Episode Stats:

Weekly Pokemon Broadcasting Station #019: "We Pichu Brothers [The Millennium Town Encounter] and [A Part-Time Job is Difficult Nyasu!?]"
Pokémon Chronicles Episode 19:  "Of Meowth and Pokémon"
Japanese Air Date:  March 4th, 2003
American Air Date:  October 7th, 2006
Important Places:  -Unnamed City- (Millennium Town)

The adventures in Millennium Town, the setting of the mini-movie "Pichu and Pikachu," continue!  In "The Millennium Town Encounter," Nyasu is walking along one day when he bumps into a Moochul.  The accident causes the two pokemon to mix up the baskets they were carrying, placing Nyasu's lunch in Moochul's hands!  The cat pokemon chases Moochul to its hideout, where the kiss pokemon's friends join together to stop Nyasu.  After a frenzied chase, Moochul and its friends discover the truth and decide to help Nyasu get his basket back.  After retrieving his basket and being chased by an angry Delvil, Nyasu collapses with exhaustion.  In "A Part-Time Job is Difficult Nyasu!?," Nyasu takes on a part-time job as a pizza delivery pokemon in order to earn the money needed to build a giant golden statue of himself.  The cunning pokemon decides to trick the pokemon of Millennium Town into delivering his pizzas for him, but various mishaps cause the pokemon to be unable to complete a single conveyance.  Next, Nyasu tries his hand at a job as the cleaner of a large mansion, but the city pokemon's attempts to help Nyasu get him fired a second time.  Nyasu gets angry at the pokemon for always getting in his way, but a kind gesture that shows Nyasu how much they care about him quells his anger.  Surrounded by pokemon who idolize him, Nyasu ignores his horrible resume and happily accepts their friendship.

---

Thoughts
The Pichu brother short that came packaged with the Entei movie was a fun little adventure, and the fact the anime producers made more adventures featuring shows that they agree.  While you have to sort of take the specials as existing in their own little continuity, they're still fun little romps that combine a great soundtrack, amazing backgrounds, and amusing tales about a bunch of little pokemon running around and causing mischief.  While I'm not always a fan of the overly sugary sweet shorts, these Nyasu-themed Pichu brothers shorts are different for me for some reason.

The dubbed version is surprisingly...bad, actually.  I mean, with the way the last few episodes had turned out, I thought this comparison would be on the same level as the fourth episode comparison.  And besides, how much could 4Kids screw up a Pichu Brothers short?  Yet for some reason, 4Kids pulls a "Legend of Thunder" on us and makes edit after edit for no apparent reason.

The English version of this episode is also being shown waaaaaaay late.  It should have aired between "The Blue Badge of Courage" and "Oaknapped!" but for some reason 4Kids decided to hold off on dubbing it until now.  This kind of gives Chronicles as a whole a really unbalanced feel since they're pretty much loading all their Pikachu short-type episodes at the end of the series.   If you're watching the dub and don't like Pikachu shorts, then 4Kids pretty much allows you to make "The Search for the Legend" the last episode of the series.  If I was in charge of the dubbing, I'd probably have spread these out a little more to allow "The Search for the Legend" to be the series finale.

For your reference, this episode was released between episodes AG 014, "Double Battle and Double Kemusso!" ("All in a Day's Wurmple") and AG 015, "Study!  Pokemon Trainers' School!" ("Gonna Rule The School!").  In the Japanese version, Nyasu no Party is used as the episode's ending theme.

The Pichu brothers and Upah keep their Japanese voices.

Side Note
If you think the story in this episode seems jumbled and disoriented, there's a reason for that; this was originally two separate episodes.  You see, in Japan this episode consisted of two 11-minute shorts:  "The Millennium Town Encounter" and "A Part-Time Job is Difficult Nyasu?"  Each short had its own title screen, its own self-contained plot, and its own TO BE CONTINUED screen.

However, 4Kids decides to combine these two stories to make one long 22-minute episode.  I don't really know why because neither story really has anything to do with the other, so why combine them?  Since they didn't do it with the two Winter Vacation shorts in Episode 04, so I was quite surprised when they did it with this one. 

