Part II: Road to Nacrene

by WeakScallion June 8th, 2026

This is the second part of my rewrite series on the Black and White series of the Pokémon anime. If you missed out on the last entry, go to this post!

This 6-episode arc covers the time the group spends traveling from Striaton City to Nacrene City, and starts presenting some of the character arcs that will define the season.


BW007 Sewaddle and the Forest Fashion Shop! (NEW)

The canon BW007 has Ash catch Snivy but, as you may have guessed by the episode's title, this is another Pokémon I’m skipping over. The Snivy line is Trip’s and while Ash’s Snivy had a decent character premise, there was little they were willing to do with her. As is, I’d much rather focus on other members of the cast. You know where this is going.

Like in the canon BW007, the food disappears. This time around, Ash calls upon Lillipup to track it with his surprisingly prodigious sense of smell. They run into a nearby forest. Elsewhere in there Team Rocket is hiding, talking to Giovanni. He introduces them to the secret organization so that they understand why he needs them to be very present and attentive. The communication is interrupted by a bouncing Foongus, who hijacks the computer using Stun Spore. James catches it.

In the forest, the group encounters a niche fashion shop, and the group of fashion designers managing it. They are employing their Sewaddles to make clothes for them so they can sell them. It isn't long before the group realises the food that was stolen is what those Sewaddles are feeding from, since the ‘designers’ (the shopowners) won’t move so as to not lose business.

The specific Sewaddle that stole their food is actually not one of the designers’, but rather a wild one trying to help out the others by bringing them food and acting to be part of the sewers (since the shopowners cannot tell them apart).

A group of clients, Team Rocket in disguise, approach wanting to buy new attires to go undercover. The wild Sewaddle is forced by the shopowners to sew and, seeing her designs are not great at all, they conclude she’s either not one of them or just useless, and fire her. The wild Sewaddle flees the scene.

The shopowners apologise and present clothing pieces. Upon hearing the prices, Jessie and James lose it and decide to steal the Sewaddles for themselves. Ash tries to stop them, but Foongus’ Stun Spore and Woobat’s Gust prevent it from happening. Then the wild Sewaddle shows up again and helps the Sewaddles out too, eventually defeating the Rockets.

The shopowners demand the Sewaddles go back to work, but Ash confronts them — they should not force them to make clothes, they are clearly exploited! The shopowners then realise they’re right and decide to close shop to go buy good food for their Pokemon.

Ash catches the wild Sewaddle, and the group leaves the forest towards Nacrene.

In a final scene in the episode, the shopowners are setting up shop again after feeding their Sewaddles, showing a much better relationship with them. Then they are approached by their first clients: a sinister and outlandish pair of recruits, saying they’re here to talk about their Pokemon’s freedom (again, while not revealed just yet, they belong to Team Plasma).


BW008 The Bloom Is On Axew! (adapted from canon BW009)

The canon BW009 is a perfectly great Pokémon episode and I will not hear otherwise.

Some very slight changes I’d make (besides the removal of the unrelated Team Rocket sidequest)

  • Before Iris shows Excadrill, Ash tries to have Pikachu use Thunderbolt to stop Scolipede’s berserk, but he clearly fails to concentrate enough and so it’s not enough.
  • To eventually stop Scolipede, they collaborate somewhat more strategically (Sewaddle sets up a String Shot trap to slow it down, Oshawott and Pansage attack altogether, etc.).
  • In the end, instead of Pikachu randomly attacking Ash, Ash decides to test Pikachu’s strength by having him use Thunderbolt on him, happily proving these odd electricity issues are not a constant.

BW009 A Rival Tournament for Club Champ! (rewrite for BW010 A Rival Battle for Club Champ!)

The canon BW010 sure is an episode. Let’s have some fun editing it.

They enter the Battle Club and, while hoping to train for a while, they see Trip’s profile. Cilan remembers him ‘cos, soon before Ash did, he also showed up asking to fight all 3 leaders at once… the only difference being that Trip only had 1 Pokémon, his Snivy, and so they denied the offer. Trip then left for another gym where his conditions would be accepted.

Then suddenly Trip returns to the club and, upon seeing Ash, confidently asks him for a rematch, which Ash accepts.

