Obscure Pokémon anime trivia

[Flynn]

When 4Kids brought over the Celebi movie they commissioned OLM to add scenes to further drive the point that Sammy = Professor Oak among other things.

What a lot of people don't know is the 4Kids version was back-dubbed into Japanese and aired as a special edition of the Celebi movie back in 2004. AFAIK it only aired once and all subsequent DVD and BD releases of the Celebi film in Japan are the original version so it sort of became lost in time.

Luckily a few months back someone got a hold of the special edition and uploaded it so now its no longer lost. They uploaded the scenes that are only in the special edition in this twitter thread:
View: https://twitter.com/pan2marumie3/status/1216712904713498625

 

[FinnishPokéFan92]

In the Finnish dub of season 1, the PokéRap and "Who's That Pokémon?" segments only lasted till Bye Bye Butterfree. Starting from Abra and the Psychic Showdown, they were gone. This was because Finnish parents weren't happy with them basically telling their children to actively buy toy versions of the displayed Pokémon (the Finnish version of "Gotta catch 'em all" basically translates to "Let's collect them all"). Things actually went so far that even the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority was brought in to do an investigation on the subject, which resulted in the aforementioned segment removal.

 

[Daren]

In very early airings of the english dub, an image from the Japanese ending theme "Nyarth/Nyasu's song" was used as an eyecatcher.
It was many years before I found out what that picture was from, actually.

 

[RileyXY1]

All of Ash's Kalos Pokemon were caught in National Pokedex order.
Lana is the first female companion not based on the female PC from the games to own a starter.
In both SM and DP, Ash got the Grass and Fire starters while a blue haired female character got the Water starter. What's even more coincidental is that in both sagas two of the starters fully evolved by the saga's end while the third stayed in its base stage. Even stranger, in both cases the starter that stayed in their base stage (Piplup and Rowlet respectively) are based on birds.
Turtwig is currently the last known Grass-starter owned by a main cast member to evolve.
Scorbunny holds the record of having the earliest evolution out of any starter Pokemon owned by a main character, as it evolved in Episode 17.
Dawn is the only female PC to become a companion in the anime and not own an Eevee.
XY is the only saga in which all the starters ended the saga in a different stage: the Grass starter stayed unevolved, the Fire starter reached its middle stage, and the Water starter fully evolved.
Serena is currently the only companion to not meet any companions from any past or future saga. This does not count Gou and Koharu, as PM19 has not finished yet.
Scorbunny is the first starter that remains single-typed in its final stage that is not caught by Ash.

 

[Lightning Flame Blast]

In the Brazilian dub, Ash had a single voice actor from the beginning up to XYZ, when a change in the dubbing studio replaced him. He was one of the most iconic voices in cartoons and as such the change caused some vicious backlash throughout media, until the new VA went on Youtube to admit he was sad himself about the change and would do his best to fill those shoes (after some unsuccesful few episodes where he made the voice too different from the previous one).

 

[Galactic_V]

In the Brazilian dub, Ash had a single voice actor from the beginning up to XYZ, when a change in the dubbing studio replaced him. He was one of the most iconic voices in cartoons and as such the change caused some vicious backlash throughout media, until the new VA went on Youtube to admit he was sad himself about the change and would do his best to fill those shoes (after some unsuccesful few episodes where he made the voice too different from the previous one).

Not to mention it's one of the only dubs out there that it's always been a guy who voices him. Btw I knew the change but didn't know about the backlash.

 

[Nicolas721]

That's really cool! Where did you get this piece of trivia? Would you happen to know about the other series as well?

I wrote it down while I was watching the series. I did it again with SM and not counting the final two episodes (because I've hold off rewatching them) I got 146 days. However it was much harder to do because there weren't as many afternoon scenes and I had to assume they only could go to school once per day.

 

[Lightning Flame Blast]

Not to mention it's one of the only dubs out there that it's always been a guy who voices him. Btw I knew the change but didn't know about the backlash.

The backlash came from the new actor making his voice a tad too mature and deep while playing Ash.

Which is ironic, considering he also voiced Ben 10 and Beast Boy and gave them very convincing child voices.

 

[prog rocker]

In the Brazilian dub, Ash had a single voice actor from the beginning up to XYZ, when a change in the dubbing studio replaced him. He was one of the most iconic voices in cartoons and as such the change caused some vicious backlash throughout media, until the new VA went on Youtube to admit he was sad himself about the change and would do his best to fill those shoes (after some unsuccesful few episodes where he made the voice too different from the previous one).

Now that I think about this: Did something like that happen when they replaced Gabriel Ramos in the LA dub?

 

[Galactic_V]

The backlash came from the new actor making his voice a tad too mature and deep while playing Ash.

Which is ironic, considering he also voiced Ben 10 and Beast Boy and gave them very convincing child voices.

I know that and I watched both cartoons. He said in a video he was younger, therefore bending his voice was easier than it's been afterwards. About the backlash it makes a little sense I guess... Not that I agree with it, but people tend to not like those sudden changes.

 

[JinksChow]

The Cantonese dub of the Pokemon anime produced an original composition for a Pokerap back in 1999; the ending used animation from Meowth's Song, and the full version only featured 42 of the original 151 Pokemon. (So yes, even less than Polkamon)

It would not be until 2018 that the Cantonese dub would produce another version of a Pokerap, again with original composition, that encompasses the original 151 Pokemon. This was produced to coincide with the redub of the original anime under a different distributor. To familiarize the audience with the many name changes made to the original Pokemon when Gen 7 began, this version uses the new names for the original 151 Pokemon. ('Pokemon' and 'Pikachu' are pronounced using their English pronunciations; since these translations were made with Mandarin in mind, the Cantonese pronunciation for these two would not sound right.)

