She's the most beautiful rock I've ever seen.
My love...I'm waiting for you.
— The ghost of the maiden
Japanese Title: The Ghost Pokémon and the Summer Festival
Original Airdate: August 12, 1997
US Airdate: October 2, 1998
The one where... A Gastly transforms into a real life mongoose.
Ash and company arrive at a small port town celebrating a summer festival. Brock mourns the end of summer, wishing he had more time to meet cute girls wearing swimsuits. Team Rocket, meanwhile, show up with the ingenious criminal plot of...scrounging the ground for dropped change. Both Brock and James are warned about a mysterious girl making trouble for them in the future. Exactly as stated, they both get drawn in by the beautiful ghost of Maiden's Peak. While Jessie attacks the ghost by firing a rocket launcher at it, Ash's Pokédex reports that the ghost is actually the Ghost-type Pokémon Gastly. Gastly is unusually strong and smart for a wild Pokémon and capable of shape-shifting to scare every Pokémon sent to attack it. They struggle until the sun rises and Gastly vanishes.
Tropes
- Animal Jingoism: When faced against Jessie's Ekans, Gastly assumes the form of a mongoose to scare off the Snake Pokémon.Gastly: A snake's natural enemy is a mongoose. *poof* Dinnertime!
- Anti-Villain: Gastly just wants to make sure no one ever forgets the Maiden's legend, and he promises the actual ghost that he'll keep a lookout for the spirit of her dead lover when he leaves Maiden's Peak.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Most of the illusions the Gastly conjures for the other Pokémon are terrifying from their perspectives, such as a fire extinguisher chasing Ash's Charmander around. (The canon in this era dictates that Charmander perish if their tail-flames go out.) When faced with Meowth, Gastly's voice is ominous, but he simply distracts Meowth with a toy ball for kittens. Meowth delightedly takes the bait.
- Cast as a Mask: Gastly, the Maiden, and the old lady all have different voices.
- Crush Filter: When Misty has her hair down and wears a pretty kimono, Ash looks quite in awe at her.
- Cultural Translation: Refreshingly averted in the English dub considering how much Japanese culture is illustrated in this episode. The holiday being celebrated is Obon, a Buddhist Japanese celebration for the purpose of honoring one's ancestors. The dub doesn't mention the Japanese terms for the celebration and the other cultural items present (i.e. ofuda), but it does touch on their true significance and doesn't attempt to disguise them as something Western.
- Dance Party Ending: In the form of a traditional Japanese bon odori. Even Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy participate, and Team Rocket provides the musical accompaniment, but it's all sans a heartbroken Brock.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: The Maiden uses Gastly's powers to hypnotize young men until they eventually become her husbands in the afterlife. While it's hard to imagine...er, coitus with a ghost, and especially premarital acts given the generally traditionalist culture in Asia, the Maiden leading the bewitched James and Brock into her house (technically) over a night still comes off as creepy. Plus, she continues dragging James to her even when he's clearly shouting at a later point that he doesn't want to join her in the afterlife.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- During the fight, Gastly transforms into a mongoose. This is one of the most noticeable occurrences of real non-Pokémon animals in the first season (granted, it's an illusion). Even stranger in retrospect since a mongoose-like Pokémon, Zangoose, is introduced much later.
- When Misty appears in a kimono at the end of the episode, Ash shows apparent attraction to her for pretty much the only time ever.
- The Gastly in this episode is one of the extremely few (i.e., you could literally count them on your fingers) Pokémon, other than Meowth, who is able to speak human language without telepathy or possession. The Slowking in Pokémon 2000 is pretty much the only other one aside from a few hallucinatory/dream sequences.
- The episode itself is one of the regular bizarre ones from early on in the show's run: this Gastly is practically a prototype of Darkrai, with his fear-illusions and unexplained ability to speak human language.
- Misty produces a crucifix during the confrontation with Gastly. References to real-world religions would disappear from the anime from Johto onward.
- Enemy Mine: Ash and his friends are forced to fight alongside Team Rocket against Gastly.
- Eye Catch: The "Who's That Pokémon" was Gastly, naturally.
- Freak Out: Brock has one when he first meets the old lady.
- Furry Confusion: A retroactive example; no other Gastly in the anime can talk the way this one can.
- Fusion Dance: Blastoise + Venusaur = Venustoise. Although this is all an illusion, Pokemon cannot combine like that (yet).
- Jump Scare: In the Cold Open, when Gastly's face suddenly appears before the Maiden's face, bellowing "I'm waiting for you!"
- Larynx Dissonance: The old lady is voiced by Jimmy Zoppi.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Both James and Brock do foolish things under the Maiden's spell. What's surprising is how relatively sane Brock, the resident Casanova Wannabe who's by no means a stranger to this trope, sounds in comparison with the usually money-obsessed James.Brock: So that's Maiden Rock. It's the most beautiful rock I've ever seen!James: I don't care if she's made of stone! I'm still in love with her!Brock: If she were my girlfriend, I'd make sure she was never out of my sight!James: No one would ever steal her from me, NOT EVEN TEAM ROCKET! I'LL FIGHT THEM TO KEEP HER SAFE!
- Master of Illusion: Gastly. He can fool people up close into thinking he is human, imitate a human ghost, and frighten other Pokémon out of even trying to fight him.
- Only in It for the Money: Downplayed. Gastly is motivated by genuine kindness, but certainly doesn't mind making a couple of bucks in the process.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Minutes of seeing Brock and James in uncharacteristic agreement, Ash comes to this conclusion: "THEY'RE POSSESSED!"
- Our Vampires Are Different: Misty invokes this to troll Gastly, pulling out a cross, a stake, a hammer, and garlic as her suggestion for defeating him. It reaches the point that Gastly feels compelled to ask Misty if she thinks he's a vampire.
- Paranormal Episode: This is one of the few episodes to show non-Pokémon-related paranormal events.
- Real After All: Right when it seems like the Ghost of Maiden's Peak was just a hoax perpetrated by a Gastly, the real ghost appears and thanks him for keeping her legend alive.
- Reality Warper: Gastly. See Master of Illusion above.
- Ship Tease: At the very end of the episode when Ash first sees Misty in her yukata and with her hair down, he does a definite double-take. This is probably the most overt interest Ash ever shows in her.
- Shout-Out: Gastly's speech in which it runs down the forms it took previously in the episode before revealing its true identity mirrors Cutey Honey's In the Name of the Moon speech in which she did the same.
- Skewed Priorities: Officer Jenny catches uniformed members of Team Rocket, a known criminal organization, picking up a penny in the streets. Instead of immediately cuffing the lot of them, she thanks them for finding missing money and asks them to come to the station to fill out a report.
- Snake Versus Mongoose: One of Gastly's forms is a mongoose.
- Unfinished Business: It appears as though the ghost of the Maiden cannot leave until her beloved comes back. Gastly's apparent goal of making sure no one forgets about her is unexplained. The Japanese version has the Gastly explained as a friend of the Maiden's ghost who keeps her memory alive in the hopes of the ghost of her beloved finding out and coming to see her. Gastly also mentions he himself keeps a lookout for the guy during his travels since he can leave the peak but the Maiden cannot, which is where he's going at the end of the episode.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: The Maiden's ghost possessing Brock and James turns out to really be a clearly male Gastly.
- Weakened by the Light: Gastly says that he hates sunlight, and vanishes when the sun comes up.
