The Lizard Slayer (Starter Squad)
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"The episode that stopped the Pokemon parodies, and now having an original story."
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The Lizard Slayer is the 9th Episode for the series Starter Squad, made by Shippiddge and was uploaded on September 21, 2019
Plot
The episode starts off with a Caterpie explaining a story related to the events of the show, then Yellow (a yellow caterpie) interrupted the story. Then Sandshrew fell from the celling along with Bulbasaur and Charmander, causing the caterpies to run away and warn the others, after they ran off, Bulbasaur names Sandshrew, Dirtle. The trio went off to find Squirtle and Charmander finds a trap with Bulbasaur unknowingly falling into the trap, causing him to get wet, then a Butterfree comes out of nowhere and kidnaps Bulbasaur in her Pokeball, next to come were some falling boulders. Charmander and Dirtle run away as fast as they could till a boulder blocks their path, leaving them unable to continue, then the same Butterfree that captured Bulbasaur uses a Shellder to stop Charmander, the two argue whether to catch Charmander or kill him, with Dirtle running towards then holding sand in order to attack them, it didn't really work, so the Butterfree uses the Shellder to attack Dirtle, while doing so, Charmander grabs the Shellder and kills it in one stomp. After seeing her Shellder get killed, the Butterfree takes out a Golbat which only seems to scream due to its big mouth, because of the Gobalt just screaming and being useless, the Butterfree returns her Gobalt back to its Pokeball, then she unintentionally takes out her Beedrill who acts really annoying, after a conversation with her annoying Beedrill, Charmander sets the Beedrill on fire and pulls out his left arm, killing him. The Butterfree still doesn't give up and takes out her Geodude, who starts singing the Rock Smasher song, after some time, Charmander managed to find the trap from earlier and uses it to kill the Geodude, which worked since the Geodude flew right into the trap and sank to the bottom, drowning him. The Butterfree sees this and takes out her Golem, who unintentionally stomps on her due to his lack of control, giving Charmander a chance to run. Meanwhile, in a room filled with caterpies, most of the caterpies are dining on Bulbasaur by sucking his bulb. While having a nice time relaxing, Charmander and Dirtle make it to the room and Charmander angrily yells at everyone, asking where Squrtile is, this caused all the caterpies to go haywire and charge right at Charmander, causing a giant battle in the room. Charmander uses the Beedrill's left arm he pulled out earlier after he killed the Beedrill in order to attack the caterpies, Dirtle was able to knock out one caterpie, only for him to get stuck in a cocoon made by caterpies, with too much caterpies attacking him, Charmander gets extremely angry and breathes out lots of fire, causing the entire room to get set ablaze and getting a lot of caterpies set on fire to their death, after ripping a caterpie in half, he once again begs for Squirtle, only for Leader Caterpie to show up. Charmander tries to run to Leader Caterpie to beat her up but gets kicked by Whiskers, who is now a Nidorina, while the two fight, the giant cacoon starts glowing, why? The sandshrew inside the cocoon is turning into, a sandslash! Seeing this, Charmander asks for Dirtle to help him fight Whiskers, but Dirtle left for no dumb reason. After a few attacks, Charmander was able to knock out Whiskers, fainting her. While Charmander was about to kill Whiskers with the Beedrill's left arm until a wave of water comes out of nowhere and knocks Charmander back, as the camera pans, we see that the one who shot out the water was Squirtle! Bulbasaur, who is still stuck in the web, sees Squirtle and thought that Squirtle looked different. Charmander was glad to see Squirtle but Squirtle keeps shooting water at Charmander because he wanted to get revenge on Charmander for doing all the cruel stuff he did, with the help of the caterpies, he is able to fight back, after shooting loads of water, Charmander is almost about to faint, with his tail's flame shrinking. Just as Squirtle was about to capture Charmander inside his Pokeball, Leader Caterpie tells Squirtle (Bluey because that's the way she says Squirtle's name) to stand down, then Leader Caterpie uses a shiv to kill Charmander, after that, the screen is blocked by a black screen, leaving the episode on a cliffhanger.
Why It Rocks
- This episode is the first ever episode in the series to be made in Blender, which improved the animation quality a lot. Many of the character models are also upgraded to have more emotion as well, the lighting is improved, and better camera work as well.
- The story is actually original this time around, with it not parodying the games. And changing the series for the better.
- Great soundtrack done by Dreux Ferrano Jr. (DRUOX), in which is the first episode to have originally composed music.
- As mentioned, "Rock Smasher" is a great song.
- The episode does have a few cool moments, such as the scene where Whiskers and Charmander fight, and for the Caterpie fight mentioned in the original page.
- The intro sequence done by Robin French looks nice.
- Great voice acting like usual.
Bad Qualities
- The episode ends off with a cliffhanger, in which before Leader Caterpie stabs Charmander. The screen cuts to black, with the stabbing sound echoing.
- Episode 10 later reveals that Charmander died.
- One minor plothole: Squirtle had a deal with Leader Caterpie to keep Charmander alive off-screen, but once he almost kills Charmander with Water Gun, Leader Caterpie is shown to break the promise and kills Charmander itself. When did Squirtle have a deal?
- In a older script for Episode 10, originally there was going to be a flashback with Squirtle and Leader Caterpie talk about the deal in which Leader Caterpie wanted Squirtle to train Charmander and gave Squirtle the Ultra Ball, but it was later scrapped for a unknown reason.[1]
- Considering that Squirtle had the Ultra Ball on him, why couldn't he use it to save Charmander before the Leader Caterpie ends up stabbing Charmander?