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Review S23 EP01: Enter Pikachu!

WTP is Pichu

Cast:
Sarah Natochenny
Zeno Robinson
James Carter Cathcart
Michele Knotz
Cherami Leigh
Rodger Parsons

Justin Anselmi
Megan Hollingshead
Melissa Hope
Emily Jenness
Ted Lewis
Mike Liscio
Lisa Ortiz
H.D. Quinn
Bill Rogers
Michelle Ruff
Erica Schroeder
Marc Thompson

New studios: Iyuno Media Group (LA) and Goldcrest Post (NY)
 
Wow. I'm lost for words. Never thought i'd ever see LA VA's be part of the show but I'm so happy for Zeno, Ray, Cherami, Michelle and the returning Megan Hollingshead.

Congrats to them and the returning NY VA's.
 
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Ah, that's awesome to see such a diverse cast of old and new. My predictions were right - Iyuno Media seems to be handling production.
 
OK, this felt different not gonna lie. As someone who mainly watches Dub, this felt like a new experience to watch. New actors/Old ones too, Goldfarb's still around but once again I like the new music and styles brought to the table, the theme song is really good and yeah still 30 SECS but as usual here's to hoping for a longer version and, brand new dubbing studios are here/RIP DUart, the OP/ED has new font credits, I like the ED animation and the fact that it ends with Mew before flashing to black nice touch. Now for the episode itself, feels like an Indigo League reboot with Ash/Oak/Delia/Pikachu still here, but with entirely new characters, getting Pikachu's backstory as a Pichu was a nice surprise, So Mew is pretty much the endgame mon for Goh this series and nice to see Younger Ash after so long and Goh too for that matter. But yeah, the dubbing definitely made this series much more interesting for me and am curious to see how our new/old crew will this world-trip style series. As for this episode i'll give it 8/10.
 
Finished watching the entire episode, I'm pleased that the opening soon isn't as long as the Japanese version, none of that rather silly dancing.

The animation was just outstanding, an improvement over the Sun and Moon art style, great voice work from all involved, really great to hear Megan Hollingshead back
 
The intro sounds good, the style kinda sounds like the songs they make for commercials, but I'm glad it's not too similar to any other intros.

Keeping not just the ending footage but also the eyecatch segment means the visual presentation overall is the same as the Japanese series.
Also they actually accomodated the text for the empty side of the screen this time around.
 
My only bummer based off the YouTube clips is the different music used on the Who's That Pokemon segment. I love that little jingle used on the Japanese version. The English dub theme is nice and I like it just as much as the Japanese theme. Both work great for their version much like Indigo League's themes (Aim To Be An Master and Gotta Catch Em All).
 
I don't like the opening. The beginning of the song is nice but it's just buildup to a catchy tune so it feels very incomplete, and the digital effects make it sound like an early 2010s song. And the footage relies too much on episode 2, it's sad that the shot of the starters from all the regions wasn't used, but at least I give it points for not using the cringey dance scene and there have been worse ones. 4/10

About time they used the footage from the Japanese equivalents of WTP. I'll miss the tune from the Japanese version too.

I preferred Kevin's version of the ending, but this one isn't bad. It's nice to see the tradition of borrowing from Japanese endings being continued and how it finishes on Mew.
 
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A few random thoughts based on the clips I've seen posted here and there:

- The opening theme is pretty good. It feels like more effort was put into this than previous ones; in the past they'd have like a single chorus about friendship or whatever and then finish out the song by chanting the word "Pokémon!" over and over but this new opening manages to avoid that. This one felt like an actual song.

- Opening visuals - it's mostly OK, but the opening really needs to have that one shot of Gou reaching out for Mew since that's an important part of his character. I also don't like the use of episode clips here; the dub already has to sacrfice a full minute of original footage to get the opening down to 30 seconds so removing even *more* footage on top of that in favor of random episode clips is a real shame.

- The dancing in the Japanese opening is fun. I don't understand why it's getting so much hate?

- I like that the eyecatch presentation is more or less unchanged from the Japanese version. See, TPCI, was that so hard?

- Chloe's voice seems decent enough.

- The music...I'm not even the tiniest bit surprised. I read online that the episode only keeps one piece of Yuki Hayashi's score? In the year 2020? OK, sure, that's cool and normal :rolleyes:
 
Oh wait... so pokemon is back on teletoon in Canada then? It’s not on Netflix in Canada like in the US?
 
Dogasu said:
A few random thoughts based on the clips I've seen posted here and there:

- The opening theme is pretty good. It feels like more effort was put into this than previous ones; in the past they'd have like a single chorus about friendship or whatever and then finish out the song by chanting the word "Pokémon!" over and over but this new opening manages to avoid that. This one felt like an actual song.

- Opening visuals - it's mostly OK, but the opening really needs to have that one shot of Gou reaching out for Mew since that's an important part of his character. I also don't like the use of episode clips here; the dub already has to sacrfice a full minute of original footage to get the opening down to 30 seconds so removing even *more* footage on top of that in favor of random episode clips is a real shame.

- The dancing in the Japanese opening is fun. I don't understand why it's getting so much hate?

- I like that the eyecatch presentation is more or less unchanged from the Japanese version. See, TPCI, was that so hard?

- Chloe's voice seems decent enough.

- The music...I'm not even the tiniest bit surprised. I read online that the episode only keeps one piece of Yuki Hayashi's score? In the year 2020? OK, sure, that's cool and normal :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Frankly if the Japanese version is available on Netflix after all, I can live with the music replacements, but it’ll never stop being an odd practice.

I agree on the theme song - I noticed this is the first theme song produced for the dub that does not use the word “Pokémon” once. It does, as you say, sound like a real song. I really hope it gets an extended version (the fact that the band that did it, Walk Off the Earth, is a big deal probably helps), it feels like it deserves it more than a lot of the TPCI/Goldfarb songs that really felt like they were pushing it to hit the 2:30 mark (the extended version of “Be a Hero” is like, half the lead vocalist scatting some of the background music from the show).

Twilight-Kun said:
Still not sure why we spent half the episode following a random pichu around instead of actually introducing Go as a character
Click to expand...
I mean... it isn’t exactly a random Pichu.
 
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