Duplica

Duplica is a ditto trainer and impersonator who first appears in episode 37: Ditto's Mysterious Mansion.

Background

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Duplica

While Ash, Misty and Brock traveled on their way to the next gym, it started raining heavily. To escape the rain, they ran into what they thought to be an abandoned house. While taking cover there, they see a pikachu with a strange face. Ash was determined to catch this new pikachu and tried to throw a pokeball at it, but the pokeball bounced back when someone hit the pokeball with their

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Duplica cosplaying as Ash

own pokeball. Then, a girl walked out from the shadows, dressed exactly like Ash. She explains to them that they are in the House of Imite, where she and her ditto put on shows by dressing up as other pokemon. The "pikachu" then transformed back into a ditto, showing it's true form. After Ash learned that ditto could only learn one move, he called it boring, which angered Duplica and caused her to challenge Ash to a pokemon battle. He accepted and chose bulbasaur as his pokemon, whereas Duplica chose her ditto. Ditto transformed into bulbasaur and grabbed bulbasaur with a vine whip, causing it to be useless, therefore, Ash had to give up. As Ash was depressed over his loss and wondering how the original could've lost, Duplica escorted everyone to the dress-up room where she entertained them by dressing up as Nuse Joy, Officer Jenny, and Misty. After having fun in dress-up room, Duplica explains to everyone that she wants to become a ditto master, but it seems impossible because her ditto can't seem to pull off imitating another pokemon's face, therefore, it keeps it's plain, small black eyes and wide mouth. She even had a flashback to when she was trying to perform to a crowd, but when ditto couldn't pull off a transform move, everyone booed and left. From then on, she had continued to train her ditto so it could transform completely.

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Duplica performing with ditto

Suddenly, after this, the lights go out and a spotlight shows on Jessie, James, and Meowth. They successfully grab Ditto and escape. Duplica, Ash, Brock, and Misty all chase after them and eventually find them. They perform their entrance by imitating the Team Rocket catchphrase while cosplaying as Jessie and James. This angers Jessie and James and James even yells at them for getting one of the lines wrong because they said to "to ignite all people within our nation" instead of "to unite all people within our nation." The kids are distracted for a moment and giggling about how fun doing the catchphrase was, but quickly turned their attention back to Team Rocket. They ask for ditto back, but cannot tell the difference between ditto and Meowth because ditto finally learned how to transform perfectly. Team Rocket takes this chance and purposfully gives Duplica Meowth instead of ditto. Duplica then ran after them and screamed that they still had her ditto, showing that she could tell the difference between them. She throws Meowth at the balloon and he crashed into Jessie, which causes her to let go of ditto and have ditto fly back down to Duplica. Pikachu then uses thunderbolt on the balloon and causes Team Rocket to "blast off again." Ditto then transformed into Pikachu and Ash became confused and said he couldn't tell them apart. Duplica then picked up her ditto and it transformed back, Duplica explained that she could always tell which one was her ditto. She later thanked Team Rocket form helping her ditto learn how to transform completely, even though they scared it to do so.

Ash, Misty, and Brock then bid farewell to Duplica since it had stopped raining and wished her luck at becoming a ditto master.

A few seasons later, Ash, Misty, and Brock stumble upon a Pokemon Center where they can rest up, however, when they get there, they see that Nurse Joy isn't there. A girl from the shadows comes out, dressed up like Nurse Joy, and says that Nurse Joy is in the medical room, doing a check-up. Ash and Misty just assume that two Nurse Joys are working at this Pokemon Center, but Brock says that she wasn't Nurse Joy and that she was an imposter. The girl then says that she could never fool Brock and takes off her disguise to reveal that she is Duplica. The old friends catch up while resting at the Pokemon Center, and Duplica tells them that she is there because there's a Pokemon Performance Competition that she was invited to perform in with her ditto. She then tells them that she has caught a new ditto since their departure, however, just like her first ditto, this new ditto also has a problem with transforming. The problem is that this ditto, nicknamed "Minidit," can only transform into smaller versions of big pokemon. Duplica sees this as a problem and wants to fix it, but Nurse Joy tells her that nothing is wrong with her ditto, therefore, it should be fine.

