Write-Ups
Main
Old Updates Archive
Links
 |
Lists |
List of Pokémon
Pokémon World Atlas
List of Techniques
List
of Items
List of TV Episodes
|
Guides |
Episode
Comparisons
Movies
& Specials Guide
CD Guide
DVD Guide
Voice
Actors Guide
Lyrics Archive
Manga Guide
Video Games
|
Miscellaneous |
Humor
Pokémon Bashing
Features
Rants
Dogasu's
Backpack
| Site Archives | Anniversary Write-Ups
By Dogasu
Posted January 31st, 2025
The website you're looking at right now has been online a quarter of a century.
Forget Pokémon fansites for a moment, the number of Internet websites in general that've lasted as long as this one has is very, very small. It's kind of an exclusive club, one that I'm very happy to be a part of now.
When you make it all the way to an anniversary like this one you inevitably start to think back to how it all began. Dogasu's Backpack started out under the name "Dogasu's E-J Pokemon Page" back in the year 2000. Pokémon had been out in the U.S. for around a year and a half by that point and so there were already quite a few fansites making names for themselves. Most of them were either a "we cover everything and anything Pokémon" type places, or sites dedicated solely to a single character ("Team Rocket's Rockin!," "Brock-O-Rama," and "Mew's Bubble" are the ones I remember), or sites dedicated to fans' favorite relationship pairings. There were a whole lot of people talking about Pokémon back then, and yet one area in which coverage was severely lacking was the original Japanese version.
Most websites at the time (and to be honest, this is still kind of the case today) treated the English dub of the animated series as the default version of the show, the only one worth talking about. Now a few places actually did acknowledge Pokémon as being something that originated from Japan, yes, but outside a few character shrines most places treated the fact that Pokémon was a heavily localized version of a Japanese cartoon as a mere footnote, a cute piece of trivia but little else. "Oh, superstar voice actor Megumi Hayashibara's in the Japanese version? Sure, OK whatever ANYWAY did you see the latest episode on Kids' WB! this weekend!?"
A lot of this wasn't anyone's fault. Nobody was recording the newest Japanese episodes every week and then making them available to those of us outside Japan, and nobody was fansubbing the random episodes that actually did end up getting archived. I suspect a lot of that had to do with how all the fansubbing groups at the time were too busy focusing on the "cool" and "edgy" Japanese cartoons to bother with a silly little kids' show like Pocket Monsters, but whatever the reason was it just wasn't possible to follow along with what was airing in Japan in realtime. I mean, I was someone who was actively hunting for the Japanese version of the show and even I had trouble tracking it down. There's no way your average fan was ever going to just stumble across it.
So, I started up my website to create a space to talk about that ever elusive Japanese version. I knew fairly early on I wanted the "Episode Comparisons" section to be one of the site's pillars, but the problem was the aforementioned lack of access to the Japanese original. Some comparisons were done off of fifth generation VHS rips of Japanese episodes with no subtitles (oh, and also, my Japanese was pretty terrible back then), and others were done off of the ani-manga releases I was randomly able to find at a local bookshop. And for some episodes I had no choice but to just skip them. I've managed to since go back and redo all the write-ups from that era, but still, those early years were rough.
But, none of that seemed to matter because (almost) nobody else was doing what I was doing. Dogasu's Backpack had unique content you couldn't find anywhere else, and I think a lot of people really responded to that. Even today, a lot of what I'm doing in this space just isn't being done anywhere else. And it's not just the Episode Comparisons either. Who else is doing monthly breakdowns of all the latest Pokémon manga releases? Who else is covering Japanese-only media like the Movie 23 podcast or PokéTsume as in-depth as I am? Who else is fansubbing Japanese TV news reports from 1997? Who else is checking out materials from Japanese libraries to be used in articles debunking decades old rumors?
Dogasu's Backpack started out as a way to put a spotlight on the often overlooked Japanese version of the show and here we are 25 years later, that light shining as bright as ever. I suspect I'll continue to do so for years and years to come.
So what does the future hold for Dogasu's Backpack? I'd love to be able to say that someday we'll all be sitting together celebrating this site's 50th anniversary, but I'm also not sure how realistic that actually is. I'm 42 years old now, and so when that 50 year anniversary mark comes I will be 67 years old. Will I still be talking to strangers on the Internet about the Japanese version of Pokémon during my retirement years? Will I still be able to? I'd like to say yes, but who knows? Once upon a time I thought the idea of me working on this thing well into my 40s was absolutely wild and yet here I am, doing just that, so who's to say I won't still be doing this for many more years to come?
In the meantime, I can say a few things I have coming down the pipeline. You may have noticed I've been shuffling around some older sections of the site and closing down others I don't plan on ever updating again (Fun Fact: Literally no one seems to have noticed when I silently got rid of the site's Video Game section early last year), and that reorganization will continue into 2025. Once I get everything moved to where I want it to be the next major item on the agenda will be to finally, finally do the massive site layout update this site's been needing for almost two decades at this point. It's going to be an absolutely huge endeavor considering just how many pages I've created for this site in the last quarter of a century so I have no idea how long it'll take, but it is something I hope to accomplish sooner rather than later. I also plan to finish the Orange Islands episode comparisons this year, make some more Rumor Guide updates, and start up a new section or two that I hope you all find useful
I'll wrap all this up by saying thank you to all of you who've supported me and this website these last 25 years. Finding other people who like this silly Japanese kids' show just as much as I do has been such a joy, and I love how much I've been able to learn from you all year after year. Without you I'd just be some weirdo shouting out into the void so thank you all so, so much for everything.
