairy (Trainer's)
• Psyduck (Trainer's)
• Nidoran♀ (Trainer's)
• Nidoran♂ (Trainer's)
• Machoke (Trainer's)
• Ekans (Trainer's)
• Wigglytuff (Trainer's)
• Vulpix (Trainer's)
• Morpeko (anime; Full Belly Mode)
• Snorlax

Humans

• Ash Ketchum
• Goh
• Jessie
• James
• Chloe
• Professor Cerise
• Ren
• Chrysa
• Shell Sage
• Trainers
• Liam Hammerfield
• Ben Rockefeller