I miss when the English titles were punny.

[Palamon]

Do you remember when the Pokemon anime had episode titles like "Twice smitten once shy" "Smells like Team Spirit" "Our Cup Runneth Over" and etc? I really miss this era of when the dubbers would do this. Around Generation Five they just started to translate the episode titles to whatever they were literally, and now the anime hasn't had punny titles since then...

Anyone else miss this? I wonder why they stopped doing this?

 

[Turbo]

Yeah I miss them but they’re not completely gone, they just don’t appear at the same rate as they were previously every episode now it’s once in awhile

The episodes titles still have some reference or pun sometimes

Like JN14 “Raid Battle in the Ruins” is so on the nose lol and isn’t creative

But like with Iris vs Ash JN65, “Thrash of the titans didn’t really hint at Ash and Iris or have play on words but can be a reference to the movie clash of the titans of two gods battling and in this case two champions they did something extremely similar with Lance vs Leon with it being Flash of the Titans for similar reasons

So they’re less like “Solid as a Solrock” but can have references still like JN6 is “Working my way back to Mew” so it’s “Working my way back to you” but just swapping you for Mew

And there’s more like “Battle Three with Bea”

So they’re there but just not as frequent

Plus I think in Journeys in particular episodes are less a single Pokémon focused and more about the goal or overarching goal of that episode so you don’t get the same puns with Pokémon for example that or the title makes just couldn’t creative enough with all the episodes

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

Sometimes I actually do, and sometimes I don't: personally, my favorite dub episode titles are generally the first 40 or so 4Kids did in Indigo League and the first 52 TPCi did in Black and White as most of them are fairly straight translations (my least favorite English dub episode titles IIRC are "Getting the Pre-Contest Titters!" and "The Green Green Grass Types of Home," one is from Gen IV and one Gen VI though I know what the references are the former especially is just plain mind in the gutter even if jitters was the intended copy and titters can mean laugh, the way it's phrased is a bit...yeah).

I do actually prefer the punny titles though over the alliterative/assonance ones, those ones grind my gears like anything: admittedly, there are some gems in them like "Delcatty Got Your Tongue" (Cat got your tongue), "Solid as a Solrock," (Solid as a Rock), "Twice Smitten, Once Shy," (Once Bitten Twice Shy) and "Smells Like Team Spirit" (Reference to the Nirvana Song) though, I can absolutely see the argument it's a bit dry now in comparison though.

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

BW had some of the worst offenders honestly.

-Enter Iris and Axew
-The Battle Club and Tepig's Choice
-Rematch At The Nacrene Gym
-Sewaddle and Burgh In Pinwheel Forest
-Ash and Trip's Third Battle.
-Cilan vs. Trip, Ash vs. Georgia

These are only some of them, but they have no substance. The titles just say this is happening in the episode rather than using some creative pun or something.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

BW had some of the worst offenders honestly.

-Enter Iris and Axew
-The Battle Club and Tepig's Choice
-Rematch At The Nacrene Gym
-Sewaddle and Burgh In Pinwheel Forest
-Ash and Trip's Third Battle.
-Cilan vs. Trip, Ash vs. Georgia

These are only some of them, but they have no substance. The titles just say this is happening in the episode rather than using some creative pun or something.

I’ll agree the last one is pretty wooden and bland, I get what you’re saying, but I don’t outright hate any of those save the last one. I actually appreciated TPCi trying to translate straight for a little while there, same with 4Kids in the first span of episodes.

I don’t hate the puns, don’t love them but some of them occasionally did hit the mark: the only ones I truly hate are just the brain-dead ones, I could give a list but another one that made me wince was “A Jolting Switcheroo” iirc.

Though they began in the 4Kids Era and TPCi continued them until the end of DP, then BW had a return to 4Kids’ early Season 1 form on them, and then XY to now chiefly have Cathcart’s references and alliterations mixed in with occasional straight in titles or references to older dub episode titles (“Ivysaur’s Mysterious Tower” a clear reference to “Bulbasaur’s Mysterious Garden”). I will say the creativity was greater in the first 13 seasons regarding how they titled them, but Season 10 has one of the worst stinkers ever imo there at the same time.

 

[Palamon]

BW had some of the worst offenders honestly.

-Enter Iris and Axew
-The Battle Club and Tepig's Choice
-Rematch At The Nacrene Gym
-Sewaddle and Burgh In Pinwheel Forest
-Ash and Trip's Third Battle.
-Cilan vs. Trip, Ash vs. Georgia

These are only some of them, but they have no substance. The titles just say this is happening in the episode rather than using some creative pun or something.

These are some of the worst titles... I remember when I watched BW back in the day & they are literally just...a summary of what happened.

I just liked the puns/references era of the anime more because a lot of the titles now are just... Literal and uncreative, in my opinion.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

These are some of the worst titles... I remember when I watched BW back in the day & they are literally just...a summary of what happened.

I just liked the puns/references era of the anime more because a lot of the titles now are just... Literal and uncreative, in my opinion.

Ironically you have defunct 4Kids (their former studio still lives on believe it or not in Konami's Frogger, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Bomberman dub stuff) who started that mid-Season 1 in the dub to thank for the puns in English, and James Cathcart who continued them in the TPCI dub likely for consistency, until the end of Season 13 IMO.

I do think they were more creative back in the day, to be fair, there is a certain dryness these days in the titles- at the same time, though, I don't particularly dislike the titles nowadays vs other aspects.

 

[Eevee298]

Punny or funny? Or just more creative in general?

This Dutch title is everything, but punny or short:

"Na het bezoek aan het kasteel van de ridders...is het tijd om een Preimeester te worden!"

 

[Harryghost]

Oh... Here I thought I was the only one with that opinion.

But yeah, titles puns are pretty fun. IMO pun episode titles were pretty common early on, especially in the DP episodes. Now, there has been some effort in the later series as well, some of favorites being 'Kalos League Passion with a Certain Flare!', 'The One That Didn't Get Away!' and 'A One-Stick Wonder!'. Still, I hope there are more pun episode titles in the future of anime episodes to come.

 

[Alola]

I've commented on this topic several times here and while I agree, I was often met with the reason for the decline in punny titles - they don't translate well for other language localizations, which seem to go off the English titles for their own.

 

[Nicolas721]

As I said in the past, I really don't. I can understand that puns can make people giggle because of it was well-done or grin because it contains a reference to a work they know, but that shouldn't came at the cost of 50+ countries being left with nonsense titles that are hardly applicable or poorly translated.

However I have to admit that titles have taken a nosedive in Journeys to the point I'm missing the ones with puns. The references are too forced or too obscure, to cite some recent examples:

The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky! because...Team Rocket is bad? and Cassidy and Butch were lucky for not ending up in jail?
Taking Two For The Team! because it's a 2vs2...so why didn't the previous 2vs2 battles of Journeys had that title?
Looking Out for Number Two! because it's the second Project Mew mission. Kids definitely will take that from the title and not think about anything else.
Advice to Goh!: I dare any casual fan to guess what the episode is about. None of them will come even close.

 

[PaperSplash]

My least favorite dub episode titles are the ones that are neither punny nor an attempt at translating the original title, so stuff like "Cilan Versus Trip, Ash Versus Georgia!" and "Advice to Goh!" as others have mentioned.