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| Episode Comparisons | Orange Islands
Episode Stats:
Japanese Episode 101: "The Coil of the Great Plains!"
American Episode 245: "Get Along Little, Pokémon"
Pokémon Dare Da? Coil (Japan), Chansey (English)
Dr. Ookido's Pokémon Course: Spear
Japanese Air Date: June 17th, 1999
American Air Date: April 29th, 2000
Important Characters: Ford (Ethan)
Important Places: Yuzu Gym (Trovita Gym)
Thoughts
After roughly 20 episodes or so of seeing Satoshi, Kasumi, and Kenji riding around on the back of a Laplace it's actually kind of refreshing to see our heroes traveling by foot again. Now don't get me wrong, I actually like the Laplace stuff, especially since that visual really helps set the Orange Islands apart from literally every other region we see in this show, but it's also nice to see the show kind of return to basics like this for a few episodes.
Once the novelty of that wears off, however, I'm quickly reminded that oh yeah, "The Coil of the Great Plains!" is actually kind of a chore to sit through. It has some cute moments here and there -- Satoshi and Kasumi not being able to tell all the Coil apart, the hilariously stupid image of the Rocket trio rubbing plastic sheets on their bodies to conduct static electricity, etc. -- but the majority of this episode just feels like a chore to sit through. I think it might be one of my least favorite Orange Islands episodes ever...? I think the most interesting part of this whole thing is the fact that Ford is voiced by Kinryuu Arimoto (有本欽隆), the man who would go on to be the first voice of Whitebeard in One Piece before his death in 2019, but even having a big star like that isn't really enough to make this episode any fun.
But at the very least "The Coil of the Great Plains!" is a fantastic example of how my beloved Rocket trio can be a useful metric to help determine whether or not the episode's going to be any good or not. In this episode we get not one, but two (!!!) attacks from the Rocket trio, with two motto sequences (though one is abbreviated) and two blast offs. A lot of people will say the fact that this episode has so much of the Rocket trio in it is what makes it so bad, but to me this episode's no good because its writer, Shinzo Fujita, just couldn't think of enough interesting things to have Ford and his Electric-Types do for the episode's 22-minute runtime. And so he just keeps throwing in the Rocket trio to help fill up airtime. The Rocket trio get a lot of hate for "sucking all the air out of an episode" and "getting in the way," but one, they do not actually exist and can therefore only do what the writers of the show make them do, and two, in a lot of cases the trio only gets as much screentime as it does because the entire rest of the episode is just so, so weak.
The 4Kids dub likes to have the overwhelming majority of Pokémon simply say their names over and over. Now there are a lot of Pokémon in the Japanese version who also just say their names, sure, but it happens far, far less in the original than it does in the English dub. This episode is a great example of what I'm talking about. All three of Ford's Pokémon make various noises -- his Coil (and Rarecoil) produce these high pitched tongue trills, Thunder barks like a dog, and the two Kentauros make cow noises -- and while the English dub keeps the cow noises it changes all the others so it's just some guy in a recording booth overly enunciating each of these Pokémon's names. "MAGNE MAGNE MAGNEMITE!" "JOLT JOLT! JOLT JOLT JOLT!" "MAG-NE-TON" It's just soooooo goofy sounding y'all. None of the Pokémon in the original are actually saying anything that sounds anywhere close to their Japanese names and so their voice clips really could have been carried over as-is with no issue whatsoever. And yet they just...aren't.
As mentioned above, Ford's Kentauros keep their Japanese voices.
Side Note
The title of the English version of this episode is supposed to be, based on official sources like Pokémon.com, "Git Along, Little Pokémon." In the actual episode itself, however, the title screen spells "Git" as "Get" and then also puts the comma in the wrong place, making the episode's title "Get Along Little, Pokémon."
Now I'm 99.999% sure these are both just unintentional typos and that the goal was to have the episode's title match what's on Pokémon.com, but it's also very funny to me to imagine someone at 4Kids cluelessly walking around the office thinking this episode is meant to be called "Get Along Little (awkward pause)...Pokémon." Was 4Kids in a rush when they did this episode or what?
Dialogue Edit
The script for this episode is like "A Way Off Day Off" where the majority of the English dialogue is actually fairly faithful to the Japanese original, at least by 4Kids standards anyway. I'm always happy to see this (less work for me!) but at the same time I have to wonder why it's only the most boring, most unimportant episodes that gets the good writer(s). Is it not possible to save that talent for the episodes people actually care about? It's like wasting Masaaki Iwane on a random filler episode and then giving an important Pokémon League episode to some less talented newbie!
