#operation tempest

So, in the games, the Reveal Glass is just an item for the player to use in order to transform the three Forces of Nature into their Therian forms, based off the Demon Detecting Mirror from Chinese mythology. In the Best Wishes anime, however, it's an Eldritch nightmare!

First, let's compare it to the most obvious parallel: the Red and Blue Orbs from Hoenn that control Groudon and Kyogre. While it works in a similar fashion with the Forces of Nature, there is one major difference: the Orbs were man-made and hold no sentience whatsoever. They were created specifically to control Groudon and Kyogre as weapons of aggression, with it backfiring when the link created between human and Legendary Pokémon causes said Legenady Pokémon's aggression to feed back into the human and drive them mad. The Reveal Glass, however, has no defined origin, seems to naturally co-exist with the Forces of Nature and Meloetta, and is sentient, responding to spoken words from its human wielders.

And yeah, about that Meloetta. She serves two important roles here: her song is the only thing that can break the seal of the Reveal Glass whenever it's locked away, which she has to sing from some monolithic keystone device, and she is the one the Reveal Glass' power must flow through and into the Forces of Nature. For some reason, she with her pure and innocent soul is the only being who can handle that power. If a human wants to control the Forces of Nature with the Reveal Glass, they need Meloetta to be the channeler of its power. And while Meloetta's original position had her do this willingly for the rulers of Abyssal Kingdom, she can also be made to do it by force...as Giovanni of Team Rocket so ruthlessly displays.

Just look at this shit. Not only are the minds of the Forces of Nature being forcibly controlled as per Giovanni's designs, but channeling the Reveal Glass' power against her will seriously looks like it hurts Meloetta physically and mentally. And that red glowing circle on the ground beneath the Reveal Glass is downright Satanic (between Giovanni and Ghetsis, the evil team leaders in Best Wishes had a thing for glowing Satanic circles on the ground and glowing red eyes of mind-controlled Legendary Pokémon. Giovanni did it a lot cooler and scarier, though.)

And then we get the most terrifying part of this whole thing. Remember when I said only Meloetta can channel the power of the Reveal Glass that controls the Forces of Nature? Well, let's see what happens when it's channeled by the human instead! Take it away, Giovanni!

The same glowing circle that's on the ground is now on Giovanni's forehead and his eyes are red, because now the Reveal Glass' power flows directly through him and not through Meloetta. And as I said before, the Reveal Glass appears to be an entity unto itself that co-exists with Meloetta and the Forces of Nature, meaning its power was never intended for humans. When a human absorbs and takes control of its power, it drives them mad...again, similar to the Red and Blue Orbs from Hoenn, but with a huge, far more horrific difference.

Giovanni's goal turns from conquest to destruction. But as Ridley confirms, this specific brand of madness isn't coming from the Reveal Glass nor (as with the Red and Blue Orbs) from the controlled Legendary Pokémon. It comes from within. The Reveal Glass is a mirror, and it reflected back Giovanni's own id (in Freudian terms) into his mind. Destruction was always Giovanni's most base desire; his id is all about the desire to crush others with overwhelming force. It's just that usually his ego steers it toward the rational objective of conquest, with his superego seeking that for the rational objective of ruling. When both the ego and superego vanish as they do now, there's nothing left but the evil primal beast lurking at Giovanni's core.

But here's the kicker: Giovanni wanted to conquer Unova and then from there move on to conquer the world. Now he wants to destroy Unova...so what do you think he'd want to do to the world afterwards? And a scarier proposition: what if Giovanni got killed in the crossfire and as a result the Reveal Glass' power...didn't return to it? And the Forces of Nature were permanently stuck on the destruction command? This was a short but incredibly tense moment when you consider those factors, and it was only Jessie, James and Meowth's quick acting that knocked the power back into Reveal Glass and restored Giovanni back to sanity.

Something of a companion piece to this post. Credit to @themattress​

Yeah, I’m sorry, but a whole month later and I’m still not over this. In all my life, time, and involvement in Pokemon fandom, I don’t think I’ve ever been so unironically happy and welcoming of Atsuhiro Tomioka being a self-plaguarizing hack like I am regarding this here.

I now fully understand what those two episodes and the story told within them were originally intended to stand as by the PokeAni staff, but they ended up never broadcasting those episodes so that we never got that exact story with all that exact set-up in it, so what we were left with now actually stands in the BW series narrative as the Boomerang Cornerstone of the Unova Saga. And I use “Boomerang” because the event canonically occurs within the saga’s narrative, and then every little goddamn thing that happened there comes back to happen again later on in the two important narrative points for Team Rocket and Team Plasma respectively - the pre-League Undella / Meloetta arc and the post-League White Ruins / N arc (Episode N).

