I apologize for not doing one of these posts last Friday. I was having difficulty with a fanfic I’m working on that day. Anyway, earlier this month or last I got a request from dfdfdfdf to do a Character Salute post to this week’s character, and I had actually been thinking of doing one anyway. So for this week I’ll be covering the fourth gym leader of Kanto, Erika.
To my knowledge Erika has only ever had one appearance in the anime, so for the first part of this post I’ll be covering some of the events of that particular episode. It begins with Ash and company arriving in Celadon City. As Ash heads to the gym he finds that Misty, Brock, and even Pikachu have been sidetracked the sweet scent coming from a perfume shop. Ash, being the eager and somewhat hot headed boy that he was, gets a little ticked off and storms in to the shop just as Misty is buying a bottle of perfume and tells her that she shouldn’t waste her money. Just then the woman who manages the little shop comes out and confronts Ash about what he said, but Ash insists that he thinks that perfume is not only a waste of money but is only good for turning men into zombies.
Everyone in the shop is greatly offended by Ash’s remark, including Misty, Brock, and Pikachu. And Ash is promptly kicked out and banned from the shop. Of Ash doesn’t care about being thrown out of the shop and proceeds directly to the gym. But when Ash reaches the gym the two girls at the door do no allow him to enter. It is then when Ash learns that the perfume at the very shop he was thrown out of earlier is made at the gym, and that everyone at the gym had heard what Ash had said. So as a result, Ash was banned from ever entering the gym.
You know, those people at the gym seemed to take perfume way too seriously. I mean c’mon, Ash is a ten-year old boy! How do you expect him to react to perfume? Anyway, stumped as on how to get into the gym, Ash come across the Team Rocket Trio hanging from a tree branch (because they tried to steal the formula for the gym’s perfume and sell it as their own). The trio offers to help Ash get into the gym in exchange for letting them down, and seeing no other option Ash agrees.
With the trio’s help, Ash sneaks in disguised as a blonde girl named Ashley. Meanwhile Team Rocket goes off to try and steal the perfume formula again. The disguise holds and Ash learns that the gym leader is also the manager of the perfume shop, Erika. Eventually, Pikachu ends up ruining Ash’s disguise, forcing Ash to challenge Erika right then and there. Erika accepts the challenge and a battle quickly ensues. Meanwhile, Team Rocket steals the perfume formula and accidentally starts a fire in the gym. The battle is interrupted and Ash winds up running into the gym to save Erika’s Gloom. The next day Erika awards Ash the Rainbow Badge for saving Gloom. Meanwhile, Team Rocket discovers that the so-called perfume formula they stole was nothing more but the essence of Gloom, one of the foulest smelling substances in the Pokemon world.
In the Games: Just as in the anime, Erika is the leader of the Celadon City Gym in Red, Blue, and Yellow, and in the remakes, FireRed and LeafGreen. There’s no perfume shop running out of the gym like in the anime, but Erika does apparently teach flower arranging on occasion. Erika apparently dozes off quite a bit in the games, meaning that she’s either narcoleptic or the spores from all the Grass Pokemon in the gym are getting to her (one word Erika: Ventilation). In my experience, Erika is one of the easier gym leaders to defeat, especially if you chose the Fire-type starter at the beginning of the game. In the Generation Two games and their remakes, Erika is still the leader of the Celadon City Gym leader, but is faced after the Elite Four when the player reaches Kanto.
I think that about wraps it up for this post. Usually I try to come up with some other item to close the post with, but it seems like I’ve covered everything. This is almost like the Character Salute to Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy all over again. Anyway, I have a few ideas for the next Character Salute post, so stay tuned.