Anyway, let's check out the opening narration:
The Japanese version introduces the idea that the gym in Big City isn't called the "Big City Gym," as one might expect, but is instead known as the "Yuzu Gym." The English dub does not make any such distinction; they're still referring to our heroes' destination as simply "Trovita."
After the episode's title screen we get this shot of our heroes running from the rain:
This rewrite is most likely due to the animation not matching the original dialogue. During this sequence we see Satoshi's mouth move for a while before Kenji's moves some at the end. Kasumi's mouth, meanwhile, doesn't move at all. The Japanese version just kind of ignores all this and gives Satoshi, Kenji, and Kasumi an equal amount of dialogue, regardless of whose mouth is moving at any given point in time.
The English dub fixes this by giving Ash an extra line and taking Misty's dialogue away altogether.
Ash looks up Ethan's Jolteon in his Pokédex:
A lot of this is the same in both versions, but the 4Kids dub removes the part about using a Thunder Stone to evolve an Eevee and then adds in a part about charged atoms to help make up for it. Unlike the previous rewrite there are no lip flaps to worry about here so I'm not really sure why a change like this would have been necessary.
And then we get "Ethan":
The English dub of this episode is going to give "Ethan" a lot of stereotypical cowboy type dialogue throughout the episode, delivered by an actor doing the absolute worst attempt at a Southern accent you've ever heard in your life. In the Japanese version he's just a normal sounding man speaking standard Japanese.
Side Note
For the second episode in a row we get characters with Western names in the Japanese original getting changed to different Western names for the English dub, just because.
The character-of-the-day this time around is named Ford (フォード). He's presumably named after John Ford, the director of a lot of the old Western movies from the 1930s up to around the 1960s on which this episode is inspired. 4Kids didn't like this, I guess, so they renamed the character "Ethan" after Ethan Edwards, the hero of an old Western called The Searchers that was directed by, you guessed it, John Ford.
So to put it another way, 4Kids swapped out one The Searchers reference (its director, John Ford) with a different The Searchers reference (its main character, Ethan Edwards), because...they just sort of felt like it? Because they were bored? Because God forbid we have an anime-original character actually keep its original name, even when its original name is already very localization-friendly?
Anyway, renaming him "Ethan" also causes problems because the name will later be reused for the protagonist character of the Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver games. As of the time of this writing there is only one "Ford" in all of Pokémon (this guy) but like three Ethans. So maybe it wouldn't have been a bad idea to leave the name of the character in this episode as-is in the first place?
Dialogue Edit
There are a few teeny tiny rewrites here and there (a line about it taking the Coil "2.5 seconds" to get in formation gets changed to "about 2 seconds," for example), and Ethan gets a bunch of cowboy slang peppered into his dialogue (while still saying more or less what Ford says in the original) but there's not a whole lot else to bring up rewrite-wise..
The next dialogue change I'll take a look at happens as our heroes ride their way through the plains.
Ethan is apparently already headed toward Trovita and is also fully aware it's actually located on a separate island, two things that Ford doesn't really tell us in the original.
Music Edit
The English version features a couple of brand new pieces of background music that seem like they were created specifically for this episode. The first one, a kind of adventurous banjo song, shows up in the scene with the dialogue edit I just brought up while the second one, a more relaxed little ditty, is used in the shots of everyone relaxing right before the Rocket trio make their first appearance of the episode.
In both cases the Japanese version plays Track M41 from TV Anime Pocket Monsters Original Soundtrack Best 1997 - 2010 Vol. 2.
The last time 4Kids debuted new dub music ("Holiday Hi-Jynx") you could make the argument that hey, having a bunch of Christmas-themed music might come in handy for a series that's obviously going to stick around for many years to come. And I don't remember this off the top of my head but 4Kids probably did end up reusing some of that "Holiday Hi-Jynx" music for future Christmas specials, right? Regardless, the Western movie sounding music in this episode doesn't seem like it'd have the same utility to me. Does anyone know if it's been used anywhere else? Can it be used anywhere else?
Dialogue Edit
The Rocket trio makes its entrance:
And we were doing so well too! For some reason the English dub rewrites the overwhelming majority of the trio's dialogue here, something that will unfortunately become the norm throughout the rest of this episode:
Ethan gets a call on his wagon phone (???):
The statement "we haven't had electricity for almost a day" is a 4Kids invention.
Our heroes react to news of the blackout:
I just love, love, love how Ash refuses to even dignify Misty's boneheaded question with a response. "Hey Ash, what do you think'll happen if a hospital doesn't have the ability to do the very thing it was built for?" "Ugh why are you still talking OK EVERYBODY LET'S GO GO GO!!!"
As you can see from the transcript above Kasumi has a much better grasp of what's going on in the moment than her English language counterpart does.
