The 'Pokémon' Anime's Scripts For The Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma Confrontation Have Been Found
And they've been translated too. The episodes were infamously canceled after the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake
On March 10, 2011, the twenty-second episode of the Pokémon: Black & White anime saw Ash, Pikachu, Iris, Cilan, and Burgh stave off the Venipede that swarm Castelia City, and the four minus Burgh meet up with Professor Juniper to investigate Team Rocket’s disruptions in the Desert Resort. The culmination of a huge mission for Team Rocket in the Unova region involving the Meteonite that largely kept Jessie, James and Meowth away from their usual Pokémon abduction attempts. This was supposed to lead to a two-episode confrontation with Team Plasma, Unova’s evil team, as the episode previews had shown. However, the very next day was the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, colloquially “The Great East Japan Earthquake” of a 9.0 magnitude, the strongest earthquake to ever hit Japan. Such also led to the the Fukushima nuclear disaster The destruction to the buildings alone would’ve brought too much visual similarity to the buildings crumbling to the earthquake, so the episodes were skipped, and eventually banned. Pierce, a Team Rocket operative introduced this season, was never seen again.
On April 30, 2023, over 12 years later, it was revealed that Bulbagarden user ObjectionMan, real name Maku Atherton, managed to track someone with scans of the scripts for “Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma” who had agreed to sell them. The user then started a GoFundMe to get the funds to purchase, share, and translate it. Even yours truly contributed. However, 16 hours later the campaign was sending out refunds and the page was down. Why? Because the original script owner was generous enough to give the scripts for free. The original scans are here and the translation is here.
As a result of the skip and ban, Jessie, James, and Meowth reverted to the ways of the first three series, even putting their white uniforms back on, and return to the mission of abduction. The meetup with Professor Juniper is cut out of the dub and Rodger Parson’s narration mentions Ash’s Gym battle with Burgh instead. Ash’s eventual Krokorok, who appears in part 1, does not appear for about another 40 episodes, and who knows whether these changes brought it on. Further Team Rocket plots would ensue, culminating in Ash and Giovanni’s only face-off in the entire series “Meloetta and the Undersea Temple!” and “Unova’s Survival Crisis!”. The latter uses Meloetta to unseal the Reveal Glass to turn Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus into their Therian Formes. When Meloetta is recovered, he is overcome with insanity and the ambition to destroy Unova, but is thwarted. When defeated, he withdraws Team Rocket back to Kanto. It is during this two-parter that assets from the “Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma” would be used in the first episode, mostly from the structure of Desert Resort.
As for Team Plasma, by the time they actually debut, Ash has already competed in the Unova League, Black 2 and White 2 have been released, and the number of episodes in the series are in the triple digits, in episode 110. Our main Team Rocket trio returns in the episode before. Team Plasma foregoes the medieval white uniforms of the original Black and White in favor of the black uniforms of the sequels. Ghetsis is just a maniac who summons Reshiram to control it with a device that broke and he would be arrested by Looker. N was an ally to Ash and friends all the way, having run away from Ghetsis.
