Obscure Pokémon anime trivia

[RileyXY1]

According to a map released alongside the tenth movie, the Sevii Islands are around the same area as the Orange Archipelago and New Island.

The Orange Archipelago and the Sevii Islands are actually based on the same part of the world: the Ryukyu Islands of Japan.

 

[DynamicFusion]

In Best Wishes, Ash was eventually supposed to battle Drayden for his Eight Gym Badge as his Gym Badge Case in the earlier episodes had the Legend Badge Silhouette in the Eight Spot. However this was changed into a Generic Slot around Episode 50 when the Anime Staff were supposedly noted that there would be B2W2 coming out so therefore they had to change the plot.

Just imagine, what else could have been scrapped in Best Wishes?

 

[RileyXY1]

In Best Wishes, Ash was eventually supposed to battle Drayden for his Eight Gym Badge as his Gym Badge Case in the earlier episodes had the Legend Badge Silhouette in the Eight Spot. However this was changed into a Generic Slot around Episode 50 when the Anime Staff were supposedly noted that there would be B2W2 coming out so therefore they had to change the plot.

Just imagine, what else could have been scrapped in Best Wishes?

A lot of things. The 2011 Touhou Earthquake forced them to cancel an episode that would have featured Team Rocket and Team Plasma going against rach other.

 

[Johtohfiller]

In Best Wishes, Ash was eventually supposed to battle Drayden for his Eight Gym Badge as his Gym Badge Case in the earlier episodes had the Legend Badge Silhouette in the Eight Spot. However this was changed into a Generic Slot around Episode 50 when the Anime Staff were supposedly noted that there would be B2W2 coming out so therefore they had to change the plot.

Just imagine, what else could have been scrapped in Best Wishes?

I've wondered if Game Freak did poor/last minute communication with the anime staff about what the first BW games would be like, that could explain a lot about how awkward the transition between DP and BW was if true. Might post my conspiracy theory about BW in the controversial opinions thread soon.

 

[Galactic_V]

The same way Satoshi's battle against Shaga got scrapped due to B2W2, any plans OLM had for Plasma-dan post-Tohoku earthquake were trashed as well imo. Of course we have no confirmation of this, but it's hard to believe the skipped two-parter was gonna be their only appearance.

I'd go as far as say they could've aborted entire episodes that were either done or in full production by then. There's even a small hint for N in one of the trailers (the grunt's line "We won't give the power that must belong to the hero to no one").

 

[DynamicFusion]

You have to remember that when Team Plasma were supposed to first appear in BW023 (As Dogasu noted on his site) the anime had already skipped many thing Pokemon Black and Pokemon White did with Team Plasma...

• G'Cis' speech in Karakusa Town
• N's introduction
• The kidnapping of the little girl's pokemon by the Plasma grunts
• The theft of the Dragon Bones in Shippou City
• The kidnapping of Bel's Mun'na in Hiun City
• The introductions of four of the Seven Sages (G'Cis, Asura, Sumura, and Rot).

With this it is clear as Ice, that they wanted to do their own plot instead of following and copying the game one-to-one like they did with other Villain Arcs. Now I do not want to sound like someone with a bolstering ego but as a person who knows much much more about Anime Production than the average viewer... I do not think they had anything at least meaningful ANIMATED (using the word ANIMATED instead of PLANNED, big difference there) for Team Plasma till at least the start of 2012. They must certainly have had some things planned such as Team Plasma-related Episode Scripts but for the safe side, they were either scrapped or put on hold (We saw how careful the Anime Staff & TV Tokyo were putting the airing of Journeys on hold almost immediately when Tokyo Announced Lockdown and when production was halted). The most there might have been for Team Plasma for the rest of 2011 would have been those 2-3 minute Glorified Cameos and probably one-or-two episodes focused on them but that's it. And to be fair scrapping or not airing one or two animated episodes is not a big thing at all. This also might explain why Tomioka (head Writer for BW) only wrote 24 Episodes for the entirety of BW which is much less than the amount of episodes he wrote for XY (somewhere above 30), it is because he had 3-4 Team Plasma-Focused Episodes already written but they never reached the animation table and the staff played it safe by never animating them just in case BW#23 & BW#24 never aired.

 

[Enzo]

Something that is rather funny and interesting is that there is no translation of any one the main games (and any of the spin-off games) to Brazillian Portuguese. Which is funny, since Pokemon has always been big here, and the anime and movies have been translated here, and while slightly off-topic, I will leave my biggest theories of the why:

(it will make sense in the end I promise)

Spoiler

The thing is that I believe is that mainly because neither of the Nintendo Consoles (Gameboys, DS, 3DS, even the Switch) was/is really that wildly popular here due to it being pretty expensive in our coin and almost none of the games have BR Portuguese as one of the languages options, thus making it virtually impossible for kids to play, cuz English is not our second language. We don't even have a second idiom tbh. And also the fact that I still think Nintendo is one of those companies that just makes a Spanish translation and calls it a day for the entire Central and South America. No, we have different idioms here.

