Dogasu's Backpack Discussion

[ii kanji]

Bloody hell that translation is an epic piece of work, thank you so much for doing it! Reading it really drives home how different the outcome could have been. In fact I’m stunned that the show/franchise survived it at all. Amazing bit of history.

 

[Flynn]

Seriously, translating 34 pages free of charge is nothing short of amazing. Thanks for all that you do and continue to do for this fandom.

 

[MizuTaipu]

Thank you so much for your hard efforts translating that book! Having a rare quote from Satoshi Taijiri translated is a neat treat. I guess he was more open to interviews back in the early days.

I found it heartwarming that even some of the hospitalized children sent letters of encouragement to the teams at OLM and TV Tokyo—even though it must've been a traumatic experience for them they still wanted to see the show they loved continue.

 

[SushiBurrito]

Well, Chuck also had that issue in the games... Same with Morty and Falkner (I find Bugsy's case justifiable). I wonder why they didn't try to fix both Morty and Chuck's issues in the anime...

Aridos and Ledian and Scizor exist and the kid uses Metapod and Kakuna? I dont find Bugsy's case justifiable at all.

 

[prog rocker]

I guess I was thinking about aces when I wrote that, although it would have been Ledyba and Spinarak considering the gym's levels.

 

[SushiBurrito]

I know Dogasu did the write up for Battle for the Badge ages ago but there's something I have to ask

"
Ash: "I can't believe it's been a whole year since we were here."
One of the annoying things about the English dub of this series is how it has its own canon that's separate from the Japanese version. There are a lot of things that apply only to the dub and so whenever someone says something about Brock's mom being dead or Meowth's first word being the word "Rocket" then we fans of the Japanese version have to sigh and be like "yeah, OK, but in the Japanese version dot dot dot." Please believe me when I say that these explanations are just as annoying for us to give as they are for you to have to sit through.

This is another one of those type of lines. In the Japanese version, all Satoshi says is "Tokiwa City? Wow, it's been a while..." (トキワシティか。久しぶりだな). It's an extremely simple and straightforward line to translate and so of course 4Kids decided to just throw it away and make up their own bullcrap instead. The English dub of this episode did air a little bit over a year since the first Viridian City episode aired but that shouldn't be a factor here; 4Kids' job is to translate the script, not change random lines just because they can."


Is it really that inaccurate? We had the characters celebrating the Bon Festival in episode 20 and then Children's Day some 30 episodes later. That's at least a 10 month timespan right there...no? I get that Satoshi didn't specify any passage of time and it's the principle of the matter but it doesn't seem wrong to say a year has passed between the first 2 episodes and the episode where Ash gets his final badge.

 

[kantoskies]

Dogasu, I want to add onto what others have said and thank you for your hard work translating all of these materials! I know it takes a lot of work, and I for one really enjoyed reading through it. I'd never really read anything from the perspective of the people who worked on the show about this episode, especially since as far as the official record goes, this episode doesn't exist!

I've also always been amazed how this show got picked up for broadcast in the United States considering the timing. I've heard 4Kids started working on the dub around April 1998- which is right around the time all of this was cooling down in Japan. Surely Nintendo was in the process of planning out a dub for the show in early '98- I find it so fascinating that they were probably researching dubbing companies for this show while CNN and BBC were reporting on this kiddie cartoon Pocket Monsters and its star Pakucho giving kids seizures.

Also I'm super curious about this (sorry if you've already addressed it!)- I notice on your Cyber Soldier Porygon page that the section "Does an English dub exist?" has a date of October 27, 2023 listed on it. What led you to choosing such a specific date for that part of the project, especially since it's decently far off? I'm not complaining about the wait or anything, but it's interesting you have a specific date already picked out instead of a more broad "October 2023" window!

 

[Dogasu]

Is it really that inaccurate?

It's inaccurate in the sense that "I can't believe it's been a whole year since we were here" is too loose a translation of トキワシティか。久しぶりだな, especially considering how often fans quote the former when talking about the passage of time in the TV show.

I've also always been amazed how this show got picked up for broadcast in the United States considering the timing. I've heard 4Kids started working on the dub around April 1998- which is right around the time all of this was cooling down in Japan. Surely Nintendo was in the process of planning out a dub for the show in early '98- I find it so fascinating that they were probably researching dubbing companies for this show while CNN and BBC were reporting on this kiddie cartoon Pocket Monsters and its star Pakucho giving kids seizures.

