Pokémon Food Fight – Pokémon Season 2, Episode 27

Filler / stand-alone episodeSnorlax learns Hyper Beam

Pokémon Food Fight is the 27th episode of Pokémon: Adventures in the Orange Islands, the second season of the Pokémon anime, and the 107th episode of the English dub overall (Japanese episode 109, Bulbapedia code EP107). It first aired in Japan on 5 August 1999 and in the United States on 19 August 2000. It falls within the season’s The last badge & the Winner’s Cup stretch (EP106–EP112).

Synopsis · Major Events · Trivia · Dub Changes · All episodes

Synopsis

A storm far out at sea has made the sea too dangerous to sail and our heroes have been stranded on a small Island for a week now with their food supplies for both Pokémon and themselves running low. Tracey then reveals that the Pokémon should be OK because according to his trainers guide theres lots of wild flowers on the island that Pokémon love to eat, he tests the theory when he finds some wild flowers which looks similar to those in his book and starts to pull on them, but he pulls up a kid from the undergrowth who had the flowers as his hat!

The kid responds badly and tells Tracey he picked on the wrong kid, because he’s Golzar the greatest grass Pokémon trainer in the Orange Islands, Tracey apologises, but Golzar angrily challenges Tracey to a battle, Ash says they’ll just go look for food somewhere else and then Golzar challenges him too, Ash can’t resist and accepts the battle. Golzar sends out Gloom first and Ash tries to send out Charizard but instead gets Squirtle who is at a natural disadvantage, he tries a water gun but Gloom seems to like it more than anything, Ash quickly returns Squirtle and tries again to send out Charizard, he drops it however and damages his Pokéball, and again he got the wrong one, it’s Snorlax.

Ash tries to return Snorlax but the damaged Pokéball prevents him from doing so, while Ash begs Snorlax to wake up for the battle Golzar orders a Solar Beam which hits Snorlax, waking it up, Snorlax then proceeds to attack Gloom and Golzar returns it, Snorlax then turns it’s attention to Golzar – steals his lunch, and the egg flowers he was using as a hat. Just like any tough trainer, Golzar then bursts into tears and prepares to run off home, Snorlax goes back to sleep.

Ash asks Golzar if he wants to finish the battle, but he doesn’t, Ash points out that it wasn’t even him who wanted to battle in the first place but now his Pokéball is broken and he can’t fix it unless he gets to a Pokémon Center, Golzar points out that they are lucky because there is one nearby, but they’ll have to pass a mountain to get to it, he then runs off laughing to himself. Ash tries to figure out some way of getting Snorlax over the mountain, they try pulling him over logs initially and it seems to be working but wouldn’t be sustainable the whole way.

Tracey pulls out an apple which they intend to use as bait to get Snorlax running across the mountain, so they put it on the end of an old rod and dangle it above Snorlax, who even though asleep manages to snap the apple up and eat it much to the groups dismay, they then put together the plan of dressing Ash up like an apple, in order to make Snorlax chase him across the mountain, thinking him to be food. Snorlax wakes up and takes the bait and Ash runs up the mountain with Snorlax hot on his trail. Eventually Snorlax catches Ash and tries to take a bite, luckily the fake apple he’s dressed up in is pretty tough, Snorlax realises its not food and goes back to sleep – the good news is Ash made it to the top of the mountain before he got caught. The group notice a fast flowing river nearby and build a raft out of wood in order to easily get Snorlax down the other side of the mountain to reach the Pokémon Center, it all looks as though its going well but they then realise they’re heading toward a waterfall at high speed, unable to change course they plummet into the water below.

The group find themselves in water shallow enough to stand up in and they bump into Golzar who is already over there, they continue pulling Snorlax along and finally reach the Pokémon Center, with Golzar taunting Ash as they go. The Pokémon Center has a large crowd formed outside it and Golzar tells them it’s because the island isn’t large enough to have a seaport or airport so a plane flies by once a week and physically drops supplies, but this latest shipment hasn’t shown up yet so people are running out of Pokémon food.

Nurse Joy and Chansey arrive and inform the crowd that the latest shipment of food left Valencia Island that morning and that it should be arriving in the next few minutes, which is met with applauds from the crowd. The group then spot a plane flying over, which drops a package on a parachute which drifts slowly toward the ground, unfortunately Team Rocket are watching the package and use one of their latest inventions to snag it and drag it into the woods so that they can eat it themselves.

The crowd of people along with Golzar, Ash and friends arrive in the woods to find Team Rocket with the box of food. Team Rocket however try to convince the crowd that they’ll happily surrender the food so everyone can feed their starving Pokémon, but only if they get Ash’s Pikachu. It looks as though the crowd is about to turn on Ash and Pikachu but Golzar steps in and tells them they should all be ashamed, the crowd are turned back against Team Rocket, or at least to neutral.

Team Rocket propose that Ash battles Meowth in his mechanical suit “The Mega Meowthonator”, it absorbs Pikachu’s electric attacks and chases Pikachu until he flees back to Ash, just as Team Rocket are saying they won Pikachu fair and square and Ash should give it up, there is a loud thud of huge footsteps, and Snorlax appears from the undergrowth, looking focused and almost angry, a look the group have never seen from Snorlax before. Tracey concludes that it must have sensed that its friends were in danger and come to help, his theory proves correct when Snorlax begins to battle the Mega Meowthonator. Meowth manages to hit Snorlax with a few attacks, which don’t seem to bother it in the slightest, Snorlax then destroys the mechanical Meowthonator and throws Meowth into Team Rocket, knocking them into the water before hitting them with a powerful Hyper beam and sending them blasting off.

Ash is elated that Snorlax came to help and runs to hug it, however it runs past Ash and straight to the food, helping itself to a few bits before going back to sleep. Nurse Joy comes out of the Pokémon Center and hands Ash his Pokéball back which has now been mended. Golzar too is outside the Pokémon Center and he apologises to Ash, tells him he was wrong about him and the two shake hands. In the time that’s passed since this adventure began the stormy seas have cleared and our friends wave goodbye and continue on their journey.

Major Events

• Snorlax learns Hyper Beam
• Snorlax’s Poké Ball breaks — the only time one of Ash’s has
• The Mecha-Meowthinator
• Aired in the US before EP106

Trivia

• The screenplay is by Junki Takegami.
• This is a stand-alone episode: it can be skipped without losing the thread of the Orange Islands story.
• The Who’s That Pokémon? segment features Gloom in Japan, where it almost always matched the episode, but Marowak in the US, where 4Kids picked the Pokémon at random.

Changes in the English Dub

• Text on Tracey’s book erased (three shots)
• Double-Edge becomes “Body Slam”; the dub implies Snorlax is male
• The first US airing ended with an English Meowth’s Party

Part of our Pokémon: Adventures in the Orange Islands guide. Browse every season of the Pokémon anime.