• A new LGBTQ+ forum is now being trialed and there have been changes made to the Support and Advice forum. To read more about these updates, click here.
  • Hey Trainers! Be sure to check out Corsola Beach, our newest section on the forums, in partnership with our friends at Corsola Cove! At the Beach, you can discuss the competitive side of the games, post your favorite Pokemon memes, and connect with other Pokemon creators!
  • Due to the recent changes with Twitter's API, it is no longer possible for Bulbagarden forum users to login via their Twitter account. If you signed up to Bulbagarden via Twitter and do not have another way to login, please contact us here with your Twitter username so that we can get you sorted.

SDI Media Pokemon PAL UK Europe Edits

charizardmaster125

New Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2012
Messages
73
Reaction score
1
This has been the subject for discussion various times but I feel that this is significant enough to create a thread about this as this took me by complete surprise. As some of you may know that since Pokémon Black & White, SDI Media has been distributing Pokémon for TPCi in Europe, including the UK and they come with a few localization edits such as the lowering of picture brightness and frame rate during scenes of flashing images and the infamous "To Be Continued" edits.

In Australia, who like the UK and Europe share PAL as a television format, Pokémon is distributed onto DVD (and sometimes Blu Ray) by Beyond Home Entertainment who receive masters converted from NTSC to PAL by TPCi in an non-edited form meaning that they are not subject to the same edits seen in Europe.

Netflix UK uses SDI Pokémon however in a raw HD format with only the "To Be Continued" and "Who's that Pokemon" edits. I don't know what the score is with the Amazon Instant Video and iTunes versions of the show but presumably these are left untouched like the Australian format.

Recently, CITV aired Season 18 Episode "A Race for Home". As a part of SDI's editing package for Europe, all of the XY Title Cards are standardized to "Ash", much like the US version with a few oddities here and there. For those of you who don't follow the Japanese version of the show, the faces of characters shown at the right of the picture is the character that the episode is focusing on so if it was an "Ash" episode, the title card would focus on Ash and if the episode was focused on Serena, then the title card would focus on Serena.

If you watched this episode in the USA, you will notice that the title card is read by Haven Paschall as Serena. If you watched this in the UK however, the title card is read by Sarah Natochenny as Ash! Sadly, due to copyright restrictions, I cannot upload this to YouTube but it is available (albeit for less than 30 Days) on the ITV Player if you want to hear it for yourself, but I've made an audio recording of it for future reference.

https://www.itv.com/itvplayer/pokemon/series-19/episode-5-a-race-for-home-

So yeah, another "Dub" oddity and one that took me by surprise so this means that Pokémon has two different English versions of the show whilst the PAL UK Version is, I suppose you could say is now "based off" the American dub as we still retain the American Voice Cast and regrettably, the soundtrack edits.

So if you have any thoughts or reactions, I'd love to read them.
 
I'll took the very slight copyright risk and put a video up of it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeTQA-Zve8g

It's such a weird thing to have change. I'd hope the answer is as simple as it being a late change to have Serena's VA do the title card, so they'd already sent off the version to be used as the base for the non-English dubs of the dub with an Ash voice over.

In a few weeks time when CITV get to 'One for the Goomy' that'll be interesting, as there they even went to the effort of using the Bonnie title card when she voiced it, which makes it seem a lot more planned than this time around.
 
This version is also distributed in Latin America, with the edits you mentioned.

However, I only noticed the brigthtness lowering in my TV in only aproximately 7 episodes on season 17, from XY019 to XY034, but a lot of Latin American people noticed it on XY005.

It will take many months for season 18 to be broadcasted here, it will be interesting to see who reads XY054's card but probably it will be Ash.

Television formats and ratios and something like that might be a possible explanation to The To be continued bar.
 
"One for the Goomy" was read by "Bonnie" in this regions version of Pokemon XY on CITV today however the title card focused on Ash where as in Japan it focused on Dedenne and in the US it focused on Bonnie so this episode has three different title card variations depending on which part of the globe you watched it in.
 
"One for the Goomy" was read by "Bonnie" in this regions version of Pokemon XY on CITV today however the title card focused on Ash where as in Japan it focused on Dedenne and in the US it focused on Bonnie so this episode has three different title card variations depending on which part of the globe you watched it in.

On the italian version of this episode (edited by SDI Media) the title card was read by Bonnie, not Ash!
Another edit they make is the horrible "ghost effect" on the Opening Theme (Like make more slowly the scene of Pikachu VS Mega Gardevoir)...
 
Please note: The thread is from 9 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
Back
Top Bottom