Review The Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon

[maddiejoan]

Maddie, if I may ask a question: What anime or other work will you do now, now that you're (at the moment) no longer voicing Meowth?

I'll be playing Satorious on Yugi GX. You might know him as Saiou.

I'm also Overkill on Sigma 6.

and I play the Oracle on Wu-Lin warriors.

 

[Pie]

-Straightforward non-punny scripting

Hey, I like the puns. Yeah, some of the episode titles will make me roll my eyes, but overall they're just part of what makes Pokémon what it is, the original Japanese included - Lucky Lucky, for example, is one of the best and most pun-infested songs of all time.

 

[Porygandrew]

Hey, I like the puns. Yeah, some of the episode titles will make me roll my eyes, but overall they're just part of what makes Pokémon what it is, the original Japanese included - Lucky Lucky, for example, is one of the best and most pun-infested songs of all time.

Lucky Lucky = the best pokemon song ever.

But sometimes puns do go overboard. There's an anime series called School Ghost Stories in which the dubbers intentionally take a .... relief .... on the script and pass it off as humor. They claim those who hate the "translation" are 'purists'.
Think of fan-dubbing. That's what the official dub equates to. I have to watch that show in Japanese in order to get anything out of it.

Oh! Is the "Ask Maddie" over here, too? I do have a question, but I have to scan the posts to see if it's been answered, first.

 

[PDUTogepi]

I'll be playing Satorious on Yugi GX. You might know him as Saiou.

I just wanna say that when I heard you were going to be playing Saiou/Satorious on Yu-Gi-Oh! GX I was thrilled Some friends and I agreed that Saiou will be in good hands with you and I'm really looking forward to your preformance as him~ I'm sure you'll enjoy playing him, he's a really interesting character :3

As for the conversation on puns in the scripting, I too really liked the puns and the jokes in the script that often made me laugh, there were a few jokes here and there in the mirage special but they didn't seem as funny as the usual scripting jokes, not as memorable either :/ Which is why I found the script for the special rather boring.

 

[Kasumi]

Oh please, all of those 4Kids puns are lame to the max. I hope PUSA gets rid of them for good.

 

[Pie]

As for the conversation on puns in the scripting, I too really liked the puns and the jokes in the script that often made me laugh, there were a few jokes here and there in the mirage special but they didn't seem as funny as the usual scripting jokes, not as memorable either :/ Which is why I found the script for the special rather boring.

Well, perhaps part of the failed humor can be blamed, yet again, on the replacement voicie actors. The funny thing about drama is that comedy takes a lot more skill than tragedy - screw up your tone or timing just bit, and an otherwise great joke falls flat.

Of course, I'm not sure if that applies, either. I'd have to go back and watch it all again just to listen to the joke delivery, and quite frankly I am not that devoted to acting critique.

 

[inu-liger]

I'll be playing Satorious on Yugi GX. You might know him as Saiou.

I'm also Overkill on Sigma 6.

and I play the Oracle on Wu-Lin warriors.

Ah, thanks. I'll see if I can look out for those here in Canada!

I will look forward to when I can hear your voice again.

 

[ashita]

I will post a review as soon as it is ahown here in the UK ~(SARCASM) or should that be IF it ever gets shown here
anyway i am trying to get at [HASHTAG]#pocletmonsters[/HASHTAG] right now so hopefully i will have it soon

 

[Andromache]

I'm another one that doesn't mind the puns usually. Yes, I'll admit some of them were overkill, such as the latest Onix ep where there were three rock puns in a row when TR was beaten. However, I think it takes creativity to make some of those ep titles, and I do recall that the 4Kids scripts did make me laugh. "Dance like an eggplant." LOL Heck, even the old eps with Nicolai and his Zangoose, where James had asked whether that was the kid obsessed with short pants, actually made me giggle purely for how the line was said. There was no such thing in the special and I felt like with the lines that were used, Pokemon really *was* for kids and not for all ages. While I did appreciate the different "voices" evidenced by the different vocabularies of the scientists versus the kids, I think the kids were really shafted. Their lines made them sound much less mature than they actually came off before.

