Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 134:  "The Valley of Lizardon! Until We Meet Again!!"
English Episode 329:  "Charizard's Burning Ambitions"
Pokemon Dare Da?   Lizardon (Japanese), Sunflora (English)
Orchid-Hakase Pokemon Lecture:  Nidoqueen
Japanese Air Date:  February 10th, 2000
American Air Date:  February 3rd, 2001
Important Characters:  Sieg (Liza), Charla (Lisa-chan)
Important Places:  Lizafic Valley (Charicific Valley)

On the way to Hiwada Town, Satoshi and his friends talk about how strong his Lizardon is and how it's nearly unbeatable in battle.  Suddenly, a woman named Sieg and her Lizardon appear before the group!  She had heard rumors that a trainer who had just defeated the Kikyou City Gym Leader with a Lizardon and deduces that Satoshi is that trainer.  After he confirms her suspicions, she invites him to come visit her at the Lizafic Valley.  The Lizafic Valley is a place where Lizardon are raised to be as strong as possible, so Satoshi, wanting his pokemon to train there, accepts.  She decides to make Satoshi ride his Lizardon to the valley and becomes dismayed when she finds that Satoshi's pokemon is only barely able to keep up!  When it finally arrives, it's greeted by many other Lizardon who all outclass it in size and strength!  After trying to go up against a few of the valley's Lizardon and losing horribly, Sieg kicks Satoshi's pokemon out and tells it not to come back.  That night, the determined pokemon keeps itself submerged in water to strengthen its body.  The next morning, Lizardon hops out of the water to take care of one of the Rocket-Dan's mechas.  Once they're out of the way, Sieg acknowledges the tenacity of Satoshi's pokemon and decides to let it in after all.  With a heavy heart, Satoshi orders his pokemon to stay behind and become stronger.  Not giving himself a chance to change his mind, Satoshi pushes ahead on his journey through the Jouto region.

---

Thoughts
One of the problems with the original Gold & Silver games is the fact that you can bring in your super leveled up team from the older games fairly early on.  This gave players the potential to pretty much plow through the second half of Jouto with a party of overpowered monsters and eliminates any sort of challenge that would have otherwise been present.  It's kind of like what Satoshi does in the early part of Jouto.

I really like the fact that the cast, no doubt acting as mouthpieces for the writers themselves, express how unfair it is for Satoshi to be going after beginning trainers with a powerhouse like Lizardon.  It's as if they recognized that they've given him a pokemon that's too strong and that it will have to go if they want to restore any semblance of balance to his team.  Finding an opponent that could actually make Lizardon sweat a little bit was no doubt becoming too difficult, so it got the boot.  And I'm OK with that.  The writers had pretty much exhausted Satoshi's Lizardon as a character anyway, and it would have most likely just continue to stagnate if it had stayed onboard. 

This episode doesn't really break any ground storytelling wise, especially since we've had the "there's always somebody stronger" message crammed down our throats so many times before.  But, I still like it.  I think it makes up for its cliched plot with that really powerful final scene and by the fact that this isn't a typical "help a character of the day fix some problem" or a "let's debut a new pokemon" - type episode.  I also enjoyed seeing the Rocket-Dan cheering Lizardon on, especially after already seeing all of Diamond & Pearl and realizing that the way they rooted for Satoshi's fire-type starter in that region sort of got its start here.

This one also stands out because it's an early Jouto episode that doesn't debut any new pokemon.  And other than the image that flashed on the screen when the Rocket trio was counting the brats' pokemon, the only Jouto pokemon to even show up in this episode was Togepi.  And even then, Togepi sort of feels like a Kanto pokemon to me since it debuted so early in the region.  No, this episode exists to correct some issues with Satoshi's team and help get the adventure back on track and not to advertise the new games.  I wish we had more episodes like this.

The dub...dear God, the dub.  With the million rewrites this episode has, I wonder if 4Kids actually wasn't given a copy of the original script and was instead forced to guess what the characters are saying, Samurai Pizza Cats  style.  As you'll see below, the company rewrites a ton of lines, most of which were rather straightforward and not at all difficult to translate into English.  This episode also made me realize one of the (many) reasons I don't care for Lisa Ortiz as a voice actor:  she also has this really annoying tendency to speak as if every word in the script is written in bold italics.  If she'd stop trying to act so much and just talk like a normal human fucking being, her performances would be so, so much better.

