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EP020

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The Ghost of Maiden's Peak redirects here. For the actual ghost, see Ghost of Maiden's Peak.
← EP019 : Tentacool & Tentacruel
Original series
EP021 : Bye Bye Butterfree →
The Ghost of Maiden's Peak
EP020.png
  EP020  
ゆうれいポケモンとなつまつり
The Ghost Pokémon and the Summer Festival
First broadcast
Japan August 12, 1997
United States October 2, 1998
English themes
Opening Pokémon Theme
Ending
Japanese themes
Opening めざせポケモンマスター
Ending ひゃくごじゅういち
Credits
Animation Team Ota
Screenplay 首藤剛志 Takeshi Shudō
Storyboard 井硲清高 Kiyotaka Itani
Assistant director 井硲清高 Kiyotaka Itani
Animation director 志村隆行 Takayuki Shimura
Additional credits

The Ghost of Maiden's Peak (Japanese: ゆうれいポケモンとなつまつり The Ghost Pokémon and the Summer Festival) is the 20th episode of the Pokémon anime. It was first broadcast in Japan on August 12, 1997 and in the United States on October 2, 1998.

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Spoiler warning: this article may contain major plot or ending details.
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Blurb

After leaving Acapulco in search of Saffron City, our heroes finally arrive at a small port town in the middle of celebrating a summer festival. In order to recover from their hard journey, Ash and his party decide to participate in the festival. Team Rocket's interest in the festivities, on the other hand, is purely monetary. Brock and James are both bewitched by a picture scroll shown in a shrine open only on the day of the summer festival. The picture depicts a beautiful young maiden in a scene from the legend of Maiden Rock—a point on a cape near the town. According to the priest's explanation, the girl in the picture lived 2,000 years ago, and awaited the return of a lover captured in battle, until she finally turned into stone. Every year at this season, the ghost of this girl steals the spirit of a young man and this year it is James' and Brock's turn. What could the ghost possibly be after? And what is its true identity?

Plot

Traveling by ferry from the holiday resort of Porta Vista to Maiden's Peak, Ash and his friends find out that they have arrived in time for the annual Summer Festival. When they decide to go and enjoy it, Brock sees a beautiful girl, with flowing purple hair and a red flower, standing on a nearby pier. He immediately falls in love with her, but after being run over by a group of tourists, he notices that the girl has disappeared. Pikachu is the only one that seems to notice the girl is actually a Gastly, but Ash and Misty don't seem to notice her at all.

Meanwhile, Team Rocket follows Ash and his friends to Maiden's Peak. They come up with an idea to look around for dropped coins, and while pondering it, James sees the same girl Brock saw before, only by the water. Jessie slaps James to regain his attention. As they leave to look for the coins, James takes a final look at the dock, noticing the disappearance of the girl. During the festival, Ash and his friends meet an old lady. She warns Brock that he should beware a young, beautiful girl who will lead him to a cruel fate. After the old lady insults Misty and Misty decides that they should be somewhere else instead of being insulted and drags off Ash and Brock with her. Meanwhile, Team Rocket puts their plan into action, though they do not seem to find anything. Then, James notices a penny lying on the walkway and goes to retrieve it, but is interrupted by the old lady, which Ash and company met just a moment ago. As in the case of Brock, she mentions the young girl to James. Then an Officer Jenny appears and takes the coin James found. When she suggests that they go down to the station with her to fill out a report, Team Rocket stammers that it is all right, they do not need to go down to the station, and then they flee the scene.

Both Ash's group and Team Rocket head for the Shrine of the Maiden. They see the shrine's greatest treasure, a 2,000-year-old painting of the maiden. Brock and James both realize that the girl in the painting is the same girl they saw before, and both attempt to approach the painting but are blocked by the man presenting the painting to the audience. He then tells the story of the maiden, who waited on the cliff for her loved one to return from the war, and eventually turned into stone. The two groups go to take a closer look at the aforementioned cliff, and Meowth formulates a plan to steal the painting, with the intention of selling it for a lot of money, later that evening. As night falls, Brock is still at the cliff. Misty and Ash leave to enjoy the festival while Brock insists on staying at the cliff-side. When it is about time for the local Pokémon Center to lock the doors for the night, Brock still has not returned from the cliff, so Ash decides to go look for him, but Nurse Joy holds him back, giving Ash a short lecture on the importance of sleep.

In the middle of the night, Meowth tries to wake up Jessie and James so they can try to steal the painting, but the two are not very eager to wake up. Suddenly a strong wind blows, and the doors of the Maiden's Shrine open. The ghost of the maiden floats out, causes Meowth to fall asleep and then wakes up James. She also shows herself to Brock, telling him that she's been waiting for him. Brock replies that he has been waiting, too. Ash and Misty start looking for Brock the next morning, while Meowth and Jessie search for James. Ash and Jessie then meet face-to-face and notice that they both are looking for a missing person. Jessie performs the Team Rocket motto all alone, but then hears James saying his lines. James and later Brock are thrown out of the shrine. As they all try to return Brock and James normal, the old lady appears again, reminding them of her warning about the ghost of the maiden. Ash's Pikachu shocks James and Brock, and the two finally revert to their normal selves. They all head inside, and the old lady states that all young men have fallen into the curse while passing through Maiden's Peak. They decide to protect themselves from the ghost by buying a large quantity of ofuda or anti-ghost stickers and placing them around the shrine and the two cursed ones. However, when night comes, they note that the stickers do not work, and just like the previous night, the ghost of the maiden appears. Ash and others try to prevent Brock and James from being pulled out by the maiden.