Until next time!
Posted January 31st, 2025
The website you're looking at right now has been online a quarter of a century.
Forget Pokémon fansites for a moment, the number of Internet websites in general that've lasted as long as this one has is very, very small. It's kind of an exclusive club, one that I'm very happy to be a part of now.
When you make it all the way to an anniversary like this one you inevitably start to think back to how it all began. Dogasu's Backpack started out under the name "Dogasu's E-J Pokemon Page" back in the year 2000. Pokémon had been out in the U.S. for around a year and a half by that point and so there were already quite a few fansites making names for themselves. Most of them were either a "we cover everything and anything Pokémon" type places, or sites dedicated solely to a single character ("Team Rocket's Rockin!," "Brock-O-Rama," and "Mew's Bubble" are the ones I remember), or sites dedicated to fans' favorite relationship pairings. There were a whole lot of people talking about Pokémon back then, and yet one area in which coverage was severely lacking was the original Japanese version.
Most websites at the time (and to be honest, this is still kind of the case today) treated the English dub of the animated series as the default version of the show, the only one worth talking about. Now a few places actually did acknowledge Pokémon as being something that originated from Japan, yes, but outside a few character shrines most places treated the fact that Pokémon was a heavily localized version of a Japanese cartoon as a mere footnote, a cute piece of trivia but little else. "Oh, superstar voice actor Megumi Hayashibara's in the Japanese version? Sure, OK whatever ANYWAY did you see the latest episode on Kids' WB! this weekend!?"
A lot of this wasn't anyone's fault. Nobody was recording the newest Japanese episodes every week and then making them available to those of us outside Japan, and nobody was fansubbing the random episodes that actually did end up getting archived. I suspect a lot of that had to do with how all the fansubbing groups at the time were too busy focusing on the "cool" and "edgy" Japanese cartoons to bother with a silly little kids' show like Pocket Monsters, but whatever the reason was it just wasn't possible to follow along with what was airing in Japan in realtime. I mean, I was someone who was actively hunting for the Japanese version of the show and even I had trouble tracking it down. There's no way your average fan was ever going to just stumble across it.
So, I started up my website to create a space to talk about that ever elusive Japanese version. I knew fairly early on I wanted the "Episode Comparisons" section to be one of the site's pillars, but the problem was the aforementioned lack of access to the Japanese original. Some comparisons were done off of fifth generation VHS rips of Japanese episodes with no subtitles (oh, and also, my Japanese was pretty terrible back then), and others were done off of the ani-manga releases I was randomly able to find at a local bookshop. And for some episodes I had no choice but to just skip them. I've managed to since go back and redo all the write-ups from that era, but still, those early years were rough.
But, none of that seemed to matter because (almost) nobody else was doing what I was doing. Dogasu's Backpack had unique content you couldn't find anywhere else, and I think a lot of people really responded to that. Even today, a lot of what I'm doing in this space just isn't being done anywhere else. And it's not just the Episode Comparisons either. Who else is doing monthly breakdowns of all the latest Pokémon manga releases? Who else is covering Japanese-only media like the Movie 23 podcast or PokéTsume as in-depth as I am? Who else is fansubbing Japanese TV news reports from 1997? Who else is checking out materials from Japanese libraries to be used in articles debunking decades old rumors?
Dogasu's Backpack started out as a way to put a spotlight on the often overlooked Japanese version of the show and here we are 25 years later, that light shining as bright as ever. I suspect I'll continue to do so for years and years to come.
So what does the future hold for Dogasu's Backpack? I'd love to be able to say that someday we'll all be sitting together celebrating this site's 50th anniversary, but I'm also not sure how realistic that actually is. I'm 42 years old now, and so when that 50 year anniversary mark comes I will be 67 years old. Will I still be talking to strangers on the Internet about the Japanese version of Pokémon during my retirement years? Will I still be able to? I'd like to say yes, but who knows? Once upon a time I thought the idea of me working on this thing well into my 40s was absolutely wild and yet here I am, doing just that, so who's to say I won't still be doing this for many more years to come?
In the meantime, I can say a few things I have coming down the pipeline. You may have noticed I've been shuffling around some older sections of the site and closing down others I don't plan on ever updating again (Fun Fact: Literally no one seems to have noticed when I silently got rid of the site's Video Game section early last year), and that reorganization will continue into 2025. Once I get everything moved to where I want it to be the next major item on the agenda will be to finally, finally do the massive site layout update this site's been needing for almost two decades at this point. It's going to be an absolutely huge endeavor considering just how many pages I've created for this site in the last quarter of a century so I have no idea how long it'll take, but it is something I hope to accomplish sooner rather than later. I also plan to finish the Orange Islands episode comparisons this year, make some more Rumor Guide updates, and start up a new section or two that I hope you all find useful
I'll wrap all this up by saying thank you to all of you who've supported me and this website these last 25 years. Finding other people who like this silly Japanese kids' show just as much as I do has been such a joy, and I love how much I've been able to learn from you all year after year. Without you I'd just be some weirdo shouting out into the void so thank you all so, so much for everything.
Until next time!
Found an error or omission? Please help me keep this page current and error-free by e-mailing me with a description of the issue.