Eyecatch
We've made it to the episode's eyecatch which means we lose yet another exclusive piece of artwork from the Japanese version. This time we can see that the Coil's side magnets are bent, meaning the Coil in the original eyecatch is meant to be Ford's Coil No. 6.
The English dub decides to go with stock artwork of a Chansey instead.
Dialogue Edit
Jessie taunts Ethan:
Having Musashi, voiced by the one and only Ms. Megumi Hayashibara, calling someone Mister Cowboy (in English!) in the most Faye Valentine-y voice possible sure does sound like a Cowboy Bebop reference to me! Unfortunately this little Easter egg doesn't carry over into the English dub.
From the battle that ensues until the Rocket trio's second attack there really isn't much in the way of dialogue edits. The dub's replacement music and voice acting make the audio side of things not so great but at least the dialogue's faithful for a change!
The next changes I'll bring up also, surprise surprise, involve the Rocket trio. This first one occurs during Jessie's, James', and Meowth's second appearance:
My favorite part of this is James' claim that rubbing a piece of plastic on your head is "marvelous for the scalp," something I think is probably absolutely not even the tiniest bit true.
Also, Meowth referring to other Pokémon as "juicy" is basically the exact same thing as if you or I used the phrase "juicy, jolty little humans," so that's pretty horrifying!
The Rocket trio chase after Ash:
I don't know what it is about the Rocket trio that compels 4Kids to rewrite their dialogue so much, even in episodes where almost everything else is left as-is. The trio sometimes does have some punny or otherwise difficult to translate banter to translate, sure, but nine times out of ten the stuff they're saying is perfectly normal dialogue like you see above.
The Rocket duo is asked to increase its output:
4Kids also seems to have this weird fixation on the fact that James is rubbing the plastic sheet on his head, as evident by how they keep having him bring it up every chance they get. I mean I get it, it is a funny visual, but do we really need to bring it up three times in the space of like 30 seconds?
After Ash saves the town (we're almost at the end of the episode already!) Ethan invites Ash to join him as his apprentice. Ash's answer:
Whenever I watch this episode I never think "wow, that Ethan guy sure knows a lot about Pokémon!" He knows a lot about Magnemite in particular, sure, and maybe even about Electric-Type Pokémon in general. But having Ash revere this guy he barely knows as some kind of Pokémon expert based solely on what we see of him in this episode is an odd choice, to say the least.
The final lines of the episode:
The English dub has been avoiding telling its audience that Yuzu Gym is considered to actually be in Big City, using the much more generic "headed toward the next gym" instead.
Side Note
I want to bring up the Dr. Ookido lecture from the end of this episode because it presents a bunch of fascinating details about this week's Pokémon, Spear, that I haven't seen anywhere else:
I looked around and couldn't find terms like "Soldier Spear (Beedrill)" used anywhere else so I think this is information exclusive to this animated series...? Regardless of where it comes from it's an interesting collection of tidbits that dub viewers unfortunately aren't privy to since 4Kids always cuts all these post-episode segments out.
This page was last updated on March 1st, 2024
Episode Stats:
Japanese Episode 101: "The Coil of the Great Plains!"
American Episode 245: "Get Along Little, Pokémon"
Pokémon Dare Da? Coil (Japan), Chansey (English)
Dr. Ookido's Pokémon Course: Spear
Japanese Air Date: June 17th, 1999
American Air Date: April 29th, 2000
Important Characters: Ford (Ethan)
Important Places: Yuzu Gym (Trovita Gym)
Satoshi and
his friends have started to make their way through the arid plains of
Mandarin Island on the way to the next gym. A sudden thunderstorm
brings the arrival of about a dozen Coil, Electric-Type Pokémon
they soon learn are working with a man named Ford to absorb the storm’s
energy and store it so it can later be used to power the towns and
cities on the island. Satoshi and his friends join Ford on one of his
hunts for electricity but their experience is soon interrupted by an
attack from the Rocket trio. The Pokémon thieves are eventually
sent blasting off but it's not a flawless victory as both Ford and his
Pokémon sustain injuries that make it difficult for them to
continue. The team then gets word that a nearby city just had its power
go out and so Satoshi takes the initiative to go on ahead and deliver
the Coil to the city himself. Satoshi and the Coil are attacked by the
Rocket trio a second time but thanks to Satoshi's quick thinking, as
well as Pikachu's determination to not give up, he’s able to guide
Ford's Coil to work together to send the trio packing once again. The
completion of the delivery of Electric-Type Pokémon restores
power to the city, ending the Coil's mission for the day. Once Kasumi
and the others catch back up with Satoshi the three of them bid
farewell to Ford before continuing on their journey to the Yuzu Gym.