According to a later chapter in the book Pokémon Story, Summit Media Group was shopping the show around to syndication networks at the NATPE show in New Orleans in mid January 1998. So yeah, right around that time.

NATPE 1998: It's A Tough Market But Someone is Selling...

Heather Kenyon reports on NATPE 1998's animated shows and the attending companies' goals. It's not just a syndicator's show anymore.

www.awn.com

Also I'm super curious about this (sorry if you've already addressed it!)- I notice on your Cyber Soldier Porygon page that the section "Does an English dub exist?" has a date of October 27, 2023 listed on it. What led you to choosing such a specific date for that part of the project, especially since it's decently far off?

If my calculations are correct, October 27th will mark the 25th anniversary of the day an English dub of "Cyber Soldier Porygon" would have premiered if it had been a part of the show's rotation back in the day.

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

Dogasu, I’d just like to take the time to say thank you for all of the absolutely titanic work you did with all of that Pokémon Shock stuff. Especially with those news broadcasts; holy crap! It all was worth it, though, to give us all a portal into a frightening yet fascinating time in the franchise’s history, least of all for those who actually lived through all of that.

Honestly, for as infamous as this incident was even over here in West let alone in Japan, I think that we underestimate just how game-changing and precarious it all really was, given how sensationalist and “scandalous” it often got portrayed as with our media (to the point where we got parodies and jokes about it). A portrayal that we were able to give it with our distance to it all, if you know what I mean. But the Japanese news broadcasts especially helps give us a better sense of the human cost of the incident, with all of the experiences of those who, you know, actually had to go through those frightening and painful seizures. And I’m sure that for everyone at Nintendo, OLM, TV Tokyo, and everyone else involved with the franchise, there was a real fear for what would happen to the anime as a result of all of this, as well as what would happen to a lot of people’s jobs and reputations. After all, if there’s one thing that I think is universal across nearly all cultures on this planet, it’s that there are few things more powerful and more dangerous than pissed-off parents out for blood when their children get hurt, whether that hurt be real or perceived (with the former most definitely being the case here). Really, given all of that, it seems almost like a miracle that the anime survived it all. Things could’ve easily been very different…

 

[Yash]

Is it really that inaccurate? We had the characters celebrating the Bon Festival in episode 20 and then Children's Day some 30 episodes later. That's at least a 10 month timespan right there...no? I get that Satoshi didn't specify any passage of time and it's the principle of the matter but it doesn't seem wrong to say a year has passed between the first 2 episodes and the episode where Ash gets his final badge.

I feel like the main problem with this logic is that we don't really know if those festivals/holidays are observed at the same time in the Pokeverse that they are in Japan. It's logical, but it's also clear that the Pokemon timeline is stuck in place, regardless of how tortured the rationale is for Ash still being 10 - if each episode was a day in the life, we'd be at least three years in by now.

If anything I think the "it's been a whole year since our journey started" line is a reference by 4Kids to the fact that their dub had been on the air for about a year by that point.

 

[SushiBurrito]

I feel like the main problem with this logic is that we don't really know if those festivals/holidays are observed at the same time in the Pokeverse that they are in Japan. It's logical, but it's also clear that the Pokemon timeline is stuck in place, regardless of how tortured the rationale is for Ash still being 10 - if each episode was a day in the life, we'd be at least three years in by now.

If anything I think the "it's been a whole year since our journey started" line is a reference by 4Kids to the fact that their dub had been on the air for about a year by that point.

The March 3rd date is referenced repeatedly in the Japanese version of Princess vs Princess. They make it clear the Bon Festival is during the summer like its suppose to be. There's no reason to think these holidays don't take place in their real world equivalent.


Of course this all happened when the series was only suppose to be roughly 78 episodes and one movie and the franchise hadn't yet decided the characters dont actually live in Japan (but with Pokemon!) so that has to be taken into account.

 

[Onix 95]

I'd like to ask Dogasu about his list of episode airdates without the porygon insident happening. In the mysterious episode about Misty discussion, Doagsu referenced an episode airdate list. It has a guessed list of episodes after those that are known for sure. I'd like to know, how much time there is or was for producing an episode.
I think it was like four months in the first series. So if we know or guess Pikachu's goodbye only went in to production after the Porygon incident, do we really know what episodes they had thought about before the porygon insident? I think the Princess vs. princess and Purrfect hero are educated quesses, but how long does or did it to write and produce an episode?
I know there propably isn't any source that says how much of the series was planned at that point. There is that poster showing Ash's tauros and venusaur, so were they going to be part of Ash's league team, but the idea got scrapped somewhere in the 1997 or the Q1 of 1998?

