Japanese Episode 099
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| Episode Comparisons | Orange Islands
The 99th episode of Pocket
Monsters (1997), "Kanna of
the Four Heavenly Kings! The Icy Battle!!," has had multiple
versions
spring up here and there following its June 3rd, 1999 debut on TV-Tokyo. By my count there
are currently three versions
of the episode in
Japan and two of the English
dub, and so this page takes a look at each and every one of those
alternate versions.
To date, there are currently three versions of the episode "Kanna of the Four Heavenly Kings! The Icy Battle!!" in Japan.
The first version is what I'll call the "original uncut version." This is presumably the version that aired when the episode debuted on TV-Tokyo on June 3rd. 1999, though it's unlikely we'll ever find any concrete evidence to actually back this up. People weren't ripping Pocket Monsters episodes off TV and uploading them onto the Internet back then and so the only way we'd actually be able to verify this today is if we were to find someone who just happened to be taping the episode off Japanese TV that one night in June 1999.
The fifth volume of Pocket Monsters Film Comic Episode: Orange Islands, a graphic novel collection that takes screenshots from different episodes of the TV series and rearranges them into comic book panels (Viz Media releases these for other series under the "Ani-Manga" label), covers "Kanna of the Four Heavenly Kings! The Icy Battle!!" and its screenshots show the uncensored version. The film comic adaptation has a print date of May 25th, 2000.
4Kids' English dub was seemingly based on this original version of the episode.
The first re-edit of the episode takes this 26-second scene at around the 5:49 mark, where Satoshi decides Kanna isn't worthy enough to battle him, and makes a number of interesting edits.
First, OLM reconstructs the scene to remove Kanna's breast from the foreground. This takes place in the first 10 seconds. The screenshots on the left are from Version 1 while the ones on the right are the edited shots from Version 2.
The version of the episode that's up on the Japanese streaming site DMM isn't as cropped compared to the versions up on Prime Video or Hulu, allowing you to actually see a very obvious TV safe area on the left side of the screen that gets cropped out on the other services' streams. Click on the image below so you can better see what I'm talking about.
Next, there's a very abrupt Zoom-in shot on Satoshi's and Kasumi's face in a (largely unsuccessful) attempt to crop Kanna's chest out of the frame. This goes on for the remaining 16 seconds.
In the original uncut version all of this takes place as a single 26-second shot; the abrupt zoom-in about 10 seconds in is a quirk of the newer edit.
I have no idea why this scene in particular was singled out to be edited like this. It doesn't seem any "worse" than literally any other scene in the episode featuring Kanna, and I can't imagine keeping it in would have caused any issues. Did parents in Japan complain about this or something? Who knows!
So when did this "Version 2" come out? I managed to track down a copy of the Japanese Rental VHS -- a tape distributed to video rental shops (think Blockbuster and the like) for them to lend out to customers -- and can confirm that this home video release already has the edit in place. This tape was released on November 26th, 1999, about five months after the episode's debut on TV-Tokyo, and since the episode wouldn't have been in reruns yet (Pokémon Encore wouldn't get around to airing this episode until two years later) I'm thinking this VHS tape is probably where this version debuted.
To date, every release of this episode on streaming services in Japan has the above edit in place.
The final Japanese edit of the episode (so far!) turns Rougela from its original black design to its more modern purple one. This purple edit quietly replaced the original black version on the Japanese Amazon Prime service sometime around the year 2017, though determining an exact release date is difficult due to it being uploaded to the site with zero acknowledgment.
This purple version of the episode also includes the edit to the scene with Satoshi and Kanna seen in Version 2.
This version of the episode was never picked up by TPCi for international distribution, probably because they had already essentially "banned" the episode a few years before this version ever existed. The company also doesn't tend to dub anything older than a year or so, making the chances of them ever going back and doing the simple work needed to resync the dub audio to this newer footage highly unlikely.
To review, the three version of the episode, in Japan, are:
Where can you find each version? Well, there's a chart for that too!
To date, there are currently two versions of the episode "The Mandarin Island Miss Match." Finding either version now is quite difficult, however, as TPCi essentially de-existed the episode somewhere around 2014 (more on that later).