So, because of that, names of moves and characters have been pretty much created in the spot for most of it's history. This cause tons of confusions like, the fact that Hyper Beam has been called a LOT of names, like ''Hiper-Farol'' (Hyper Beacon), ''Hiper-Fusão'' (Hyper Fusion), ''Super Chama'' (Super Flame), and even ''Raio Solar'', and this one was arguibilly the worst, since it's also the correct name of Solar Beam. It literally took them up to XY (!!!!!!!!!) to get the correct name, ''Hiper Raio''

And not only that, but Fake Out was called ''Surpresa Desagradável'' (Unpleasant Surprise) in it's debut, and many other weird names for other moves.

It only really started to get better when Pokemon Go came here, since they HAD to translate the names in the game no matter what, so the dub studio has a strong base to not create moves in the spot anymore. But even that is kinda of bad sometimes, like how Play Rough was translated as ''Jogo Duro'' (Tough Game), while something more along the line of ''Brincadeira Pesada'' (Heavy Play) would make more sense.

 

[Lightning Flame Blast]

Something that is rather funny and interesting is that there is no translation of any one the main games (and any of the spin-off games) to Brazillian Portuguese. Which is funny, since Pokemon has always been big here, and the anime and movies have been translated here, and while slightly off-topic, I will leave my biggest theories of the why:

(it will make sense in the end I promise)

Spoiler

The thing is that I believe is that mainly because neither of the Nintendo Consoles (Gameboys, DS, 3DS, even the Switch) was/is really that wildly popular here due to it being pretty expensive in our coin and almost none of the games have BR Portuguese as one of the languages options, thus making it virtually impossible for kids to play, cuz English is not our second language. We don't even have a second idiom tbh. And also the fact that I still think Nintendo is one of those companies that just makes a Spanish translation and calls it a day for the entire Central and South America. No, we have different idioms here.

So, because of that, names of moves and characters have been pretty much created in the spot for most of it's history. This cause tons of confusions like, the fact that Hyper Beam has been called a LOT of names, like ''Hiper-Farol'' (Hyper Beacon), ''Hiper-Fusão'' (Hyper Fusion), ''Super Chama'' (Super Flame), and even ''Raio Solar'', and this one was arguibilly the worst, since it's also the correct name of Solar Beam. It literally took them up to XY (!!!!!!!!!) to get the correct name, ''Hiper Raio''

And not only that, but Fake Out was called ''Surpresa Desagradável'' (Unpleasant Surprise) in it's debut, and many other weird names for other moves.

It only really started to get better when Pokemon Go came here, since they HAD to translate the names in the game no matter what, so the dub studio has a strong base to not create moves in the spot anymore. But even that is kinda of bad sometimes, like how Play Rough was translated as ''Jogo Duro'' (Tough Game), while something more along the line of ''Brincadeira Pesada'' (Heavy Play) would make more sense.

It’s also notable for making up some incredibly generic names for moves, like:
-Wild Charge—>Wild Attack
-Flame Charge—>Flame Attack
-Close Combat—>Multi Punch
-Smack Down—>Destruction
-Double Team: Multiply

... but also some pretty cool ones like:
-Brave Bird—>Wrath of the Birds
-Stone Edge—>Obelisk
-Flare Blitz—>Flame Bombing
-Bone Rush—>Bone Sabre
-Swift: Shooting Star

 

[Nitro Indigo]

What do you mean by idioms?

 

[Galactic_V]

Something that is rather funny and interesting is that there is no translation of any one the main games (and any of the spin-off games) to Brazillian Portuguese. Which is funny, since Pokemon has always been big here, and the anime and movies have been translated here, and while slightly off-topic, I will leave my biggest theories of the why:

(it will make sense in the end I promise)

Spoiler

The thing is that I believe is that mainly because neither of the Nintendo Consoles (Gameboys, DS, 3DS, even the Switch) was/is really that wildly popular here due to it being pretty expensive in our coin and almost none of the games have BR Portuguese as one of the languages options, thus making it virtually impossible for kids to play, cuz English is not our second language. We don't even have a second idiom tbh. And also the fact that I still think Nintendo is one of those companies that just makes a Spanish translation and calls it a day for the entire Central and South America. No, we have different idioms here.

So, because of that, names of moves and characters have been pretty much created in the spot for most of it's history. This cause tons of confusions like, the fact that Hyper Beam has been called a LOT of names, like ''Hiper-Farol'' (Hyper Beacon), ''Hiper-Fusão'' (Hyper Fusion), ''Super Chama'' (Super Flame), and even ''Raio Solar'', and this one was arguibilly the worst, since it's also the correct name of Solar Beam. It literally took them up to XY (!!!!!!!!!) to get the correct name, ''Hiper Raio''

And not only that, but Fake Out was called ''Surpresa Desagradável'' (Unpleasant Surprise) in it's debut, and many other weird names for other moves.

It only really started to get better when Pokemon Go came here, since they HAD to translate the names in the game no matter what, so the dub studio has a strong base to not create moves in the spot anymore. But even that is kinda of bad sometimes, like how Play Rough was translated as ''Jogo Duro'' (Tough Game), while something more along the line of ''Brincadeira Pesada'' (Heavy Play) would make more sense.

