Review All the times the Japanese Version of Pokemon was Acknowledged Overseas

[AgedVeteranofShow]

The Times We ALMOST Got The Japanese Pokémon Anime

The Japanese version of the Pokémon anime has never been legally available to us Westerners. However, there's been quite a few times where we've been teased ...

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Interesting video by TheCartoonGamer8000, wanted to share it with everyone.

There were many instances in the original 4Kids Era beginning with (post-Winter Vacation VHS in 1999!) "Meowth's Party" in Orange Islands and that lasted to the end of their dub with the Movie 7 & 8 releases containing on the DVDs several cool trivia segments in Japanese (Rodger Parsons dubbed over the one for the Movie 8 dub, ironically he was NOT the narrator by the end of the original dub but still did so, getting to return to that capacity in Season 9 when almost everyone else got replaced after holding that role from EP001, Season 1 to midway in Season 6). The TPCi Era instances are mostly Pokemon's Twitter acknowledging it briefly, but basically, it's all a tease as they STILL won't offer English subbed Pokemon in Japanese to this day, 25 years in.

Only two things I can recall from the 4Kids Era Malik forgot to mention are on the 4Ever DVD, they kept a sneak preview of Movie 5 in Japanese on the DVD release & "Lights, Camerupt, Action" had 4Kids Era Brock (the OG dub version, Eric Stuart) doing "Takeshi's Paradise" as well midway into Hoenn's dub too in Season 7, but that's it (Season 9 isn't Hoenn, it's Battle Frontier's dub).

 

[snowmint]

I still think Rodger and 4kids has some kind of falling out, but was willing to come back under TPCi

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

I still think Rodger and 4kids has some kind of falling out, but was willing to come back under TPCi

I still think so as well: Pollock won't say why as he wasn't told after AG020 what happened, but this was the first major VA change technically in the Series (now 4Kids did bring Rodger in-house after eliminating TAJ from the Series, for their in house Anime dub episodes from EP263 in S5 to that point in S6, then I suspect the fall out happened there in 2004 when they let him go until the big switch happened- ironically TAJ would return the "favor" tenfold in Sept. 2006, that internal drama cost us tons of the original English staff infamously).

Ironically the Anime dub was at its best to me when 4Kids & TAJ were working together, both of them going their separate ways cost the English dub greatly IMO as time went on and led to both going defunct eventually in 2011 & 2008 respectively.

 

[Nicolas721]

In English:

• Puni-Chan's song and A Small Thing (movie 6 ending) were also kept and dubbed.
• Morrison sharing his voice actor with Goku was kept.
• In SM there's an scene where references to Megumi Hayashibara (Jessie's VA)'s other characters appear. One of them was Lina from Slayers, and Lisa Ortiz reprised the role.

In Latin America:

• Charlie Charmer and PikaBoruto had their Japanese names.
• Some characters have voices closer to the Japanese version than to the English version, like Sophocles (video) or Goh (video)
• Some episode titles from mid-SM and late-Journeys were inspired by or directly used from the Japanese version.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

In English:

• Puni-Chan's song and A Small Thing (movie 6 ending) were also kept and dubbed.
• Morrison sharing his voice actor with Goku was kept.
• In SM there's an scene where references to Megumi Hayashibara (Jessie's VA)'s other characters appear. One of them was Lina from Slayers, and Lisa Ortiz reprised the role.

In Latin America:

• Charlie Charmer and PikaBoruto had their Japanese names.
• Some characters have voices closer to the Japanese version than to the English version, like Sophocles (video) or Goh (video)
• Some episode titles from mid-SM and late-Journeys were inspired by or directly used from the Japanese version.

I remember that, how TPCi let Ortiz not only come back but promoted her to VO director by late XY yet gave the middle finger basically to her Slayers co-stars in Taylor (Amelia), Stuart (Gourry), Moo (Xellos), and never asked Freeman to return (Zelgadis) makes me question the internal favoritism involved there. Not saying 4Kids didn’t have this stuff as well back in the day, but their never ending grudge is clearly with the main cast in the original English run (have never seen a single other franchise do this to their original English crew, just insane disrespect). Not from the VAs, the company, to clarify. I wonder if they will stop this in Horizons, even Chris Sabat at FUNimation let Brian Drummond return as Copy Vegeta in their dub of Super and also let Scott McNeil return as Hohenheim in FMA, very sad to see they refuse to let their vendetta go so far there.

It was cool they let her do that though, I think the dub has been bad for longer by now than it was good & watchable by now, but a rare highlight from the SM dub, which I found incredibly painful to watch personally.

 

[Skyryan2468]

Plus, Sheena sharing the EXACT voice actress with Mami Tomoe and Casca.

 

[MiH]

In English:

• Puni-Chan's song and A Small Thing (movie 6 ending) were also kept and dubbed.

Meowth's Song in EP071 too.

 

[Yash]

The single biggest example is probably TPCI releasing the Japanese version of Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution on Netflix. I know there's been minor things that have been available in Japanese before, like the Pichu Bros. shorts on Pokemon Channel for GameCube, but I'd say a full-length movie being made available in Japanese stands heads and shoulders above that. Shame they didn't follow up with Koko, or release the Japanese version of any previous movie or series - an uncut, subtitled (or even bilingual if they were able to hack one together from the old 4Kids audio) release of the Kanto episodes would probably do very well, though I imagine interest would wane pretty quickly beyond that, thanks to the Johto seasons' unpopularity and the relatively lighter censorship that would follow.

I posted this in the Dogasu's Backpack thread too, but they also released this music video a few months ago, which as far as I can tell is the first time Mezase Pokemon Master has been acknowledged as the original theme song by a Western source:



I know it's been kept before as background music, or like, stage music in Pokemon Pinball on Game Boy Color, but like with the movie example, I'd say there's quite a difference between sneaking it in as BGM versus outright saying, here's a mash-up of the Japanese and English theme songs. (Also appreciate that for the music video they sourced the footage from the original intro, meaning Moltres isn't left out for once)