Japanese Episode 6

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Japanese Episode 6

Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 6: “Pippi to Tsuki no Ishi”

(“Pippi and the Moon Stone”)

Satoshi-tachi arrive at Mt. Moon, where they see a young man being attacked by a bunch of Zubat. After rescuing him, the man, Rikao, tells them that someone has strung a bunch of lights inside the cave. The lights are disrupting the environment of the pokemon inside, and they’re becoming restless because of it. The Rocket-Dan appear, announcing that they’re the ones who strung the lights about so that they can find the Moon Stone. The Moon Stone is a rock with the ability to power up a pokemon, and the Rocket-Dan intend to use it to power up their own pokemon. They’re quickly defeated by Satoshi-tachi. Later, Satoshi-tachi find the area where the original Moon Stone rests, and they witness the Pippi worshipping the rock. It doesn’t take long for the Rocket-Dan to find it, but they’re defeated again. Suddenly, small fragments of the Moon Stone fall to the Earth, making the Pippi evolve into Pixy. Rikao decides to live with the Pippi to study them, and he parts ways with Satoshi-tachi.

Thoughts
This episode has its ups and downs, and Rikao is just a funny little man. Too bad he’s messed up so much in the dub…

Zubat keeps its Japanese voice.

Paint Edit
The shot of the outside of NIBI GYM during the recap is replaced with PEWTER GYM, just like the last episode.

Dialogue Edit
OK, this is more of a character edit, but it involves Rikao/Seymour. I really really really don’t like Seymour. His voice is annoying (it sounds like a less sinister version of Mandark from Dexter’s Laboratory), and he’s given some really bad dialogue (“Super fantabulistic”!?).

In addition, Rikao's romantic side was completely annihilated in the dub. Originally, Rikao talks about how romantic the moon stone is, even more so than Kasumi. In fact, as you'll see later on, one of his virtues in the original is "Love." I suppose 4Kids thought it was too wrong to have a guy think about romance and such, so they changed all his dialogue involving romance into something scientific. Because of his romantic-ness (if that's even a word), Rikao makes a lot of exaggerated gestures when he speaks. Well, if Seymour's not talking about romance, but he's making all these wild gestures, what can 4Kids have him do to justify his wild gestures?

Recite poetry.

Seymour talks in rhyme several times in the dub, but never does in the original. So Rikao's this super-romantic guy, while Seymour's this nerdy science guy who recites poetry all the time. That's the biggest change of this episode.

Paint Edit
Rikao’s two main virtues are Love and Courage, and when Rikao announces these, the kanji for the appropriate virtue appears in the background. 4Kids erases the kanji, and changes the virtues to Knowledge and Research, again to get rid of his romantic side.

Side Note
When Meowth says

"Don't be scared of Meowth!"

doesn't his voice sound like Butch? I didn't know cat-type pokemon were also chain smokers...

Side Note
I believe this is the first episode where Jesse and James recite their "Trouble!? Make that double" part of their motto. In the Japanese version, these first lines vary from episode to episode, while in the dub it's more or less the same for every episode.

Dialogue Edit
Now you KNOW this wasn't in the original:

Ash: "The Clefairy collect all of these rocks and...do the Macarena!"

God, that is, like, sooooooooo 1996!

Dialogue Edit
The whole scene where Ash tries to figure out what the Clefairy are saying is pretty accurate in the dub. Originally, when Pikachu lifted the Pippi up, Kasumi says the word mamoru (protect). So what are the Pippi protecting? Well, Pikachu pulls a hair from Satoshi's hair. The Japanese word for hair is kami, and Takeshi guesses that Pikachu means Kami-sama, or "God." So the whole phrase is "Pippi o mamoru Kami-sama da," or "The Pippi are protecting God," with God being the Moon Stone.

The general gist of the whole thing was kept in the dub, but of course, you can't see the G-word. Plus, the whole idol worship thing probably didn't bode well with the censors. So all of the dialogue was reworded to eliminate that one word.

Paint Edit
The sign at the end of the episode that says "Cerulean City" had Japanese on it originally. It said "Hanada SHITII heno <something in kanji> wa Kochira," which is basically the same thing. The note at the bottom, the "Gary was here Ash is a loser" said "Shigeru <something in kanji>! Satoshi no Baaka!!," which is something like "Shigeru is the best! Satoshi is an idiot!"

What's interesting is that when they show the sign in the Japanese version, we see an image of Shigeru doing the "bii-da~" face (when you stick out your tongue and pull one of your eyelids down with your index finger). The image of Shigeru is painted away in the dub. The image was transparent, and 4Kids probably erased Shigeru first, and then painted over the writing. When they were done with the writing, I imagine it was too difficult to try to recreate the transparent image, so it was just left out. That's my theory, anyway. If you look in the issue of Pokemon Power (the magazine that came with Nintendo Power a while back) that retells this episode, the image of Shigeru is left in.

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