Dogasu's Backpack Discussion

[SammyW27]

^ Oh! Okay then. Didn't know. My mistake, sorry.

Thanks

 

[AvatarAce2015]

Really loved your look at the Mewtwo Strikes Back manga, Dogasu! Very interesting to see how one of my favorite manga incarnations managed to make a distinct take on the movie even though Ono didn't have much to work with (it's common that people making a novel version of a movie are working off earlier drafts of the script or earlier cuts of the movie, so they often have to make changes or fill in the blanks themselves). Looking forward to your revised recap of Pikachu's Vacation as well.

 

[Abcd2015]

I was reading Dogasu's review of the three Mewtwo episodes/the first movie, and of course we were reminded that these episodes were supposed to air BEFORE the first movie's premiere had the seizure incident not happened. This makes sense, as the episodes leave a lot of unanswered questions (how did Mewtwo and Sakaki met and decided to work together? Why was Mewtwo wearing an armor? Why did he decide to blow up Sakaki's headquarters and escape from him?), and the movie's prologue answers to all of them.

However, I was surprised to learn that, according to Takeshi Shudo, the ten-minute original prologue was added to the movie AFTER the incident happened. This puzzles me: if the movie aired without the prologue, how would have viewers explained the scenes in the three Mewtwo episodes? Nothing in the movie minus the prologue explains the relashionship between Mewtwo and Sakaki, except for a generic "I thought of working with humans once. But I was disappointed".

Can anyone help me clarify this point?

 

[MizuTaipu]

I remember reading somewhere that the Pikachu short came after the Mewtwo movie when it was screened in Japanese theaters, but I could be wrong. TCPI does have women narrate the new Pikachu shorts, so there's something good we can say about that company's dubbing practices.

 

[Litten]

Didn't really like the updated Pikachu's Vacation comparison since it seemed like half of it focused on the narrators' genders. Sigh. I await Lugia Lundis though.

 

[Dogasu]

However, I was surprised to learn that, according to Takeshi Shudo, the ten-minute original prologue was added to the movie AFTER the incident happened. This puzzles me: if the movie aired without the prologue, how would have viewers explained the scenes in the three Mewtwo episodes? Nothing in the movie minus the prologue explains the relashionship between Mewtwo and Sakaki, except for a generic "I thought of working with humans once. But I was disappointed".

Fans were simply meant to think of Mewtwo as a mystery. Who is this powerful pokemon wearing this armor that conveniently covers up most of its body? Is this that "Mewtwo" I keep seeing in all those movie trailers? If you get that connection then cool, you got a sneak peak at 1998's summer blockbuster. If not then you miss out on that but you still understand that Sakaki, as the head of the Rocket-Dan, is involved in some weird shit that includes Game Shark pokemon capable of defeating any Trainer.

I remember reading somewhere that the Pikachu short came after the Mewtwo movie when it was screened in Japanese theaters, but I could be wrong.

I keep reading that on English-language fan sites too but I haven't seen anything on any of the Japanese sites to confirm that. The modern day Pikachu shorts certainly air before the main features, though, and it seems likely that the earlier ones did too.

The Deoxys movie was the first Pocket Monsters movie I ever saw in theaters here in Japan so I can't confirm one way or the other what those earlier movies did.

Didn't really like the updated Pikachu's Vacation comparison since it seemed like half of it focused on the narrators' genders.

It didn't though. It was focused on how 4Kids replaced a human narrator (who just happened to be a woman) with a robot and how doing so completely changes the tone of the episode.

 

[AvatarAce2015]

Wow, the dub of Pikachu's Vacation was a big mess in hindsight. I haven't watched it in a while; but I found it to be enjoyable and silly, much like the numerous skits that followed it. As for the whole leaving after the short: I gather a fair number of people paid full price for one movie to see the trailer to Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace, then walked out afterwards in that time (this was in the days when YouTube didn't exist; and I often had to wait an hour just to see a 2-minute trailer on QuickTime). The exact same thing also apparently happened a decade prior with the Tim Burton version of Batman. Even so, it definitely says something about how release patterns have changed and are different between two countries; as well as why I'm glad the company that made that misogynistic decision is now bankrupt. Dogasu, I look forward to your look at all the promotional material for Mewtwo Strikes Back (it was probably the most aggressively-promoted movie I remember that year besides The Phantom Menace); then, onto Lugia Lundis!

 

[garrison-san]

Didn't really like the updated Pikachu's Vacation comparison since it seemed like half of it focused on the narrators' genders. Sigh. I await Lugia Lundis though.