After being shot with a bazooka by Jessie, the ghost of the maiden summons several skull-like ghostly apparitions. Ash tries to identify them with his Pokédex, but with no results. However, the Pokédex is still searching for one and when Ash points the Pokédex at the ghost of the maiden, it identifies her as a Gastly, who is impersonating the old lady as well. Since Gastly's disguise has been revealed, it transforms back to its normal form. Ash then challenges it to a battle. Ash commands Pikachu to start the battle, but Gastly summons a living mouse trap to scare Pikachu off. Meowth states that mouse traps do not work on him, but Gastly summons a ball for him to play with, distracting him. Jessie then sends out Ekans, only for it to be scared off by Gastly's newly summoned mongoose. James commands his Koffing to attack with the Poison Gas attack, but the mongoose puts on a gas mask and stomps Koffing down.

Ash decides that it is his turn again and calls out Charmander. Gastly summons a fire extinguisher, and Ash quickly recalls Charmander. He then summons his Squirtle and Bulbasaur, but Gastly summons a Venusaur and a Blastoise, which causes Ash's Pokémon to become too scared to do anything, and just because it thinks it is fun, it combines them into a hybrid called "Venustoise". After repeatedly being beaten by Gastly, Misty tries another strategy. She uses a cross, garlic, a stake, and a hammer, comparing Gastly to a vampire. However, the sun starts to rise once again, and as Gastly hates sunlight, it disappears, saying that the ghost of the maiden and the old woman will return for next year's festival. On the following night, the festival continues, with lantern boats sent out to sea to help guide any wandering spirits. Ash and his friends have fun, and everything is back to normal. As the episode ends, the true ghost of the maiden emerges from her stone self, thanking Gastly for keeping her legend alive and hoping her true love will return.

Major events

For a list of all major events in the animated series, please see the history page.

Debuts

Pokémon debuts

Characters

Humans

Dare da?

Pokémon

Who's That Pokémon?
Venustoise (Japanese: フシギックス Fushigix)

Who's That Pokémon?: Gastly

Other


Trivia

The mongoose
  • The priest says the great war the maiden's lover went off to happened 2,000 years before the episode's events.
  • One of the creatures Gastly transforms into is a real-world animal: mongoose.
  • While the Venusaur and Blastoise that Gastly summoned transform into "Venustoise," they appear to be performing the Fusion Dance.
  • The outfits that Ash, Misty, and Brock wear during the festival reappear in the fourth Japanese ending song, Pokémon Ondo.
  • The similarly named Maiden Peak is a real mountain in Oregon.
  • The Maiden's Peak statue is almost identical to the Orichalcum statue that was a plot device in early episodes of the Slayers anime series.
  • There are many Japanese cultural references in this episode, especially during the festival at the end.
  • The festival is the first time Misty is seen with her hair down.
  • The Gastly in this episode is the only known one to date that is able to speak and shape-shift.
  • This is the first episode to feature another Pokémon, other than Meowth, that is able to talk without telepathy. The second is A Shipful of Shivers.
  • The kanji on the fire extinguisher Gastly uses to extinguish Ash's Charmander's tail flame was left unedited in the dub.
  • In the Arabic dub, this episode was removed for unknown reasons, likely because of the extensive representation of Shinto religious elements in ways that are against Islamic culture. It was also removed from the Korean dub.
  • The festival in this episode bears a striking resemblance to the one from the 1993 OVA Mega Man: Upon a Star. However, in this festival, there is no Whack-a-Mole.
  • This is the first episode to show a real ghost, as the true spirit of the Maiden speaks with Gastly near the end.

Errors

Ash's miscolored hat
  • James commands his Koffing to use Poison Gas, which Koffing could not legally learn in a Generation I game unless it was traded back from Generation II. At the time of the episode's original airing, no Generation II game had been released yet, meaning that at the time of this episode airing, Koffing was completely unable to learn Poison Gas by any means.
  • When Ash says "We lose. It's just too strong", the red part that adjusts the size of his hat is white.

Dub edits

  • Kanto Pokérap: Day 5 (Version 2)
  • The fan that Misty held had its kanji erased.
  • Misty (or, at least, someone who sounded suspiciously like her) shouted "Let's go to the ferris wheel!" twice in the scene; specifically, right up to the part where Brock says "She was the most beautiful girl I've ever seen...".
  • James finds a United States penny on the ground which was originally a ¥5 coin in the Japanese version. However, the ¥1000 and ¥5000 bills in the old woman's cash register were left unchanged.
  • James mentions the F.B.I when he encounters Officer Jenny.
  • The o-fuda they wear are referred to as "anti-ghost stickers" in the dub.
  • Brock's "Hey! Let me go!" line in the dub was actually "You guys...!" in the Japanese version. The original version implied that Brock was in a trance and his friends broke the trance.
  • Ash says that, since Gastly is a Pokémon, he can battle it with his Pokémon in the Japanese version.
  • The ball that Meowth was playing with had the word "Matatabi", meaning "catnip", which was erased from the dub.
  • The mongoose says "mongoose" in the vein of a Pokémon in the original version instead of "Dinner time!".

In other languages



← EP019 : Tentacool & Tentacruel
Original series
EP021 : Bye Bye Butterfree →
Project Anime logo.png This episode article is part of Project Anime, a Bulbapedia project that covers all aspects of Pokémon animation.
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