Me, Myself and Time – Pokémon Season 7, Episode 36

Filler / stand-alone episodeFirst time-travel episode

Me, Myself and Time is the 36th episode of Pokémon: Advanced Challenge, the seventh season of the Pokémon anime, and the 349th episode of the English dub overall (Japanese episode 352, Bulbapedia code AG076). It first aired in Japan on 13 May 2004 and in the United States on 30 April 2005. It falls within the season’s Littleroot to Rubello: Oak, Bulbasaur & the R1 Contest stretch (EP71–EP78).

Synopsis · Major Events · Trivia · Dub Changes · All episodes

Synopsis

Crossing Kirikiri Mountain in thick fog, Ash slides down a steep slope with Pikachu and is separated from his friends. Nearby he hears someone singing and glimpses a woman in a burgundy robe and glasses. He then spots a Baltoy spinning towards a cliff edge, and Pikachu’s Quick Attack stops it just in time. Its Trainer, Calista, scolds Ash until he explains what happened, then shows him her book of ancient artifacts. She wants to become an archaeologist even though her parents object, and a mysterious phone call has sent her to look for ruins on the mountain; a song recorded in her book is the key to finding them. Ash recognises the tune as the one he has just heard, so the two set off together to find the singer and the hidden ruins.

Team Rocket overhear and confront the woman first, but when she refuses to share her secrets, her Xatu blocks Cacnea’s Pin Missile with Reflect, teleports behind it and strikes with Peck. Ash and Calista arrive mid-fight. Baltoy’s Rapid Spin sends the Pin Missiles back at the villains, Pikachu hits Seviper with Thunderbolt, and Xatu’s Shadow Ball blasts the trio off. Calista asks the woman to lead her down “Baltoy’s path”, and the stranger guides them into a hollow tree, where her singing opens the floor and drops them into ruins covered in glyphs of the ancient Baltoy civilisation. An earthquake has trapped the woman’s own Baltoy beneath a rubble-covered altar, and Calista’s Baltoy frees it with Confusion. The woman then reveals her own copy of Calista’s book, far more worn, and says that her parents also opposed her dream.

Following the woman’s instructions, Calista has Baltoy perform Rapid Spin at the centre of a carved wheel, but Team Rocket burst in with a steel drilling mecha and snatch Baltoy with an extending arm. Realising that the machine is made of steel, Ash has Pikachu’s Thunderbolt free Baltoy, Rapid Spin topples the mecha and Xatu’s Shadow Ball blasts the villains away again. The ritual resumes, and as the wheel fills with golden light the woman steps into it and reveals the truth: she is Calista from the future. The greatest treasure the Baltoy civilisation left behind, she says, is time itself, and she has come back to urge her younger self to keep chasing her dream, since life offers only one chance to change the future. Then she vanishes. Calista thanks Ash and runs off, and Ash rejoins his friends with a new appreciation of how precious time is.

Major Events

• The anime’s first time-travel episode: Calista meets her future self in the ruins of the Baltoy civilisation
• Baltoy debuts

Pokémon making their anime debut

• Baltoy#0343 · AG076

Trivia

• The English title plays on "me, myself and I".
• The screenplay is by Junki Takegami.
• This is a stand-alone episode: it can be skipped without losing the thread of the Hoenn story.

Changes in the English Dub

• Pokémon Trainer’s Choice (dub only, in place of Who’s That Pokémon?): which Pokémon is best against Illumise? Answer: Crobat (more than one choice was correct, and later type changes made it a tie)
• The dub uses a cue from The Power of One

Part of our Pokémon: Advanced Challenge guide. Browse every season of the Pokémon anime.