Dogasu's Backpack Discussion

[Insanish Danish]

lol Brock's line about how he wishes Professor Ivy would train him is nowhere near as bad as what he actually says in the original

 

[Skalesgon]

lol Brock's line about how he wishes Professor Ivy would train him is nowhere near as bad as what he actually says in the original

What was it?

 

[Antiyonder]

What was it?

"Ah, I wish she'd pat me on the head and tell me I'm a good baby!"

Dub version is probably just as pervy if you think about it.

Still surprised Episode 9 in the dub got away incidentally with him saying "She can violate my rights anytime" in reference to Giselle. Besides her being much younger than him, I don’t think you can interpret that line any other way.

 

[MizuTaipu]

Yay! More screentime for the Rockets! It doesn't make up for how poorly they've been treated for the last 3 years or so though.

What was the age demographic breakdown at your screening if you can remember?

 

[Antiyonder]

Japanese Episode 084

I see an animation company going from making a really great piece of Japanese animation to a vanilla product that's constantly in a state of fear, always worrying that what they're doing at any moment is "too Japanese."

People absolutely hate it whenever I use the word "whitewash" to describe what happened to this show once it became an international success but it's honestly not a bad way to summarize what happened during the Orange Islands arc. The animators' native language is forbidden from appearing in the show, and the one person in the cast with "Asian-y eyes" gets replaced with a character that makes it easier for Americans to project their whiteness upon. Episodes about Japan-only holidays will no longer be produced, and Japanese food will all but disappear from the show altogether.

And considering how the world of Pokémon is different enough from our own, I don’t see how riceballs and Japanese are hard to accept if say the fictional aspects of the show are accepted.

 

[Johtoo]

I think creating a fake language was a great idea. The show is a global product, and the anime rarely focuses on any form of written language to expand its story. It's just background stuff, really. And Brock being removed backfired everywhere and I would like to think The Pokemon Company learned their lesson from that.

 

[Dogasu]

The show is a global product, and the anime rarely focuses on any form of written language to expand its story.

The anime rarely focuses on any form of written language to expand its story because it's not allowed to. That's literally the problem.

It's just background stuff, really.

So are the images in these mock-ups I made. Doesn't make the practice of removing some of the real-world text any less ridiculous.

 

[Morningstar]

Conceptually the conlang aspect does make sense as its a fictional world...but there is one issue. Coding. All the regions in the game are based on RL locations and as such are coded as said RL locations. Which means that not only are Kanto, Johto, Hoenn and Sinnoh are Japanese coded, so are most of their residents (despite the Mukokukesi and that the localization changed msot of the names). Likewise, Kalos, Unova and Galar are likewise coded as mostly white with some other minorities as a reuslt and Alola is likewise Polynesian.

All of this means that the removal of Japanese and onigiri does feel like cultural self censorship and now that I think about it I wonder if that was a factor for three of the last four regions not taking place in Japan. And its obviously censorship if the Japanese text is only present in the Japanese version (I'm assuming the conlangs pop up in the JP version from Orange Island onward)

 

[Dogasu]

The Japanese version of the Kanto episodes (1-80) had Japanese writing. The overwhelming majority of it got changed for the dub; some of it got translated but the overwhelming majority of it was just erased.

Scribbles and other random markings started showing up in the Orange Islands episodes and stayed with the show until the end of Diamond & Pearl. From Best Wishes! onwards, the show's animators created a cipher language that fans have actually been able to decode.

English writing, meanwhile, continued showing up in the show without any problem.