Also, I like to thank Dogasu about the translated texts about The pokemon shock. Very interesting stuff.

 

[prog rocker]

IIRC, there is a list with at least four or five episodes that were supposed to air if the Porygon episode didn't cause problems.

I remember the Jynx and snow ones being there, plus the New Year's Special that never materialized.

 

[Onix 95]

I know about the Jynx and Snow way out episodes. Forgot to mention those. Also I know about the new year's eve episode. I think it was kinda odd to have a clip show after the one that aired after the Vulpix episode. I was referring to a list Dogasu talked about in a different thread. It has (he made the list?) a list for episodes listed up to the date 07/14.
The articles on Dogasu's page were fascinating and I wonder how the staff came up with the episodes back then. Theres some wacky episodes like the Clefairy rocket and more serious ones like Snow way out. The porygon episode is more action packed, and I wonder if the staff made more calm episodes after the porygon thing happened.

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

I'd like to ask Dogasu about his list of episode airdates without the porygon insident happening. In the mysterious episode about Misty discussion, Doagsu referenced an episode airdate list. It has a guessed list of episodes after those that are known for sure. I'd like to know, how much time there is or was for producing an episode.
I think it was like four months in the first series. So if we know or guess Pikachu's goodbye only went in to production after the Porygon incident, do we really know what episodes they had thought about before the porygon insident? I think the Princess vs. princess and Purrfect hero are educated quesses, but how long does or did it to write and produce an episode?

This is the only list I remember:

Wayback Machine

 

[prog rocker]

That's the same list I remember.

 

[Onix 95]

Thanks for the article!
I think the Farfetch'd episode could have been easily edited not to have Lickitung mentioned, but nobody noticed it. Charmander not having evolved is understandable, as the episodes involving him were finished making and ready to air in 1997.

This is a list Dogasu wrote or copypasted in Mysterious video about Misty!
I'm curious about the three episodes involving Todd as in this those episodes aren't back to back. I know Dogasu isn't saying this is a factual list of intended episode order. Princess vs. princess and Purr-fect hero are the episodes most likely to be scheduled to air on those dates. Not so sure about the Todd episodes.

And the rest we can guess by looking at a calendar from 1998

02/17 - Purin
02/ 24 - Ptera

03/03 - Princess vs. Princess (the episode is based on the Japanese holiday hinamatsuri, which just happened to fall on a Tuesday back in 1998)
03/10 - Lucky
03/17 - Guardie and Kojirou
03/24 - Kamonegi (Musashi already has Beroringa in this episode)
03/31 - Togepi

04/07 - Fushigidane
04/14 - Guardie
04/21 - Pokemon Snap (came out in Japan March 21st, according to Bulba, so maybe this episode and the two that follow it would have aired back in March instead?)
04/28 - Exam

05/05 - The Purr-fect Hero (same as the hinamatsuri episode - "Kodomo no Hi" just happened to fall on a Tuesday in 1998
05/12 - Breeding Center
05/19 - Guren Gym pt 1
05/26 - Guren Gym pt 2

06/02 - Kamex
06/09 - Hanada
06/16 - Pippi vs. Purin
06/23 - Tokiwa
06/30 - Barriered

07/07 - Orchid Laboratory
07/14 - Yadon / Yadoran or some kind of movie special

This is all, of course, assuming there were no breaks and that they didn't air any hour long specials.

 

[Antiyonder]

Yeah I'll admit to being prone to typical shipper logic when it comes to that trailer too, but I don't know if it really matters that the child had pink hair.

Unless Misty's sisters for example dyed their hair (Most likely if nothing else), or each daughter has a different mother (A fact that would have been addressed if that's the case), or the parents had dual colored hair (Not that ahem, Farfetch'd), then I don't see why the pink girl's parents lacking pink hair means anything.

Kind of a typical anime quirk anyway isn't it.

So yeah if that wasn't a trick trailer, it probably would end without any ships canonized for many reasons (Like Shudo being vocal against it). I just think pink hair being a sign of such doesn't work in a fantasy/fictional anime.

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

Yeah. Anime hair colours are more about a character's theme and personality.

 

[SushiBurrito]

Unless Misty's sisters for example dyed their hair (Most likely if nothing else), or each daughter has a different mother

According to Takeshi Shudo's Light Novelization for the anime they wore wigs. I know its not necessarily canon (His novel also apparently had Brock's siblings all had different dads which is kind of ludicrous when so many of them look like Flint) but that's something I guess.