Here, we have to spend days hand-crafting these in the mountains with a crazy old man yelling at us but you can just have it.
Misty, you just go right on trying to be a Pokémon trainer. You might as well be good at something, cause you'll never be stars like us.
— Lily
Japanese Title: The Suichūka of Hanada City
Original Airdate: May 13, 1997
US Airdate: September 16, 1998
The one where... We find out Misty has sisters.
Despite Misty's mysterious attempts to dissuade Ash from confronting the Cerulean City Gym, Ash goes forth to earn a Cascade Badge. At the gym he watches "The Sensation Sisters" perform a swimming act, then he goes back stage to challenge them. They claim that they can't do battle now, and offer to just give him a badge. Misty stops them, however, revealing that she is their youngest sister who left home to be a Pokémon Trainer. She challenges Ash to a fight.
Misty gets off to a good start when Pikachu refuses to do battle against her and she handily defeats Ash's Butterfree. Ash defeats Misty's Starmie with his Pidgeotto, but the fight gets interrupted by Team Rocket, however, and after Pikachu saves the day with his electrical attacks, Misty's sisters decide to reward Ash the badge without finishing the battle.
Tropes
- Adaptational Nice Guy: The three sisters are a tad less condescending in the Electric Tale of Pikachu Manga, in which they're much more pleasant and welcoming to Ash.
- Black Sheep: Evidently Misty does not fit in with her older sisters, who are all graceful, beautiful, and socially adept (rather than brash and abrasive).
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Misty's older sisters—Daisy (blonde), Violet (blue hair, but still fits), and Lily (pink hair).
- Call-Back: When threatened by Jenny to put the boys under arrest, Ash pulls out his Pokedex to identify himself as a trainer.
- Casanova Wannabe: This is the first episode with Brock's running gag of hitting on women where ever he goes and more often or not being shot down quick. It might help if he did not try to pick up on-duty police officers.
- Clueless Detective: Officer Jenny is quick to jump to conclusions, accusing Ash and Brock of criminal activity, based on no hard evidence whatsoever and whips out her handcuffs, loudly concluding that if Ash knows the Jenny from Viridian City, he's probably a burglar who broke out of jail.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: Ash could have easily beaten the water Pokémon-using trainer, if only Pikachu hadn't refused to fight.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- This is the first of a few gyms where Ash gets the badge without winning or it being clear that he would win.
- A few non-Pokémon fish are seen in this episode. In the early episodes, it was vaguely implied that "normal" animals live in the show's world alongside Pokémon, but this was one of the only episodes to show any evidence of it. The idea of there being normal animals in the Pokémon world was phased out as the show went along.
- The Gym Leader(s) for Cerulean City are completely original to the anime. Though Ash does end up fighting Misty, the canon Gym Leader, for the badge, it still sticks out as every other Gym Leader in the anime since have always been directly lifted from the games.
- Evasive Fight-Thread Episode: This is likely the reason why Team Rocket interrupted the match and Ash was given the Cascade Badge for stopping them. Ever since they met, Ash and Misty have butted heads over the aspects of Pokémon training. When the two fight during the Gym battle, they are evenly matched with Staryu defeating Butterfree and Pidgeotto defeating Starmie before Team Rocket breaks in. The episode ends with Ash and Misty getting into an argument over their unfinished battle, making it ambiguous as who's the better trainer of the two.
- Eye Catch: The featured Who's That Pokémon? this episode is Seel, a Pokémon the sisters keep at the gym.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Misty's sisters can be rude and shallow (especially Lily), but do genuinely care for her and are proud of her for being such a good Pokémon trainer.
- Likes Older Women: Brock hits on Officer Jenny for the first time in this episode. While Brock's age is a bit ambiguous, he is clearly meant to be noticeably younger than her as she makes a crack about getting off work "past [his] bedtime". This is not the last time he hits on older women, either, as he makes a pass at every other Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy he sees as well as several older one-off characters that are meant to be full grown adults.
- Riddle for the Ages: Why did Brock go off on his own this episode? Never explained.
- Sibling Team: Misty's three older sisters work together in their water shows and in running the gym.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Misty tells Ash and Brock that they should not go to Cerulean. The boys think it's because of last night's story robbery that Team Rocket caused, but in actuality, it's because of of the gym being handled by Misty's sisters.
- Sibling Rivalry: As it turns out Misty's journey away from home to become a great master of water Pokémon is motivated by her desire to compete with her sisters, who are all attractive, popular, and talented.
- Theme Naming: The fact that Misty's sisters are peas-in-a-pod and Misty is the odd-one-out is reenforced by their naming scheme, her sisters all have flower names: Lily, Daisy, and Violet, but she herself does not. In the Japanese version, she did — Kasumi is part of the Japanese term for the baby's breath flower.
- Took a Level in Badass: Having spent its first few appearances suffering The Worf Effect for the sake of Butterfree's own evolution, Pidgeotto finally gets to score a huge win, defeating Misty's Starmie in a gym battle.
- Uncanny Family Resemblance: This is the first episode that shows that Officer Jenny is in the same situation as Nurse Joy; she is from a large family of identical women who all are named Jenny and who are all police officers, with some of them not even being blood-related!
- Valley Girl: Misty's sisters, like, TOTALLY talk like this.
- Worf Had the Flu: Daisy notes that if Ash had used Pikachu from the start, Misty's water types would have been nothing more than cannon fodder.