All the Lizardon in this episode keep their Japanese voices.

Side Note
There are two things about this episode I thought was worth mentioning that didn't really belong in any other part of this essay.

The Japanese title of this episode may come from the film Mata Au Hi Made (また逢う日まで), or "Until the Day We Meet Again."  I say "may" because while the title of the movie is used as the title of this episode, nothing else about the two really matches up.  The movie is about a young couple that's torn apart when the man gets drafted to help fight in World War II while this episode of Pocket Monsters is about a boy parting with his friend.  I guess the very general idea of being separated from someone you care about is there, but "stay here with other pokemon and get strong" is quite different from "I'm leaving to fight in a war, and I might die."

And then there's the character who debuted in this episode.  Sieg (written out in Japanese as ジーク) seems to come from an epic poem from Germany named Nibelungenlied.  It's about a dragon slayer named Siegfried, and...well actually, that's pretty much where the similarities end.  Unless, of course, there's some episode in which Sieg bathes herself in dragon blood to gain invulnerability or uses her invisibility cloak to sneak into the bedroom of the queen of Iceland and beat the crap out of her that I don't know about.  MAKE THIS HAPPEN, FAN ARTISTS!!!!

Dialogue Edit
Team Rocket's the victim of a lot of this episode's rewrites.  First up,


Originally, Musashi kind of breaks the fourth wall by telling Nyasu that their problem is that they're going up against the increasingly popular Pikachu.  Nyasu then denies this, saying that it's their lack of strength, not popularity, that's causing them to fail so often.

Next, James counts the twerps' Pokémon:

James:  "We do have a lot of nerve, but the twerps have a lot more Pokémon.  There's one...two...three...four...five...six seven eight...nine...ten...eleven twelve."

Kojirou starts to count but kind of trails off by the time he reaches the number seven.  In the dub, James makes it all the way to twelve, which is kind of ridiculous since there are actually fifteen pokemon onscreen.

After counting their own Pokémon and deciding that they lack the strength to take on Ash and the others:

Jessie:  "How can we win against something so big?  So scary?"
Meowth:  "What would the Boss say if he knew we was afraid of Charizard?
Jessie:  "I know exactly what he'd say."
James:  "Me too."
Meowth:  "He'd say:"
Team Rocket:  "You're fired!"

Nobody mentions Sakaki-sama in the Japanese version.  Instead, they talk about how popular Lizardon is (I guess they can't stop attacking that fourth wall?) and how, long story short, it's just too strong for them to defeat.  At the end, the three of them gather together and declare Lizardon "unfair."

We're only just now making it past the episode's title screen.

Later, Ash and his friends meet Liza.  Pretty much every line here is a rewrite, so I thought it'd be easier to put everything into chart form.

Japanese Version	English Version
Takeshi:  ""Yahoo~!"  See?  "An echo."	Brock:  ""Hello~!"  Hear that?"
Satoshi:  "You're telling me an echo can say something like "unfair"?"	Ash:  "I think I liked your echo better than the first one."
Sieg:  "Normally it can't, little boy."	Liza:  "So do I.  And "hello" to you, too."
Satoshi:  ""Boy"?"	Ash:  "Huh?"
Sieg:  "No matter how you look at it, the three of you are just a boy, girl, and young man."	Liza:  "I couldn't make it out exactly, but it sounded like someone was yelling "no fair.""
Takeshi:  "Call me Takeshi, not young man, please!  The echo says "yahoo!"  Could you tell me your e-mail address?"	Brock:  "Oh, that couldn't have been what they were saying, Miss.  Because you're very fair!  You're the fairest of them all~!"
Sieg:  "I'm not an echo, so I can't answer you back when you shout "yahoo" at me.  Besides, the echoes here and the word "unfair" don't sound anything alike.  Here, I'll show you.  "Lizardon~!"	Liza:  "Well, that's very nice of you to say, I suppose, but I know I heard three voices yelling something out.  You can hear things in these canyons for miles because of the echoes.  Here, I'll show you what I mean.  "Oh Charla~!""

