Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 043:  "The March of the Nassy Squad!"
American Episode 140:  "The March of the Exeggutor Squad"
Pokémon Dare Da?  Tamatama
Japanese Air Date:  May 7th, 1998
American Air Date:  November 2nd, 1998
Important Characters:  Maggy (Melvin the Magician)
Important Places: The Leaf Forest (The Leaf Forest)

Satoshi and his friends decide to take some time off from their journey to attend a carnival.  Kasumi and Pikachu, embarrassed by Satoshi's and Takeshi's behavior in public, separate from the boys.  They eventually meet Maggy, a magician who needs help attracting customers to his Pokémon Magic Show.  Kasumi agrees to act as his assistant but is dismayed to find out that his show isn't any good.  Kasumi, now rejoined by Satoshi and Takeshi, tries to help Maggy figure out how he can make his show better.  After Satoshi gives a demonstration show, Maggy's pokemon, a Tamatama, uses Hypnosis on the young trainer.  This puts Satoshi under its spell, giving Maggy the idea to use the young trainer to help him out with a scheme of his.  The magician enters the nearby Leaf Forest and commands Satoshi to use his pokemon to weaken the Nassy in the area so he can use them to hypnotize people and force them to attend his shows.  After Maggy captures a bunch of the pokemon, they accidentally hypnotize each other and start on a rampage toward the carnival.  Satoshi, who has now snapped out of his hypnosis, follows the Nassy.  He battles the pokemon to try to get them to snap out of their confusion, and together with a guilt ridden Maggy, is able to prevent them from causing any more damage.  As everyone rejoices at avoiding a potential catastrophe, Hitokage evolves into Lizard!  Now that the carnival is saved, Satoshi and his friends bid farewell to Maggy and head for their next adventure.

---

Thoughts
This episode is probably one of the dumbest episodes Kanto's given us.  I feel like I've said that before when talking about other episodes (I know I said something kind of similar about "Hypno's Naptime," for example), but man...this episode is just ridiculous.

The writers have pokemon like Yungeller and Houdin, whose names are both homages to real world magicians, who could have shown off the whole idea of "pokemon magic" wonderfully.  So what do the writers give a street magician as his signature pokemon?  A freakin' egg pokemon.  An egg pokemon who has absolutely no connection to magic whatsoever.  Sure, it's part psychic-type, but you know what?  So are Yungeller and Houdin.

The only reason I can possibly come up with to explain why the writers chose Tamatama was because it was a psychic type who hadn't appeared in the show yet.  Giant board with a dart blindly thrown at a box that reads "Tamatama?"  Sure seems that way!

And if we're going to get a Tamatama episode, why not have an episode centered around the pokemon's unique characteristics?  It's a pokemon who looks like a group of six eggs but is actually seeds; surely there's something there that could make for a great story, right?  What happens if one of the seeds gets separated, for example?  Is that even possible?  And why do they look like eggs?  What's the deal with that one seed with the super depressed face, or the one with its yolk / brain exposed?  And apparently, Tamatama are created when the heads of Nassy fall off after becoming too big.  Why not show how that works?

And then there's Tamatama's trainer.  The writers start off by making Maggy sympathetic loser, but they throw that away during the second half in favor of making him a creepy asshole.  Think about what he does for a minute.  He manipulates a ten year old's mind to have him catch a bunch of pokemon on his behalf so he can hypnotize other people and force them to attend his crappy magic show.  I mean, ignoring the fact that Maggy somehow separated Satoshi from his friends for a moment (I'm imagining him distracting Kasumi and Takeshi by saying "Look!  Over there!" before grabbing his new hypnotized boy toy), wouldn't you think Kasumi and Takeshi would be a little more pissed off at the guy for essentially kidnapping their friend?  Why do the people in this episode act like the stuff he did wasn't any big deal? 

I also like how, at the end of the episode, Maggy's problem is actually worse than it was when the episode started.  He was just a shitty magician at the beginning of the episode, and by the end of it, he's still a shitty magician.  The only difference now is that he's a shitty magician who's going to be responsible for paying for all the damage his pokemon caused to the carnival.  And he lived happily ever after, the end...?

