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| Season | Pokémon the Series: XY (Season 17) · Shalour City & the road to Coumarine arc (XY043–XY049) |
| Episode | Season 17, episode 48 · English episode 843 · Japanese episode 849 · Bulbapedia code XY049 |
| English title | Bonnie for the Defense! |
| Japanese title | 出動ラプラス防衛隊！ユリーカがんばる！！ Shutsudō Rapurasu Bōeitai! Yurīka Ganbaru!! — “Dispatch the Laplace Protection Team! Do Your Best, Eureka!!” |
| First aired (Japan) | 30 October 2014 · TV Tokyo |
| First aired (US) | 20 December 2014 · Cartoon Network |
| Screenplay | Shōji Yonemura |
| Opening / ending (Japan) | Mega V (Mega Volt) – Yūsuke · Doridori (DreamDream) – Shōko Nakagawa |
| English opening | Pokémon Theme (Version XY) – Ben Dixon & The Sad Truth |
| Who’s That Pokémon? | Lapras (US) |
| Previous episode | A Campus Reunion! (XY048) |
Filler / stand-alone episodeSeason finaleLapras Defense Force
Bonnie for the Defense! is the 48th episode of Pokémon the Series: XY, the seventeenth season of the Pokémon anime, and the 843rd episode of the English dub overall (Japanese episode 849, Bulbapedia code XY049). It first aired in Japan on 30 October 2014 and in the United States on 20 December 2014. It falls within the season’s Shalour City & the road to Coumarine stretch (EP43–EP49).
The season finale premiered on 20 December 2014, five days after Australia’s Toasted TV; An Undersea Place to Call Home! (XY024) and Mega Evolution Special II followed on Cartoon Network on 7 February 2015, in Season 18.
Synopsis
Bonnie joins three children secretly caring for an injured Lapras, persuades them to trust Nurse Joy, and helps return it to the sea despite Team Rocket. Exploring the forest with Dedenne, Bonnie meets Heidi, Jay and Kye, the self-styled Lapras Defense Force, who welcome her as a member and take her to their lakeside hideout, where a Lapras hurt in a storm, possibly by poachers, is resting.
When the Lapras develops a high fever, Ash, Serena and Clemont arrive and warn that it needs proper care; Heidi, who has distrusted adults since a teacher took away an Eevee the children were hiding, finally agrees to let Nurse Joy come. Joy treats Lapras and reveals that the Eevee was returned to its Trainer, and the children admit that some adults can be trusted.
Missing the sea, Lapras follows the river with the children once their friends’ Pokémon smash a boulder in the way. Team Rocket attack in their Magikarp submarine and James’s Inkay confuses Lapras with Psybeam, but Heidi cures it with Jay’s candy and Lapras races to the sea, where its family freezes Team Rocket with Ice Beam before Pikachu’s Electro Ball blasts them off, and Lapras says goodbye.
Major Events
- Season finale. Bonnie joins Heidi, Jay and Kye’s Lapras Defense Force
- An injured Lapras
- Nurse Joy
- Luxio uses Wild Charge
- Lapras returns to the sea
- Meowth fills in for James in the motto
- The dub softens talk of Lapras dying
- The last episode of the dub’s Season 17
Trivia
- The screenplay is by Shōji Yonemura.
- This is a stand-alone episode: it can be skipped without losing the thread of the Kalos story.
Changes in the English Dub
- Ash’s warning that leaving Lapras would let it die becomes “Lapras is going downhill fast”
- Clemont’s “that may be a possibility in the worst case” becomes that he’d “rather not think about it”
Part of our Pokémon the Series: XY guide. Browse every season of the Pokémon anime.