Japanese Episode
AG 158







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Dogasu's Backpack | Episode Comparisons | Battle Frontier

Episode AG 158
Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode AG 158:  "A Time Traveling Haruka!!"
American Episode 428: "Time Warp Heals All Wounds
"
Japanese Air Date:  December 22nd, 2005
American Air Date:  October 14th, 2006
Important Characters:  Kuni (Edna), Kumiko (Katrina), Isao (Jonathan)

While on the way to the Battle Tube, Haruka's pokemon egg starts to glow.  After taking it by a nearby Pokemon Center, the young Coordinator's Zenigame goes missing!  While searching for her lost pokemon, she comes across an old train station.  There, she reunites with her pokemon and meets an elderly woman named Kuni.  She tells Haruka that she's waiting for someone before her granddaughter arrives and asks her to return home.  Once Kuni leaves, the granddaughter, Kumiko, tells Haruka that Kuni is waiting for her husband.  She tells her that many years ago, he had left her grandmother behind to study medicine.  Tragically, he passed away in an accident, but Kuni refuses to believe the reports and continues to wait for him.  Later that night, Haruka returns to the train station and finds Nyasu gazing at the moon.  Suddenly, Haruka's Zenigame finds a pendant on the ground!  The pendant, which belongs to Kuni, begins to emit a strange light.  The next thing they know, Haruka and Nyasu have traveled back in time!  They immediately find Kumiko's grandfather, Isao, so they decide to change history by helping Kuni reach him in time to stop him from leaving.  Haruka finds a hot air balloon and has her Zenigame use its Ice Beam technique to turn the rain into snow!  The snow delays the train, enabling Kuni to catch up to her beloved.  She tells Isao that she's pregnant, so he decides to stay in the town after all!  Now that Haruka and Nyasu have altered the past, the two return to the present, where Satoshi and the others inform Haruka that her egg is hatching.  When she returns to the Pokemon Center, her egg hatches into an Eevee!  Now that she' s set things right in the past, Haruka picks up her new pokemon and rejoins Satoshi on his path to the Battle Tube.


Thoughts
Y'know, I really hated "Celebi and Joy" because of how screwed up the whole time traveling thing was.  You just can't go into the past and prevent someone's death without completely effing the present...there's no way. 

Having said that...this episode completely sucks in comparison.

God, where do I start...first of all, the biggest WTF thing about this episode is how the hell Haruka and Nyasu go back in time in the first place?  The popular anime magazine Newtype releases the newest episode titles about a month before they air, so we all knew that there was going to be a time traveling episode shortly after the episode with the Pokemon Ranger and Celebi.  So the logical conclusion is that there would be a three-parter involving Pokemon Rangers Celebi and Haruka going back in time (and, for some reason, a ninja school...).  But noooooo...the little fairy pokemon is nowhere to be seen.  Instead, they go back in time through a freakin' pendant which has, apparently, been sitting on a railroad track for decades without anyone noticing.  And THEN, if that's not enough, the pendant just conveniently brings everyone back as soon as they finish the universe-destroying task they set out to do. 

Another thing that bugged me was how Zenigame can just make it snow by using an Ice Beam at the sky.  Even more stupid was Nyasu's line that goes something like "we're almost at the height we need to be."  How the hell would you know, Nyasu!?  I mean, I know that Zenigame is supposed to be the Pikachu of Haruka's team, but giving it the ability to alter weather puts it on a Dragon Ball Z level.  Just give it yellow hair and an orange gi and you've got the newest member of the Son family.

And then there's the whole part where everything is the same as it was when the episode started.  I'm sorry, but you can't just prevent a man's death and not dramatically alter the future.  Haven't the producers of this show ever watched that horrible, horrible movie The Butterfly Effect?  I mean, if Isao lives, that means that his daughter doesn't grow up without a daddy.  Her whole childhood is different because of that, and when she grows up, she's probably a very different person from who she would be if her father had died in that accident.  She ends up marrying someone else, and they have a son or daughter who's completely different from Kumiko's mother or father.  Etc., etc. 

Personally, I think it would have been funny if Haruka's tampering with the past altered the members of the party she's traveling around with.  Y'know...she could return to find herself traveling with Satoshi, Takeshi, and...I don't know...KENJI.  It sure as hell would have been more realistic than the whole "everything is the same as it was" ending the anime gave us.

On the plus side...well, the Haruka and Nyasu pair-up was certainly a nice change of pace.  It was also neat to see that Gentleman from "Battle Aboard the St. Anne" make a reappearance.  He should show up more often.

The dubbed version reinforces the idea that Jimmy Zoppi is all wrong for Meowth.  Seriously, the guy's voice really starts to grate on your nerves, particularly in the second half.  However, I will say that it's nice to watch this episode without any digital paint being used on all the signs we see.  If 4Kids was dubbing this episode, you can be sure they would have wiped every bit of text "clean," so it's nice to see PUSA not waste their money on stupid shit like that.

Also, you know how I complained about there only being three pieces of music kept in the last episode?  Well, this one tops it...we only get two pieces this time around!  The really bad part of this is that they replaced some music that's really good and isn't placed all that much, like the sad, slow version of OK! and that Celebi resurrection song from the fourth movie.  The music in the dub isn't terrible, but it really pales in comparison to the stuff we hear in the Japanese version.

This is an unnecessarily bitchy comparison, isn't it? 

Eevee keeps its Japanese voice.

Cut--1 second
A second is cut from the shot of the train station after Kojirou sneezes while looking at Takeshi and Masato in the Pokemon Center. 

Side Note
A lot of people had a red flag go up with this line, which reeks of that cover up-itis anime dubbers seem to have:

Edna:  "You see, your mother was a little baby inside my tummy at that time."

"Little baby inside my tummy?"  It sounds like PUSA is avoiding the word "pregnant," doesn't it?  The thing is, this is actually an accurate translation of what is said in the Japanese version (Ano toki watashi no onaka ni wa, omae no okaasan ga itanda).  You can't blame bad dubbing on this one, folks.

Music Edit
You know that random vocal song the dubbers add at the end of the episode?  How about there's no such vocal song in the Japanese version!  That's right!  In a weird turn of events, the dubbers replace instrumental music with a vocal song instead of the other way around.

Additional Footage--3 seconds
TO BE CONTINUED.  Three seconds.  Added.  Put them together and what do ya get?

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