Japanese Episode 7

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Japanese Episode 7

Japanese Episode 7: "Hanada SHITII no Sui Chouka"

("In the Water at Hanada City")

Satoshi-tachi arrive in Hanada City, but for some reason, Kasumi does not want to stick around and leaves for a little while. Satoshi eventually finds the city's gym, and is surprised by the gym leaders...three beautiful young girls. The three girls--Sakura, Ayame, and Botan--tell Satoshi they don't have any pokemon to battle him with, so they'll give him the Blue Badge anyway. However, Kasumi suddenly appears to protest and says that she'll battle Satoshi for the badge. Satoshi is surprised that Kasumi is a gym leader and that the three girls are her elder sisters. The battle commences, but the Rocket-Dan interrupt it by bursting in with a giant water hose. They use it to suck up all the gym's water pokemon, but Pikachu quickly fries the trio with its electricity. The gym is saved, and Kasumi's three sisters decide to reward Satoshi with the Blue Badge, despite Kasumi's protest. So now Satoshi has two badges! Yatta!

Thoughts
This episode, our second gym leader battle in three episodes (the anime producers do this again with the Natsume/Erika battles later on), adds some interesting twists to the gym that weren't in the game. First of all, we're given Kasumi's three sisters, and one can see just by looking at the way they act where Kasumi got some of her "charm" from. It's too bad that in the dub they sound members of the fashion club on Daria, but oh well.

I also think the animators add a neat little dimension to the gym by turning into a tourist attraction--it makes the Hanada City Gym stand out among the other gyms. The only thing that struck me as odd about this episode was the fact that Takeshi just randomly goes off on his own, and we're given no reason why. And then he just kind of shows up toward the end without any explanation as to what he was doing during the gym battle. I guess some mysteries were never meant to be solved.

Both Stramii and Hitodeman keep their Japanese voices.

Paint Edit
Shigeru's scrawling on the sign in the flashback is painted over the way it was in the previous episode. But they missed the very last shot of the sign, because you can see the Japanese characters left intact. What's weird is that in the dub, Gary reads what he wrote ("Gary was here, Ash is a loser") out loud during the recap, while in the Japanese version he doesn't.

Paint Edit
The outside of the store that the Rocket-Dan looted had "MASHIIN" ("Machine") written on it in katakana, as well as a bunch of kanji underneat. This was replaced with "MACHINE SHOP INDUSTRIAL SUPPLIES ALL MAKES AND MODELS" in the dub.

Also in the very next shot, some the katakana on the sign in the upper right-hand corner of the screen that said "RUUMU" was replaced by the letters "LS" in the dub.

Paint Edit
The outside of the Hanada City Gym said HANADA GYM. Like with the Nibi City gym, it was written in English letters. 4Kids replaced this with "CERULEAN GYM."

Side Note
James gives us this infamous dub line:

James: "It's times like these that make me wanna go straight."

Before everyone jumps up and says "That's undeniable proof that James is gay!", I just thought I'd mention that he means "going straight from a life of crime," not "I'm going to stop dating men." But still, you have to admit that it's a pretty funny-sounding line...

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