Japanese Episode 8

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Japanese Episode 8

Japanese Episode 8: "Pokemon RIIGU Heno Michi"

("The Road to the Pokemon League")

Satoshi has become pretty confident in his travels, boasting that he already has two gym leader badges. However, his cockiness is soon undermined when he visits Akira's Gym. Akira, a young pokemon trainer, has won 98 battles, and when he wins 100, he'll begin competing for gym leader badges. Satoshi decides to battle, but Akira is confident that Satoshi will give him his 99th victory. Sure enough, Akira's Sand makes quick work of Satoshi's pokemon, and Satoshi's confidence is shattered. When the match is over, Akira goes back into his gym and scolds his pokemon for having such a lousy match, and Satoshi hears all the shouting and comes into the gym to see what's going on. Akira's pokemon work tirelessly to become stronger, and Satoshi comes to the conclusion that Akira will hurt his pokemon by overworking them so much. But Akira cares deeply about his pokemon, and is able to prove it when the Rocket-Dan steal his Sand. The pokemon is quickly recovered, and Akira challenges the Rocket-Dan to a battle. His pokemon defeats Dogasu and Arbo quickly, and Akira has his 100th victory. Satoshi and Akira part ways, vowing to meet each other in the Pokemon League.

Thoughts
This episode presents us with a very skilled trainer and interesting character, Akira. I mean, if you consider the kind of advantage he has starting his pokemon journey with 100 victories under his belt, his gym leader battles should be a breeze. Satoshi and Akira promise to battle each other another day, and just like the Samurai, we never see Akira again (well, except for in the second opening theme, but that doesn't count). Anyway, this episode had quite a bit of paint thrown around, as well as a rather odd video edit toward the episode's end.

Sand keeps its Japanese voice.

Paint Edit
The big paint edit of this episode deals with the sign over Akira's gym. First of all, it was in Japanese originally, of course. The text was mostly black and put on a white background, and looked rather plain. In the dub, the text was translated into English (and it's an accurate translation, too!) and the sign was modernized by making the sign's background a grey that faded into white, and by making the numbers (98, 99, and 100) look more digital. The Japanese version only had the number of wins listed, while the dub has a box for both wins (98) and losses (0). It was quite a bit of work for 4Kids, but they've done more difficult paint edits, like the next one:

Paint Edit
Inside Akira's tent, there's a sign behind the sparring Butterfrii and Spear with a bunch of kanji on it. I don't know what it said, but there were two phrases with exclamation marks after each one, so I can only guess they're commands. Something along the lines of "Fight! Work Harder!" I dunno. 4Kids replaced the text with a picture of a PokeBall being hit by a whip, and it looks pretty good. Hey, if nothing else, you have to give 4Kids credit for being able to emulate the art style of the animation.

Rocket-Dan
The Rocket-Dan toy around with the idea of a new motto in this episode, and it goes like this:

Musashi: "Atashi-tachi tte kirei no dorobou"
Kojirou: "TAAGETTO o Pikachuu!"

Translation:

Musashi: "We are the pretty thieves"
Kojirou: "Target: Pikachu!"

For the dub, they just rewrote it to get the same basic idea--they just made it flow better.

Jesse: "Team Rocket will do what it has to do"
James: "To snatch that little Pikachu"

Luckily for us, the Rocket-Dan retain their old motto for the rest of the series. Good decision, guys--that new one's way too short.

Cut--3 sec/Added footage--3 sec
OK, this has to be the strangest edit in the series so far. You know at the end of the episode, right before AJ says the rather stilted-sounding "When I return I'm gonna be...the number one pokemon master," they do a pan-out of the battlefield and then randomly, for no reason at all, show a picture of Akira on the cliff with his Sand? It just shows up, out of nowhere.

Well, what 4Kids did was this: The panning out of the battlefield (demolished by Sand's Fissure attack) lasted five seconds, and then they just cut to Akira saying goodbye to Satoshi. I guess 4Kids thought the pan-out lasted too long or something, because they cut out three seconds of the five-second pan, and then added a three-second shot of Akira and Sand from eariler in the episode. I don't know why they did this--it's really odd just seeing that shot appear out of the blue. And besides, we already know that little kids can handle long, drawn-out shots...just look at Dragon Ball Z...

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