The Long Vault Home! – Pokémon Season 21, Episode 41

Plot episodeAsh catches Stakataka

The Long Vault Home! is the 41st episode of Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon – Ultra Adventures, the twenty-first season of the Pokémon anime, and the 1019th episode of the English dub overall (Japanese episode 1025, Bulbapedia code SM085). It first aired in Japan on 9 August 2018 and in the United States on 29 December 2018. It falls within the season’s Ultra Beasts & everyday Alola stretch (EP78–EP86).

Premiered on 29 December 2018; Disney XD showed no new episode the following Saturday, 5 January 2019.

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

Synopsis

A block-shaped Ultra Beast, Stakataka, lands at the Pokémon School in the middle of a vaulting craze and ends up as the base of a statue of the developer Viren, until Ash rides it, calms it down and catches it. In gym class, Mallow clears the vaulting box, Lillie falls short and Togedemaru pushes a hesitant Sophocles over, while Ash adds steps, trips and crashes face-first into the box. Kiawe clears ten steps and Lana twelve, so Ash vows to clear twenty and Kiawe thirty, and Professor Kukui promises to build more steps. That evening in Hau’oli City, Rotom gives Ash a 0.001 percent chance of clearing thirty, Poipole draws Pikachu’s face on a freshly built wall, and its owner, Viren, recognises Ash from the Battle Royal and boasts about his planned Viren Tower resort before ordering Ash never to come back. That night, an Ultra Wormhole drops a huge black box to the ground.

The next morning the students find the box outside the school and assume that Kukui has set them a vaulting challenge. An Alolan Diglett trips Ash into it, and when Kiawe touches the top, a tile gives way and he drops inside, where many eyes stare at him before he is spat out in a daze, until Tsareena brings him round with a gentle stomp. Komala’s bell summons the Ultra Guardians, who learn at headquarters that the box is the Ultra Beast Stakataka. Back outside, it dodges Ash’s Beast Ball by rearranging its body, Kiawe’s thrown ball bounces off a tree into his own face, and a passing Scyther calls a strike. The team’s combined attacks have no effect, and when they surround it, the dodging blocks send their Beast Balls back at them. Exhausted by evening, they give up, and Lusamine advises them to observe Stakataka and try again tomorrow.

The next day, Stakataka has vanished, leaving square footprints, and an Ultra Aura is detected at Viren’s construction site, where his crew has placed a tarp-covered object on a mysterious new pedestal. Viren unveils a golden statue of himself just as the pedestal—Stakataka—begins to shake, its eyes turning red because it hates anything standing on top of it. Kiawe kicks Viren out of the way of a stomping leg, and Viren is knocked out when he steps in front of Marowak’s Bonemerang. Ash cannot climb the rampaging Ultra Beast until Turtonator holds up a board as a springboard; stepping on its spikes, Ash triggers Shell Trap and is launched onto Stakataka with Pikachu, whose Iron Tail knocks the statue loose. Ash asks Stakataka to calm down, catches it with its happy agreement, and that evening releases it through a wormhole at the school.

Major Events

• Stakataka. A vaulting class
• The Ultra Guardians’ fourth mission, as Stakataka lands at the school and becomes the plinth for Viren’s statue
• Ash vaults onto it with the help of Turtonator’s Shell Trap and catches it, and it is sent home
• Kukui narrates the close in Japanese
• Anime debut of Stakataka

Pokémon making their anime debut

• Stakataka#0805 · SM085

Captures and evolutions

• Stakataka#0805 · Ash · after riding it to calm it down; sent home that evening

Trivia

• The English title plays on the film <em>The Long Walk Home</em> (1990), for a vaulting class.
• The screenplay is by Jun’ichi Fujisaku.
• This is a plot episode: it advances the Alola storyline.

Changes in the English Dub

• Tsareena’s stomp is frozen, though the stomping sound is kept
• Kukui’s closing narration is given to the narrator
• The first TV Tokyo airing ended with Breath (Porno Graffitti); the DVD uses Twerp, Twerpette

Part of our Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon – Ultra Adventures guide. Browse every season of the Pokémon anime.