This is the last dub episode to premiere in syndication.  After this episode, we didn't get any new episodes for about four months while 4Kids got ready for their move to Kids' WB!  It's also the last dub episode whose English title is a translation of its Japanese title until the Deoxys two-parter that premiered almost a decade later.  I hope you like pun titles, kids, because we're going to be getting a lot more of them from here on out!  As far as the edits go, this episode has a lot of script changes.  On the plus side, there were quite a few visual things that didn't get censored, surprisingly, so those of you who like seeing close-ups of underage asses and a guy throwing a glass bottle at a man's head are in luck.

Paint Edit
The opening shot of the episode gets digital paint!  There were too many moving parts for me to attempt creating a panorama, so I took two separate shots instead.


The sign in the top picture, as well as the yellow and red banners in the bottom picture, all say Waarudo Kaanibaru (ワールドカーニバル), or "World Carnival."

Click on each image for a larger version.

Dialogue Edit
The very first line of the episode!


The Japanese narrator starts the episode by saying that Pokémon Trainers don't get any days off from training, not even Saturdays, Sundays, or national holidays.  The dub doesn't portray the same seven days a week, 365 days a year training schedule that the Japanese version does.

After Ash and Brock strip (a phrase I hope I never have to type out again):


Satoshi's second line in the Japanese version is odora na son, son (踊らな損、損), or "Why not dance?"  It's a line used in a song performed at the Awa Odori, Japan's largest dance festival.  It's also a reference that pretty much nobody in the English speaking world would get, so it got rewritten.

Paint Edit
When Kasumi's walking around, a sign behind her gets altered.


The sign on the tent there said Mirakuru Miraa!! (ミラクルミラー！！), or "Miracle Mirror."  But not anymore!

Click on each image for a larger version.

Side Note
Maggy, the character, seems to have been based on several Japanese comedians.  His appearance seems to be based on Tsubuyaki Shiroh (つぶやきシロー) who, at the time this episode was made, was known to have a mushroom hair style.  He doesn't have it now, apparently, but he did back then!  Maggy also speaks with a Tochigi accent, just like Mr. Tsubuyaki. 

His name, on the other hand, comes from a group of comedians who dressed up like magicians known the Maggy Clan (マギー一門).  Their official website is here, though it's not much to look at and doesn't seem to have been updated in quite some time.  My romanization of "Maggy" comes from the URL of their site, in case you were wondering.

Paint Edit
When Maggy asks Kasumi to be his assistant, the tiny bit of text visible on the banner at the left of the screen gets erased.


The only character I can make out there is po (ポ).

Click on each image for a larger version.

Dialogue Edit
Melvin's dream is a little different from Maggy's:


Originally, his dream is to have his own magic show in Broadway.

Now I know what you're thinking.  "Broadway?  The place in New York famous for musical theater?"  Doesn't make any sense, does it? 

I think what happened here is that the Japanese writers mistook Broadway for something else.  Maybe people associate magic shows with Broadway in Japan, for some reason?  *shrugs*  Whatever the case, 4Kids, understandably, changed Broadway to Las Vegas for their version.

After Ash sees his ten year old friend in an awkwardly form-fitting costume:


Satoshi simply states that it's an interesting costume (omoshiroi kakkou da nai).  No flirting for Satoshi here!

The crowd starts to get restless, and:


The heckling starts while the camera is still on Satoshi in the Japanese version, but in the English version, it doesn't begin until after the camera pans over to the two guys.

Also, I'm absolutely shocked that 4Kids didn't bother to edit out that one guy's lit cigarette.  It's kind of small and hard to see, and the DVD Viz released doesn't really help matters either, but it is there.  Wow!

After the start of the magic show:


Takeshi doesn't yell at the stage in the Japanese version, because that would be an extremely rude and out of character thing for him to do.  Instead, he tells Satoshi, quietly, in a voice too low for Maggy to be able to hear, that he agrees that the show isn't that good.

