Dogasu's Backpack Discussion

[Hidden Mew]

See, for me, I'd be surprised if we didn't get the regional evil (well, in Yell's case maybe "antagonistic" is a better word) group since, well, we've gotten every single main series group so far. It would just be too weird if the Yell-Dan got zero representation in the main series.

That's true. It just seems like it would be harder to incorporate Team Yell in the anime if they don't include Marnie. They could write around cheering her on for the Galar Gym Challenge fairly well if they have her taking part in the PWC instead, but I don't see Marnie being in the anime. It wouldn't be impossible, especially when the anime tends to introduce some of the video game rivals fairly late, if at all, but when they already have Morpeko without including Marnie, it just seems less likely.

I mean...I'm sitting right here y'know

Sorry about that. I'm just used to seeing a headline on Serebii's homepage every year after the newest movie comes out in Japan, but I noticed that didn't happen in December.

Toho wouldn't have known about the box office decline on Day One. The decision to not have a trailer at the end of Movie 23 is most likely a case of OLM / Toho just not being sure when they'll be able to release a new movie more than anything else. Everything's too unpredictable now. A July 2021 release, at this point, is highly unlikely, and we're now seeing from Movie 23's box office performance that December wouldn't really work out either.

I chalk up the lack of buzz online about the film to 1) the longer than usual promotion period (532 days!) and so people just got sick of hearing about it, and 2) the fact that Japan's borders being closed right now means that the only English speakers able to watch this movie (and therefore report on it) are those of us who were already in the country when COVID started.

I wonder if they'll save the movie for the fall instead. I assume that part of the problem for the December box office performance was Demon Slayer being such a massive hit, but the competition might be rough regardless for that month. I don't know if fall will be any better for theaters though.

 

[Daren]

To be honest the prediction that Takuto/Tobias is going to reappear was the one that surprised me the most (second place was DP sequels).
The only league kickers I can really see reappearing are Ritchie and Alain, since they had more story importance than just being there to knock Ash out of the league, and I'd still put the odds pretty long on either (a bit higher for Ritchie since he's from the glorious land of Kanto).
But if you asked me in the past I'd have said that Ash would never get an old region Pokémon that didn't have a new evolution or get a Dragonite or similar tier Pokémon in the first dozen episodes so who knows? This series torched the rule book and is laughing maniacally over it.

 

[Antiyonder]

No, really. Why were aspects of Japan present in the anime deemed problematic?

So I'm the least picky when it comes to the Dub and still enjoy it a lot (I'd still be happy to regularly consume the original if it ever got the Subbed Toku treatment:)), but yeah the downplaying of Japanese culture really doesn't make sense. The show isn't some super realistic slice of life...

forums.bulbagarden.net

Basically took my previously stated opinions on trying to hide Japanese culture so that it would be the focus of the thread.

And yeah, even then my point was missed:-(.

I was 16 going on 17 when the dub premiered and finally watched it often when I was 17. Had 4Kids not made the changes in question and I lacked internet access?

I'd probably just figure that riceballs or the Hinamatsuri festival were akin to MLP's Zap Apple Jam or species like breezies.

You know that they were made for the Pokémon world just like Pokéballs, TMs/HMs and so on.

Then I'd learn they actually existed. You know rather than assuming they were conceived by the Anti-Christ:-D.

 

[MizuTaipu]

Another great comparison. This episode is easily the best filler of the Orange Islands arc.

People don't criticize 4Kids and TCPi for ruining moments of silence enough; I see people raise a stink only when they replace arrangements of BGM from the games. Silence is a great tool for creating atmosphere and makes the anime feel more natural and it's a shame they just do away with it.

 

[Antiyonder]

I mean, who cares if the Boss of Team Rocket, who I've never met before, helps release these dangerous criminals back onto the streets again? No biggee LOL!

As long as they aren't on the receiving end of their schemes (right away), not their problem, right?

I mean when Ace Trainer Liam gets to this on WTF Moments he might respond with "That's not very protagonisty".

 

[Insanish Danish]

Aaaaaa this comparison made me so happy, this is one of my absolute favorite episodes and I've been a Butch and Cassidy stan since I was like...15 lol, so reading anything about them at all is always a delight. <3 Shame they're so much cooler in the original than in the dub (Butch's dub voice is, as has been discussed, not good, and I think Cassidy's dub voice just doesn't suit her), but oh well.

 

[ii kanji]

That episode is easily one of my favourites in the whole series so I was so happy to read the comparison! Also so glad you covered the 'Mata-chan, Bero-chan' thing which has been bugging me for years But also officially sets loose a whole river of potential headcanons about Musashi being a loving mummy to Matadogas off-camera...

