Happy Anniversary! (Year Eight)

Dogasu's Backpack | Rants | Happy Anniversary! (Year Eight)

By Dogasu
Posted 02-01-2008

Hi, and welcome to Dogasu’s Backpack’s eighth year!

Two thousand and seven was a pretty exciting year for my site. I got an insane number of comparisons completed (90 by my count), managed to reformat the Episode Lists (something I’ve wanted to do for a long while), and redid the Video Games section (ditto). Plus a bunch of other stuff.

The year was a big one for the franchise as well. The Diamond & Pearl games saw releases in pretty much every country that’s not Japan, the anime continued to surprise fans by breaking many of the “patterns” that it had adhered to for so long, various manga series continued to be serialized in Japan…tons of stuff. In fact, I could probably fill this page with a list of all the things that happened in 2007. But I don't really think that's necessary.

Two thousand and seven was also the year that I moved back to Japan, a country I plan to remain in (bar any NOVA-style collapse of my company) for the next three years or so. I haven’t done a whole lot of Pocket Monsters-related stuff that I couldn't have done back in the States, but with the Internet the way it is these days, there isn't a whole lot that fans in the West don't have access to anyway. I'll try to get a scanner this year and do some manga stuff, so hopefully you'll have that to look forward to in 2008.

Speaking of 2008...what's going to be in store? Well, I have a few predictions. We already know that the third Kanto DVD set will come out in the U.S. next month and Smash Brothers Brawl and Pokémon Ranger Batnage will come out in the US and Japan, respectively, in March. We also know that Viz is going to start releasing manga again in April. We also know that the second batch of Mysterious Dungeon games will see their stateside releases in “Spring 2008” and that the Giratina movie will be out in Japanese theatres in July (with a DVD release, most likely in December).

As far as the stuff we don’t know? Well…I’ll make the following predictions:

The anime will continue as Satoshi goes through his third and fourth Gym Battles. I also, for no real reason, think that Satoshi will actually make it to his fifth Shin’ou Gym Battle before the year’s end. I think Pinpuku will evolve at some point, and I think that something major with Shinji will happen.

Pokémon Puzzle League will probably show up on the Wii Virtual Console sometime in 2008. I won't download it, though, and will wait for the eventual release of Tetris Attack on the SNES. Simply because that version's better :P

Pokemon Ranger Batnage will show up in the U.S. before the end of the year.

After the fans finally figure out that TAJ no longer working on the dub will have no effect on the show, they'll forget that they ever freaked the hell out about it in the first place. I know I've been wrong before, but trust me this time.

I think there will be another Pokemon Wii game in 2008. Maybe an RPG, maybe another boring Revolution-type game, maybe a sequel to Snap…something.

I think “Pokémon The Rise of Darkrai” will either be packaged with a dub of the second Mysterious Dungeon anime special or a dub of the ANA short "Pikachu's Rescue Club" (ピカチュウたんけんクラブ).

I predict that we won’t see Pokémon Battle Frontier released on DVD.

I think it's pretty likely that we’ll see the third version of Diamond & Pearl come out on the DS later in the year.

I wonder how many, if any of these, will come true.

As far as the future of the site? Well, I'll finish with the new layout and will then catch up on the rest of the PUSA comparisons. I also plan to do more of the aforementioned manga stuff, revamp the CD Guide, add a Region 2 DVD Guide, and revamp the Seiyuu pages. That's a lot of stuff to do, but I think I should be able to get that all done before the site's ninth birthday.

In any case, 2008 looks like it'll be another big year for the franchise. The fandom (and the whole "Internet culture" as a whole, really) is actually starting to wear me out, so don't be surprised if I just up and vanish for a month or two to prevent myself from going crazy and shutting this site down or something like that. Just thought I'd give you guys a heads up.

See you in 2009!