Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode AG 084: "Hiwamaki Shitii no Fezaa Kaanibaru!!"

("Hiwamaki City's Feather Carnival!!")

American Episode 356: "Who's Flying Now?"
Orchid-Hakase Pokémon Lecture: 
Japanese Air Date: July 8th, 2004
American Air Date:  June 25th, 2005
Important Characters:  Nagi (Winona), Zekaa (Zachary)

Satoshi has finally arrived in Hiwamaki City!  When the young trainer reaches the gym, the Gym Leader's assistant informs the group that the Gym Leader is busy helping out with the Feather Carnival, a festival being held to celebrate the sky.  Satoshi-tachi decide to search for the Gym Leader, and it isn't long before they find her.  The Gym Leader, Nagi, will be busy all day helping out with the carnival, so Satoshi and his friends decide to enjoy themselves until Nagi is finished.  As the young trainers and their pokemon take in the city's festivities, the Rocket-Dan are happily enjoying some time off as well.  However, Kojirou seems distraught, and soon he tells his comarades that the carnival reminds him of a carnival that came by and visited when he was little.  There, Kojirou spotted a Chiriin that he wanted, but the carnival had packed up and left before the young boy could buy one for himself!  As Kojirou sulks, he comes across a stand selling a bunch of Chiriin.  Kojirou decides not to buy them when recognizes the salesman as the crook who sold him a Koiking and a fake Hinbass, but the salesman swears that he's turned over a new leaf.  After a bit of convincing, Kojirou decides to purchase the pokemon.  However, he soon learns that his Chiriin is really a Hanekko that had been painted to look like a Chiriin!  Kojirou is furious until suddenly, out of nowhere, a real Chiriin appears!  Kojirou asks the pokemon if it wants to join the group, and the pokemon agrees.  Kojirou has a new pokemon!  Now, the Rocket trio decides to capture all the pokemon at the festival, so they start wreaking havoc in a giant mecha.  Satoshi steps up to stop them, impressing Nagi in the process.  When Satoshi's Ohsubame and Pikachu are KO'ed, Nagi steps in with her Airmd and takes care of the Rocket-Dan's mecha.  With the stolen pokemon retrieved and the Rocket-Dan sent blasting off, Nagi is free to hold a Gym Battle.  However, it's gotten dark, so the match will have to wait until tomorrow!  Now, Satoshi eagerly awaits the Gym Battle for his sixth Houen League Gym Badge.

---

Thoughts
I really get this feeling that the anime producers blew it with this episode.  Hiwamaki City was a unique city in the games because most of the houses were in the treetops, but the anime makes it look like every other city in Houen.  Sure, we get a glimpse of the treehouses, but why don't we get to go inside one of these unique buldings?  Why is the bulk of the episode spent on the ground at some "Feather Carnival" that appears to exist solely to bring back the Koiking Salesman? 

Kojirou's capture of Chiriin also bothered me.  So all of a sudden, with this episode, Kojirou had always wanted this pokemon?  If it meant so much to him, why hadn't he mentioned it at least once in the past 355 episodes?  Even if someone brings up the fact that Chiriin wasn't revealed to the public until the time Advanced Generation came up, that still leaves over 80 episodes where Kojirou is walking around the region where the pokemon is known to be found in the wild without so much as one mention of the creature.  I guess they really are just making this crap up as they go along, huh?

And then the pokemon just decides to join a group of people it had only known for all of 30 seconds?  And then, Kojirou doesn't bother to keep the Hanekko that he spent all of the group's money on!?  I know that Hanekko may not be the best pokemon ever, but come on Kojirou, beggers can't be choosers. 

The dubbed version isn't bad at all.  We get one paint edit, but other than that it's pretty standard edit-wise. 

Cut--3 seconds altogether
The first two seconds of the episode are snipped out.

Also, a second is cut from the shots of the Lizardon and Airmd statues right after the episode's title screen.

Music Edit
From the time after Nagi promises to battle Satoshi for his badge until the scene where Musashi and Nyasu are seen walking around the carnival, Ready Go! is heard playing in the background.  Then, when Musashi's and Nyasu's scene is over, the song picks up where it left off and plays until we see Haruka fly off in the distance on Nagi's Airmd.

Usually when the Japanese version has an insert song like this, 4Kids will simply replace it with background music.  However, this time, they actually replaced the song with another vocal song, You and Me and Pokémon (which is on the "Totally Pokémon" and "Pokémon 3 The Ultimate Soundtrack" CD's).  In addition, 4Kids even kept with the spirit of the Japanese version by having the song interrupted by the Team Rocket scene and then resume when it's over!

Cut--1 second
A second is cut after the Trainer's Choice commercial break.

Paint Edit
During Kojirou's fantasy about being wealthy once he has a Chiriin, the liquid in his wine glass is recolored to make it look more like the strawberry milk that James is talking about in the dub (in the Japanese version, he's just doing the standard promotion chant the Rocket-Dan does in just about every episode):


I'm surprised that 4Kids didn't redraw the glass, since it's still extremely obvious what's supposed to be in a glass shaped like that.

Cut--2 seconds
Two seconds are cut from the TO BE CONTINUED... screen.

Previous Episode

Next Episode