A Mandarin version of the song was also produced in 2019, however this never aired with the anime and is only available on their website.

 

[Rockapheller]

This thread reminds me of a post I had seen couple of years ago on Reddit. I copy-paste it.



When Pokémon went worldwide, it was popular in Turkey as much as anywhere else. I was one of those crazy fans back then, as I still am. When I was 5, Pokémon was truly my passion in my tiny life. Of course, that kind of popular stuff caught the attention of authorities. People were worried about their children if Pokémon would have any bad side affect on their kids, while ministers and parliamentarians had statements for parents to be careful about it.

Then, the expected bad things happened. First, a boy jumped off a building, thinking he was a Pokémon and could fly. Shortly after, another girl jumped off a building with the very same excuse. I could find this article at earliest from the year 2006. Eventually, the minister of health stated that if something that popular would banish on screens, it would not help anything. Instead, Pokémon had to be gone little by little. Thus, they did not ban the animé on TV's at first, but Charizard Chills! was the last episode aired dubbed on screens. After that episode, it would get back to the first episode all over again. I had no idea Pokémon had console games back then, so I am not sure how they dealt with it, but I know that games were never banned in Turkey. It was only the animé to be considered troublemaker. There was also tazos, but they lost their popularity in a couple of years anyway.

Once people forgot about Pokémon due to the limitations, the radio and television supreme council banned Pokémon as they considered it safe to ban at that point. Thus, the animé was never aired. Once a private broadcasting, Star TV aired Pokémon in 2005 starting from the first episode, and they paid fine.

A memory of mine would be that in 2004, we had the internet connection in our house, and I searched random things related to Pokémon on the internet, and found the pictures of second and third generation Pokémon and I was about to LOSE IT. "I've never seen these before, are they new Pokémon? Are THERE NEW Pokémon?! Is Pokémon STILL A THING AND GOING ON?" Then I was directed to Serebii anyway, and been following that website ever since.

In 2009, the ban was removed. If I am not mistaken, Johto and Hoenn episodes began to air on TV's, and then Sinnoh and Unova. Now, the XYZ episodes are airing dubbed every week on TV's. But once it lost its popularity, it never gained back again. Only the core fans from back then who were really obsessed with Pokémon like myself remained in the national community.

 

[KenzeyEevee]

The have re-runed Ultra adventures 4 times before beginning to broadcast the first 10 episodes of Legends and then yet a re-run of adventures in the Flemish part of Belgium

 

[FinnishPokéFan92]

The Advanced Generation episode Vanity Affair seems to be a remake of the Orange Islands episode The Mandarin Island Miss Match. Think about it: in both episodes, Ash gets overconfident, the group meets an Elite Four member whom Ash battles and loses to, and said Elite Four member teaches Ash a lesson about humility. And if you ask me, Drake delivered that lesson in a better way than Lorelei/Prima did.

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

Some things I noticed after rewatching some episodes subbed:

Kasumi has three older sisters because they're created as a parallel to Satoshi's three rivals, who's, in early episodes, always "there" before him.
Kasumi and her sisters seems to be based on Akane Tendo and her sisters.

 

[Rocket Messiah]

Since gen 2 the translation of the Pokemon Games in spain changed the names of the protagonists and Gym leaders so the spanish names of the Pokemon main characters are:

May = Aura
Dawn = Maya
Max = Max
Iris = Iris
Cilan = Millo
Serena = Selena
Clemont = Lem
Bonnie = Clem
Sophocles = Chris
Lana = Nereida
Lillie= Lillia
Mallow = Lúlu
Kiawe = Kiawe
Koryna = Korelia
Go= Goh

Rivals

Paul = Polo
Barry = Benito
Trip = Tristan
Bianca = Bel
Trevor = Trobato
Tierno = Benigno
Sawyer = Sabino

And the villains are

Archie = Aquiles
Maxie = Magno
Cyrus = Helios
Ghetchis = Ghechis
Colress = Acromo
Lysandre = Lysson
Faba = Fabio
Guzma = Guzmán
Lusamine = Sámina

And for future characters that may appear in the show

Leon = Lionel
Raihan = Roy
Hop = Paul
Bede = Berto
Marnie = Roxye
Eternamax Eternatus = Eternatus Infinito

So it's possible that in some discusions I use the spanish translation names.

 

[prog rocker]

Since gen 2 the translation of the Pokemon Games in spain changed the names of the protagonists and Gym leaders so the spanish names of the Pokemon main characters are:

Also, at first the Spanish dub tended to use the Spanish names of the cities for Gen I, possibly because they were one of the few games that were available in Spanish for some reason, but around the Orange Islands arc they stopped. Which is why I kept asking me for years what this "Ciudad Viridian" was, at least until I got Fire Red in 2004.

 

[Rocket Messiah]

Also in the spanish games and anime Unova is named Tesselia.

So if in the future Unova episodes discussion I might say Tesselia instead of Unova.

Which one of the names I said before is better or worst for all of you?

 

[prog rocker]

I prefer Unova, but that's mostly because I'm used, too.

 

[Nicolas721]

Many of the Latin American voice actors have relationships within them:

• Ash (Seasons 1-12) and Giselle are siblings.
• Misty and Paul/Harley/Tracey (for a couple of episodes) were married. She is also Dawn and Todd's sister.
• May and Stephan are married, and their daughter is Serena. May is also the aunt of Max and Autumn.
• Iris is the Unova Pokedex/Damian/Lucian's niece.
• Ash (Season 13 onwards), OS Tracey/Guzma and BW Bianca are siblings.
• Meowth/Narrator and Lizabeth/Teenage Molly are married.
• Chili and Cress are brothers.
• Tim Goodman and Drew (season 6) are brothers.