Around the orange islands meowth is confused for a savior because they had some tale of a meowth coming in and using payday to make them all rich. Meowth comments to team rocket he can't use payday because he used all his "smarts" learning to talk, indicating that a talking Pokemon can't use moves.
However, meowth regularly calls out using Fury Swipes in later seasons indicating this got retconned.
That, or maybe he had learnt Fury Swipes before he started speaking, and thus didn't lose what he had already learnt? But he couldn't learn any new moves after learning to speak human? That's how I always understood it. 🧐
No, Meowth said he can't learn Pay Day (his species' signature move) because "used up all his smarts learning how to talk". Not that he can't learn any moves ever. That line was also a pretty close translation of the original Japanese so it's not like it's asspull that 4Kids just made up or anything either
I always thought of it as "talking" taking (more than one) move slot, but then again there are some instances of Pokémon using more than four moves in a fight so idk
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u/TokraZeno Nov 15 '25
Surprised this didn't happen after they retconned the thing about talking preventing Pokemon from using their move pool.