Episode Stats:

Weekly Pokemon Broadcasting Station #045: "Another Legend of Celebi"
Pokémon Chronicles Episode 12:  "Celebi and Joy!"
Japanese Air Date:  August 7th, 2003
American Air Date:  August 12th, 2006
Important Characters:  Nick (Nick)
Important Places:  Marion City (Marion City)

While traveling through Marion City, the aspiring Pokemon Master Hiroshi and his partner Léon come across a group of construction workers threatening to tear down an old Pokemon Center.  The young trainer decides to stop them, so he sends out his pokemon to battle.  Hiroshi wins and succeeds in driving the workers off, earning the gratitude of the Joi who run the Pokemon Center.  Inside, Hiroshi is told about the history of the center and how a friend of Joi, Nick, had been lost in a landslide the day of the Pokemon Center's completion and her birthday.  Joi tells Hiroshi that if Nick had attended the birthday party, he would have missed the landslide and would still be alive today.  As HIroshi mulls this over in a guest room of the Pokemon Center, the time traveling pokemon Celebi appears and takes the young trainer to the past!  There, Hiroshi meets a young Joi and a young Nick and discovers that Nick has a crush on Joi.  However, he's too timid to confront Joi, thinking that a simple carpenter like him would have no chance with a girl like Joi.  That night, a large storm comes, so Joi runs out to a shrine erected for Celebi to make sure it's okay.  Hiroshi and Nick go out to find her pinned under a tree that had been struck by lightning, so the young boys rescue her.  The next day is the day of Joi's birthday and the completion of the Pokemon Center, but Nick is nowhere to be found!  Hiroshi quickly finds Nick and tells him to go back to the party, convincing him that she would be grateful to see him after saving her life the night before.  He agrees and turns around mere moments before the landslide that would have claimed his life pours rocks and mud onto the road in front of him.  As everyone celebrates Joi's birthday, Hiroshi is taken back to his own time and is amazed to see how much Marion City has changed.  As Hiroshi watches the construction workers of his time restore the Pokemon Center instead of trying to demolish it, the time traveling pokemon Celebi disappears to help out in another time.

---

Thoughts
I could start this comparison by quoting Edward Lorenz, but I'd rather quote Grandpa Simpson:


That's my main problem with this episode; you can't go back in time and do something as drastic as preventing the death of a little boy (and possibly his father?) without basically fudging up the space-time continuum and causing the universe to collapse on itself.  Yet Hiroshi does just that and nothing in the present has really changed at all. 

Otherwise, I really liked the episode.  I liked having a plot not dependent on pokemon battles or attacks from the Rocket-Dan, and the whole "let's see Nick's death prevented" is neat to watch even if my sense of logic is telling me that this episode makes no sense at all.

You know what I like about the dubbed version of this episode?  HOW EVERY SINGLE EDIT IS NECESSARY AND MAKES THE SHOW BETTER.   I guess if I was on a message board I'd put a little </sarcasm> at the end of that statement, but I'm not, so I won't.  I'll just say that I'm glad the TV series doesn't see this level of "reversioning" made to each episode that this episode does.  However, I will admit that the script is pretty solid, and it's nice to see 4Kids not go into their usual "death cover-up mode."

4Kids also tinkers with the episode numbering again, dubbing this episode before they dubbed "Training Daze," which aired the week before this one in Japan.  It doesn't affect a thing, but still, 4Kids, why dub these episodes out of order? 

For your reference, this episode was released between episodes AG 045, "To the Other Side of the Mirage!  Togepi's Paradise!" ("A Togepi Mirage!") and AG 046, "The Kachinuki Family!  Four vs. Four!!" ("Candid Camerupt").  In the Japanese version, Boku no Best Friend e is used as the episode's ending theme.

Celebi, Saidon, Kairos, Ponyta, and Kentauros keep their Japanese voices.

Music Edit
As usual, the Japanese music is done away with in the dub.  This episode uses a lot of the music from the Celebi movie, so we get to hear all this great movie music in the Japanese version while we get some rather boring music in the dub. 

One particular scene that's really affected by music are the scenes of present-day Marion City after Hiroshi's traveling back in time.  The Japanese version plays that melodic song that plays when Celebi's being brought back to life at the end of the fourth movie (I believe it's Track #17, but I'm not sure...it's the song where that woman's all like "la la...la la la lalala...") throughout the final part of the episode, but the dub replaces it with a bunch of really uninteresting stock music.  I've seen some fans claim that not having the original Japanese music isn't that big of a deal, but after an episode like this, I'm inclined to disagree with them.

Paint Edit
The only "text" edit in the episode happens about nine seconds into it:


Click on each image to view a larger version.

Dialogue Edit
First of all, the voice the dub gives for old Nurse Joy sucks.  Bad.

Secondly, the scene where young Nurse Joy says this has a bit added to it:


The "75 years ago" part is dub-only.  You see, the Japanese version never specifies exactly how many years Hiroshi travels into the past...we're just told it was "a long time ago."

Added Footage--8 seconds
Celebi's entrance in the guest room of the Pokemon Center is played twice in the dub.  We only see it once in the Japanese version.

Cut--9 seconds
After Hiroshi is taken to the past and we see the little Celebi figurine fall to the floor, there's a nine-second shot of the empty guest room followed by a shot of Hiroshi and Léon that's removed from the dub.


Dialogue Edit
The script for this episode is mostly good, but there are a few rough spots:


Originally, Joi states how she WANTS to be a nurse and how that, a year from now, she'll start her training to become one.  Hiroshi asks Nick what his dream is, and Nick responds with a noncommittal "Well, I..." before being cut off by Léon.

The dub makes it sound like Joy's being forced into being a nurse and only decided to become one at the end of the episode when she originally made her career choice long before the events of this episode take place.

Paint Edit/Dialogue Edit
We've some One Piece-type stuff going on here:

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