Thoughts
After roughly 20 episodes or so of seeing Satoshi, Kasumi, and Kenji riding around on the back of a Laplace it's actually kind of refreshing to see our heroes traveling by foot again. Now don't get me wrong, I actually like the Laplace stuff, especially since that visual really helps set the Orange Islands apart from literally every other region we see in this show, but it's also nice to see the show kind of return to basics like this for a few episodes.
Once the novelty of that wears off, however, I'm quickly reminded that oh yeah, "The Coil of the Great Plains!" is actually kind of a chore to sit through. It has some cute moments here and there -- Satoshi and Kasumi not being able to tell all the Coil apart, the hilariously stupid image of the Rocket trio rubbing plastic sheets on their bodies to conduct static electricity, etc. -- but the majority of this episode just feels like a chore to sit through. I think it might be one of my least favorite Orange Islands episodes ever...? I think the most interesting part of this whole thing is the fact that Ford is voiced by Kinryuu Arimoto (有本欽隆), the man who would go on to be the first voice of Whitebeard in One Piece before his death in 2019, but even having a big star like that isn't really enough to make this episode any fun.
But at the very least "The Coil of the Great Plains!" is a fantastic example of how my beloved Rocket trio can be a useful metric to help determine whether or not the episode's going to be any good or not. In this episode we get not one, but two (!!!) attacks from the Rocket trio, with two motto sequences (though one is abbreviated) and two blast offs. A lot of people will say the fact that this episode has so much of the Rocket trio in it is what makes it so bad, but to me this episode's no good because its writer, Shinzo Fujita, just couldn't think of enough interesting things to have Ford and his Electric-Types do for the episode's 22-minute runtime. And so he just keeps throwing in the Rocket trio to help fill up airtime. The Rocket trio get a lot of hate for "sucking all the air out of an episode" and "getting in the way," but one, they do not actually exist and can therefore only do what the writers of the show make them do, and two, in a lot of cases the trio only gets as much screentime as it does because the entire rest of the episode is just so, so weak.
The 4Kids dub likes to have the overwhelming majority of Pokémon simply say their names over and over. Now there are a lot of Pokémon in the Japanese version who also just say their names, sure, but it happens far, far less in the original than it does in the English dub. This episode is a great example of what I'm talking about. All three of Ford's Pokémon make various noises -- his Coil (and Rarecoil) produce these high pitched tongue trills, Thunder barks like a dog, and the two Kentauros make cow noises -- and while the English dub keeps the cow noises it changes all the others so it's just some guy in a recording booth overly enunciating each of these Pokémon's names. "MAGNE MAGNE MAGNEMITE!" "JOLT JOLT! JOLT JOLT JOLT!" "MAG-NE-TON" It's just soooooo goofy sounding y'all. None of the Pokémon in the original are actually saying anything that sounds anywhere close to their Japanese names and so their voice clips really could have been carried over as-is with no issue whatsoever. And yet they just...aren't.
As mentioned above, Ford's Kentauros keep their Japanese voices.
Side Note
The title of the English version of this episode is supposed to be, based on official sources like Pokémon.com, "Git Along, Little Pokémon." In the actual episode itself, however, the title screen spells "Git" as "Get" and then also puts the comma in the wrong place, making the episode's title "Get Along Little, Pokémon."
Now I'm 99.999% sure these are both just unintentional typos and that the goal was to have the episode's title match what's on Pokémon.com, but it's also very funny to me to imagine someone at 4Kids cluelessly walking around the office thinking this episode is meant to be called "Get Along Little (awkward pause)...Pokémon." Was 4Kids in a rush when they did this episode or what?
Dialogue Edit
The script for this episode is like "A Way Off Day Off" where the majority of the English dialogue is actually fairly faithful to the Japanese original, at least by 4Kids standards anyway. I'm always happy to see this (less work for me!) but at the same time I have to wonder why it's only the most boring, most unimportant episodes that gets the good writer(s). Is it not possible to save that talent for the episodes people actually care about? It's like wasting Masaaki Iwane on a random filler episode and then giving an important Pokémon League episode to some less talented newbie!
Anyway, let's check out the opening narration:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| ナレーション 「オレンジリーグの次なるジム、ユズジムのあるビッグシティを目
指しサトシたちはマンダリン島の大平原を進んでいた」 |
Narrator: "Satoshi and his
friends continue to make their way through the great plains of Mandarin
Island on the way to Big City, home of his next Orange League gym
challenge at the Yuzu Gym." |
Narrator: "Bound for the next
Orange League Gym in Trovita, our heroes find themselves trekking
across the rugged desert landscape of Mandarin Island." |
The Japanese version introduces the idea that the gym in Big City isn't called the "Big City Gym," as one might expect, but is instead known as the "Yuzu Gym." The English dub does not make any such distinction; they're still referring to our heroes' destination as simply "Trovita."
