Recap / Pokémon S11E24 "A Full Course Tag Battle!"

"One thing that'll send May over the edge is someone swiping her food."

"What happened to our princess?!"

—Brock and Dawn

Japanese Title: Seven Stars Restaurant! Tag Battle for a Full Course!!

Original Airdate: April 24, 2008

US Airdate: September 13, 2008

Birds of a Feather battle together.

May shows up at Lake Valor for the Wallace Cup after mixed results in Johto, and quickly becomes friends with fellow Coordinator Dawn. The group makes plans for dinner at a restaurant where you must battle for your meal. This plan gets derailed when Team Rocket asserts itself and steals the restaurant's food...drawing May's ire.

This episode contains examples of the following tropes:

• Balloon Belly: Team Rocket steals all the food in the Seven Stars Restaurant, and then they all decide to pig out. When the twerps finally find them, they decide to eat all the food before they get taken back.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Blaziken and Piplup can qualify when May and Dawn do a tag battle.
• Birds of a Feather: May and Dawn really hit it off pretty quickly. Taken literally when Blaziken and Piplup battle against the Seven Stars owners.
• Broken Pedestal: Played for Laughs when Dawn finds out there's another side to her new friend.
• Burning with Anger: May, after Team Rocket steal all the food from the Seven Stars.
  May: I'll tell you, nobody steals my food and gets away with it!
  Dawn: I think May's turned into a Fire type.
• The Bus Came Back: May is shown to have added Beautifly back onto her team, having last used it during her mock contest battle with Drew back during Battle Frontier and in a full-on contest since the Hoenn Grand Festival. This also marks the return of May's Munchlax and Blaziken, neither of whom have been seen since May left for Johto.
• Call-Back:
  • During May and Dawn's second match against the owners, May has Dawn use a fire and water combo attack with her, which is a reference to what she learned during her time in the Kanto contests.
  • At the end of the episode, May and Ash show the two halves of the Terracotta Medal that they won in Kanto after the Battle Frontier.
• The Cameo: Drew and Harley briefly appear when May describes how difficult they've been to deal with in Johto.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: When Brock and Ash fight the first battle for their dinner, Sudowoodo and Pikachu one-shot the Seven Stars owners' Munchlax and Snorlax. Justified, as they have experience with both Pokémon.
• Guest-Star Party Member: May rejoins the group for the Wallace Cup arc, reuniting with Ash and Brock and meeting Dawn.
• Honorary Princess: May has become knows as the "Princess of Hoenn".
• Lost Food Grievance: May unleashes her full fury when she learns that a full-course meal in one of the fanciest restaurants in Sinnoh was stolen. Team Rocket comes to regret it the moment they see her enraged.
• Lost in Translation: The PokéDex in the English dub misquotes the Japanese, saying Snorlax can eat 400 pounds of food a day instead of 400 kilograms. Other dub episodes round up the Imperial conversion of 881 pounds to 900.^note The games flip-flop between a roughly accurate figure of 880 lbs., and rounding up to 900 lbs.
• The Nose Knows: May sends out her Munchlax to sniff out the trail of stolen food. Kylie tries to do the same with her Munchlax, with less success.
• Parrot Pet Position: Piplup takes this on Blaziken after Dawn and May's tag battle, per the episode picture above.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Seeing the "Hoenn region twerpette" inspires Team Rocket to have a conversation stringed with these.
• Took a Level in Badass: May's Eevee is revealed to have evolved into a Glaceon. May said she went to Snowpoint City and found the Ice Rock near there. In the DP games, the Ice Rock is on Route 217, just south of Snowpoint City.^note The mechanics are depicted incorrectly, however. The episode suggests Eevee evolved into Glaceon by touching the Ice Rock. In-game, an Eevee needs to level up in its vicinity to evolve into Glaceon.