 

[Yami-no-Game]

The new episode comparison reminded me of how hypocritical the Rocket duo were in that episode. They were depressed about having their Pokemon stolen even though they'd been trying to steal Ash and co's Pokemon for over 80 episodes....

You'd think that them going through the same experience in Pikachu Re-Volts would've made them a little more compassionate but of course any potential development never happened. :/

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

Ah, it sure is nice to see one of my favorite songs from the anime — Hateshinai Sekai — get some attention! Especially since it didn't seem to be a particularly well-known song that anyone really cared about up until this point, as far as I knew. One of Miyazaki's most beautiful songs, with the added bonus of fleshing out Melody to be quite a bit more interesting (given how little real development she got in the movie itself). I definitely didn't expect this song, of all things, to be the "slower, much more gentle song", but then I wasn't really that surprised either, because one of the main things I thought while listening to it for the first time was: "this sure sounds like more of an ending theme than the actual ending theme they used, doesn't it?" Looks like my instincts were right, haha!

As to whether or not I would've actually preferred it to be the ending theme over toi et moi, though, I can't really say that I have any particularly strong feelings about that; it is what it is after 20+ years. I neither love nor hate toi et moi, and while it doesn't rank very high on my list of favorite Pokémon movie ending themes, it's a fun song for what it is (enough that I own the single and listen to it about as much as the other ending themes). Still, it does kind of stick out like a sore thumb compared to the likes of Kaze to Issho ni from the Mewtwo movie, let alone the ballads from the next few movies after this one (all of which do rank very highly on my favorites list, which should give you an idea of my preferences). And while having something a little different from all of those songs is nice in concept, in hindsight it feels kind of like a harbinger to many of the later movies' ending themes being straight pop songs that have little to do — even tangentially or thematically — with the movies in question (although the last five or so movies have gotten a bit better with that). And while there's nothing necessarily wrong with that (ONE, Ice Cream Syndrome, and Egao all also happen to rank highly on my favorites list, haha), I do sometimes miss those epic slow and serious ballads that may themselves not reference the events of the movies directly, but nonetheless touch on their themes or otherwise just feel like they "fit", for lack of better words. Even if such songs aren't quite as marketable nowadays in this very marketing-driven franchise, of course.

Besides all of that, though, there's another, unrelated-but-kind-of-related thing that I find funny about this whole story. Thanks to Hateshinai Sekai being replaced with a contemporary pop song with a big-name performer attached to it, we have a rather interesting parallel in hindsight between toi et moi and its own replacement song in the US dub, The Power of One. Namely that with the likes of Namie Amuro singing toi et moi and Donna Summer — that Donna Summer — singing The Power of One, we basically have, as far as I'm aware, the two single highest-profile performers the anime has ever had — and likely ever will have — for their respective countries singing in the same movie, both for its ending theme, at almost the same time. Such are the perks of your franchise being near the peak of its popularity at the time, I suppose!

(With all of that Mewtwo money in particular certainly helping with attracting that level of talent. Heck, that success is probably a big part of why they ended up replacing Hateshinai Sekai in the first place, because, after all, why have someone like Akiko Hiramatsu headline your ending theme when you can have one of Japan's biggest pop stars headline it instead? Or Miyazaki when you can have one of Japan's biggest music producers headline it? I doubt that it was a very difficult decision for the executives, who were almost certainly the ones who ultimately made that call.)

And speaking of Miyazaki as a final little something to think about, had the opposite scenario happened and Hateshinai Sekai actually was used as the ending theme, then that would've been the first time that he ever composed an ending theme for one of the movies, and — assuming that things happened the same way after that — it would've been the only time (Oración's melody for M20's ending theme notwithstanding). But what if things didn't happen the same way? Could we have seen Miyazaki compose more ending themes afterwards, had Hateshinai Sekai proved to be a particularly popular ending theme? (Probably not, honestly, for many possible reasons, but wishful thinking, haha.) Or, perhaps more likely, if the powers that be didn't get their chance to get a Namie Amuro-level headliner for the second movie's ending theme, could they have pushed harder for something more in the contemporary pop style for the next few movies, to the point where we may not have gotten songs like Niji ga Umareta hi or Ashita Tenki ni Shite Okure in that resultant ripple of events? Because, kind of weirdly when you think about it, for all of the crap that toi et moi sometimes gets for being a straight pop song, it was actually something of an anomaly compared to those other songs, which felt more like "business as usual" at that point in the series' life (I believe that it took a few more movies before the "contemporary pop" trend really started to become a thing, and even then, there did remain a few exceptions to that rule).