The issue of the narrator's gender was mentioned once. That's not even close to half the article.

 

[Abcd2015]

Fans were simply meant to think of Mewtwo as a mystery. Who is this powerful pokemon wearing this armor that conveniently covers up most of its body? Is this that "Mewtwo" I keep seeing in all those movie trailers? If you get that connection then cool, you got a sneak peak at 1998's summer blockbuster. If not then you miss out on that but you still understand that Sakaki, as the head of the Rocket-Dan, is involved in some weird shit that includes Game Shark pokemon capable of defeating any Trainer.

Thank you for your answer. It makes sense, and it even seems the only logical answer. Still, even if is true, it seems strange to think that the episodes and the movie prologue were not created together, since they complete each other so well (especially after Mewtwo escapes from the Rocket-dan HQ, as we see Mewtwo's POV in the movie and Sakaki's POV in the episode).

I wonder how much of the episodes and how much of the movie were completed by the time the seizure incident happened: in "The Battle of the Badge", we see Mewtwo with a cartoony armor, while in "It's Mr. Mimie Time" the armor has the same design as the movie (indeed, it's the same animation used in a scene from the movie); also, the two shots in "Showdown at the Poké-Corral" where Mewtwo flies away are also seen in the movie, but in the episode they are truncated at the beginning and at the end, suggesting they were created for the movie and reused in the episode, rather than vice-versa. I'm not sure of what all of this proves; maybe Shudo's blog entries about the Mewtwo saga contain useful info about this issue.

One last thing: in relation to "The Birth of Mewtwo", you wrote "4Kids never got this updated footage (or even knew it existed?)", but this is not entirely true: some dub versions of the first movie contain the first two minutes of that short at the beginning, and the footage used is the updated one.

 

[AvatarAce2015]

Really loved your final Mewtwo Monday, Dogasu! Very interesting to see how especially-aggressively promoted the movie was in Japan. Even there; they definitely wanted to make their first of many movies a hit. I'm really looking forward to see what you have planned for Lugia Lundis (I'm working on my own piece to celebrate the 15-odd years since I first saw it).

 

[MizuTaipu]

Thanks a bunch for tracking down and translating these Coro-Coro magazines Dogasu! Like the magazine scans you did for April Fool's Day 2012, a lot of the content hasn't been seen by the vast majority of the fandom so getting a glimpse into the film's promotion before it made its debut is a fascinating treat!

You're right, the first movie was aggressively advertised! I wonder if that's because people thought that it was going to be the only RGBY-centered movie featuring Satoshi? They probably made the decision to extend his adventure beyond Kanto around the time the film came out in July.

The trailer shown at Nintendo Space World could have been this as well.

 

[Dogasu]

I wonder how much of the episodes and how much of the movie were completed by the time the seizure incident happened

If the episodes were originally meant to air in June then production definitely would have started by the time December rolled around. They wouldn't have been that far into production but they definitely would have at least had the script and possibly storyboards ready by then.

The scenes of Mewtwo in its armor that were recycled for the TV show hadn't even been conceptualized before the Pokemon Shock incident took place (the movie was originally going to start with Satoshi and his friends at camp) so the original plan was probably to have all three episodes use the more cartoony versions of the armor you see in that one episode. As production continued, however, I'm sure someone at some point said "hey, there's this footage from the movie that's already finished...why don't we just use that?"

One last thing: in relation to "The Birth of Mewtwo", you wrote "4Kids never got this updated footage (or even knew it existed?)", but this is not entirely true: some dub versions of the first movie contain the first two minutes of that short at the beginning, and the footage used is the updated one.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll add that to the site later.

The trailer shown at Nintendo Space World could have been this as well.

I doubt it. CoroCoro barely knew that the Pikachu short existed and yet just a few weeks later there's a full trailer for Pikachu's Summer Vacation attached to the end there? Seems unlikely.

 

[froakiefroak]

Does anyone happen to have a link to watch this trailer mentioned here? -

Mewtwo Strikes Back - The First Trailer

 

[MRStealth64]

What I found the most interesting from this latest batch, was the revelation from Shudo's blog that there was originally going to be an episode where Satoshi met Mewtwo. I wonder how far in production that episode got before it got scrapped. Would be very exciting if some kind of material that sheds a little more light on that lost piece of the anime surfaced, but unfortunately that isn't likely. Seeing the old CoroCoro issues was also very neat. Can't wait to see what Dogasu has in store for the second movie!