The first version of "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" is the original uncut version, same as Japan. This version's been uploaded in entirety online (I'm not linking to it, but it's easy enough to find), and while there are comments that claim it aired on Kids' WB! exactly one time before being replaced with the edited version (Version B below) in reruns we have really no way to verify that.
This version of the episode only seems to be available on a few of the older DVDs sold outside the US.
The second version of the episode is appears to be, from what I've been able to gather, a Kids' WB! exclusive edit...? In this version, the 26 second sequence that got edited in Japanese Version 2, as well as a little bit of the footage both before and after it, is simply removed from the episode altogether.
Altogether, 38 seconds are removed here.
I've seen a few fans state the episode's April 15th, 2000 debut on Kids' WB! was uncut but that the scene was later removed in reruns, though as far as I know no one's produced a VHS rip from that day's broadcast to prove this claim. In any case, the Region 1 DVD releases (well, the ones from before the episode was banned anyway) are all missing the scene above.
I reached out to fans on Twitter to see how the episode aired elsewhere in the world and the general consensus seems to be that the scene above was left intact pretty much everyone else in the world except the US (and also Brazil, apparently...?). Mexico, Latin America, Argentina, the UK, Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Italy, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand have all reportedly aired the episode uncut, though I will point out that we are dealing with people's memories of TV broadcasts that took place nearly a quarter of a century ago and so it's entirely possible not all of these recollections are accurate.
The episode was dubbed and aired on TV / released on home video multiple times over a span of about 15 years before TPCi just one day decided to remove it from rotation altogether. This happened sometime around the year 2014 or so. An official reason for the episode's removal has never been provided but "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" disappearing at the exact same time as the other two Jynx episodes, "Holiday Hi-Jynx" and "Stage Fight!", make the appearance of "Prima's" blackface Jynx the obvious culprit here.
The episode has been removed from all official episode listings and hasn't been made available on streaming or home video ever since. Here's the episode guide on the official Pokémon website's Pokémon the Series Episode Encyclopedia page; "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" should be between "A Way Off Day Off" and "Wherefore Art Thou, Pokémon?" but has, as you can see, been removed.
The episode's also been scrubbed off every one of the show's home video release since 2014. Here's what the menu screen looks like from Viz's 2003 Pokémon: Adventures On The Orange Islands 2 DVD (left) vs. their 2015 Pokémon: Adventures in the Orange Islands - The Complete Collection box set (right):
Like the US, multiple other countries seem to have had the episodes removed from their post-2014 releases as well.
To review, the two versions of the English dub are:
Where can you find each version? Well, there's a chart for that too! In the US "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" was only ever released on home video twice before being removed from rotation, and both times it was Version B.
OK, so what about the rest of the world? Well I'm not able to go through and list out every single Pokémon Orange Islands DVD ever released in the world, so I'm instead going to focus on the releases that, based on fan reports at least, have the uncut footage from Version A.
Thanks to Pocketmonsters.net for the details:
And there you have it! This one random episode of the 1997 Pocket Monsters series has, for one reason or another, a ton of different versions floating around out there. It's odd, but it's also just one more item in the list of the many, many things that are so interesting about Pocket Monsters (1997) Episode 099.
| Japanese Version |
To date, there are currently three versions of the episode "Kanna of the Four Heavenly Kings! The Icy Battle!!" in Japan.
| Japanese Version 1: Original Uncut Version |
The first version is what I'll call the "original uncut version." This is presumably the version that aired when the episode debuted on TV-Tokyo on June 3rd. 1999, though it's unlikely we'll ever find any concrete evidence to actually back this up. People weren't ripping Pocket Monsters episodes off TV and uploading them onto the Internet back then and so the only way we'd actually be able to verify this today is if we were to find someone who just happened to be taping the episode off Japanese TV that one night in June 1999.
The fifth volume of Pocket Monsters Film Comic Episode: Orange Islands, a graphic novel collection that takes screenshots from different episodes of the TV series and rearranges them into comic book panels (Viz Media releases these for other series under the "Ani-Manga" label), covers "Kanna of the Four Heavenly Kings! The Icy Battle!!" and its screenshots show the uncensored version. The film comic adaptation has a print date of May 25th, 2000.
 |
 |
4Kids' English dub was seemingly based on this original version of the episode.
| Japanese Version 2: Zoomed-in Edited
Version |
The first re-edit of the episode takes this 26-second scene at around the 5:49 mark, where Satoshi decides Kanna isn't worthy enough to battle him, and makes a number of interesting edits.