Next,


It shouldn't be any surprise that the Japanese version uses a different mix up, right?  One that really couldn't be translated into English and therefore had to be rewritten?

Originally, Maggy says Odoroite shiri o nukasanai you ni ne (驚いて尻を抜かさないようにね), or "You'll be so surprised that you won't be able to move from your seat."  Kasumi responds by saying Sore o iu nara koshi o nukasu desho (それを言うなら腰を抜かすでしょ), or "When you say it like that, it sounds like they've dislocated their back."  What she means by that is the fact that Maggy said shiri o nukasanai instead of koshi o nukasanai.  Both shiri and koshi refer to the same area of your body, but in the idiomatic phrase that Maggy was trying to use, koshi is preferred to shiri.

It's kind of like how, in English, the words "beautiful" and "pretty" mean the same thing, yet it would still be weird if someone said that something "costs a beautiful penny."  We just don't say that.

Anyway, the dub just rewrote it.

Paint Edit
The sign above Maggy's stage gets its text erased.


The text up there says Magii no Majikku Shoo (マギーのマジックショー), or "Maggy's Magic Show."  This edit must have been more difficult than the others in the episode because of that layer of water raining down on the scene.

Click on each image for a larger version.

Dialogue Edit
After Ash and the others overhear Melvin's boss fire him,


Kasumi doesn't insult Satoshi in the Japanese version.  Instead, she states that Maggy is in over his head and gets up to go talk to him.  Satoshi tells her to wait up, surprised that she's actually going to be direct enough to confront a grown man and give him career advice.

This next part has quite a few changes in the script, so I'll do a side-by-side comparison.

Japanese Version	English Version
Maggy:  "But I got fired, you know?  I can't even get on stage now.'	Melvin:  "Fired again.  I'll never make it to Las Vegas!"
Tamatama:  "..."	Exeggcute:  "Exeggcute!"
Maggy:  "I'm sorry, Tamatama.  I'm just a clumsy oaf."	Melvin:  "I guess well have to give up all our dreams."
Satoshi:  "Hey, you're a man, aren't you?  Don't just sit there and complain!"	Ash:  "Give up!?  You're not going to give up your dream that easy, are you?"
Maggy:  "But..."	Melvin:  "But..."
Satoshi:  "If you're a real entertainer, you can make a new show, right?"	Ash:  "If your show's no good, then learn some new tricks and make it good."
Takeshi:  "That's certainly true."	Brock:  "That's a good idea."
Kasumi:  "Even Satoshi can say something good every once in a while (tama ni)."	Misty:  "Ash does say something right once in a while."
Satoshi:  "Once in a while? (tama ni)"	Ash:  "Say what?"
Tamatama:  "Tamatama Tamatama!"	Exeggcute:  "Exeggcute!  Exeggcute!"

Looking at this dialogue, line by line, reveals a number of changes.  Melvin has apparently been fired multiple times, but Maggy never indicates this.  4Kids has Exeggcute speak more than it (they?) do(es) in Japan.  Melvin doesn't apologize to his pokemon and instead declares he's giving up his dreams in the best Droopy the Dog voice he can muster.  And Ash doesn't make a thinly veiled sexist remark that implies that complaining is something only women do.

And while I don't like that those lines were changed, I will at least cut 4Kids some slack for ignoring the untranslatable pun at the end there.  In Japanese, the phrase "once in a while" is tama ni (たまに), a word that sounds an awful lot like Tamatama.  So while the Tamatama are laughing at the (lame) pun in the Japanese version, Exeggcute are laughing at Misty's wisecrack in the English version.

Paint Edit
Another banner gets its text erased.


I can make out ho (ホ) and shi (シ), but the image quality and the way it's written there make it kind of hard to figure out what it's supposed to be saying.

Click on each image for a larger version.

Dialogue Edit
They don't stop!


Takeshi states that Maggy's act isn't any good.  He doesn't say whether or not those flowers are actually dead (sorry..."get [its] hair dyed purple"), or that they're even real in the first place.


