Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 066: "Iwaaku de BIBAKKU"

(Iwaku as a Bivouac)

American Episode 064:  "Snow Way Out" 
Pokemon Dare Da?  Pijon (Japanese), Muk (American) 
Japanese Air Date:  October 5th, 1998 
American Air Date:  December 18th, 1999

While on the road to the next city, Satoshi-tachi come upon a fork in the road.  The road they choose turns out to lead through a snow-covered mountain, but Satoshi says that he'd rather tackle the mountain head-on instead of backtracking and taking the easier route.  As a snowstorm starts to brew, Takeshi suggests that the group uses his Iwaku to create a bivouac.  They're about to start when a strong gust of wind blows Pikachu away, causing Satoshi to go running after it.  After saving Pikachu from falling off a cliff, he finds himself separated from the group.  Remembering Takeshi's plan, Satoshi uses his Hitokage to create an entrance to a cave to stay for hte night.  As the night drags on, Satoshi decides that his pokemon would be warmer inside of their Monster Balls, but they won't hear of it--they stay up with Satoshi and keep him warm throughout the night.  Morning comes and the storm has subsided, so Satoshi ventures out to find his friends.  Takeshi and Kasumi are quickly found and reveal that they found an underground hot spring where they spent a comfortable night soaking in the warm water!  Satoshi-tachi, riding in a Nyasu balloon that had gotten away from the Rocket-Dan earlier, fly the rest of the way out of the snow-covered mountains and into the next city.

---

Thoughts
Two snow-themed episodes shown back to back?  Two episodes with flashbacks to Musashi's past shown back to back?  Weird.

Just like "Ruujura's Christmas," "Iwaku as a Bivouac" was postponed after the seizure-inducing Episode 38.  And, just like the Christmas episode, this episode aired shortly before Satoshi got his eighth Gym Leader Badge. 

Anyway, this episode was alright, even though not a whole lot happened.  I think it's strange that they'd use such an obscure term in the episode's title (a bivouac is a temporary open encampment without tents), but we all know that the Japanese tend to throw English (or in this case, French) words into their products haphazardly.  The other thing I noticed about this episode was the part where Takeshi and Kasumi reveal that they were comfortable in their hot springs.  I just think it's kinda funny that they never question where Satoshi's been all night, how he and his pokemon kept warm, and that they never seem to be worried about him for even a second.  "Gee, you were separated from us all night and were left to fend for yourself during a terrible blizzard in the middle of a mountain...hey look, a Nyasu balloon!"  Really, Kasumi and Takeshi, you could at least PRETEND to care about your friend...

Dialogue Edit
Of course, when we get a bunch of food (as in Jessie's "snowgasboard"), we're going to have the dialogue reworked to change the Japanese food into more American food.

Jessie's "mom":  "Here's a snow loaf with snow sauce, a sampler of sushi snow rolls, Ida-snow potatoes with snow sour cream, and for dessert, a bowl of your favorite--snow pudding.  Happy snowgasboard!"

Well, at least the sushi was the same.  I can't really tell what she's saying in the Japanese version of this scene, but I do know that the woman didn't say "snow" about a million times. 

Dialogue Edit
Usually, when there are a number of similar edits in one scene, I list them all under the same heading, but this time the edit was so severe that I thought it warranted being put under its own heading.

Child Jessie:  "This is the best snowgasboard a mommy ever made!"

...and later...

James:  "I can't believe what I'm hearing!"
Meowth:  "You must be joking!  You mean your mutta actually made meals outta snow!?"

One problem, 4Kids...that woman WASN'T JESSIE'S MOM!!  She was most likely a caretaker of Musashi (since, remember, she bounced around from foster home to foster home early in life).  Whoever she was, the Japanese version never referred to her as Musashi's mother. 

After what 4Kids has done with Takeshi's mother and Musashi's mother, I kind of have to wonder what would happen to Kasumi's mother should she ever make an appearance.

Paint Edit/Cut (24 seconds altogether)
The really big edit in this episode was the Rocket-Dan's igloo scene.  For some reason, the censors seem to have had a problem with matches and the lighting thereof, so they demanded a number of cuts and paint edits to take them out of the show.  Let's start by seeing what was done.

At the beginning, we see Nyasu holding a lit match that's quickly blown out.  4Kids went in and used their digital paint to turn that match into a candle, since somehow candles are less offensive than matches.

Then, Musashi puts down her snow rolls, and we get a 16-second cut of her talking to Kojirou about how delicious the snow rolls are as Nyasu goes through two matches in the background, lighting them and then watching them being blown out.  Then the scene cuts to a shot of Musashi's face (which is part of the 16-second cut) where we can see the light from a match glowing before it's blown out. 

Nyasu holds up the three burnt-out matches and declares that they're almost out of a heat source.  He hands out a match to each person and they all agree to think warm thoughts to take their minds off the blistering cold.

Musashi and Kojirou hold their burnt-out matches to their faces.  However, Nyasu's match IS lit, and we see him stare at the flame for a few seconds before the fantasy about him in the hot springs begin.  The Nyasu gazing at the lit match scene, which took up three seconds, was cut.

As Musashi's fantasy of being in the desert comes to a close, we see her looking at a lit match.  Just like Nyasu's scene, this three-second scene was cut out. 

All that work to get rid of lit matches?  Is Kids' WB! afraid that little kids are going to start playing with matches because they saw two adults and a talking cat do so on a kids' cartoon?  I know the show is rated TV-Y, but this censoring to keep it at that rating is really going overboard.

I mean, come on...matches?

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