Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 007:  "The Water Flowers of Hanada City"
American Episode 107:  "The Water Flowers Of Cerulean City"
Pokemon Dare Da?  Pawou
Japanese Air Date:  May 13th, 1997
American Air Date:  September 16th, 1998
Important Places:  Hanada City (Cerulean City), Kuchiba City (Vermilion City)
Important Characters:  Sakura (Daisy), Ayame (Violet), Botan (Lily)

Satoshi-tachi arrive in Hanada City, but for some reason, Kasumi doesn't want to stick around.  As the young trainer from Masara Town ignores his traveling partner, the Rocket-Dan break into an electronics store and steal a huge vacuum and a giant hose.  After being questioned by Junsa about the robbery, Satoshi and Takeshi split up for a while.  Eventually, Satoshi finds the city's gym, but he's surprised to see a trio of performing sisters - Sakura, Ayame, and Botan - instead of a battle arena!  Satoshi approaches the three girls after the show and confirms that he's in the right place.  However, since all of their pokemon are exhausted from their battles with previous trainers, they don't have any battle worthy pokemon left.  Sakura, the oldest of the three sisters, tells Satoshi that she'll just give him the gym badge, but Kasumi appears and protests.  She reveals that she is one of the Gym Leaders and tells Satoshi that he won't walk out of the gym without a fight!  Satoshi accepts, and the first match pits Satoshi's Butterfree against Kasumi's Hitodeman.  The starfish pokemon is able to use the water in the gym to defeat the bug-type, so Satoshi sends out his Pigeon.  Kasumi responds with Starmie, who is eventually defeated by a powerful Gust attack.  Before the two trainers can conclude their battle, the Rocket-Dan appear with the machine that had been stolen from the electronics store earlier!  As they use the vacuum to suck up the gym's water, Satoshi has his Pikachu shock them with an electric attack, destroying the machine and sending the trio blasting off again.  Later, Sakura decides to give the badge to Satoshi for rescuing their gym, much to Kasumi's dismay.  As the young trainer receives the Blue Badge, Takeshi and Kasumi follow him on his journey to his next gym challenge.

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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.  Kasumi's sisters are a welcome addition from the game, and the decision to have the gym double up as a water stadium was a great one, in my opinion.

The big problem I have with the dub is the destruction of Sakura, Ayame, and Botan.  Not content with a trio of competent, un-annoying trainers, 4Kids had to go and make them "more appealing" by turning the three of them into airheads.  The sisters in the English version are extremely unlikable, and I can't imagine anyone who's familiar with the Japanese version being happy about the way 4Kids handled these characters. 

There were a few puns in the Japanese version that I couldn't figure out (one has to do with a Japanese version of pat-a-cake), and they all got changed for the dub.  I only wish I knew what they meant so I could post that information here.

Hitodeman (who sounds an awful lot like Ultraman) and Starmie keep their Japanese voices.

Paint Edit
The sign from the last episode has some digital paint on it. 

What's interesting this time around is that it seems that 4Kids didn't just edit in the altered footage from the previous episode; they went in and edited it again.  You can tell because in the second shot, they simply froze the frames of Satoshi with his back toward the camera to avoid having to paint the sign that's revealed behind him when he starts to run off.  They also neglect to edit the last shot of the sign, giving us a rare glimpse of the terror that is "written Japanese."

Paint Edit
Later, in the city, the establishing shot of the electronics store has the Japanese text painted away and replaced by the English equivalent.

Click on each image for a larger version.

The katakana on the sign behind Satoshi is replaced.  The Japanese text says room.

Click on each image for a larger version.

(By the way, what does that sign behind Takeshi say?  E-Love?)

Finally, every shot of the outside of the gym has the words HANADA GYM replaced with CERULEAN GYM to keep continuity with the dialogue in the English version.

Click here to view more pictures from the scene.

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