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| Welcome to Dogasu's Backpack, a fansite for the Japanese franchise Pocket Monsters! For 23 years this website has been your guide for the Japanese version of Pokémon and contains content you can't find anywhere else. Stuff like detailed comparisons between the Japanese version and the English version of the animated series, interview translations, information on Japan-only manga, a lyrics database, a home video guide, and much more! So whether you're a seasoned veteran or a newbie just getting into Pocket Monsters, this site has something for every fan to enjoy. | ||
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Episode Comparisons: General Edits
September 28th, 2023
Dogasu @ 00:08 JST -- I was working on a new(-ish) Episode Comparison lately when I happened to take a look at the old General Edits page I had and realized that oof, this thing's way out of date. Like, "Last Updated February 19th, 2013" out of date. So I kind of stopped what I was doing and decided to do a massive overhaul of the page.
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The new and improved General Edits page has been completely rewritten from the ground up and features more information, more up-to-date examples, better quality images, and all sorts of other content that wasn't there before. It's a great breakdown of the types of changes being made to the show that I don't always bring up in my Episode Comparisons but are still taking place regardless.
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Translation: Pokémon Story Chapter 3: America
September 7th, 2023
Dogasu @ 22:13 JST -- Today marks the 25th anniversary of the debut of the English dub of the Pokémon animated series! A quarter of a century ago 4Kids reversioning of the Japanese show Pocket Monsters first hit American airwaves, setting off the chain reaction that would eventually allow the franchise to take over the world. I couldn't not celebrate this momentous occasion and so I'm doing it in the most Dogasu's Backpack way ever; by translating 40+ pages of the Japanese book Pokémon Story!
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You may remember Pokémon Story from my Pokémon Shock 25th Anniversary coverage last year. Well, that same book has a rather large section on bringing Pokémon over to the United States and so I thought hey, now's as good a time as any to translate that section into English as well. These 40-ish pages go over Nintendo of America's trepidation about bringing Pocket Monsters over to the U.S. in the first place, the various hurdles the teams faced in doing so, the reason why they rolled out the animated series first, and a whole lot more. It's 40-ish pages jam packed with information I simply haven't seen anywhere else and so I'm confident you'll learn all sorts of things you never knew before.
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New live action TV series "PokéTsume" to start October 20th
August 30th, 2023
Dogasu @ 23:51 JST -- Earlier this evening The Pokémon Company announced, seemingly out of nowhere, that a live action series "Pockets Filled with Adventure" (ポケットに 冒険をつめこんで), or "PokéTsume" for short, will begin airing on TV-Tokyo starting October 20th!
TV-Tokyo's
official website for
the show has synopses, quotes from the show's cast and crew, and a
breakdown of other information about the upcoming live action TV show.
I've translated all of that information and put it on its own page in
the Features section here.
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This Is Animation: Pocket Monsters The Movie Screenplay Writers' Comments
August 9th, 2023
Dogasu @ 22:28 JST -- Last month -- July 18th, 2023, to be exact -- marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Pocket Monsters The Movie "Mewtwo Strikes Back!" & "Pikachu's Summer Vacation." My goal was to post a bunch of translations related to the movie to celebrate, but then right around the anniversary date I got knocked out by COVID and wasn't really able to do much of anything. I seem to be back at full health now but the whole ordeal delayed things quite a bit and so now I'm only just now getting around to posting this.
So for today's update, I've got the following:
First up, I've posted a page on the press conference that was held on November 13th, 1997 during which the double feature was first revealed to the public. I took reports from multiple sources and put them all on one page so that you can easily see what all they revealed the first time anyone publicly acknowledged Mewtwo Strikes Back!
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Next up, I have a translation of a comment made by supervisor Tsunekazu Ishihara from the pamphlet that was sold in movie theaters back in the summer of 1998. In this, Mr. Ishihara talks about how amazed he is to see Pokémon on the big screen and how moved he was when he saw the finished product at the films' preview screening.
Finally, I've got a translation of comments made by screenplay writers Takeshi Shudo ("Mewtwo Strikes Back!") and Hideki Sonoda ("Pikachu's Summer Vacation") from the book This Is Animation: Pocket Monsters The Movie "Mewtwo Strikes Back!" & "Pikachu's Summer Vacation." The Takeshi Shudo one is a bit...well, let's just say I had to tweak the translation quite a bit in order to make the thing make some amount of sense. The Hideki Sonoda comment, meanwhile, talks about the challenges with working on a movie where most of the characters who appear in it aren't actually able to speak. They're both these fascinating time capsules of what these two men were thinking back in the summer of 1998!
Episode Comparison: "The Mandarin Island Miss Match"
July 7th, 2023
Dogasu @ 10:04 JST -- The time has finally come; I've completed the comparison for "The Mandarin Island Miss Match!"
This write-up was a colossal undertaking as it features one of 4Kids' least accurate scripts from its entire run. I am not joking when I say at least 75% of the episode's script was rewritten, most of it for seemingly no reason whatsoever! There are also weird name inconsistencies, references to past episodes that get missed, a large scene cut, the fact that the episode's been de-existed due to a certain character...there's a ton to go over here.