Thanks for the article, Dogasu. (It was indeed all worth it!)

 

[Sheep]

Chiming in to say Pikachu Re-Volts was also one of my favorite episodes, and probably one of my most-rewatched as a kid. Seeing a comparison was really interesting. I wish they let Ash just call Jessie by her name in that scene where they teamed up, I do agree it's more personal and really gives them a connection that otherwise is not there in the dub. This though:

Ash's non-chalant reaction to the rewritten dialogue 4Kids gave to Jessie and Misty is a bit off-putting to me. I mean, who cares if the Boss of Team Rocket, who I've never met before, helps release these dangerous criminals back onto the streets again? No biggee LOL!

I never really noticed how weird saying this was when I was young, it's almost hilarious to read now lmao.

 

[Nicolas721]

Gotta love Shudo's "At least the other countries didn't suffer through this" attitude. Makes me wonder if he ever saw the dub.

I personally don't care much if a movie song doesn't share its message, specially since the movies' messages are very ambiguous most of the time. However I agree that there should be at least some coherence between the two so a serious movie doesn't have a childish song as the ending (looking at you Movie 7).

 

[Momentum]

Just putting it out there again in case Dogasu didn't see, but I'd love to help contribute to his DVD guide, perhaps even provide screenshots to help educate new collectors on what DVDs to look out for. Here's a good portion of my collection as proof (my Blu-rays and other DVDs are on a separate shelf):

 

[Ricbolog1310]

Just putting it out there again in case Dogasu didn't see, but I'd love to help contribute to his DVD guide, perhaps even provide screenshots to help educate new collectors on what DVDs to look out for. Here's a good portion of my collection as proof (my Blu-rays and other DVDs are on a separate shelf):

Do you have a DVD of the Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon special? I can't spot it in your collection.

 

[Momentum]

Do you have a DVD of the Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon special? I can't spot it in your collection.

Yes I do! It would be contained inside the Lucario and The Mystery of Mew case.

 

[Ricbolog1310]

Yes I do! It would be contained inside the Lucario and The Mystery of Mew case.

Thanks for clarifying. I hope one day it will get a digital release, possibly on Pokémon TV too.

 

[MizuTaipu]

I think the reason why The Crystal Iwark episode remains popular among fans is because they're fascinated with different biological anomalies in Pokémon beyond its body being shiny. I wonder if the anime producers knew shiny Pokémon were going to be a thing in the Gold and Silver games and included a similar concept in the Orange Islands?

Neat of 4Kids to fix the mouth flaps errors like that. Is the Dogasu translation of 「やな感じ！」 "this stinks!"?

 

[prog rocker]

I wonder if the anime producers knew shiny Pokémon were going to be a thing in the Gold and Silver games and included a similar concept in the Orange Islands?

The answer is: most likely, considering Sunflora was programmed to be always shiny in the SW demo IIRC.

 

[Daren]

Okay, so as a rule of thumb I'm all for accuracy in translation...
...but I can't lie. I always adored that dumb "how we escaped is a mystery even the writers can't figure out" bit, and the original line seems pretty generic in comparison.

I know it's a long while off but I am very curious about the Orange champion episodes. I rewatched them a few years ago (wait, that was back during middle XY...I rewatched them half a decade ago ) and there's some things I'm curious about if were accurate or not.

 

[Antiyonder]

Another point Suede brought up jokingly albeit not for this episode is that between say Region variants and the last or the four Gyms having a legit Double Battle is that the game developers just had the OI episodes on while working on the new installments.

Okay, so as a rule of thumb I'm all for accuracy in translation...
...but I can't lie. I always adored that dumb "how we escaped is a mystery even the writers can't figure out" bit, and the original line seems pretty generic in comparison.

Interesting to learn about what they said in the original. After the episode premiered in the West, one of the old sites (can't recall the name) brought up one of the less discussed audio dramas (other one being the Mewtwo AD) about the trio having a friend name Mondo (who had a Ditto that he briefly traded for Meowth) who would show up to get them out of jams as an actual explanation.

So yeah for a long time I thought the Dub and possibly the original was making a shout out to said Drama.

 

[Yami-no-Game]

@Dogasu I just wanted to point out that you misspelled "Marill" 4 times about halfway through the episode comparison; its English name only has one "R", not two.

Also I'm glad that 4Kids changed that "God of Glass" line because it honestly sounds so cheesy in the Japanese version imo.