Japanese Title: Pastoria Gym! VS Crasher Wake!!
Original Airdate: June 19, 2008
U.S. Airdate: November 22, 2008
So Crasher Wake's first Pokémon is Gyarados? I bet Ash will have a long and tough battle trying to take it down.
After having fun at the Crogunk Festival yesterday, the time has finally here for Ash to face Crasher Wake in his 4th Gym Battle. His Buizel is pumped to get started after the draw against Lucario in the previous Gym battle, but things couldn't be worse as after Pikachu accidentally hurts it leading to a fight and it feeling pressure after meeting Crasher Wake's powerful Floatzel. Will Ash be able to defeat the Torrential Masked Master's water Pokémon team and finally earn the Fen Badge?
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- The Coats Are Off: Crasher Wake takes off his Badass Longcoat before the battle signifying he's ready to give it his all against Ash.
- Conflict Ball: A simple accident on Pikachu's part caused a feud between it and Buizel which made it difficult for Ash to have his team work together.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: A bit more of a Curb Stomp Cushion as Wake actually does pull off a good fight and push all of Ash's Pokémon to the limit unlike with Wattson back in Hoenn, but besides the aforementioned Wattson, Wake is the only gym leader Ash has ever beaten without any of his Pokémon being defeated.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: When patting Ash on the back, Wake doesn't realize how strong he is as it Ash is noticeably bothered by it.
- Incoming Ham: Crasher Wake once again introduces himself loudly and dramatically.
- Irony: Despite Crasher Wake mentioning several times to Ash he couldn't defeat his Floatzel with Water Type moves, it ends up going down only by Ash's Buizel's Water Pulse and Aqua Jet.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Thanks to working together to defeat Crasher Wake, Buizel, Pikachu, and Turtwing make up after their earlier fight and become closer friends.
- Graceful Loser: Wake takes his loss to Ash pretty well and happy to see how closer Ash's team has gotten after the battle. He happily awards him his Fen badge.
- The Load:
- Surprisingly enough on Crasher Wake's team its Gyarados. While its understandably at a disadvantage thanks to having a double weakness to electricity, it still fails to hit Pikachu with a single attack and quickly goes down after a Thunderbolt and Volt Tackle.
- Turtwig suffers this in order to make Buizel look good. Despite being the best option to take on Wake's Quagsire whose only weakness is Grass, he fails to do much damage and Quagsire hits it with a barrage of super effective attacks like Ice Beam and Sludge Bomb. It ends up being benched for the rest of the fight and contributing to basically nothing.
- Making a Splash: Crasher Wake is a Water Type Gym Leader who uses Gyarados, Quagsire, and Floatzel. His gym is a pool with several mini islands for challengers to battle on.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Turtwig's attempts to stop Buizel and Pikachu from fighting only to accidentally make things worse when it unintentionally knocks Buizel over.
- No-Sell: Averted. After Gyarados is fried by Pikachu's Thunderbolt, he visibly slumps over with his eyes and mouth closed before recovering. This indicates the Atrocious Pokémon was very heavily damaged and is pretending the attack didn't work.
- Out of Focus:
- Turtwig unfortunately doesn't get much time to shine as its quickly overwhelmed by Quagsire and is benched for the rest of the battle.
- Team Rocket only appear at the very beginning and very end of the episode, where they are seen relaxing in a mud bath at the Great Marsh.
- Chimchar and Gligar understandably doesn't get much focus due to being at a disadvantage against Wake's Water Type Pokémon.
- Recycled Premise: Ash's star Pokémon battler developing a rivalry a Gym Leader's Pokémon and struggling to defeat and evolved version of itself? Gee where have we heard that before?
- Wham Episode: Not only does Ash successfully defeat Crasher Wake and earn his 4th badge, but he manages to do it without a single one of his Pokémon fainting in the process which shows his growth as a trainer.
- The Worf Effect: While Crasher Wake does try his best to give Ash a challenging Gym Battle, he still fails to knock out a single one of his Pokémon and is the only Sinnoh Gym Leader to do so.