 

[froakiefroak]

Another thing; thanks for these recent Mewtwo Mondays articles. The first three Pokemon movies have so much meaning to me and finding out more and more about them is always welcome and interesting to me. I'm excited for the Lugia (Movie 2000) articles upcoming and hopefully you'll do some for Entei and the Movie 3 too.

Anyway, thank you for compiling all of this information and all the information that you have done throughout the years. Myself and many others appreciate it.

 

[MrsDogasu]

Had to make a throwaway account to ask this since I'm way too nervous to ask this on my main account.

Is Dogasu... single? :x -blushes and scurries away-

Does anyone happen to have a link to watch this trailer mentioned here? -

Mewtwo Strikes Back - The First Trailer

Here you go.

[video=youtube;b70GRNYnacI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b70GRNYnacI[/video]

 

[Abcd2015]

If the episodes were originally meant to air in June then production definitely would have started by the time December rolled around. They wouldn't have been that far into production but they definitely would have at least had the script and possibly storyboards ready by then.

The scenes of Mewtwo in its armor that were recycled for the TV show hadn't even been conceptualized before the Pokemon Shock incident took place (the movie was originally going to start with Satoshi and his friends at camp) so the original plan was probably to have all three episodes use the more cartoony versions of the armor you see in that one episode. As production continued, however, I'm sure someone at some point said "hey, there's this footage from the movie that's already finished...why don't we just use that?"

It makes sense. Of course, they couldn't use movie scenes in "The Battle of the Badge", which only shows few seconds of Mewtwo vs Shigeru, and they couldn't use scenes from the episode in the movie because it wouldn't have looked good. Plus, in "Showdown at the Poké-Corral" they also recycled a scene from the movie (played in reverse) involving Sakaki's helicopter.

I was really surprised to learn that "there were plans to have an episode where Satoshi and Mewtwo actually meet before the Pokemon Shock incident messed everything up. The two weren't going to battle but they were going to at least cross paths". I wonder if this was meant to be Mewtwo's fourth appearance in the tv series, or if it was supposed to replace the first three. And if Satoshi and Mewtwo were supposed to meet each other in an episode before the movie, then I guess there was some minor rewriting in the movie, since in "Mewtwo Strikes Back" it's obvious that Satoshi and Mewtwo have never met before. This would lead to the question of whether there were other rewrites at this point. Is it possible that Sakaki and Mewtwo's partenrship was supposed to be touched upon in the core of the movie, and then those hypothetical scenes were dropped and replaced with a generic line (about Mewtwo working with humans) because of the brand new ten-minute prologue being created? I guess we will never know.

Still, Shudo's blog entries are like a gold mine, with a new nugget being found now and then. Was this info about a never made Mewtwo episode the last nugget, or is it there something else to be found?

One last thing: in relation to "The Birth of Mewtwo", you wrote "4Kids never got this updated footage (or even knew it existed?)", but this is not entirely true: some dub versions of the first movie contain the first two minutes of that short at the beginning, and the footage used is the updated one.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll add that to the site later.

I'm glad my advice was useful.
By the way, a discussion in page 133 of this topic says that the first movie as aired on July 8, 1999 is different compared to the version that aired on March 31, 2000, as the latter has additional CGI editing. I guess the only difference is in "The Birth of Mewtwo" and the rest of the movie is the same, right? And what footage is shown in the first VHS release of the Kanzenban (November 12, 1999): is it the same as the 1999 tv airing, or is it the one used in the 2000 tv airing and that would eventually become the definitive version?

 

[Galactic_V]

I found this July issue of CoroCoro with the movie's manga version at Mandarake's website a few months ago and I was really gonna purchase it, however they cancelled the order as they didn't have it anymore... Pretty disappointing I missed this special magazine. I ended up with another one with a few Gold\Silver infos (still called Pocket Monsters 2), but with no major information sadly...

Anyway nice article, really interesting how this movie was covered back in 97\98, and how CoroCoro messed up some information xD

 

[MizuTaipu]

I agree that we need a unreleased music release for this film and the Entei movie ASAP. The piece where the Rockets and Satoshi are racing to Ice Island on the makeshift speedboat is one of my favorite Miyazaki pieces and I'd love to hear it.

I don't think Japan was trying to imitate Warner Bros./4Kids with the soundtrack thing because this film came out in summer before the first dub film premiered; I think they were just doing their own thing.

 

[Garren]

Always wondered why Pokemon is so devoid of image songs when it seems like every other anime on earth has them in droves.