There's about a million rewrites going on during this exchange.

Satoshi's first line here had Satoshi questioning how an echo was able to produce a new word like "unfair."  Sieg steps in and tells Satoshi that he shouldn't be able to under normal circumstances.  During this line, she refers to our heroes as shounen ("boy"), shoujo ("girl") and oniisan (in this context, "young man") and will continue to use these for the rest of the episode.

Finally, Sieg calls out to Lizardon in general, not to her Lisa-chan specifically.  This is why you see multiple plumes of fire emerging from behind the mountains instead of just one.  If Charla had produced the fire we see there all by herself, she'd have to have three heads or something.  And that'd be rather terrifying.

This two part edit comes after hearing Liza's offer to go with her to the Charicific Valley.  First:

Brock:  "We'd all be delighted to come, right Ash?"

Takeshi doesn't say Satoshi's name in the original.  Which leads us to the second part:

Liza:  "Brock and Misty can ride in back.  Just hop right on into the basket."

If I was Misty, I'd be freaked out if a woman I just met somehow already knew my name.

Sieg simply refers to Kasumi and Takeshi as shoujo and oniisan again.  In fact, the Lizardon trainer never refers to anybody by their real name throughout the entire episode.  I don't know if this is because she doesn't know their names (nobody ever introduces themselves to her) or if she just thinks so little of them that she doesn't think it's worth the effort to remember them.  But whatever the reason is, this little character quirk is lost in the dub.

Also, she refers to her Lizardon as her kawaii Risa-chan (かわいいリサちゃん), or her "cute Lisa-chan" throughout the episode.  The closest the dub gets to this is when they have Liza call her Charizard "my little Charla" in the second half of the episode, but the rest of the time they just kind of ignore this.

Next, Liza tells Ash to follow her to the Charicific Valley.  Again, there were too many rewrites here for me to not do a table:

Japanese Version	English Version
Sieg:  "Follow us on your Lizardon.  Let's go."	Liza:  "Fly on your Charizard, and just follow me.  C'mon, Charla!"
Satoshi:  "Wait a second!  You want me to ride on Lizardon...?"	Ash:  "Hey!  Wait a second!  How do I do that!?"
Sieg:  "You're a Lizardon user, aren't you?  What other choice do you have than to command your Lizardon to carry you?"	Liza:  "You mean to tell me you're a Charizard Trainer and you've never even gone flying on your Charizard yet?"
Satoshi:  "Now that you mention it..."	Ash:  "Well, I've been kind of busy..."
Pikachu:  "Pika..."	Pikachu:  "Pika..."
Satoshi:  "Alright!  Lizardon, I choose you!"	Ash:  "But...it can't be that hard!  Go!"
(Lizardon lets out a roar)	(Charizard lets out a roar)
Satoshi:  "Lizardon, can you give me a ride?"	Ash:  "Charizard...I need you to give me a ride."
Sieg:  "It doesn't want to...it hasn't been raised to let people ride on it, has it?"	Liza:  "It won't let him ride...What's wrong there!?  Ash too heavy for ya?"

To recap:  no, Satoshi never says that he's never ridden on his Lizardon before in the Japanese version.  Also, Liza thinks Ash is fat, for some reason.

On the ride to the valley:

Originally, Sieg tells Kasumi that she's only interested in finding out what kind of Lizardon "that boy's" (Satoshi's) Lizardon is.  She doesn't mention thinking that they love pokemon or reassure Kasumi that they're all safe with her the way she does in the dub.

As the Rocket trio is sliding their way into the valley, somehow:


In the Japanese version, Musashi quotes the first line of the Karl Busse poem Über den Bergen, or "Over the Mountains."  I guess because the trio's sliding down the side of one during this scene?  Anyway, the line she says is Yama no anata no sora to'oku Rizafikku Baree ga aru to iu (山のあなたの空遠くリザフィック・バレーがあるという), or "Far away on the other side of the mountain is where the Lizafic Valley is said to be."  The line in the original poem (well, the Japanese translation of the original poem, anyway) is Yama no anata no sora to'oku "saiwasi" sumu to hito no iu (山のあなたの空遠く「幸い」住むと人のいう), or "Far away on the other side of the mountain is where happiness is said to be."  So, as you can see, Musashi fudges it around a bit.