 

[Tolen's Love]

Well, this would most likely be my favorite episode if for the fact that my ears didn't bleed from listening to May sound like my Mom(46) instead of a 10 year old, Brock having a scratchy voice like a guy in a nursing home, and Ash sounding like Naruto. Also I have to ask who did the script... because while they got Misty's voice almost perfect, she sounds like a "valley girl" and says "whatever" waaaaaaaaaaay too much. (I don't like to watch totally spies on cartoon network if you haven't noticed)

However, I liked how they (for the first time EVERRRRR) used inscerpts from the movies, had the pokemon have power over the people by picking them up and walking away with them. They have minds! Yes! YESSS!
Well, I finally got that out of my system and I know others are going to say I'm a horable person to even like it a little bit, but I never got to see the end of it where Mewtwo popped in. Does anyone know how I can see it without AOL? I'd like to know that very much. Thanx!

 

[Unregistered]

the voices were horrible and it made me dislike the whole movie so i ended up watching most of it in fast forward.

 

[Unregistered]

*Takes a deep breath*

I wanted to like this, I really did, but...no, just no.

20 minutes into the special and I felt terribly bored, both the script and the dull acting just made me lose all interest in this and for anyone who knows me they'll know I rarely get bored by pokémon episodes.
Usually in an episode, the script is full of gags and lines I find hilarious! But in this there was nothing said that even stood out to me. The acting wasn't that great either I'm sorry to say, at times the actors sounded like robots and can't convey emotion as great as the original cast can.
There were also times I sat there and when a character spoke a line, I'd simply just sit there and go "No...they wouldn't say that". Mostly it was in the beginning and mostly it was with Ash's lines...

I agree that Ash sounded very "Ritchie-ish", maybe mixed in with a bit of what Dub!Naruto sounds like (*I've only seen the first 7 or so episodes of dub naruto but Ash's voice at time reminded me of naruto's voice in that and other's he reminded me of Ritchie*), May sounded too old, Brock way too deep, James didn't feel right to me either. Ones that may grow on me are Max, Misty, Jessie and Meowth but that doesn't mean I was completely happy with their voices either, meowth was probably by far the best, but his new voice has NOTHING on Maddie's Meowth.

The fact that it seems they have the original narrator at least makes me happy, a familiar voice amongst all these I don't recognize is a good feeling.

The opening theme to this was really bad. I'm not a fan of cheesy rap like that and I hope they don't use that for the series opening. I like the fun tunes 4Kids did that you were able to pick up easily and sing along too.

The only thing I really enjoyed was the fact that the BGM was all original Japanese BGM from the movies and such. I am hoping this is a good sign that they'll be keeping it in the series.

In the end I just have to say I just wasn't pleased with the final outcome at all. I miss the normal voices, the normal way the script is written, it just doesn't feel like Pokémon to me :/

i have to say that i completely agree, except i can't get used to any of the voices...

 

[Unregistered]

I missed it. X( All I have seen on it is the first 7.5 minutes on youTube (the rest were deleted) and the summary and pictures on serebii. I really wanna see it! I don't care if the voice acting is bad, I can always imagine the old voice actors saying the lines, and it looks really cool!

Does anyone know when it will be on again, or is coming out on DVD (probably a long way away, but worth a shot....)?

 

[Zhen Lin]

Hmmm. Apparently this special was animated by Team Koitabashi - the people who usually do the movies. Except none of the movie staff are actually involved - there's no Kazuaki Mōri (animation director), no Yūji Asada (assistant director), no Hideki Sonoda (screenplay), no Kunihiko Yuyama (director, storyboard) etc. Then again if it did it would be a movie, not a special, wouldn't it.

 

[Pokeyug]

you could download it on pocketmonsters.net or watch it on pokebeach.

 

[AkivaraII]

Hey, it's unregistered (I hadn't remembered that my name was AkivaraII, not Akivara)....

I have no idea how to use BitTorrent, and probably aren't allowed to, as this is a family computer.

The current ep on Pokebeach is Hooked on Onix, and it's not working for me, it says WMP can't play the file (though I had to right-click and check the error message to see what was wrong)....

Pokemon.com said it was on KOL, but my mom won't help me get AOL for the free-period and I don't even know if it's still there.

So yeah, I have to wait until they do a re-run or release it on DVD.

 

[Dogasu]

Hmmm. Apparently this special was animated by Team Koitabashi - the people who usually do the movies. Except none of the movie staff are actually involved - there's no Kazuaki Mōri (animation director), no Yūji Asada (assistant director), no Hideki Sonoda (screenplay), no Kunihiko Yuyama (director, storyboard) etc. Then again if it did it would be a movie, not a special, wouldn't it.

Actually...Kunihiko Yuyama is given an Executive Director credit, which furthers the idea that the special was a co-production with the US.