First, OLM reconstructs the scene to remove Kanna's breast from the foreground. This takes place in the first 10 seconds. The screenshots on the left are from Version 1 while the ones on the right are the edited shots from Version 2.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The version of the episode that's up on the Japanese streaming site DMM isn't as cropped compared to the versions up on Prime Video or Hulu, allowing you to actually see a very obvious TV safe area on the left side of the screen that gets cropped out on the other services' streams. Click on the image below so you can better see what I'm talking about.
Next, there's a very abrupt Zoom-in shot on Satoshi's and Kasumi's face in a (largely unsuccessful) attempt to crop Kanna's chest out of the frame. This goes on for the remaining 16 seconds.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
In the original uncut version all of this takes place as a single 26-second shot; the abrupt zoom-in about 10 seconds in is a quirk of the newer edit.
I have no idea why this scene in particular was singled out to be edited like this. It doesn't seem any "worse" than literally any other scene in the episode featuring Kanna, and I can't imagine keeping it in would have caused any issues. Did parents in Japan complain about this or something? Who knows!
So when did this "Version 2" come out? I managed to track down a copy of the Japanese Rental VHS -- a tape distributed to video rental shops (think Blockbuster and the like) for them to lend out to customers -- and can confirm that this home video release already has the edit in place. This tape was released on November 26th, 1999, about five months after the episode's debut on TV-Tokyo, and since the episode wouldn't have been in reruns yet (Pokémon Encore wouldn't get around to airing this episode until two years later) I'm thinking this VHS tape is probably where this version debuted.
To date, every release of this episode on streaming services in Japan has the above edit in place.
| Japanese Version 3: The Purple Rougela Edit |
The final Japanese edit of the episode (so far!) turns Rougela from its original black design to its more modern purple one. This purple edit quietly replaced the original black version on the Japanese Amazon Prime service sometime around the year 2017, though determining an exact release date is difficult due to it being uploaded to the site with zero acknowledgment.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
This purple version of the episode also includes the edit to the scene with Satoshi and Kanna seen in Version 2.
This version of the episode was never picked up by TPCi for international distribution, probably because they had already essentially "banned" the episode a few years before this version ever existed. The company also doesn't tend to dub anything older than a year or so, making the chances of them ever going back and doing the simple work needed to resync the dub audio to this newer footage highly unlikely.
| Japanese Version Summary |
To review, the three version of the episode, in Japan, are:
| Foreground
Edit? |
Rougela
Color |
|
| Version
1 |
No |
Black |
| Version
2 |
Yes |
Black |
| Version
3 |
Yes |
Purple |
Where can you find each version? Well, there's a chart for that too!
| Film
Comic |
VHS |
Hulu |
Prime
Video |
DMM
TV |
|
| Version
1 |
✓ | ||||
| Version
2 |
✓ | ✓ | |||
| Version
3 |
✓ | ✓ |
| English Version |
To date, there are currently two versions of the episode "The Mandarin Island Miss Match." Finding either version now is quite difficult, however, as TPCi essentially de-existed the episode somewhere around 2014 (more on that later).
| English Version A: Original Uncut
Version |
The first version of "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" is the original uncut version, same as Japan. This version's been uploaded in entirety online (I'm not linking to it, but it's easy enough to find), and while there are comments that claim it aired on Kids' WB! exactly one time before being replaced with the edited version (Version B below) in reruns we have really no way to verify that.
This version of the episode only seems to be available on a few of the older DVDs sold outside the US.
| English Version B: Cut Version |
The second version of the episode is appears to be, from what I've been able to gather, a Kids' WB! exclusive edit...? In this version, the 26 second sequence that got edited in Japanese Version 2, as well as a little bit of the footage both before and after it, is simply removed from the episode altogether.
 |
 |
| Prima turns around and laughs | "Hey! What's so funny?" |
 |
 |
| "Not only am I an undefeated champion on this island but I'm practically a Pokémon Master!" | "Come on, Prima! One battle!" |
 |
 |
| "The only thing you're a master of is disaster." | "Who asked you? Maybe you want me to teach you a lesson instead of Prima?" |
 |
 |
| "Hey, I guess I could use another easy win..." | "Whaddya mean 'another easy win'?" |
 |
 |
| "Oh well. If the great Prima's scared of me, I guess I'll find somebody who's not afraid to lose." | "Ugh! That... Ash...is...so... If he ever did battle you he'd see he's not as great as he thinks he is." |
Altogether, 38 seconds are removed here.