It's a very, very long episode comparison but I think it is absolutely worth it to take the time to read each and every word. As always, let me know what you think!
The Different Versions of Japanese Episode 099
July 2nd, 2023
Dogasu @ 08:29 JST -- You may have seen me mention this on social media and whatnot, but I am currently hard at work on the Episode Comparison for "The Mandarin Island Miss Match." It's a doozy of an episode and so I'm going to need a little longer to complete it, but in the meantime I do have something to share: a page I'm calling The Different Versions of Japanese Episode 099.
The reason I even have a page like this is because there are, somehow, multiple, multiple versions of this one random episode from 1999! It's actually kind of wild! When I first started working on this the intention was just to cover this in a paragraph or two within the episode's comparison but the more I got into it the more I realized that no, this actually needs its own page. So here we are!
If you have any more information about the different versions of the episode not covered in this page then please let me know.
Lyrics - "Lucky Lucky"
June 18th, 2023
Dogasu @ 10:56 JST -- When I was working on the write-up for the Rocket-Dan radio episode earlier this week I was checking out all the pages I had linked to in the write-up and when I saw the one I had for Lucky Lucky, a character song performed by Shin-ichiro Miki in-character as Kojirou for the 1997 CD release of Rocket-Dan yo Eien ni, I realized that it was a page in dire need of an update. And so today I'm doing just that!
Lucky Lucky is a song infamous for being jam packed with Pokémon puns and other plays on words, making it one of the more difficult songs to render in English and still have it make any sort of sense. I gave it my best shot, though! I've also provided a line-by-line breakdown of what the Pokémon puns are and why I chose to translate the lines the way I did, something I haven't really seen any other site do before.
Pokémon Radio Show! The Rocket-Dan's Secret Empire -- Vol. 08
June 14th, 2023
Dogasu @ 19:38 JST -- It's been a while since we've had any "new" Rocket trio content to look at so today I've got a write-up for Episode 08 of Pokémon Radio Show! The Rocket-Dan's Secret Empire!
The episode's special guest is Ms. Mika Kanai, a voice actor who's done the voice of Pokémon like Purin, Kenji's Maril, Satoshi's Chicorita / Bayleaf, Kojirou's Deathmas, and more! There's also another music guessing game segment as well as an opening sketch involving Nyarth as a train...? As usual, there are also a ton of footnotes and other miscellaneous translations throughout the write-up.
"Manga Guide: "Pocket Monsters ~ Liko's Treasure~" & "Pocket Monsters ~ Pucchi Gumi Special ~"
May 20th, 2023
Dogasu @ 22:50 JST -- In the last few weeks a couple of new manga based on the Pocket Monsters (2023) TV series came out in Japan and so for tonight's update I wanted to take a close look at both of them.
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The first one is Pocket Monsters ~ Pucchi Gumi Special ~, a manga adaptation that breezes through the first three episodes of the TV series in about a dozen pages. The chapter that's currently out now has been advertised as being the first of two chapters; chapter two is set to come out June 30th. Story summaries, character bios, and an author profile can also be found in the section for this series.
The second one is Pocket Monsters ~ Liko's Treasure ~, a series I've already featured in a previous update but that made its official debut in the issue of Ciào that went on sale May 2nd. This series is also an adaptation of the Pocket Monsters (2023) TV series but it's taking things a bit more slowly than its Pucchi Gumi counterpart; it covers one episode in 32 pages instead of three episodes in a dozen pages. This manga looks like it's going to be a monthly series but of course it's still a bit early to tell. In any case, story summaries, character bios, and an author profile (spoiler alert: both these manga are being made by the same artist!) can be found for this series as well.
A third adaptation of the Pocket Monsters (2023) series, Kei Yamadaka's Pocket Monsters, was already covered in an update from last month. The issue of CoroCoro Comics that went on sale earlier this month did not feature a second chapter of this series and so this particular manga, as I suspected, was only a one-off.
And as far as I know that's all the Pocket Monsters (2023) manga that's out right now! I'll continue to follow up with these two series and will let you know if any others pop up in the future.
Lyrics - "RVR ~ Rising Volteccers Rap"
April 21st, 2023
Dogasu @ 20:56 JST -- A new ending theme debuted with tonight's episode of Pocket Monsters (2023) and so I went and added the lyrics to RVR ~ Rising Volteccers Rap to the Lyrics Archive!
Of course, English translations of the lyrics have also been added.
The title of the song used in tonight's episode contains the words "Friede Ver.," implying there will be multiple versions of this song used throughout the series. It'll be interesting to see how many variations of this song we'll eventually get!
The 'Pocket Monsters' Animated Series Special Investigation
April 16th, 2023
Dogasu @ 1:29 JST -- Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Pocket Monsters TV series making its triumphant return to the air after being pulled for about four months due to the Pokémon Shock incident. A few days before that, on April 11th, 1998, TV-Tokyo aired a special called The "Pocket Monsters' Animated Series Special Investigation. Like with the other news reports of the era, I've made a fansub (of the footage that still exists) and posted it to my YouTube page!