After the episode's title screen we get this shot of our heroes running from the rain:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| サトシ 「あ～もう！こんなときに雨かよ」 |
Satoshi: "Oh come on! I can't
believe it's raining at a time like this!" |
Ash: "I think I'd rather be
hot and tired than wet and tired." |
| ケンジ 「早く雨宿りしないと体が冷えちゃうぞ」 |
Kenji: "We'd better hurry and
take cover or we'll catch cold." |
Ash: "I just can't believe how
fast this storm came up." |
| カスミ 「そんな場所どこに…」 |
Kasumi: "But where could we
possibly..." |
Tracey: "We better look for
cover." |
This rewrite is most likely due to the animation not matching the original dialogue. During this sequence we see Satoshi's mouth move for a while before Kenji's moves some at the end. Kasumi's mouth, meanwhile, doesn't move at all. The Japanese version just kind of ignores all this and gives Satoshi, Kenji, and Kasumi an equal amount of dialogue, regardless of whose mouth is moving at any given point in time.
The English dub fixes this by giving Ash an extra line and taking Misty's dialogue away altogether.
Ash looks up Ethan's Jolteon in his Pokédex:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| ポケモン図鑑 「サンダース、かみなりポケモン。イーブイからかみなりのいしで
進化する。怒ったり驚いたりすると全身の毛を針のように逆立てて相手を威嚇する。電気系の技が得意」 |
Pokémon Bestiary:
"Thunders, the Lighting Pokémon. It evolves from Eevee using a
Thunder Stone. When angered or frightened the hairs all over its body
stand on end like needles to intimidate its enemy. It specializes in
Electric attacks." |
Pokédex: "Jolteon, the
Lightning Pokémon. When angered or frightened, the hairs on
Jolteon's body become like needles that are fired at its opponents. It
absorbs charged atoms and can produce 10,000 volts of electricity." |
A lot of this is the same in both versions, but the 4Kids dub removes the part about using a Thunder Stone to evolve an Eevee and then adds in a part about charged atoms to help make up for it. Unlike the previous rewrite there are no lip flaps to worry about here so I'm not really sure why a change like this would have been necessary.
And then we get "Ethan":
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| フォード 「乗るんだキミたち。早く！」 |
Ford: "Well get on you three.
Hurry!" |
Ethan: "Hop in, pilgrims!
Hurry!" |
The English dub of this episode is going to give "Ethan" a lot of stereotypical cowboy type dialogue throughout the episode, delivered by an actor doing the absolute worst attempt at a Southern accent you've ever heard in your life. In the Japanese version he's just a normal sounding man speaking standard Japanese.
Side Note
For the second episode in a row we get characters with Western names in the Japanese original getting changed to different Western names for the English dub, just because.
The character-of-the-day this time around is named Ford (フォード). He's presumably named after John Ford, the director of a lot of the old Western movies from the 1930s up to around the 1960s on which this episode is inspired. 4Kids didn't like this, I guess, so they renamed the character "Ethan" after Ethan Edwards, the hero of an old Western called The Searchers that was directed by, you guessed it, John Ford.
So to put it another way, 4Kids swapped out one The Searchers reference (its director, John Ford) with a different The Searchers reference (its main character, Ethan Edwards), because...they just sort of felt like it? Because they were bored? Because God forbid we have an anime-original character actually keep its original name, even when its original name is already very localization-friendly?
Anyway, renaming him "Ethan" also causes problems because the name will later be reused for the protagonist character of the Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver games. As of the time of this writing there is only one "Ford" in all of Pokémon (this guy) but like three Ethans. So maybe it wouldn't have been a bad idea to leave the name of the character in this episode as-is in the first place?
Dialogue Edit
There are a few teeny tiny rewrites here and there (a line about it taking the Coil "2.5 seconds" to get in formation gets changed to "about 2 seconds," for example), and Ethan gets a bunch of cowboy slang peppered into his dialogue (while still saying more or less what Ford says in the original) but there's not a whole lot else to bring up rewrite-wise..
The next dialogue change I'll take a look at happens as our heroes ride their way through the plains.
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| カスミ 「えっフォードさん、ビッグシティのこと知ってるんですか？」 |
Kasumi: "Oh! Mr. Ford, do you
know about Big City?" |
Misty: "That's right, but
we're looking for the nearest town so we can rest." |
| フォード 「もちろんさ。島のことなら何でも知ってるぞ。ビッグシティまでは行
かんが途中の町までなら乗せてってやろう」 |
Ford: "Of course I do. I know
everything there is to know about this island. I can't take you all the
way to Big City but I can
drop you off at a town along the way if you'd
like." |
Ethan: "You're in luck.
