Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 065: "Ruujura no KURISUMASU"

(Rougela's Christmas)

American Episode 063:  "Holiday Hi-Jynx"
Pokemon Dare Da?  Rougela (Japanese), Pidgeotto (American)
Japanese Air Date:  October 5th, 1998 
American Air Date:  December 11th, 1999

When Musashi was a little girl, a Rougela in a Santa suit came into her room on Christmas Eve and took her beloved A-Cha Doll.  Ten years later, Musashi plots to get her revenge.  Meanwhile, Satoshi-tachi spot a Rougela with a boot.  The boot belongs to Santa Claus, and the Rougela who now has it accidently drifted away from Santa's island while polishing it one day.  Satoshi-tachi decide to return the Rougela to Santa's island, so they depart on a raft as the Rocket-Dan follow.  The trainers and their pokemon tire out soon, and it seems as if they'll never make it to the island.  Suddenly, a Lapras appears and announces that it will escort Satoshi-tachi the rest of the way.  After they arrive at the island, Satoshi-tachi are attacked by the Rocket-Dan.  They kidnap the Rougela and declare that they're going to take all the presents as well.  As they stand outside Santa's workshop, Musashi-tachi see the real Santa Claus.  Musashi-tachi manage to tie up both Santa and Satoshi-tachi as they command the Rougela to load the presents into their submarine.  Santa asks why Musashi is doing this, and after she tells him, one of the Rougela returns the doll to her.  It reveals that it didn't really steal the doll, but had instead taken it to repair it after Musashi had broken it.  Musashi is happy to find out the truth but is still determined to take all the presents, so Lapras, with the help of all of Santa's Rougela, defeat the Rocket-Dan and recover all the presents.  Christmas is saved as Lapras returns Satoshi-tachi to the Kanto Region.

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Thoughts
This episode has an odd story behind it.  Episode 38's "Next Episode Preview" featured "Rougela's Christmas," and it was meant to air the week after Episode 38 as Episode 39.  However, after the whole seizure incident surrounding the Porigon episode, the show went on hiatus for four months, so "Rougela's Christmas" didn't air the way it should have (it would have aired on December 23rd, 1997).  Instead of resuming with Episode 39 after the four months were up, TV-Tokyo decided to press on and air "Pikachu's Woods" instead.  "Rougela's Christmas" was eventually shown, together with "Iwaku as a Bivouac," right before the episode where Satoshi gets his eigth Gym Badge.

The American airing was just as screwed up.  For whatever reason, 4Kids decided to air this in the middle of their third season (well, what I consider to be the third season anyway), right after the Mr. Mime episode.  In both cases, postponing the episode causes continuity problems since one week Satoshi has a Lizardon and the next week it's back to being a Hitokage again. 

In addition, this was the first appearance of the controversial pokemon, Rougela.  About three weeks after the episode premiered on Kids' WB!, Carole B. Weatherford wrote her famous essay about how Rougela is a racist stereotype of African Americans.  I mean, the fact that there are a bunch of Rougela employed as workers for Santas and the fact that the Pokédex describes it as "the human-shaped pokemon" certainly help her argument.  The episode did air a few more times and was eventually released on home video (though the picture of Rougela on the back of the VHS box was reworked to give it purple skin), but at the moment the episode seems to have been unofficially banned.  It hasn't aired on Kids' WB! (who I believe no longer has the rights to air any of the pre-Johto stuff) in years, nor has it ever aired anytime during Cartoon Network's run of the series.  So, should this episode ever air on American TV again, here's what was edited:

Side Note
This is a really small edit, but in the dub, Jessie says the episode's title, while Satoshi says it in the Japanese version.  Yeah, I know, that's really nitpicky of me...

Paint Edit
In the Japanese version, Santa wrote his name--SANTA KUROOSU--in katakana on the inside of his boot.  In the dub, the text is replaced with a picture of Santa surrounded by a snowflake border.  I guess the American Santa is so vain that he'll put a picture of himself inside his boot or something.

Dialogue Edit
In the dub, Santa calls Jessie by name on more than one occasion.  However, the Japanese Santa Claus doesn't even seem to know Musashi's name.

Also, Santa's reason for not returning to give the doll back is different in both versions.  In the dub, he tells Jessie that he couldn't return the doll because she had stopped believing in him and that that made him powerless to visit her.  However, in the Japanese version, he says that he had tried to return it, but by the time he did she was already gone.  That big house on the edge of the cliff that Musashi lived in was probably a foster home, and by the time Santa returned, Musashi was taken to live in another home.  That's my theory, anyway.

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