Before I start the thread, I would like to thank Dogasu for noticing this making it public on his website. However, while this could easily be discussed quietly in the Dogasu thread, I thought it was needed to make a thread for this so it could be made even more public.
If you didn't know, Viz Media plans to re-re-release the entire first season of Pokémon (Pokémon: Indigo League) on October 28th.
But if you noticed the box art, you probably saw the "All 78 Episodes!" sticker. And therein lies the problem. There should be more than 78 episodes.
There are technically 82 episodes in the Kanto chapter of the original series, otherwise known as "Pokémon: Indigo League". However, there were a few banned episodes in this chapter that are probably well known among the fan-base:
- "Beauty and the Beach": While this episode was dubbed and edited into English, it was only aired on Kids' WB a few times and was never distributed onto any form of home video release.
- "The Legend of Dratini": This episode was never dubbed into English, probably due to excessive usage of firearms, even this would later create a plot hole as to where Ash caught all thirty of his Tauros.
- "Electric Soldier Porygon": This episode was never dubbed into English due to the seizure-inducing scenes that caused it to be banned by the Japanese government.
It was pretty obvious these episode would never be commercially available in English, but that would still leave 79 episodes. But wait, didn't the box art say 78 episodes? That means one more episode will be absent from this release. Since you probably read the title of this thread, you can probably guess what episode I think will be excluded from this release, "Holiday Hi-Jynx"!
In case you don't know the whole story about this episode, and more importantly Jynx, it's quite a complicated one. Trying to keep the story condensed, the controversy is mainly from Jynx's original design.
This original design was viewed as racist and received outrage from many. Most of the outrage came after the airing of "Holiday Hi-Jynx!" and resulted in a lot of changes, including an episode in the Johto chapter of the original series never being dubbed into English and a later edit to Jynx's design, making her skin purple.
But even with all these changes, for a long time "Holiday Hi-Jynx" was left alone and pretty much left available in English, from being released onto VHS and DVD numerous times and even broadcast on television as recent as 2011.
It should also be noted that on December 23, 2012, a re-tooled version of "Holiday Hi-Jynx!" was aired in Japan with one major difference. Jynx's skin was changed from black to purple in every scene it appeared. This will be important to come back to later in the discussion.
However, things suddenly changed in 2014. Sometime after April 21, 2014 (I say this date because it was the last archived date saved of the episode page), the episode page for "Holiday Hi-Jynx!" was silently removed from Pokémon's official website. It was also missing from Netflix. This leads to me to one conclusion. TPCi, or another person of authority, decided to quietly remove all existence of the episode.
It would make sense that this episode is the most likely of all the other Kanto chapter episodes to be excluded from this new release, and possibly remove it from all future Pokémon existence, but what puzzles me is why do this now? It's been available for well over a decade, and will still technically be available in the 2008 DVD release of Pokémon: Indigo League (Unless it suddenly goes out-of-print after the new DVD release). If the episode was truly too offensive, it should have been banned a lot earlier than now. Why release it in 2008 but not in 2014? Did the controversy somehow become more obtrusive in the matter of six years?
Another question to this is why the re-tooled footage from 2012 couldn't be used if Jynx's design was truly the problem. Earlier this year, TPCi was able to obtain the remastered footage of Pokémon: The First Movie and air it on Cartoon Network, so it makes me wonder why TPCi couldn't obtain the re-tooled footage for "Holiday Hi-Jynx!". It might be a bit of trouble to get, but it would be better to do this than try to pretend this episode no longer exists.
So what do you think? Do you think this proves this episode is now banned once and for all, or could it make a return? Discuss!
If you didn't know, Viz Media plans to re-re-release the entire first season of Pokémon (Pokémon: Indigo League) on October 28th.
But if you noticed the box art, you probably saw the "All 78 Episodes!" sticker. And therein lies the problem. There should be more than 78 episodes.
There are technically 82 episodes in the Kanto chapter of the original series, otherwise known as "Pokémon: Indigo League". However, there were a few banned episodes in this chapter that are probably well known among the fan-base:
- "Beauty and the Beach": While this episode was dubbed and edited into English, it was only aired on Kids' WB a few times and was never distributed onto any form of home video release.
- "The Legend of Dratini": This episode was never dubbed into English, probably due to excessive usage of firearms, even this would later create a plot hole as to where Ash caught all thirty of his Tauros.
- "Electric Soldier Porygon": This episode was never dubbed into English due to the seizure-inducing scenes that caused it to be banned by the Japanese government.
It was pretty obvious these episode would never be commercially available in English, but that would still leave 79 episodes. But wait, didn't the box art say 78 episodes? That means one more episode will be absent from this release. Since you probably read the title of this thread, you can probably guess what episode I think will be excluded from this release, "Holiday Hi-Jynx"!
In case you don't know the whole story about this episode, and more importantly Jynx, it's quite a complicated one. Trying to keep the story condensed, the controversy is mainly from Jynx's original design.
This original design was viewed as racist and received outrage from many. Most of the outrage came after the airing of "Holiday Hi-Jynx!" and resulted in a lot of changes, including an episode in the Johto chapter of the original series never being dubbed into English and a later edit to Jynx's design, making her skin purple.
But even with all these changes, for a long time "Holiday Hi-Jynx" was left alone and pretty much left available in English, from being released onto VHS and DVD numerous times and even broadcast on television as recent as 2011.
It should also be noted that on December 23, 2012, a re-tooled version of "Holiday Hi-Jynx!" was aired in Japan with one major difference. Jynx's skin was changed from black to purple in every scene it appeared. This will be important to come back to later in the discussion.
However, things suddenly changed in 2014. Sometime after April 21, 2014 (I say this date because it was the last archived date saved of the episode page), the episode page for "Holiday Hi-Jynx!" was silently removed from Pokémon's official website. It was also missing from Netflix. This leads to me to one conclusion. TPCi, or another person of authority, decided to quietly remove all existence of the episode.
It would make sense that this episode is the most likely of all the other Kanto chapter episodes to be excluded from this new release, and possibly remove it from all future Pokémon existence, but what puzzles me is why do this now? It's been available for well over a decade, and will still technically be available in the 2008 DVD release of Pokémon: Indigo League (Unless it suddenly goes out-of-print after the new DVD release). If the episode was truly too offensive, it should have been banned a lot earlier than now. Why release it in 2008 but not in 2014? Did the controversy somehow become more obtrusive in the matter of six years?
Another question to this is why the re-tooled footage from 2012 couldn't be used if Jynx's design was truly the problem. Earlier this year, TPCi was able to obtain the remastered footage of Pokémon: The First Movie and air it on Cartoon Network, so it makes me wonder why TPCi couldn't obtain the re-tooled footage for "Holiday Hi-Jynx!". It might be a bit of trouble to get, but it would be better to do this than try to pretend this episode no longer exists.
So what do you think? Do you think this proves this episode is now banned once and for all, or could it make a return? Discuss!
