Pokemon Journeys (Part 2) Review – Almost As Good As Before? Ditto!

It’s been a couple of months since Pokemon Journeys first debuted on Netflix (if you haven’t seen our review for Part 1, you can check it out here!), and the wait for new episodes has been hard, but Pokemon Journeys Part 2 has finally arrived, and so the journeys continues!

A quick recap. Ash, after winning the Alola League, has gone and taken a new kind of journey as a Research Assistant for a new Professor in Vermillion City. Now, he’s going on journeys all over the Pokemon world with his new friend Goh to learn all about Pokemon! And Part 2 continues that adventure…even if its success wasn’t as great as Part 1.

First off, even with the pandemic shutdown of things, Pokemon Journeys Part 2 had 12 episodes to watch, which is a good model more or less going for this series. And thankfully, they immediately picked things up with the cliffhanger last round via the Dynamax Pokemon in Alola. Which led to a fun battle between it…and Gigantamax Pikachu!

Yep, Pikachu got BIG! Stop feeding it Pokemon food Ash!

Anyway, after winning the battle and getting to battle Leon, we finally got to see Ash’s true journey unfold. Because he wants to have a rematch with Leon and to do that he has to rank up via a special challenge that has him battling other trainers (and not just gym leaders) to increase his ranking until he’s in the Top 8! This is a nice twist on things, even moreso than the Island Kahuna’s from Sun & Moon, and given how Pokemon goes in terms of Ash pushing himself, it’ll be fun to see who he faces.

Which brings me to another fun thing that I liked about Pokemon Journeys Part 2, its dedication to the history of Ash. Because his first Pokemon Coronation battle is against the acting gym leader in Vermillion City. It’s not Lt. Surge, but they do mention him and that he remembers Ash very well. And we know that Ash is going back to Alola (we’ll get that episode presumably when Part 3 is translated) and that leaves the door open to even more reunions and callbacks.

Then again…Ash does still act pretty naive at times…including wondering how Silcoon evolves into Beauitfly even though he already knows that via May…

That being said, Ash does have some great moments here, including saving another Pokemon from abandonment via Gengar, and connecting with a Pokemon egg that turns into Riolu! Speaking as a long-time Pokemon fan, it’s about time Ash got one!

As for Goh, I’m honestly still 50-50 with him. Because on one hand, we get a bit more of his backstory, including learning why he’s so independent and why he felt he didn’t need friends or anything of the sort after learning about his family life. Which is great and that was great character development for him. Plus, the episode “Dreams Are Made Of These” showed how his “Gotta Catch’em All” childlike attitude can inspire others. And while I still maintain that it shouldn’t be so easy to catch Pokemon like he does, I’m less angry about it than I was before.

That being said, Goh can still get VERY annoying, including a key episode where Scorbunny is trying to learn a new technique and Goh refuses to help it. I wanted to beat him senseless for that! Yes, you’re trying to catch a lot of Pokemon, we get that, but Scorbunny is your partner! You NEED to connect with him! Then, when it evolves into Raboot, they honestly take a rather cheap way out in regards to why it wouldn’t listen to Goh. They could’ve gone the Ash/Charizard route in regards to Goh earning Raboot’s trust over time and proving him worthy of his time, but instead…they do a dance battle. Yeah, it’s weird.

The other real problem with Pokemon Journeys Part 2 is that while they do get creative with some episodes, including “Dreams Are Made Of These” and “Panic In The Park”, they also go a bit too oddball with “A Talent For Imitation”, whom long-term fans might recall that this is basically a parody of the original Ditto episode all the way back in Kanto. Not to mention, two episodes were more about Team Rocket than anything else. 1 episode? Fine, no problem. But 2? Not so much. Plus, one of those two episodes was the end of the set, so its timing also wasn’t the best.

This brings me yet again to my problem with the original Pokemon Journeys set…this model honestly doesn’t work for Netflix. Full seasons in a setting? Yeah, that works. Especially when it’s a Netflix original that is meant to be like 10-13 episodes or so. But for Pokemon, you KNOW there’s more coming, and yet they’re doing this in pods of twelve and it really kills the flow. The ending of Part 1 was a cliffhanger as I noted, and the ending of Part 2 didn’t even have that. So while I’m going to be patiently waiting for Pokemon Journeys Part 3 to arrive…the hype is only there because I know some of what is coming because of spoilers from Japan, like with the Alola episodes.

Now to be clear, I’m not saying Pokemon Journeys Part 2 was bad. Far from it. Some episodes were really good and really clever. But other episodes weren’t as consistent. But hopefully by Part 3 the rhythm will work itself out.