However, a few other trainers come into the club at the same time to train as well. These are Flora, Marris and Mikael, all minor trainers from canon BW. They argue over who should be the first one to train, and so Don George comes up with an idea: if they find three other trainers willing to participate, they can do a small 8-people elimination tournament, in line with other battle tournaments that take place in the region. Cilan offers himself to fill out the roster while Iris declines because of Axew’s lack of experience and her issues with Excadrill. Trip is visibly annoyed because he’s in it solely to fight Ash.

Now that they’re missing 2, Jessie and James (in disguise and under fake names, acting as if they were a married couple) show up, saying they want to participate too.

First round: Trip defeats Marris’ Karrablast, Cilan defeats Mikael’s Patrat, Jessie defeats Flora’s Gothita, and Ash’s Lillipup defeats James’ Foongus after an extremely silly fight where the two of them just played around the battlefield.

In the semifinals, Cilan faces Trip. Cilan’s Pansage gets the lead over Snivy, as Trip looks nervous — he really wants to win so he can prove he would have won the Trio Badge had they let him battle there. After a decent fight, Snivy evolves into Servine and his new power boost gets Trip the win. Trip cockily tells Cilan he expected him to do better against a challenger he deemed unfit not that long ago, while Cilan tells him it would have been beyond reckless to face all three brothers at once. Trip then claims his goal is to become strong enough to face his idol, no matter the hardships he and his Servine have to get through.

The second semifinal is Jessie’s Woobat against Ash’s Oshawott. Meanwhile, Meowth is making use of everybody’s distraction with the tournament to steal some Pokeballs from the back storage. However, while at it, he encounters suspicious individuals (just like the ones that approached the Sewaddle shop at the end of BW007) stealing information from the trainer database, saying they’ll get these trainers to submit and free their Pokemon. Meowth is almost caught, but escapes just in time without having successfully stolen any Pokemon. Upon being defeated, Jessie and James spot Meowth fleeing the scene and take their leave.

It’s time for the final. Trip looks pretty confident he can defeat Ash’s Pikachu with his Servine, but Ash doesn’t use Pikachu, choosing Sewaddle instead. Trip cannot believe this, saying he had a full strategy for Pikachu prepared. Ash’s smarts and Sewaddle’s odd String Shot strategy overcome Servine’s power, and Sewaddle gets the win.

Trip argues it was because of the type advantage and that he wasn’t prepared for the strength of a Sewaddle (which Iris finds to be ridiculous as Sewaddle is just a cute little bug) and leaves running.


BW010 A Home for Dwebble! (adapted from canon BW011)

Much like we did for The Bloom Is On Axew!, I only want to make a few adjustments to an otherwise pretty great episode.

  • When Dwebble is crashing out, Sewaddle crafts an extremely odd looking String Shot-made shell for him, definitely messy but well intentioned.
  • While they are trying to locate the bullies, Ash asks Lillipup to use his sense of smell to help out; but Lillipup fakes being tired to avoid having to do any work.

In terms of added scenes, there's the one. While it’s nighttime and the group is camping, we see Team Rocket having set camp as well. They talk with Giovanni about Meowth’s sighting of odd figures (the Team Plasma encounter in the previous episode) and Giovanni tells them that must have been the unknown organization they are targeting. He tells them to head for Nacrene next, and is about to tell them they’ll have to meet with someone when Foongus’ Stun Spore disrupts the call again (and yes, this is a recurring gag now). James calls Foongus back and they head to sleep. Jessie tries to use a rock to act as a pillow, but of course that’s one of the bully Dwebbles from earlier; leading to them having to leave in a hurry.

The point here is to integrate Team Rocket into the plot more cleanly than the canon anime did (which just gave them odd sidequests they just injected into the episodes to cover the 20 minute runtime).


BW011 Here Comes the Trubbish Squad! (adapted from canon BW012)

I find this episode to be wonderfully fine until Sandile shows up. The fight he has against Trubbish is very odd and the teacher is a bit of an asshole if you ask me.

Anyway, after the gang is run over by the kids on their bikes, they also run over Sandile and knock his glasses off — Sandile has clearly been following the team for a bit, but now he’s mad.