And I’ve such a good grasp on how Tomioka’s writing tends to work for his Big, Action-Packed Epic Event Episodes, even the imagined Reshiram VS Zekrom two-parter in the extended post-League final arc of the Unova Saga we should’ve been given would have this going on, with many striking parallels to Team Rocket’s earlier finale.

So, the second year of Pokémon: Best Wishes, even before the Black 2/White 2 based rebranding in its final stretch, always appeared to have been planned to have Team Rocket going after the Forces of Nature as bookends: the Milos Island event was the first big two-parter in that year, and the final one would be set around Undella Bay (where the Abundance Shrine for the Forces of Nature actually is placed in the games) and feature Giovanni himself controlling their Therian Forms with the Reveal Glass in Abyssal Temple. But just as there were many differences with the arc than what could have been thanks to B2/W2 (Virbank instead of Opelucid, Cynthia taking the heroes to Undella instead of them just naturally reaching there after Opelucid and meeting her there just as you do in the games, the "World Tournament Junior Cup", etc.), the two-part Operation Tempest also was different than what it was originally likely going to be. Seven key points in the episodes stand out above all else.

1.

Part 1 would almost certainly have not opened on us seeing Giovanni arrive in Unova and greet his troops in preparing for the operation. This only happened because the first year's "Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma" two-parter, which had this same kind of opening, was shelved. And speaking of which, both this and the Milos Island two-parter lack the original rationale behind why the Forces of Nature were so important to Team Rocket: they're in an "arms race" with Team Plasma and are trying to secure Legendary Pokémon to conquer Unova with before they do. The original Operation Tempest would've likely begun with this:

Ridley riding on his Golurk, and hearing Meloetta's voice*. Giovanni's first appearance would thus be the sudden jump-scare of him and his Persian showing up in Ash and Pikachu's way.

*Assuming that the change detailed in the last point on this list was in effect.

2.

After that encounter with Giovanni, Ash and Pikachu would not have been captured by Team Rocket, put in the cargo of Dr. Zager's helicopter, and need to bust out early into the second part. This is yet another recycled element from the script of "Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma".

3.

Literal animation re-used from "Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma".

The seal that opens up to the Reveal Glass would be something different, not this staircase.

4.

This is recycling both narratively and animation-wise from "Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma": Pikachu creating a gigantic Electro Ball due to being specially empowered (originally by the Meteonite, now by Thundurus' electric power). And this is my most major case of "y'know, in hindsight maybe it's a good thing those episodes got shelved" (in which I try not to think of the reasons behind them getting shelved 'cause then I just feel like an asshole), because the new context of what Pikachu is attacking with the gigantic Electro Ball is way more effective.

5.

OK, this one's a Schrodinger's Cat situation because I can't entirely prove it wasn't going to be utilized originally. On the one hand, it feels like a big climactic moment for a two-parter that wasn't initially going to be that climactic as I will detail in the next point, plus Giovanni being knocked to the ground and helped up by the TRio is also a "Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma" carryover (even if there, the TRio weren't the ones who knocked him down to begin with.) But on the other hand, many elements of Team Rocket's Best Wishes arc down to this usage of weather-oriented Legendary Pokémon in tropical settings strongly suggest that Atsuhiro Tomioka was using it as a make-up for the notorious flop that was Team Aqua and Team Magma in Advanced Generation, and this moment is clearly a repurposing of Archie's descent into madness due to the Red Orb's power, so it never would have felt out of place.

I will say that it's less likely to have happened if the last point on this list wasn't a thing.

6.

Team Rocket (Giovanni, Dr. Zager, Jessie, James and Meowth) retreating back to Kanto would not have occurred. For one thing, we already had Giovanni and Dr. Zager retreating back to Kanto in, you guessed it, "Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma". And those episodes also were to make clear that Giovanni and the Team Rocket organization with its feud against Team Plasma was to be a series-long thing, carrying over into the third year. So just as the end of Year 1 brought Zager back to Unova and kept him there, Giovanni was still going to stay in Unova at some kind of secret base even after his defeat here at the end of Year 2.

In this case, the change of marketing priority to B2/W2 in addition to "Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma" being shelved informed this alteration. In B2/W2, the evil team arc with Neo-Team Plasma is settled between your 8th badge and the Unova League. Since Team Rocket has been the ones with the evil team arc across Ash's journey in Best Wishes, that means their evil team arc's finale must happen between his 8th badge and the Unova League (in contrast, pre-B2/W2 I highly doubt that Ash was going to win his 8th badge in his first visit to Opelucid and would do so the next year, and the Unova League wouldn't happen until the end of said year and tie in with the original B/W-based Team Plasma arc where N was the antagonist.)

Last but certainly not least...

7.