Maggy's dream is to make children happy.  I guess 4Kids thought this made him sound like a creepy pedophile or something, so they changed "children" to "people."  I find it kind of weird that they'd change this but then leave in that scene earlier where it looks (and sounds!) like Melvin is going to sexually assault Misty, but I guess that's 4Kids for ya!

Side Note
Another reference to a Japanese-only comedian!


Satoshi doesn't identify himself as a swami in the Japanese version.  But there is a reason he's dressed like that!  Satoshi is doing an impersonation of comedian Shopan Igari (ショパン猪狩) who did a similar act to what Satoshi does in this episode.  Here's a picture of him on the cover of the book Red Snake Come On!


Shopan's act included taking a box with three holes in it, tapping it with a flute, and saying "Red Snake, Come On!" (レッドスネーク、カモン！).  As soon as this happened, a red snake puppet would creep out of the hole.  He also dressed in Indian-style clothes.  Maybe this sounds familiar?


In Pocket Monsters, Satoshi's dressed like Shopan and has a very similar act.  He also imitates Shopan's catch phrase by saying "Red Fire, Come On!" (レッドファイヤー、カモン！) and "Blue Water, Come On!" (ブルーウォーター、カモン！) during the parts where he's ordering his pokemon to use their attacks.

Since American kids wouldn't have any reason to know about a Japanese comedian from a few decades ago, 4Kids just had Ash call himself a swami and hope people don't look too much into it.

Dialogue Edit
Ash's Bulbasaur impression starts as soon as he starts to spin around.  Satoshi's impression doesn't stop until after he stops spinning.

Paint Edit
The second half of the episode starts off with a rather significant paint edit.


Here's what all that text means:

注 意	Caution
☆ この先　リーフの森	The Leaf Forest is ahead
む やみにタマタマを近付けると	If you recklessly bring a Tamatama here,
ナッ シーに進化してしまいます	it'll evolve into Nassy

The Japanese version lets us know that the forest will be what causes the pokemon to evolve.  Some fan sites state that the sign explains that there are Leaf Stones buried underground and that their radiation is the cause of the Leaf Stone-less evolution that occurs later in the episode, but that's bull.  There's nothing in the episode, either written or spoken, that even suggests this.

The dub doesn't really convey that same message as the sign in the Japanese version; instead, it merely tells us that Exeggcute evolves into Exeggutor.  There's no mention of the forest anywhere, so dub viewers are forced to conclude that the forest has some connection to Exeggcute's evolution on their own.

Dialogue Edit
Right after the above paint edit,


In the Japanese version, Maggy simply apologizes to Satoshi for making him do his work.  Maggy may be a dick for manipulating a ten year old to do his bidding, but at least he's polite about it!

Later, during the the Rocket-Dan's motto, Musashi and Kojirou go into a box.  Once inside, Nyarth pulls a curtain over them and starts making drum roll noises with his mouth.  Meowth doesn't make these noises in the dub.

Next, Exeggcute evolves into Exeggutor.


Originally, Kojirou asks how Tamatama can evolve when there aren't any (leaf) stones around.  The dub doesn't have James say this, for some reason. 

I wonder if Kojirou's line there in the Japanese version was actually an ad-lib.  Like, maybe the animators realized halfway through production that, hey, this pokemon needs a Leaf Stone to evolve, but were too far along in the process to actually fix it?  So they just had one of their actors ad-lib some dialogue, off-screen, to at least address this overlooked fact?

I have absolutely no proof to back this up, but it seems plausible to me.

I also wanted to bring up the fact that, in the Japanese equivalent of the above exchange, everyone pretty much knows that the pokemon is evolving from the beginning.  It takes Jessie, James, and Meowth a little bit longer to reach that same conclusion.

Paint Edit
The same signs from before get digital paint again.  Now with less confetti!


All the text there says the same thing it did the first time this edit was done.

Click on each image to view a larger version.

Dialogue Edit
The rest of the episode is pretty edit-free, which is nice. 


Takeshi doesn't tell Maggy that they'll see him on Broadway; he just wishes him good luck.

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This page was last updated on June 3rd, 2014