The kids would at some point comment on how, when they went to pick up Trubbish, a very nice green-haired guy let them know Trubbish was feeling lonely and wanted friends; thus why they took him under. Otherwise, the first half of the episode stays all the same (as per usual, besides the Team Rocket side stuff).

The whole dumpster then starts to tremble as the Sunglasses Sandile comes digging, back for revenge. Ash jumps in to protect the kids and Trubbish. The fight is interrupted when the huge pile of scrap falls down on Sandile and threatens the kids too. Iris, Cilan, Daniela and her grandmother arrive in time to help out, but it’s ultimately Trubbish who helps out the most to both the kids and even Sandile, who has had his pride hurt and runs away using Dig again.

As Ash is handed the Pokémon egg, with everyone happy with Trubbish and the group headed to Nacrene; a mysterious green-haired person watches from afar.


BW012 Minccino—Neat and Tidy! (adapted from canon BW013)

An amazingly fun episode as-is. However, as I hinted towards during the first few episodes, Bianca is going to be a bit more central as a character this time around.

Bianca is here not just to hand out Ash’s badge case, but also running some more errands for Juniper (side-note, ain’t it a bit stupid to tell a girl to go out, try and find this random guy wherever he may be just to hand him a badge case?, anyway).

Bianca does not want to catch Minccino, but rather just pet it — she finds it to be adorable, but she repeatedly states she is not a trainer. She does have one Pokémon though, a Pignite. He hurriedly hugs Ash, and it is then we learn this is the Tepig from BW004. Bianca explains one of her errands was to go pick Tepig from the Battle Club to bring him back to the lab. When she got there, Tepig was very much good to go, so she let him accompany her while doing the last few errands, including handing Ash’s badge case — but in the way, Tepig (who happens to be extremely battle prone) kept fighting and fighting and ended up evolving. Bianca is exhausted of him going off the road to pick up a fight wherever he can. He seems keen on battling Pikachu too!

So when they encounter Minccino again, Pignite attacks her recklessly out of his own gut (Bianca does not really give him any commands and, whenever she does, they are extremely messy, “go, attack, do something!” sort of orders). She only has Pignite around as a way to defend herself if she faced any trouble. Despite her lack of knowledge, Bianca still very effusively tells every one of Ash’s Pokemon to use attacks they don’t know (it’s a very fun bit).

While escaping, Minccino also stole Meowth’s coin to polish it up, so he’s very pissed off. Ash and the group encounter Team Rocket, and they tag along for a bit.

Again facing Minccino, Bianca wants Pignite to go at it again, but of course she’s an absolute disaster and instead of taking out Pignite’s Pokeball she picks out of her bag an unused, very dirty one. Much like in lore, Minccino rushes to clean it up and is accidentally caught. Meowth demands she hands over the Minccino so he gets his coin back, but Pignite blasts them off after they threaten to take the ball off of Bianca's hands.

Later in the Pokemon Center, Bianca says she’ll go back to Juniper’s lab next. Cilan however suggests Bianca and Ash battle, which Pignite is clearly raring to do. Bianca proves she has little idea of what Pignite can do, and Pignite ends up doing what he always does, recklessly attacking — Pikachu defeats Pignite, but Pignite ends up dealing good damage after Bianca orders a surprisingly well-timed Flame Charge.

After her loss, Cilan smiles and confirms his Connoisseur conclusion: Bianca and Pignite are so different, they work. He advises her to take some time to bond with Pignite further before returning, and Bianca says she’ll think about it, but that she is not to travel (for reasons she still doesn’t disclose). Bianca then leaves.

At the end, after much searching around, Meowth finally finds his coin (which Minccino dropped earlier). Then Team Rocket are surprised by a guy, Pierce, who says Giovanni sent him to help out with their plans.


Updated summary

Ash's team: Pikachu, Lillipup, Oshawott, Sewaddle Iris' team: Axew, Excadrill Cilan's team: Pansage, Dwebble

Badges obtained: 1 Season progress: 12/48

Deleted episodes: 2 BW007 Snivy Plays Hard to Catch! BW008 Saving Darmanitan from the bell!


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Pub: 08 Jun 2026 09:16 UTC

Edit: 12 Jun 2026 10:53 UTC

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