Yes, Meloetta herself, the centerpiece of this whole plot, almost certainly wasn't envisioned as being such when the writers first conceived of said plot when thinking up Year 2. But something ended up happening in October 2010 shortly after Best Wishes premiered: Takeshi Shudo, the head writer of the Pokémon anime back in the Original Series, tragically passed away. Naturally, his colleagues that worked with him would seek to honor him in the show. But in what way? Well, according to an interview with the Original Series' director, Shudo's original intended plot in Johto before stepping down as head writer once it was yanked away from him by meddling executives was that Celebi would come out of the GS Ball, travel with Ash and his friends, and be targeted by Team Rocket. Wouldn't it be nice to finally get to do that story somehow? If only the current games being marketed also had a green, spritely little Legendary Pokémon that could be used in place of Celebi! Oh, WAIT...

So had Shudo not died, it's unlikely Meloetta would have been involved at all. There would be Abyssal Temple and the Reveal Glass and the Therian Forms of the Forces of Nature, but Meloetta, her song, and her spirit used as a medium between the Reveal Glass' power and the Forces of Nature would not be a factor. Just as with Pikachu's gigantic Electro Ball and the shelving of its original source, the darker side of me is almost thankful for Shudo's passing, since I adore Meloetta and can't imagine the story being half as good without her.

Doug Walker if he did get that climax!

With the release of the Black 2/White 2 games, Pokémon: Best Wishes was rebranded as Pokémon: Best Wishes Season 2, which featured a story arc set between Ash's 8th badge and the Unova League taking place in East Unova that proved to be one of the best in the entire anime, combining the continuation of Team Rocket's plan to conquer Unova through gaining control over the Forces of Nature with the late Takeshi Shudo's original idea for the story with Celebi after it was to come out of the GS Ball, in this case with Meloetta, the cute spritely songstress Mythical Pokémon of Gen V. And it all culminated in a two-parter where Team Rocket launched Operation Tempest, their self-described greatest mission in history.

There are many things that make Operation Tempest amazing. There's the pay-off to all the arc's build-up, the intensity of the action and stakes, the pitch-perfect atmosphere. There's the fact that you like and care about Meloetta, which makes her being placed in distress so effective. There's the way that it cribs structure and plot beats from the banned "Team Rocket VS Team Plasma!" two-parter so that they don't go to waste. There's Cynthia's involvement. There's the total reimagining of Abyssal Temple and the Reveal Glass into something out of H.P Lovecraft. There's motherfucking Giovanni himself finally battling Ash and his friends!

And there's these climactic 4 minutes. All these years later, they're still beautiful to behold.

So, after a long time and a lot of hard work, we finally have the scripts to the legendary lost Best Wishes anime two-parter, “Team Rocket VS. Team Plasma!”  We’ve got the whole story.

I wish the 3/11 disaster had never happened...mostly because so many people would still be alive today and so much damage to Japan would not exist, but also because these episodes could have aired. And I wish the staff’s original plan for the overarching story for Best Wishes based on the Black/White games could have come to pass, as it would have been amazing.

However, in the end these wishes are hollow Ideals, and we have to face the harsh Truth. And part of this Truth is that Game Freak passed on doing a Gray version in favor of doing Black 2/White 2, which means the staff’s plan was going to be scuttled regardless of whether the 3/11 disaster transpired or not. They would’ve done Episode N and just placed Reshiram putting a halt to N’s coronation in the present day rather than two years prior. So that’s why....

....I’m kind of, sort of glad that “Team Rocket VS. Team Plasma!” never aired.

Don’t get me wrong! The executives in Japan not allowing the full episodes to be released in any capacity in favor of remaining Lost Media just because their events no longer line up with subsequent canon is stupid. They have lots of grown-up viewers who understand the facts and still won’t mind...heck, probably lots of kids as well! However, the episodes not being broadcast and being relegated to a nebulous space in Japanese canon ended up working to the series’ advantage when Tomioka and the other writers were freed up to recycle elements from them. Most specifically, in the Operation Tempest two-parter, which is honestly an even better pair of episodes than “Team Rocket VS. Team Plasma!” and I just have a hard time imagining them in any form other than the one they’re in now. If not for what transpired with “Team Rocket VS. Team Plasma!”, we might have never been blessed with this scene:

Pikachu using a giant Electro Ball on a nuclear space rock just doesn’t hit the same way that him using it on Giovanni, the leader of Team Rocket whom Ash had never faced up until now and whom had always doubted Pikachu’s abilities when Jessie, James and Meowth talked them up. Pikachu doing it to save not only the entire Unova region but also Meloetta, a character that we’ve come to love and care about, is also far more dramatically satisfying.

Really, I’m more sore about how the show’s third year turned out due to Junichi Masuda’s Gen VI-related meddling (since it really should have been something more like this) than I am about “Team Rocket VS. Team Plasma!” and the intended arc it was setting up. As great as it would have been to see, it just wasn’t in the cards and, unlike said Gen VI-related meddling with the third year, I don’t believe that Best Wishes suffered all that much from its removal.

The Operation Tempest trailer. Boy, did it end up living up to the hype!