That's just where I'm headed, little lady. I'd like to take you all the
way to Trovita but this old wagon don't float. " |
| サトシ 「ありがとうおじさん」 |
Satoshi: "Oh! Thank you sir!" |
Ash: "The next town will be
great, sir." |
| フォード
「おいおい”おじさん”はよしてくれ。これでもまだ若いつもりなんだ」 |
Ford: "Hey now, enough with
that 'sir' stuff. I don't think I'm that old yet." |
Ethan: "Ah, quit that "sir"
stuff, will ya? You can just call me Ethan." |
Ethan is apparently already headed toward Trovita and is also fully aware it's actually located on a separate island, two things that Ford doesn't really tell us in the original.
Music Edit
The English version features a couple of brand new pieces of background music that seem like they were created specifically for this episode. The first one, a kind of adventurous banjo song, shows up in the scene with the dialogue edit I just brought up while the second one, a more relaxed little ditty, is used in the shots of everyone relaxing right before the Rocket trio make their first appearance of the episode.
 |
 |
In both cases the Japanese version plays Track M41 from TV Anime Pocket Monsters Original Soundtrack Best 1997 - 2010 Vol. 2.
The last time 4Kids debuted new dub music ("Holiday Hi-Jynx") you could make the argument that hey, having a bunch of Christmas-themed music might come in handy for a series that's obviously going to stick around for many years to come. And I don't remember this off the top of my head but 4Kids probably did end up reusing some of that "Holiday Hi-Jynx" music for future Christmas specials, right? Regardless, the Western movie sounding music in this episode doesn't seem like it'd have the same utility to me. Does anyone know if it's been used anywhere else? Can it be used anywhere else?
Dialogue Edit
The Rocket trio makes its entrance:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| ムサシ 「やつら何にも知らないでくつろいでるわ」 |
Musashi: "Look at them
relaxing without a care in the world." |
Jessie:
"We're about to rustle up some Pokémon." |
| ニャース 「ピカチュウにコイルにサンダース…ビリビリくるやつばっかりだ
ニャ」 |
Nyarth: "Pikachu, Coil,
Thunders...why it's a gathering of electrifying Pokémon Nya." |
Meowth: "Pikachu, Magnemite,
Jolteon...that's a real power posse." |
| コジロウ 「でもオレたち電気なら浴び慣れてるもんね」 |
Kojirou: "Well we don't have
anything to worry about. We've gotten so used to being bathed in
electricity after all." |
James: "Just wait till we
bring all of them back to the
boss." |
| ムサシ 「それって、ジャリボーイのピカチュウに負けっぱなしってことなんじゃ
ないの？」 |
Musashi: "But that's
only because we keep losing to that twerp's Pikachu." |
Jessie: "Oh, we'll bring them
to the boss, but after we get
a little currency out of their current." |
| ニャース 「ニャッ」 |
Nyarth: "Nya!" |
Meowth: "Ha!" |
| コジロウ 「そうとも言うかも」 |
Kojirou: "Well when you put it
that way..." |
James: "What do you mean,
Jess?" |
| ムサシ 「とにかく！あのコイルたちをかっつり奪って電気エネルギーを我が手に
すれば大もうけは間違いなし！」 |
Musashi: "Anyway! If we can
round up all those Coil and make their electricity ours then we'll be
rolling in the cash!" |
Jessie: "Listen! If we can
steal those Magnemite we can cash in by selling their electricity. We
just have to figure out how." |
| ニャース 「電気を制する者は世界を制するんだニャ！」 |
Nyarth: "They say he who has
control of the power has control of the world Nya!" |
Meowth: "Yeah, and when we do
we can charge for a charge." |
| コジロウ 「早速行動開始だぜ」 |
Kojirou: "Come on, let's get
to work!" |
James: "Come on, let's get to
work!" |
And we were doing so well too! For some reason the English dub rewrites the overwhelming majority of the trio's dialogue here, something that will unfortunately become the norm throughout the rest of this episode:
Ethan gets a call on his wagon phone (???):
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| ジュンサー 「さっきの雷の影響で町の発電所が故障してしまったんです。今はこ
のポケモンセンターの小型発電機から電気を分けてもらっているんですがいつまでもつか…あっ…」 |
Junsar: "The town's power
plant's down because of the lightning storm from before. At the moment
a small generator at this Pokémon Center's supplying power but
we
have no idea how long it'll las...ah!" |
Officer Jenny: "Lightning hit
the power plant and we haven't had electricity for almost a day. Right
now we're powering the whole town off of the Pokémon Center's
Magnemite, but they won't last very much longer. They're running low.