I've seen a few fans state the episode's April 15th, 2000 debut on Kids' WB! was uncut but that the scene was later removed in reruns, though as far as I know no one's produced a VHS rip from that day's broadcast to prove this claim. In any case, the Region 1 DVD releases (well, the ones from before the episode was banned anyway) are all missing the scene above.
I reached out to fans on Twitter to see how the episode aired elsewhere in the world and the general consensus seems to be that the scene above was left intact pretty much everyone else in the world except the US (and also Brazil, apparently...?). Mexico, Latin America, Argentina, the UK, Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Italy, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand have all reportedly aired the episode uncut, though I will point out that we are dealing with people's memories of TV broadcasts that took place nearly a quarter of a century ago and so it's entirely possible not all of these recollections are accurate.
| English Version C: The De-Existed
Version |
The episode was dubbed and aired on TV / released on home video multiple times over a span of about 15 years before TPCi just one day decided to remove it from rotation altogether. This happened sometime around the year 2014 or so. An official reason for the episode's removal has never been provided but "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" disappearing at the exact same time as the other two Jynx episodes, "Holiday Hi-Jynx" and "Stage Fight!", make the appearance of "Prima's" blackface Jynx the obvious culprit here.
The episode has been removed from all official episode listings and hasn't been made available on streaming or home video ever since. Here's the episode guide on the official Pokémon website's Pokémon the Series Episode Encyclopedia page; "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" should be between "A Way Off Day Off" and "Wherefore Art Thou, Pokémon?" but has, as you can see, been removed.
The episode's also been scrubbed off every one of the show's home video release since 2014. Here's what the menu screen looks like from Viz's 2003 Pokémon: Adventures On The Orange Islands 2 DVD (left) vs. their 2015 Pokémon: Adventures in the Orange Islands - The Complete Collection box set (right):
 |
 |
| Region
1 DVD release (2003) |
Region
1 DVD release (2015) |
Like the US, multiple other countries seem to have had the episodes removed from their post-2014 releases as well.
| English Version Summary |
To review, the two versions of the English dub are:
| Prima
Scene Cut? |
Jynx
Color |
|
| Version
A |
No |
Black |
| Version
B |
Yes |
Black |
Where can you find each version? Well, there's a chart for that too! In the US "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" was only ever released on home video twice before being removed from rotation, and both times it was Version B.
| Uncut |
Cut |
Episode
Omitted Altogether |
|
| Pokémon:
Adventures on the Orange Islands 2 (DVD,
2003) |
✓ | ||
| "Pokemon:
Adventures on the Orange Islands Box Set (DVD, 2008) |
✓ | ||
| Pokémon:
Adventures in the Orange Islands - The Complete Collection (DVD, 2015) |
✓ | ||
| Pokémon
TV |
✓ | ||
| Netflix
(whenever they have the original series) |
✓ |
OK, so what about the rest of the world? Well I'm not able to go through and list out every single Pokémon Orange Islands DVD ever released in the world, so I'm instead going to focus on the releases that, based on fan reports at least, have the uncut footage from Version A.
Thanks to Pocketmonsters.net for the details:
 |
 |
 |
 |
- Australia, New Zealand: Magna Pacific's Pokemon Season 2 Super Wallet - Pokemon Chronicles Volume 3 release from 2006
- France: Editions Atlas' Planète Pokémon Saison 2 Vol.32 release from 2009
- Australia, New Zealand: Magna Pacific's Pokemon: Adventures on the Orange Islands release from 2010
- Germany: The 33rd disc of Hachette Collections' Die Welt der Pokémon Staffel 1-3 release from 2010
- Australia, New Zealand: Magna Pacific's Pokémon
Kanto and Orange Islands Collection release from 2011
And there you have it! This one random episode of the 1997 Pocket Monsters series has, for one reason or another, a ton of different versions floating around out there. It's odd, but it's also just one more item in the list of the many, many things that are so interesting about Pocket Monsters (1997) Episode 099.
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.