Arriving at the valley:


The "Charizard have lived in peace for thousands of years" and the "greatest Charizard in Pokémon history" parts are both inventions of the dub.  In the Japanese version, Sieg only says that the Lizardon in the valley are seen as being like the mamori gami (守り神), or "guardian deities" of the area.  Additionally, Sieg is finished with her little speech before the end of the pan-up shot of the main gate of the valley, but in the dub, Liza doesn't stop talking until her Charla actually lands.

A few sentences later,


Again, the dub oversells the valley.  Originally, the "best in the whole world" part is never said by Sieg.

Once Ash and his Charizard finally catch up with everyone:


Sieg doesn't put down Satoshi as a trainer in the original version.  Instead, she warns him against letting his Lizardon shooting out fire randomly and says that if he's not careful, he'll get burned.  A few seconds later, that very thing happens.

I'm surprised 4Kids didn't have Liza say something along the lines of "if you play with fire, you're gonna get burnt!," since it's exactly the horrible kind of line you'd expect them to write.  "Comments like that burn me up!" is a nice try, but it's not quite as punny as I've come to expect from them.

We're now into the second half of the episode!


Yeah...no.  Sieg tells Satoshi that Lisa-chan is her cute Lizardon a few times, but she never says that she raised it since it was just a Hitokage.  It's possible, yes, but it's not something that's supposed to be confirmed here.

Cut -- 2 seconds
Satoshi's Lizardon gets hit in the face after breathing fire on the most gentle Lizardon in the valley.  The actual hit got cut from the dub and replaced with a full screen impact star from later in the episode.


Satoshi's Lizardon gets hit in a similar way later on, but that time the impact star we see in the English version is also there in the Japanese version.  The Japanese animators are a bit inconsistent when it comes to using these impact stars, so this edit, while regrettable, does make things at least a little bit more uniform than they were originally.

Dialogue Edit
Ash's Charizard refuses to quit!


Satoshi tells Lizardon that he'll work with it to help it become stronger.  Ash doesn't make a similar promise.

After Charizard gets smacked again and again:


In the Japanese version, Sieg says that she understands how Satoshi's pokemon feels but that it really is no use for it to continue like that.  In the dub, she's afraid that Ash is the litigious type?

Next, Team Rocket looks at their giant bug-catching robot:


This is one of the few understandable dialogue edits in the episode as it involves two untranslatable puns.

Originally, Musashi wonders who in the world decided to make a bug-catching robot to go up against a Lizardon.  The way you say "who in the world" in Japanese is doko no doitsu (どこのどいつ) which, as you can see, is written out entirely in hiragana.  Change the doitsu part from hiragana to katakana, however, and you end up with ドイツ, or the Japanese way of saying "Germany."  Musashi, having fun with the fact that doitsu and doitsu are homonyms, throws in the word itaria (イタリア), or "Italy," for good measure.  Kojirou decides to join in on the fun and suggests the mecha came from (オランダ), or Holland instead.

This is all ignored in the dub.  Also, 4Kids gives Kojirou's line to Meowth, for some reason.

After Musashi's next line, Kojirou kind of laughs all of this off (he doesn't say anything about buying it online the way he does in the dub) and Nyasu says that they should just mushi it.  In Japanese, the word for bug, mushi (虫), sounds identical to the word for "ignore that," mushi (無視).  So, Nyasu is playing with the fact that the word for "bug" (as in the bug-catching robot before them) and the word for "ignore" sound the same.

Again, none of this could have been translated, so 4Kids just rewrote it instead.

After Liza tells Charizard to stop pounding on the gate:


Musashi is originally upset that Sieg seems to have tricked Lizardon into thinking it had a chance and getting its hopes up before turning it away.  Kojirou asks if Musashi's so upset because something similar to this happened in her past, prompting Nyasu to suggest that someone Musashi had a crush on back in the day spurned her in a similar way.  Musashi responds to her teammates' prodding questions by beating them up.

