Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 31:  "Digudaa ga Ippai!" 

("Full of Digda!')

American Episode 31:  "Dig Those Diglett!"
Pokemon Dare Da?  Digda
Japanese Air Date:  October 28th, 1997 
American Air Date:  October 19th, 1998
Important Characters:  Kantoku (no name in the dub) 
Important Places:  Kouji Dam (Gaiva Dam)

Satoshi, Kasumi, and Takeshi are lost in a mountain range.  Suddenly, after hearing a loud noise, they go to investigate and find a frustrated director of a project to build a great dam.  The Digda in the area have been destroying his trucks and other building supplies, preventing him from completing the dam, so the director becomes desperate.  He calls on all able Pokemon Trainers to assist him in his anti-Digda campaign, offering a free stay at his resort for any trainers who get rid of the Digda.  Shigeru is one of the trainers who shows up, but neither his pokemon nor any of the other trainers' pokemon will come out to fight the Digda.  Since the pokemon won't obey, all of the trainers except Satoshi-tachi leave to continue their journey.  Meanwhile, Musashi and Kojirou are frustrated with their constant defeats, so they research ways to make their pokemon evolve and grow stronger.  Night comes, and Satoshi-tachi discover the reason the Digda had been causing so much destruction--if the dam is completed, all of the forest's residents will be homeless!  The director realizes his oversight and cancels the project, but not before the Rocket-Dan can show up to battle with their new pokemon!  They had succeeded in making Dogasu evolve into Matadogasu and Arbo evolve into Arbok, so they attack with their new pokemon.  However, their new pokemon are no match for the combined efforts of the Digda, who appear and send the Rocket-Dan blasting off.  With the dam project cancelled and the pokemon safe, Satoshi-tachi continue on to their next adventure.

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Thoughts
What a great little episode.  We get to see Digda, one of the funniest and cutest pokemon since Pikachu.  We get to see Kasumi and Takeshi's first meeting with Shigeru (and their general dislike of him), and we get to see Musashi-tachi's pokemon evolve.  Yup, there sure are a lot of different things going on in this episode.

Arbok keeps its Japanese voice, which is kinda nice since it appears in a few hundred more episodes before the show's over.

Dialogue Edit
When Musashi and Kojirou are having their little picnic, they're eating curee.  In the dub, it was changed to "Chinese food," as if curee was so insanely foreign to American children or something. 

Paint Edit
As Shigeru tells Satoshi about the free trip to the resort rewarded to trainers who successfully exterminate the Digda, he's holding up a paper that says something like "Ottsu!  Goo" in katakana.  All the text was erased, so in the dub Gary's showing Ash a blank sheet of paper. 

Paint Edit
There are little signs with lots of tiny kanji on them placed on two of the trainers' buses' windows, and all of the kanji are erased for the dub.

Dialogue Edit
Pun time!  In the dub, here's what's said:

Ash:  "My name is Ash Ketchium, the loser from Pallet (groans)"
Brock:  "Don't listen to Gary.  You can still catch up."
Jessie:  "My name's Jessie!"

Do you wonder why Jessie just randomly said "My name's Jessie!" for no reason?  In the original, Satoshi commented on how his name must mean "4th place."  You see, one of the words for the number four in Japanese is "shi," and since Satoshi has the "shi" character in his name, he thinks this must mean he's destined to be in fourth place.  Takeshi mentions that having the number four in his name isn't so bad, and then Musashi suddenly shouts out her name.  So instead of trying to come up with a brand new pun, 4Kids just rewrote the scene altogether.  Thanks to Denise from the Indiana Sailor Moon Mailing List for pointing this out.

Paint Edit
While Kojirou's calculator is trying to figure out how many pokemon the trainers down below could be carrying, his calculator displays the following:  ¥0//*.  The ¥, /, /, and * are all painted away for the dub, leaving the 0 just sitting there on the middle of the calculator.

Dialogue Edit
The "Principle of Induced Evolution" is actually called "Pokemon Shinka no Housoku" ("Appendix <as in a book appendix> of Pokemon Evolution").  There's nothing "induced" about the evolution of Dogasu and Arbo.  It's not like using a Thunder Stone to evolve a Pikachu.

Dialogue Edit
This line from the dub is all backwords.

Brock:  "Diglett plows the ground and Dugtrio plants the trees."

Dugtrio plows the ground while Digda plants the trees.  It's obvious just by looking at the pokemon.  How could 4Kids mistranslate this?

Side Note
The scene when Musashi and Kojirou introduce their newly-evolved pokemon has a lot of kabuki influences.  The little wooden blocks Nyasu clacks together are known as Kabuki clappers which are used in kabuki plays to signify the beginning and the end of the play (or in this case, the end of Dogasu and Arbo and the beginning of Matadogasu and Arbok).  The curtain in the background is the typical kabuki curtain but are the wrong colors (they usually are a red-brown, green, and black color).  Just a side note--curtains in kabuki plays are usually much wider than ones used in typical American plays and are drawn from the side, not raised.  The tree trunks on which the Monster Balls rested on are typical kabuki decorations. 

Dialogue Edit
Matadogasu has two voices when it talks in the Japanse version (kind of like DBZ's Gotenks or Vegetto), but in the dub it only has one voice.

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