This news special, as we learned from the book Pokémon Story, was first teased on March 30th, 1998 and then eventually aired on Saturday, April 11th, 1998 from 1:00 PM to 1:55 PM. The special is, for all intents and purposes, TV-Tokyo's final report on the incident. The other videos I've shared up until now were from just a few days after the incident; this report is from a whole four months later. It is, therefore, the most comprehensive of the bunch.
And with that I think I've translated every single Japanese report from that time period (December 1997 - early 1998) related to the Pokémon Shock! If you see any other reports floating around out there let me know; I'd love to add it to the archive!
Kei Yamadaka's "Pocket Monsters" Summary
April 14th, 2023
Dogasu @ 12:29 JST -- The May 2023 issue of CoroCoro Comics went on sale earlier today and with that comes the first (and apparently also the only...?) chapter of Kei Yamadaka's Pocket Monsters manga!
The main update I have for you today is a detailed summary of the massive 48-page chapter as well as brief character bios for everyone who appears in this manga. Now it's just a matter of waiting and seeing how much of what's in this manga matches up with what we'll see in the actual animated series itself when it debuts later tonight!
There was no "To Be Continued" type text at the end of the chapter so it seems as though this manga may actually end up being a one-off, though I will of course buy next month's issue of CoroCoro Comics and let you know.
Lyrics - Dokimeki Diary
April 8th, 2023
Dogasu @ 13:25 JST -- This is a bit late, I know, but the theme song to the upcoming Pocket Monsters (2023) TV series, a song called Dokimeki Diary, was played on TV for the first time ever during the "Pocket Monsters The Animated Series Music Festival" that aired last week (March 31st) and so I went and added the lyrics to the song to the Lyrics Archive.
I've included the song's full lyrics, both in its original Japanese and in our alphabet, as well as a line-by-line English translation of the song's lyrics. Translations of comments from the song's performer and lyricist have also been included!
The series' ending theme hasn't been revealed yet so the lyrics for those will have to wait until the series' first episodes air this coming Friday, April 14th.
Pocket Monsters ~ Liko's Treasure ~ Manga
April 4th, 2023
Dogasu @ 22:14 JST -- Another new manga based on the upcoming Pocket Monsters (2023) TV series has been announced!
Pocket Monsters ~ Liko's Treasure ~ is a new manga that is set to debut in the issue of the girls' manga anthology magazine Ciào that goes on sale May 2nd. The issue that's currently on the shelves, the May 2023 one, includes a special four page preview of the upcoming manga and so I've done the usual series overview, plot synopsis, character bios, and author biography that I do for all the manga featured in the site's Manga Guide. Like with Kei Yamadaka's Pocket Monsters, the series hasn't started its actual run yet and so there isn't a ton of information to go off of at the moment but if there's anything out there then I've included it in this update.
I'll be sure to update the Manga Guide with new information once the next issue of Ciào goes on sale.
Voice Actors React to the Pocket Monsters (2019) series ending
March 26th, 2023
Dogasu @ 12:56 JST -- This past Friday the final episode of Pocket Monsters: Mezase Pokémon Master aired on TV-Tokyo. After the episode aired lot of the show's cast and crew took to social media to voice their appreciation for the show that's been a part of their lives the last 26 years or so and so for today's update I thought I'd archive them all in one place for you!
The Cast / Staff Reactions to the end of Pocket Monsters Mezase Pokémon Master page collects all the social media and blog posts I was able to find from the show's cast and crew regarding the end of the current animated series. Since these posts are all in Japanese I have, of course, translated each and every one of them into English.
If you know of any other social media / blog posts from the people behind the original version of the show that I haven't included on this page then please let me know and I'll be sure to add it.
While the current "anipoke" series has come to a close a new series, Pocket Monsters (2023), is set to start airing Friday, April 14th, 2023 with an hour-long special.
Pocket Monsters (2023) Manga
March 15th, 2023
Dogasu @ 16:18 JST -- The monthly Japanese kids' magazine CoroCoro Comics is going to start running a brand new manga based on the upcoming Pocket Monsters (2023) animated series soon, and to commemorate this the manga anthology featured a special sneak peek of the new series in the April 2023 issue that went on sale earlier today. While there isn't a lot to go off of at the moment, I did take the information I could and put it all in its own section of the Manga Guide.
The Manga Guide's page on Kei Yamadaka's Pocket Monsters (not to be confused with Kosaku Anakubo's Pocket Monsters or Machito Gomi's Pocket Monsters) boasts the usual; a detailed plot summary of the preview, a page on the characters who appear, and information about the manga's author.
The first official chapter of the manga will appear in the May 2023 issue of CoroCoro Comics set to go on sale April 14th, 2023.
Found an error? Spot an omission? Please help me keep this page current and error-free by e-mailing me with a description of the error or omission.
