So now, time for us to play...
— Sabrina
Japanese Title: Casey! Psychic Showdown!
Original Airdate: August 26th, 1997
US Airdate: October 6th, 1998
The one where... Sabrina gets one heck of an Adaptational Villainy upgrade.
The party finally arrives in Saffron City where a young girl manages a gym of Pokémon using her psychic powers. If Ash defeats this particular Gym Leader, Ash can earn a gold badge. Gathering all their strength, Ash and Pikachu challenge her. She happily accepts, but adds the strange condition that if Ash loses, they must become her friend. The official gym battle begins, but Pikachu is helpless against the young girl's Pokémon, Abra. To make matters worse, Abra evolves in the middle of the match, turning into the more powerful, Kadabra. Employing even stronger psychic powers against Pikachu, Saffron City's Gym Leader defeats Ash. As this strange story unravels, Ash encounters a mysterious man who seems to be the key to solving the puzzle to this young girl's disturbing power.
Tropes
- Adaptational Villainy: Sabrina was a serious, stoic character in the games, but not the dangerous psycho who kidnaps and traps the trio in a deadly dollhouse like she is here. And this would hardly be the only time she'd get this treatment, either.
- Adapted Out: Besides the Abra line, Sabrina used a Mr. Mime and a Venomoth in the games. Considering how strong she is with a single Psychic Pokémon, Ash is really lucky those aren't in the anime.
- Animation Bump: The shot of Ash falling off the cliff at the start of the episode is unusually fluid.
- Catchphrase Interruptus: While Team Rocket does their motto, they stop in the middle when they notice the twerps drinking tea.
- Comedic Underwear Exposure: Ash is on the receiving end of one of these by Sabrina's father, having his jeans pulled down to his ankles and being forced to dance in his white boxers.
- Creepy Child: Sabrina's doll, who nearly lures Ash into falling off a cliff to his doom and tries to crush him, Brock, and Misty with her destructive bouncy ball.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Sabrina hands Ash possibly his most humiliating defeat ever in this episode. Pikachu doesn't even get a hit in on Kadabra. The fight is so one-sided that Kadabra uses its psychic powers to force Pikachu to dance, just to rub salt in the wound, until Ash forfeits.
- Darker and Edgier: This is one of the few episodes where a person (in this case, Sabrina) attempts to outright murder Ash and co. At the start of the episode, she leads Ash off the edge of a cliff, and at the end, she attempts to crush the miniaturized Ash, Misty, and Brock under her ball.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Zig-Zagged. As punishment for losing to Sabrina, Ash and his friends are forced to play with her Split Personality doll, which represents her younger self.
- Disguised in Drag: James (of course) as a Hawaiian girl, complete with cheesy falsetto voice.
- Eye Catch: This episode's Who's That Pokémon segment features Abra.
- Fan Disservice: Misty doesn't take well to seeing Ash in his boxers any more than we do.
- Giggling Villain: Sabrina's doll loves to giggle, usually while she's trying to kill Ash and his friends or otherwise lure them to their doom.
- Heroic Willpower: Discussed. Sabrina's father says Ash has the willpower but it alone won't be enough to beat his daughter.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: There is absolutely nothing Pikachu can do to Abra/Kadabra: it effortlessly teleports out of harm's way, redirects Pikachu's lightning attacks back at him, and takes special time to humiliate and toss him around with Psychic, forcing Ash to throw the match and protect his friend.
- Involuntary Dance: Pikachu by Kadabra's Psychic, and Ash by Sabrina's father's telekinesis.
- Knight of Cerebus: Sabrina is portrayed completely seriously and without any of the series' usual slapstick humor.
- Long Speech Tea Time: Ash and his friends have tea while waiting for Team Rocket to finish their catchphrase, to Jessie and James’ offense.
- Minimalist Cast: This episode may hold the record for the fewest Pokémon depicted in any episode. Only five appear in any form: Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Meowth, Abra, and Kadabra. There are no duplicates, nor do any other Pokémon even appear in the background.
- Mythology Gag:
- Team Rocket traps the trio in a Saffron City building by throwing them onto a warp tile, a reference to Silph Co, its Rocket occupation, and all its warp tiles in the game.
- It's hard to tell if this is intentional or not, but Ash and Pikachu's helplessness against the might of Kadabra's overwhelming strength adds up with the Psychic type's infamously overpowered state in the Gen 1 games.
- Non-Indicative Title: Abra was only seen for a while before evolving into Kadabra mid-battle.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Averted, surprisingly: while their voices are a bit of a giveaway, Team Rocket looks fairly convincing in their hula girl disguises.
- Police Are Useless: The Saffron City police are apparently okay with the local gym leader being a murderous lunatic (either that or they've got nothing that can take on her Abra/Kadabra).
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: When Sabrina, her doll, and Abra/Kadabra's eyes start glowing red, psychic mayhem ensues.
- Sadist: Sabrina herself seems to love torturing and murdering people.
- Sequence Breaking: This is the first time the show goes off the rails from the order of events in the games. Ash challenges Gym Leader number 6 before we meet 4 and 5.
- Shout-Out
- Ash and Co's time in Sabrina's dollhouse homages The Twilight Zone (1959) episode Stopover in a Quiet Town.
- Skewed Priorities:
- After Team Rocket reveal themselves, abduct Pikachu, and trap Ash & Co., the first thing out of Ash's mouth is to wonder where the prizes he supposedly won are.
- Even after Sabrina’s father saves Ash and his friends from possibly dying in the hands of Sabrina, Ash still worries about earning a badge from the gym leader.
- Spoon Bending: Many of the psychics in Sabrina's gym are shown to be practicing their psychic abilities by trying (to limited effect) to bend spoons. One such psychic tries demonstrating this to Ash, Brock and Misty with great difficulty.
- The Stoic: The real Sabrina doesn't show any expression at all. She instead relays her thoughts to her doll.
- Teleportation Rescue: Sabrina's doll teleports Ash and the gang out of Team Rocket's trap. Sabrina's father then has to teleport them out of Sabrina's dollhouse.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- Ash still thinks it’s a good idea to challenge Sabrina after the latter’s father, Misty, and Brock tell him not to.
- Then there's his "attempt" at Spoon Bending, simply bending said spoon in half and boasting "muscle over mind" to his friends and the psychic. They are not impressed with his stupidly cocky display.Misty: Embarrassing.
Brock: Just pretend we never met him before.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Ash, upon realizing that the two cute girls who kissed him earlier were Team Rocket in disguise, is understandably grossed out. Of course, because it was both of them, it was more "unsettling identity reveal."Ash: Ew, gross, they both kissed me! (starts wiping off his cheeks)