Huh?" |
| フォード 「何だ？どうしたんだ？」 |
Ford: "What is it? What's
happening?" |
Ethan: "What is it? What's
happening?" |
| ジョーイ 「大変よ。うちのコイルたちもオーバーヒートしちゃったわ」 |
Joy: "This is bad! Our Coil
have overheated as well." |
Nurse Joy: "Officer Jenny, the
Magnemite are completely out of power. What do we do?" |
The statement "we haven't had electricity for almost a day" is a 4Kids invention.
Our heroes react to news of the blackout:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| フォード 「こいつはマズいことになったぞ」 |
Ford: "They're in big
trouble..." |
Ethan: "Sure sounds like
they're in a heap of trouble." |
| カスミ 「このまま停電が続けば町は大混乱になっちゃうわ」 |
Kasumi: "If this blackout
continues the town'll be thrown into a big panic." |
Misty: "What happens if they
don't have telephones or electricity for the hospitals?" |
| サトシ
「早くなんとかしなきゃ！」 |
Satoshi: "We've got to do
something fast!" |
Ash: "We've got to do
something fast!" |
I just love, love, love how Ash refuses to even dignify Misty's boneheaded question with a response. "Hey Ash, what do you think'll happen if a hospital doesn't have the ability to do the very thing it was built for?" "Ugh why are you still talking OK EVERYBODY LET'S GO GO GO!!!"
As you can see from the transcript above Kasumi has a much better grasp of what's going on in the moment than her English language counterpart does.
Eyecatch
We've made it to the episode's eyecatch which means we lose yet another exclusive piece of artwork from the Japanese version. This time we can see that the Coil's side magnets are bent, meaning the Coil in the original eyecatch is meant to be Ford's Coil No. 6.
 |
 |
The English dub decides to go with stock artwork of a Chansey instead.
Dialogue Edit
Jessie taunts Ethan:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| ムサシ 「ミスターカウボーイ～あんたのコイルたちはあたしたちが頂いたわ
よ！」 |
Musashi: "We'll be taking
those Coil off your hands, Mr. Cowboy." |
Jessie: "We surely are much
obliged for all these mighty fine Magnemite, Mr. Cowpoke." |
Having Musashi, voiced by the one and only Ms. Megumi Hayashibara, calling someone Mister Cowboy (in English!) in the most Faye Valentine-y voice possible sure does sound like a Cowboy Bebop reference to me! Unfortunately this little Easter egg doesn't carry over into the English dub.
From the battle that ensues until the Rocket trio's second attack there really isn't much in the way of dialogue edits. The dub's replacement music and voice acting make the audio side of things not so great but at least the dialogue's faithful for a change!
The next changes I'll bring up also, surprise surprise, involve the Rocket trio. This first one occurs during Jessie's, James', and Meowth's second appearance:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| サトシ 「ロケット団！またお前たちか！」 |
Satoshi: "The Rocket-Dan! You
again!?" |
Ash: "I thought we got rid of
you!" |
| ニャース 「どうかニャ？さっき開発に成功したコイル捕獲マシンの威力は。これ
は下敷きを利用して作った静電気を増幅する省エネマシンなんだニャ」 |
Nyarth: "How are you liking
the Coil capture machine we just finished inventing Nya? It's an
eco-friendly device that amplifies the static electricity conducted by
these plastic sheets Nya." |
Meowth: "You did, kid, but
those Magnemite are so magnetic we just couldn't stay away. Our new
electromagnet machine uses static electricity to attract those juicy,
jolty little Pokémon." |
| ムサシ 「おまけに持ち運び便利なポータブルタイプよ」 |
Musashi: "And on top of that
it comes in a convenient portable type!" |
Jessie: "It's portable, and
it's environmentally friendly, too." |
| コジロウ
「我らの優秀な科学力思い知ったか！」 |
Kojirou: "Behold our amazing
scientific power!" |
James: "And all this rubbing
is simply marvelous for the scalp." |
My favorite part of this is James' claim that rubbing a piece of plastic on your head is "marvelous for the scalp," something I think is probably absolutely not even the tiniest bit true.
Also, Meowth referring to other Pokémon as "juicy" is basically the exact same thing as if you or I used the phrase "juicy, jolty little humans," so that's pretty horrifying!
The Rocket trio chase after Ash:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| ニャース 「あ～！コイル！待つニャー |
Nyarth: "Ah! Coil! Wait up
Nya!" |
Meowth: "Wait you little brat!