Brazil's always been ignored by Nintendo imo. Remember how they left the country in 2014 with the explanation of high taxes to just come back in 2019\2020 (I don't quite remember the year, just know it quite was some time after I'd moved out of there), so it explains why the lack of a Br Portuguese translation here.

Now about the anime translation, for me it always sucked, ever since day one. Not talking about the dub, of course, which was good, but the bad adaption just killed it. By DP I had changed to the English dub and by BW to the original version LOL

 

[Enzo]

It’s also notable for making up some incredibly generic names for moves, like:
-Wild Charge—>Wild Attack
-Flame Charge—>Flame Attack
-Close Combat—>Multi Punch
-Smack Down—>Destruction
-Double Team: Multiply

... but also some pretty cool ones like:
-Brave Bird—>Wrath of the Birds
-Stone Edge—>Obelisk
-Flare Blitz—>Flame Bombing
-Bone Rush—>Bone Sabre
-Swift: Shooting Star

When they changed Brave Bird from ''Fúria dos Passáros'' (Wrath of the Birds) to ''Passáro Bravo'' (literally ''Angry Bird'') I nearly fell off my chair.

But to be perfectly honest tho, like,,, how on Earth do you translate something ''U-Turn'' to BR Portuguese?

I vividly remember Swift being my favorite move as a kid cuz I saw Dawn's Ambipom using it and the bunch of stars coming out and with that sound effect and I got SO excited when it happened lol.

 

[Lightning Flame Blast]

When they changed Brave Bird from ''Fúria dos Passáros'' (Wrath of the Birds) to ''Passáro Bravo'' (literally ''Angry Bird'') I nearly fell off my chair.

But to be perfectly honest tho, like,,, how on Earth do you translate something ''U-Turn'' to BR Portuguese?

You gotta be fucking kidding me they did that...


I guess you could name it “Recuo” (retreat) and call it a day.

 

[Enzo]

Fun Fact: If Phione is counted as an Mythical, Dawn's Buneary would officially be the first Pokemon to defeat a Mythical in the anime.

 

[Enzo]

You gotta be fucking kidding me they did that...


I guess you could name it “Recuo” (retreat) and call it a day.

Well they did translated it as ''Fazer Retorno'' in SM. But I still think ''Meia Volta'' would be the way to go. ''Retorno'' would be the perfect choice imo, but it's a lil too close to ''Retorne'' (like the ''Return'' they say to call a mon back) for it to work, sadly.

 

[Galactic_V]

Well they did translated it as ''Fazer Retorno'' in SM. But I still think ''Meia Volta'' would be the way to go. ''Retorno'' would be the perfect choice imo, but it's a lil too close to ''Retorne'' (like the ''Return'' they say to call a mon back) for it to work, sadly.

The names of the moves have always been a mess ever since the start too, changing all the time. But I thought they were done with that when Pokeplus started aiding in the dub back in late-AG... I even remember Volt Tackle being given a very ridiculous name before swapping for a better one for instance.

And something I've never quite understood, why the heck they started changing names of the main characters in SM? Gotta be honest here, but Nogueira sounds just awful... Why not leaving Kukui? Like I said, I haven't been following this dub in a long time however I tend to keep in touch with it once in a while.

 

[JinksChow]

This may just be a coincidence, but for DP007's "Professor Oak's Big Pokémon Encyclopedia" segment, Professor Oak, while on the subject of Pokemon Breeders, stated that top Pokemon Breeders would often become Doctors or Professors to further their skills, which is the path Brock decided to take at the end of DP.

 

[Rainbow-Rain]

Fun Fact: If Phione is counted as an Mythical, Dawn's Buneary would officially be the first Pokemon to defeat a Mythical in the anime.

Funny thing is, at that point in time Phione was considered a Legendary.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

It's more that the distinction between legendaries and mythicals didn't exist in English at that point.

 

[FinnishPokéFan92]

Funny thing is, at that point in time Phione was considered a Legendary.

The term "Mythical Pokémon" has actually existed as a separate thing from the term "Legendary Pokémon" since the beginning its Japanese. It's just that the term wasn't officially translated until Gens IV (where it was incorrectly used about Dialga and Palkia) and V, so western people have a less easy time identifying as what it's meant to be: a category of special Pokémon separate yet similar to Legendary Pokémon.

 

[Enzo]

The names of the moves have always been a mess ever since the start too, changing all the time. But I thought they were done with that when Pokeplus started aiding in the dub back in late-AG... I even remember Volt Tackle being given a very ridiculous name before swapping for a better one for instance.

And something I've never quite understood, why the heck they started changing names of the main characters in SM? Gotta be honest here, but Nogueira sounds just awful... Why not leaving Kukui? Like I said, I haven't been following this dub in a long time however I tend to keep in touch with it once in a while.

It's mainly cuz some names can sound dificult to say/understand in other languagues. Like how ''Ash'' was the translation they chose for Satoshi, even in the US version.

And if you're br you may now why the name KUKUI wouldn't have worken...