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| Season | Pokémon: Johto League Champions (Season 4) · Westward with Todd: Snowtop Mountain & Articuno arc (EP184–EP191) |
| Episode | Season 4, episode 28 · English episode 185 · Japanese episode 187 · Bulbapedia code EP185 |
| English title | The Light Fantastic |
| Japanese title | テッポウオのそら! Teppouo no Sora! — “Teppouo’s Sky!” |
| First aired (Japan) | 15 February 2001 · TV Tokyo |
| First aired (US) | 15 December 2001 · Kids’ WB |
| Screenplay | Takeshi Shudō |
| Opening / ending (Japan) | OK! – Rica Matsumoto · Boku no Best Friend e (To My Best Friend) – Hiromi Iwasaki |
| English opening | Born to Be a Winner – David Rolfe |
| Who’s That Pokémon? | Sunflora (US) · Remoraid (Japan) |
| Previous episode | All That Glitters! (EP184) |
| Next episode | UnBEARable (EP186) |
Filler / stand-alone episodeRemoraid TV debutTakeshi Shudō script
The Light Fantastic is the 28th episode of Pokémon: Johto League Champions, the fourth season of the Pokémon anime, and the 185th episode of the English dub overall (Japanese episode 187, Bulbapedia code EP185). It first aired in Japan on 15 February 2001 and in the United States on 15 December 2001. It falls within the season’s Westward with Todd: Snowtop Mountain & Articuno stretch (EP184–EP191).
Synopsis
A painter who has waited 24 years to capture the mysterious Rainbow Lights finally sees them created by a school of Remoraid. Beside a dry riverbed the gang spot a glow over Remoraid Mountain and reach the ruins of a tribe that felled its forests and dried up its lakes. At the Pokémon Center they meet Gan Gogh, an artist who returns every twelve years when the underground lake refills, having failed with seven crayons and then twelve; this time he has brought 251.
Team Rocket tag along disguised as archaeologists, Meowth wrapped as a mummy. At the empty Remoraid Lake stands a tower of ice, worthless to the trio, so James grabs Pikachu with rubber gloves instead, and Gan Gogh’s Venusaur beats Arbok, recovers Pikachu and fires the thieves off with Solar Beam.
At sunrise water erupts from the lakebed and Remoraid surface, building up the ice pillar with Water Gun and Ice Beam. Misty’s Poké Ball cannot catch a single Pokémon out of a swarm, and Team Rocket’s net is foiled when the Remoraid jet upwards on Water Gun and puncture the balloon. As the pillar melts and sunlight refracts through the evaporating water, the Rainbow Lights blaze and the rivers flow again. Gan Gogh never gets his painting, but Ash reckons the memory is worth more.
Major Events
- Remoraid main-series debut
- Misty fails to catch a Remoraid
- Gan Gogh and the rainbow lights
- Screenplay by Takeshi Shudō
Pokémon making their anime debut
Remoraid#0223 · EP185
Trivia
- The English title plays on the phrase "trip the light fantastic", also the title of a Discworld novel.
- The screenplay is by Takeshi Shudō.
- This is a stand-alone episode: it can be skipped without losing the thread of the Johto story.
- The Who’s That Pokémon? segment features Remoraid in Japan, where it almost always matched the episode, but Sunflora in the US, where 4Kids picked the Pokémon at random.
Changes in the English Dub
- The Japanese pun “Somehow it’s a Crystal” is lost.
Part of our Pokémon: Johto League Champions guide. Browse every season of the Pokémon anime.