Later, Jessie and James see Minidit and hatch up a plan to steal it so that they can make it transform into a little Arbok, sell it to someone for a powerful pokemon, then steal Minidit back and repeat the process. They successfully steal Minidit and make it transform into a mini Arbok and try to sell it to a crowd of people. Ash and his friends quickly catch word of this and go to see if it's Minidit. Duplica (although she has gloated about being able to tell her ditto from any other pokemon before) can not tell if this small arbok is her Minidit or not. Meowth then loses his patience and talks, giving away Team Rocket's identity. Ash and Duplica then use Pikachu and the two Dittos to blast away Team Rocket.

At the end of the episode, Duplica comes to terms and accepts Minidit's condition, she then makes a vow to capture different dittos, each with their own way of transforming, and create a team of dittos

This was the last time Duplica was shown in the series.

Pokemon

Ditto

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Ditto in Duplica's Arms

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Duplica holding her dittos

Ditto is Duplica's first ditto and her trusted partner. They perform cosplay shows together, and now that ditto can transform perfectly, their buisness went up. However, they did have a rocky start whenever ditto could not transform, but even though ditto couldn't transform all the way, Duplica still loved it and thought of it as a perfectly good pokemon.

Duplica is able to tell her ditto from any other pokemon it transforms into because she is so close to it.

Duplica's ditto, like all dittos, only knows one move, and that is transform. However, even though it only knows one move, Duplica's ditto is very powerful and easily defeated Ash in a pokemon battle with it.

Minidit

Minidit

Minidit is Duplica's second ditto, it was caught shortly after Duplica parted ways with Ash and his friends. Minidit seems like a normal Ditto, but Duplica claims that this ditto has a problem, which she even got Nurse Joy to check out to see if there was something wrong. Nurse Joy told her that nothing was wrong with her ditto and that it was healthy and happy. However, Duplica still said something was wrong with it. To show what it was, she made Minidit transform first into Pikachu, and then into Togepi, nothing was wrong and it transformed normally, but Duplica then told them to bring out a large pokemon. Brock let out Onix and Duplica told Minidit to transform again, it did, but it was only seven inches tall. Duplica told them that Minidit could transform into small pokemon just fine, but it couldn't transform into bigger pokemon, it could only transform into the smaller versions of them. Duplica hated this and tried to fix it, but after rescuing Minidit from Team Rocket, Duplica came to terms with Minidit and accepted its size. Duplica then vowed to find and catch different dittos, all with different quirks and ways of transforming until she had a whole team of odd dittos.

Appearance

Duplica and Misty cosplaying as Jessie

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Duplica in her normal outfit

Although Duplica cosplays often, her main outfit is a red shirt with a yellow star on it and a pair of blue jeans. She keeps her blue-ish green hair in two pigtails. She is able to change her hair and voice at any time to imitate someone. She has also been in the imitating buisness for so long that she is able to change in a flash. This was proven when she was in the dress-up room with everyone and she was able to change just by running behind a shelf of clothes. She was able to cosplay as three different girls in under ten seconds.

When Duplica cosplayed as Ash, she copied everything about him perfectly, even the way he throws his pokeballs. This may reveal that she can pick up on every quality of a person in just a matter of seconds, especially since in the first five minutes that Ash was in the House of Imite, Duplica had already managed to make a perfect cosplay of him, and she could already imitate the way he talked.

Trivia

• Duplica's name is a parody of the word "Duplicate" which means "the same as something else."
• Although Duplica cosplays as other people's outfits, hairstyles, voices, and personalities frequently, she never puts on a wig to complete the cosplay. This may be a connection to the fact that her ditto could never finish a cosplay either because he couldn't transform his face. However, when Duplica made her appearance a second time, a few seasons later, she cosplayed as Nurse Joy and completed the outfit with a red wig.
• Duplica had to shut down the House of Imite when the crowd hated the fact that ditto couldn't transform all the way, which is why it looked abandoned when Ash and his friends found it.
• The House of Imite is a parody on the word "imitate" which means "to act like someone or something else."
• Duplica made her second (and final) appearance in Pokemon Johto Journeys when she put on a performance in the pokemon center.
• When Duplica first made her appearance, she gloated on how she could tell her ditto from any other pokemon, even when it transformed perfectly, which is why she could tell which "Meowth" was really her ditto, and yelled at Team Rocket when they gave her the wrong one. However, during Duplica's second appearance a few seasons later, when she saw Minidit being sold as a tiny arbok, she couldn't tell if it was really her Minidit or not. This was especially strange because she knew that Minidit could only transform into tiny pokemon, and this was a tiny arbok.