I have stayed commited and watched every Journeys episode so far. As I’m currently rewatching XY right now and I’m going to start XY094 later today (XYZ episodes), I have to say that I’m enjoying XY way more than I have been with Journeys throughout its run. But that’s not the point of the thread. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Journeys has a LOT of bad episodes, and that is very disappointing. Here’s my bottom 10:
#10 - JN036
This is a Goh focused episode, but the beginning of it shows that Ash is currently on a losing streak. Ash regressed from the Great Class to the Normal Class, and this is one of the only times in Journeys where they shoehorn a “depression arc” for Ash. How does this get resolved? By turning Goh into an AMAZING trainer despite still being relatively new. He uses some Ash-like strategies against a wild Flygon and catches it. While that doesn’t sound bad on paper, there was no foreshadowing prior to this episode that he was skilled enough to understand and utilize Ash’s strategies in this episode. They made Goh seem like an expert just to cheer up Ash and make him realize that he can do better than he currently has been. It just rubs me the wrong way.
#9 - JN061
This is a filler episode about Plusle and Minun. The plot of the episode starts off interestingly enough, with Plusle trainer suffering an injury and the Minun trainer having to borrow his Plusle, but the episode doesn’t really get better throughout. There’s also a LOT of Tauros in this episode for some reason. Ash and Goh help out the Plusle trainer throughout the episode, but then we find out that Team Rocket has been stirring up trouble. Interestingly enough, this leads to one of the rare times that Ash sees through one of Team Rocket’s disguises. This is the only time it has happened in Journeys so far, but Team Rocket using disguises in Journeys is already surprisingly rare in itself. Overall, this is just a below average filler episode, and it’s pretty forgetable. I can’t remember some of the finer details about it myself.
#8 - JN058
One of the consistantly bad two-in-one episodes. The first half of this one focuses on Gulpin. For some reason, the Gatcha machine has a ton of Gulpin Pokéballs in it. The Gulpin also stick to litterally everything they touch, which was never established at any other point in the show where Gulpin appeared in the anime. The conflict of this segment is just idiotic. The turtle Pokémon race segment afterwards just drags on and has no real payoff either. The joke is based on the fact that turtles are supposed to be slow at races, like in the classic tale “The Tortoise and the Hare”. However, since all of the racers are turtles, they’re all slow. And then Team Rocket’s Chewtle wins by default because some guy took all of the other turtles with him. What a waste of time.
#7 - JN067
This is a moronic filler episode about Pikachu being arrested for stealing electricity. First of all, how do the writers get bored enough to make a plot about something that Pikachu would obviously never do? Aside from that, we just see Ash run from house to house trying to find answers. Eventually, we learn that Team Rocket’s Morpeko is cussing the problems in the episode. Team Rocket drive away with Morpeko, and the barebones plot of this episode just gets dragged on and on with no payoff. Really irratating filler episode, and another reason to not like Morpeko in Journeys.
#6 - JN041
This is one of the dumb two-in-one episodes. All of them are bad, but I think this is the worst one. Team Rocket dubbing over Pikachu to understand its thoughts is incredibly stupid when you consider how Meowth can just translate anything a Pokémon says. I guess they want Jessie and James to understand Pikachu better, but it’s just complete nonsense that leads to nothing. The Marshtomp segment is even worse. It’s a moronic plot of a Marshtomp being stuck in the ground, and Ash and Goh spend the entire segment to get it out. When they do, more Marshtomp are stuck in the ground, leaving the episode with no payoff. Just a waste of time all around.
#5 - JN078
Possibly the most undeserved evolution for a main character’s Pokémon ever. After largely being off-screen for the good part of 14-ish episodes, we learn only in this episode that Drizzile has been training “off-screen”. Somehow, that is enough for it to evolve all the way into Intellion? Are you kidding me? It’s almost like the writers hated Drizzile and just wanted to pretend that it evolve straight from Sobble to Intellion. It absolutely disgusts me. The episode itself also has this weird CotD as a villain who steals Professor Cerise’s data… because he admires him? And the CotD doesn’t learn any harsh lessons for it? Hogwash.
#4 - JN081
Finally, another main character catches a shiny Pokémon! This is such a big accomplishment for Goh, catching a shiny Volto- oh wait, we’re just going to brush that aside in the first 30 seconds of the episode? And Goh doesn’t send out shiny Voltorb at any point later in the episode? What?! Undermining such a huge milestone is already bad in itself, but it’s even worse in that its followed by a compete nothing plot. Ash, Goh, and Chloe do nothing throughout the entire episode, and it’s driven by these CotDs that we have no reason to care about. There’s no clear cut story, just a bunch of nonsense about Pokémon that happen to be blue. And… you’re telling me that Goh’s shiny Voltorb plays no part in the episode after its captured? Yeah, this is a terrible episode.
#3 - JN030
This episode betrays Pikachu’s entire characterization for no payoff whatsoever. In theory, this should be an interesting episode, and I can see why people would like it. However, I hate it. Pikachu really got jelous over Riolu, really? Riolu is an unevolved Pokémon and needed training, of course Ash would want to focus on it at the moment. Pikachu getting the impression that Ash doesn’t care about him anymore just because he’s focusing on a newer team recruit is disgustingly out of character. Pikachu is just extremely unlikeable in this episode, and this episode only. It’s definitely one of the worst Pikachu episodes in the entire show. The only nice part is the scene with Delia singing to Pikachu, but Pikachu going to Delia for consulting is something it never had to do before for any reason. This episode just left a really bad taste in my mouth that never went away.
#2 - JN097
Atrocious episode. I would put this in my bottom five episodes of the entire anime. We only get Ash and Goh in this episode, and the conflict of Goh wanting to catch a Galarian Slowpoke gets resolved in the first minute of the episode. The rest of the episode is completely nonsensical. For some reason, the writers thought it would be absolutely hilarious to make a full version of the Slowpoke segment from JN026, and it’s just pure pain. Dumb conflicts between the Kanto variants and Galarian variants, plus crap like rapping “YO! HEY! YO! HEY!” for five minutes, make this episode borderline unwatchable. This was the only Journeys episode that made me want to quit it in the first few minutes, but I stayed committed to my goal of watching every Journeys episode and suffered for it. This episode isn’t even so bad it’s good, it’s just flat out terrible. Skip this one even if you plan on watching every other episode, it’s not worth the pain.
#1 - JN053
Goh. Catches. Suicune. That is all. While I don’t actually think this is the worst episode of Journeys, this episode will be remembered forever for tainting how easy it is to catch a legendary Pokémon, as well as how Goh caught one before Ash did. The episodes I listed before this one are objectively worse to watch, but this episode has the worst effect on the anime as a whole out of all of the episodes on this list. That is why I have it at number one. This is a controversial episode that will stand the test of time among the most controversial moments in the entire show, alongside moments like Ash’s Pikachu losing to Trip’s Snivy in BW001, and Ash’s Greninja losing to Alain’s Charizard in the Kalos League.
