Japanese Episode 25

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Japanese Episode 25

Japanese Episode 25: "Okoranai dene Okorizaru!"

("Angry Okorizaru!")

Ookido-Hakase gets a phone call from Satoshi telling him that he's gotten four gym leader badges. Ookido is surprised because all his other rivals have five badges and are way ahead of him. Takeshi and Kasumi eat onigiri ("rice balls") and the smell of the food lures a Mankii out of hiding. The Mankii steals Satoshi's hat, and every attempt to retrieve it ends with Satoshi getting beaten up. The Rocket-Dan appear and kick the Mankii, causing it to evolve into Okorizaru. The monkey pokemon chases Satoshi-tachi through a large canyon until Satoshi, remembering how everyone else is ahead of him, decides to stop running and capture Okorizaru. Combining his pokemon's power, Satoshi is able to capture the fighting-type pokemon. Afterwards, Satoshi-tachi notice that Okorizaru has chased them all the way to Tamamushi City, and so Satoshi gets ready for his next gym battle!

Thoughts
This episode isn't all that interesting to me. I mean, it's important in that a) we learn about Satoshi's hat, b) Satoshi captures a new pokemon, and c) they reach Tamamushi City, but just because it's important doesn't mean it's interesting. And the fact that there's only one episode between the time Satoshi gets the Gold Badge and the time he gets the Rainbow Badge is kind of odd to me. Oh well.

Both Mankii (whose name in Japanese is pronounced more like the English word "monkey" than it is in the dub) and Okorizaru keep their Japanese voices.

Paint Edit
During Professor Oak's poem ("Everyday it's cake and tea/Just my pokemon and me"), there's a kanji symbol in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. It was, of course, erased.

Also, the poem in Japanese, for those of you who are curious, was "Pokemon to yokan tabete a~oishii, sou ja?" which as far as I can tell means "Eat pokemon and premonitions, delicious isn't it?" or something bizarre like that.

Dialogue Edit
Donuts=Onigiri

OK, we all know that the little black and white food Takeshi and the gang were eating weren't donuts. They were onigiri (rice balls). I suppose 4Kids didn't want to show foreign food (heaven forbid they teach kids about Japanese food...) so they pretended it's "donuts." I think they tried to force this too much, though:

Brock: "These donuts are great! Jelly-filled are my favorite! Nothing beats a jelly-filled donut!"

Blech. Why did they force it so much!? Later in the episode, Takeshi makes a pun (Monster Ball/Rice Ball) which is easily translatable into English, but 4Kids' insistance on deleting all signs of Japanese culture in the show destroyed the pun.

So now rice balls have been called "donuts" and "éclairs." What's next?

Dialogue Edit
The narrator says:

Narrator: "Can Ash keep up with his rivals? Or will he be left in the dust?"

This part originally had Satoshi remembering Ookido-Hakase's words about catching more pokemon. I wonder why 4Kids changed this?

Side Note
The Monster Ball during the commercial for Satoshi's hat says "POCKEMON LEAG" on it, written in English letters. However, this was kept as-is for the dub. Kinda funny, considering how 4Kids corrected the spelling of Pokemon back in Episode 17. It'll take a little while longer for the Japanese producers to correctly spell Pokemon on a consistent basis...

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The screencap for this episode was taken from the Ultimate Pokemon Anime Site.