Japanese Episode 1

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Japanese Episode 1

Japanese Episode 1: "Pokemon Kimi ni Kimeta!"

("Pokemon I Choose You!")

Satoshi is a ten-year old boy in Masera Town, and this means that he can start on his journey to become a Pokemon Master. However, on the fateful day, Satoshi oversleeps and all of the other trainers, including Shigeru, have been given their first pokemon. Satoshi is forced to take the last one left, an ill-tempered electric mouse named Pikachu. Pikachu doesn't want anything to do with the young trainer at first, but Satoshi doesn't give up on being its friend. When a flock of Onisuzume attack, Satoshi stands up for the battered Pikachu, and the pokemon finally accepts its trainer. After Pikachu unleashes a powerful electric shock, Pikachu has finally warmed up to its trainer as Satoshi carries the battered pokemon to the nearest Pokemon Center.

Thoughts
This is actually the second episode to air in America. Episode 15 was the first.

This episode starts the whole series, and I have mixed feelings about it. It does a good job of setting up the entire story and whatnot, and it's pretty faithful to the game, but it is a rather slow start. But I do have a soft spot for these first episodes--they were dubbed much better than any of the other episodes in the series. Veronica Taylor said in her interview that they were really careful about the first ten episodes or so, taking more effort than usual to translate every line as closely as they could. Then, as the series progresses, the dubbers started taking more and more liberties. Usually, the first few episodes of a dub are usually pretty bad--the voice actors haven't gotten a chance to get into their characters, and the characters usually sound flat and unconvincing. But in this dub, all of the characters--with the exception of James--all sound their best. I like the dubbed Ash in these first episodes more because he has a deeper, more boyish voice--toward the end of the second American season, his voice goes waaaaaaaay up to an almost girlish tone. Dub-wise, this was a good episode, but it wasn't without its edits.

Pikachu keeps its Japanese voice, but sometimes Rachel Lillis provides its voice when the original audio of Ohtani Ikue couldn't be salvaged from the original.

Title Screen
First of all, I want to say that the first season episodes have almost dead-on title translations. "Pokemon I Choose You!" works as the title for both the Japanese version of the episode and as the title of the dubbed episode, and that's very rare in non-Cartoon Network TV-dubbed anime. Later, 4Kids goes for stupid puns for their titles ("Good 'quil Hunting" comes to mind), but for now they're sticking to title translations. Yay!

The title screen in the dub has a few changes. First of all, the green checkerboard pattern was there in the original, so 4Kids didn't change anything in that respect. However, they did change the background music--in the Japanese version, they use the same title screen music they use for every episode of the anime. In the dub, they made up their own little song. This episode's title screen also starts a rather stupid trend--every time the word "Pokémon" appears in the title screen, 4Kids puts the gaudy blue and yellow American Pokémon logo in place of the word Pokémon. It looks really tacky, having the word "Pokémon" stick out so much. This is never done in the Japanese version, but then again, the title of the show (Pocket Monsters) never appears in any of the episode titles. Even if it did, I doubt the creators would place the show's logo in place of the actual word. It's a rather pointless change that only takes more work, as now the company's set itself up to do this for every episode title featuring the show's title.

Yeah, I know, that is a lot of whining about a three-second title screen. Just trying to be thorough.

Paint Edit
I have a question for you guys. Look below:

Fushigidane Fushigidane

Well, 4Kids faced this same decision, but their choice made less sense. On Ookido-Hakase's TV program, there is a picture of the three starter pokemon--Fushigidane, Zenigame,and Hitokage. And underneath each picture, their name is written in Japanese. In the dub, the first shot of Prof. Oak's show has the names there, untouched. These would be the smaller versions of the words. Then, when the camera gets closer to the TV, the names are slightly larger. So 4Kids decided to erase those. I really don't know why--do they suddenly decide to erase the Japanese words once they get to be a certain font size!? Is every Japanese word under a size 12 font OK to leave in, but any larger than that gets erased!? I don't get it.

Anyway, I think that's a rather odd choice for the first of many paint edit in the series.

Side Note
This episode is pretty close to the game, except for one rather big problem. Look at this line from the dub:

Gary: "Hey, watch where you're going! Well, you must be Ash. Better late than never, I guess. At least you get the chance to meet me!"

My problem isn't with the line. The line's translated pretty faithfully from the original Japanese. I just have a problem with the line in general. Isn't Shigeru supposed to be Satoshi's lifelong rival!? Then why is Shigeru acting like this is the first time they've ever met? It's like Shigeru's heard all about Satoshi from other people, and that's very different from the game.

Now the "Call me Mr. Gary" line...that's uncalled for.

Paint Edit
Each of the Monster Balls containing Satoshi's potential pokemon have their names written on them in Japanese. The first time we see the Monster Balls, as they rise from Ookido's pillar, we can see all their names, clear as day. But just like the previous paint edit, they names are erased when the camera gets closer to the Monster Balls.

Dialogue Edit
Prof. Oak gives us a slew of crappy dialogue:

Professor Oak: "It's usually shy, but can sometimes have an electrifying personality."

And then about one line later:

Professor Oak: "Shocking, isn't it?"

This starts the first of the dub's many, many electric puns. I don't know why they insist on making so many of these "jokes"--they're not funny, even to the eight-year-olds they're targeting the show at. What's the point?! I don't get a charge out of these jokes at all *ducks for cover*.

Paint Edit
When Satoshi's mom brings all those people to Ookido's lab to cheer him on, one guy's holding a sign that says Ganbare Satoshi! (Good Luck Satoshi!). This was painted over and replaced with "Go Ash Go." It doesn't look too bad, and it's certainly a step up from the bouncing paint found in the early days of Dragon Ball Z.

Cut-1 sec.
When Kasumi fishes Satoshi out of the water, she asks him if they're OK. Satoshi says that he's OK, and Kasumi slaps him, saying that she was asking about his pokemon, not him. The actual slap is cut--the camera just freezes on Ash's face for the one second, I guess to cover for the one second that was lost.

Next Episode

Pocket Monsters was not created by me. It was created by Satoshi Tajiri and the crew at TV-Tokyo. Pokemon is (c) Game Freak, Nintendo, 4Kids Productions, Hasbro, Bandai, and a ton of other companies. When you have a popular anime like Pokemon, lots of people own it so it's impossible to list every company who owns a piece of Pokemon. No infringement of copyrights is meant by the creation of the web site. All images were gotten from official websites (Nintendo, TV-Tokyo, etc.) unless otherwise noted (I don't steal images from other sites!).