Also, Jessie, Liza did let Ash's Charizard battle.  Several times, actually.

As the gate's closing:


Sieg was actually talking to Satoshi, telling him that Lizardon will be OK as long as the flame on its tail doesn't go out.  After all, it's been a while since this show's gone over this fact, right?  This warning here is also the reason a lot of the shots throughout the rest of the episode are close-ups of Lizardon's flame.  The dub replaces Sieg's reminder with a lesson about respecting one's limitations.

As Team Rocket's crying:


Nyasu's line in the original is "Are you guys bringing up that old story again," referring to the line 4Kids rewrote earlier in the episode.

Later that night, Meowth translates what Charizard's saying to itself.  After that scene:


Originally, Kojirou's line is kokoro ni taiyou (心に太陽), an idiomatic phrase that roughly means "keep hope in your heart."  Literally, however, it means "the sun of your heart."  Nyasu decides to continue this astrological theme by saying "...and tonight's a full moon!" 

The English language doesn't have a phrase similar to kokoro ni taiyou, so Meowth referencing the moon all of a sudden like that would seem random.

The following morning, the Rocket trio embark on their mission.  Practically every line here got rewritten.

Japanese Version	English Version
Musashi:  "Let's go ahead this morning full of energy!"	Jessie:  "Rise and shine!  Rise and shine!"
Kojirou:  "Beating even one Lizardon is impossible for us!"	James:  "We helped Charizard make it through the night."
Nyasu:  "And it can probably destroy this mecha!"	Meowth:  "Now we'll help it stand up and fight!"
Musashi:  "The Lizardon who wants to become stronger has the heart of a man!"	Jessie:  "Charizard's determination to succeed is an example for us all."
Kojirou:  "Though we don't really know if it's a man or a woman."	James:  "The least we can do is help a fellow loser."
Nyasu:  "At any rate, the Rocket-Dan's been captivated by you!"	Meowth:  "Yeah, but we're gonna act like we ain't helpin' 'em."
Musashi:  "When it comes to someone who's captivated us..."	Jessie:  "What the twerps don't know won't hurt them."
Kojirou:  "...we don't care if we're fighting for "justice" or "evil.""	James:  "Now let's put Robot Boy to work."

I personally liked the "we don't really know if it's a man or a woman" bit (remember, the romance between Lizardon and Lisa-chan hasn't become a "thing" yet), but the dub did away with it.  I also like how the Japanese version doesn't beat us over the head with the Rocket trio's plan the way the dub does.

After Charizard delivers the final blow:

Japanese Version	English Version
Musashi:  "It's just as we planned."	Jessie:  "It's gonna destroy us."
Nyasu:  "Just as we planned nya."	Meowth:  "Isn't that great?"
Kojirou:  "By doing this, you're preserving your honor as a man."	James:  "You have to admire that Charizard."
Nyasu:  "Get stronger, Lizardon."	Meowth:  "It's scrappy, just like us."
Kojirou:  "It gives us a good feeling to not tell anyone that we're doing this!"	James:  "I hope you reach your goal, Charizard!"
Musashi:  "However, we are the Rocket-Dan..."	Jessie:  "Your friends should be impressed, because"
Rocket-Dan:  "And, just as we thought, this is clearly..."	Team Rocket:  "We're blasting off again~!"
Rocket-Dan:  "A bad feeling~!"	(silence)

The Japanese version includes this idea about the villains of the series not really liking how un-villainous they're being in this episode.  None of this doubt is there in the dub.

Also, when the trio actually blasts off, their mouths move but no sound comes out in the English version.

Now that they're taken care of, Ash tells Charizard to stay behind with the others:


Satoshi tells Lizardon that the path ahead for it isn't with him, but with the other Lizardon (リザードン、お前の行き先はこっちじゃない。あっちだ。).  The dub gives the same general feel but adds a "lot of things to learn" thing in there for some reason.

In the very next line:


Here, Satoshi tells Lizardon to become stronger. 


The first and fifth sentences here were both added by the dub.

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