The Squirtle Squad Is The Coolest Pokemon Gang Of All Time
Their life of crime and fruit stealing is now behind them.
You Are Reading :The Squirtle Squad Is The Coolest Pokemon Gang Of All Time
Category : Pokemon
Never has a gang of roving wild Pokemon captured as much attention as the Squirtle Squad, a ragtag crew of five sunglasses-wearing Squirtles from the first season of the Pokemon anime, and who generally wreak havoc on townsfolk and lived dangerously on the wrong side of the law. These Pokemon ruffians are a menacing sight, of course, and are mostly indistinguishable from one another aside from their leader, a Squirtle with a particularly angular pair of sunglasses. Abandoned by their trainers, they had since banded together to pull off a bunch of silly pranks on humans, which is how they met Ash and his friends: by trapping them in a pit they’ve dugged, their five, blue, orbular heads peeking out from the side to sneer at them. It’s their tough-guy, devil-may-care reputation, a stark contrast to the doe-eyed look that most Squirtles have, that makes them so endlessly endearing; later in the episode, we see the Squirtle Squad doing truly awful stuff like doodling graffiti and stealing fruit.
But we don’t always think about the origins of the coolest Pokemon gang in town, however, and how far their mistrust against the human trainers who have betrayed them extends. Abandoned Pokemon aren’t simply released into the wild; instead, many of them simply wait for their owners to come back, to the point of their health deteriorating rapidly. One example is Ash’s Charmander, who once belonged to another trainer who abandoned him, with Charmander waiting for his first owner till the rain pelted him and almost caused the fire at the tip of his tail to be extinguished—thus nearly losing his life. And in Pokemon Sun & Moon, there’s Stufful who has been abandoned at a motel, or the two Skiddo in Pokemon X that have been sleeping for years in front of the train station, waiting for their owner to come pick them up once more. And what about Pokemon that were simply abandoned with their Pokeballs, their inability to wrestle free from a high tech jail that may gradually degrade them to bits and bytes of data? It is thus at least heartening to see a group of Squirtles band together against the humans who have failed them—and which explains the more macabre aspects of the episode that went under the radar.
In the Squad’s debut episode, Team Rocket’s Meowth has tricked them into working together to capture Ash’s Pikachu. This, however, has led to Pikachu getting severely injured from a Goldeen, requiring Ash to make a quick detour to grab a Super Potion. But with Ash and his friends now held hostage by the Squirtle Squad, the turtles only allowed Ash to make the trip if he can bring back the Super Potion in time; any later, or Misty will be killed. So shaken was Misty by this threat, that she offered to make the trip on behalf of Ash instead, but was summarily rejected. She should be so lucky, however, since the shopkeepers that Ash turned to were so trigger happy that they aimed their guns against a literal child asking to purchase a Super Potion for his severely injured friend.
Of course, all is well at the end of the episode, with the Squirtle Squad eventually rescuing the town it owes nothing to by putting out fires planted by Team Rocket. The gang eventually became local heroes, with the leader of the Squirtle Squad deciding that she wishes to join Ash as part of his Pokemon team, only to rejoin her Squad several episodes later, a nod to the series’ most well-liked and coolest street gang. The Squirtle Squad is now part of Pokemon’s rich anthrozoology, making cameo appearances in Pokemon Go and even performing a duet with Ed Sheeran. On their journey as they evolve from street urchins to folk heroes, the popularity of the Squirtle Squad has no boundaries, with the five rotound Squirtles immortalised as one of the coolest Pokemon gangs of all time.
See more : PokemonWe