Come back here!" |
| ムサシ 「待～て！待て待て待て！」 |
Musashi: "Come back! Come back
come back come back!" |
Jessie: "We need more power
James!" |
| コジロウ 「無駄な抵抗をやめろ！」 |
Kojirou: "It's no use
resisting!" |
James: "I'm rubbing as fast as
I can!" |
I don't know what it is about the Rocket trio that compels 4Kids to rewrite their dialogue so much, even in episodes where almost everything else is left as-is. The trio sometimes does have some punny or otherwise difficult to translate banter to translate, sure, but nine times out of ten the stuff they're saying is perfectly normal dialogue like you see above.
The Rocket duo is asked to increase its output:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| ニャース 「コニャ！ぼけっとしてないで静電気フルパワーニャ」 |
Nyarth: "Hey Nya! Get your
heads outta the clouds and give me all the static electricity you've
got Nya." |
Meowth: "Well don't just stand
there! Make with the static and help me out here! Hurry!" |
| コジロウ・ム
サシ 「ん？」 |
Kojirou and Musashi: "Huh?" |
Jessie and James: "Huh?" |
| ムサシ 「よっしゃ！任しとけ」 |
Musashi: "Alright! You can
count on us!" |
Jessie: "All right, let's give
them all we got." |
| コジロウ 「エンジン全開だぜ」 | Kojirou: "All engines, full
speed ahead!" |
James: "We'll go head to head." |
4Kids also seems to have this weird fixation on the fact that James is rubbing the plastic sheet on his head, as evident by how they keep having him bring it up every chance they get. I mean I get it, it is a funny visual, but do we really need to bring it up three times in the space of like 30 seconds?
After Ash saves the town (we're almost at the end of the episode already!) Ethan invites Ash to join him as his apprentice. Ash's answer:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| サトシ 「そう言ってもらえるとうれしいけどオレ、どうしてもオレンジリーグに
出場したいんだ。強いポケモントレーナーたちに出会ってもっともっと修行したいんだ」 |
Satoshi: "I'm flattered, but I
really have my heart set on competing in the Orange League. I want to
meet other strong Pokémon Trainers and train even more." |
Ash: "That's really nice,
Ethan, and thanks for the offer, but I have to go compete in the Orange
League. And maybe someday I'll get to know as much about Pokémon
as you do." |
| フォード 「ならしかたないか。頑張れよサトシ君」 |
Ford: "Well it was worth a
try. Good luck out there, Satoshi." |
Ethan: "And much, much more.
Goodbye...amigo." |
| サトシ 「ありがとうフォードさん」 |
Satoshi: "Thank you, Mr. Ford." |
Ash: "Goodbye...friend." |
Whenever I watch this episode I never think "wow, that Ethan guy sure knows a lot about Pokémon!" He knows a lot about Magnemite in particular, sure, and maybe even about Electric-Type Pokémon in general. But having Ash revere this guy he barely knows as some kind of Pokémon expert based solely on what we see of him in this episode is an odd choice, to say the least.
The final lines of the episode:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
English
Dub |
| ナレーション 「こうして大平原で暮らすコイルと共に町のピンチを救ったサトシ
たちはユズジムのあるビッグシティへと旅だったのである」 |
Narrator: "And that's how
Satoshi and his friends saved the town with the help of the Coil of the
plains. They've now set out to Big City where the Yuzu Gym is waiting." |
Narrator: "After beating the
bad guys and helping to save the day Ash and his friends hit the trail
once more, headed toward the next gym and their next adventure." |
The English dub has been avoiding telling its audience that Yuzu Gym is considered to actually be in Big City, using the much more generic "headed toward the next gym" instead.
Side Note
I want to bring up the Dr. Ookido lecture from the end of this episode because it presents a bunch of fascinating details about this week's Pokémon, Spear, that I haven't seen anywhere else:
| Japanese
(original) |
Japanese
(translated) |
| オーキド博士 「スピア―の特徴は両手とお尻の大きな毒針じゃがこれは自分たち
の巣を守るために発達したものだといわれておる。リーダーを中心として餌を捕まえてくる兵隊スピア―、子どもを守る子守スピア―、巣を回りをパトロールす
る警備スピアーなどのグループに分かれて集団生活をしておるんじゃ。まさに人間顔負けの社会を作っておるわけじゃな！」 |
Dr. Ookido:
"Spear are characterized by the poison stingers on both their legs and
thoraxes and it's said those were developed to protect their own nests.
Spear live in colonies and are divided into groups, with the leader in
the center, followed by other groups such as Soldier Spear who go
out to catch food, Caregiver Spear who protect the young, and Security
Spear who go out and patrol the area. They really do have an advanced
society that puts us
humans to shame!" |
I looked around and couldn't find terms like "Soldier Spear (Beedrill)" used anywhere else so I think this is information exclusive to this animated series...? Regardless of where it comes from it's an interesting collection of tidbits that dub viewers unfortunately aren't privy to since 4Kids always cuts all these post-episode segments out.
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