Music Edit
So far, every Chronicles episode except "The Legend of Thunder" Parts 1-3 have at least kept 1% of the Japanese music.  This episode isn't one of them; there isn't a single piece of music left over from the Japanese version.  It's a shame, too, because these two shorts use that jazzy music from the "Pikachu and Pichu" short instead of the regular episode music, making this episode stand out more. 

Cut--11 seconds
The opening shots of the episode -- basically everything before the title screen -- is removed from the dub.  This missing footage consists of various establishing shots of Millennium Town as the narrator tells us about the little pokemon who live in this big, big city.
Dialogue Edit
The biggest edit to this episode, by far, has to be the script.  Every other Chronicles episodes take some liberties with the script, fudging a line here and there, but they've at least managed to keep the gist of a large portion of the dialogue.  But this episode is different.  The only lines in this episode that are actually translated correctly are the two lines or so where Meowth talks about wanting to build a giant golden statue of himself.  Everything else?  Well, everything else is a complete and total rewrite.

Basically, what 4Kids does is make Meowth the narrator of the episode, meaning everything we hear is from his perspective.  Meowth starts off by going on about how he's always looked out for himself and how he is able to get his chump pokemon pals to do his bidding.  Later (because of the episode merging), Meowth starts to randomly go on about how he needs money and how clever and seems to drop the whole "only look out for yourself" schtick he was going for.  None of this, by the way, is in the Japanese version.

In the Japanese version, the narrator actually carries the weight of the episode.  Nyasu still has all his dialogue, of course, but everything else is a one-man performance by Mr. Narrator.  He tells us what's going on and provides voiceovers for all the non-Nyasu pokemon in the special.  You know how in Meowth's boss fantasies, Meowth will kind of do his impersonation of Giovanni?  Well, the narrator in the Japanese version does the same thing here; this time, however, he does it for every pokemon in the episode.  Moochul gets a girlish voice, the older Pichu brother gets a sort of older mentor-type voice, Buby gets a sort of nerdy voice, etc.  It sounds like it would be lame as hell, but it's actually quite amusing to listen to.  Mike Pollock got absolutely robbed of what could have been his most entertaining performance, and I hope if Japan makes more of these, PUSA or whoever's dubbing it will return the narrator's lines to where they belong.

Cut--29 seconds altogether
Two seconds are trimmed from the shot between Himeguma's first appearance and Marilli's first appearance.

Three seconds are removed from the shot where Marilli calls everyone for breakfast.

The overhead shot of everyone gathering from various parts of the wood into the area where Marilli is waiting is shortened by a second.

A second is removed from the shot of the pokemon looking sad after seeing their acorns crushed by the passing truck.

After that, a long 22-second cut is made.  Basically, one of the Pichu brothers starts yelling at Himeguma, blaming it for ruining their meal.  The younger Pichu brother pouts, and everyone starts to laugh as the narrator tells us that the pokemon have forgiven it. 
Sound Effects Edit
As Meowth is looking over the city with his coffee cup in paw, the sound of police sirens that was present in the Japanese version is missing from the dub.

Cut--3 seconds
The shot of Meowth with his back to the camera ("...and everyone will know how truly great I am!") is three seconds longer in the Japanese version than it is in the dub.

Paint Edit
The letters REW (for "rewind") are taken away from Nyasu's flashback.


Click on each image to view a larger version.

Cut--19 seconds altogether
A second is trimmed from the shot of Moochul running away from Nyasu at full speed.

Later, an 18 second scene during which Moochul realizes that the basket it has belongs to Nyasu is excised from the dub.  Originally, after Nyasu rushes over the fence to get his basket, Moochul looks down, sees its basket full of make-up, and then has a flashback to when it bumped into Nyasu.  That footage is replayed, and then we go back to seeing Moochul and the others with a sort of apologetic look on their faces.

Hey, if this is my basket...

...then the one we had was Nyasu's!

Added Footage--3 seconds
4Kids plays the shot of Nyasu stepping on Delvil's face twice, while it's only played once in the Japanese version.

Cut--24 seconds altogether
A five second shot of Himeguma looking at a cake before being hit in the head with Nyasu's picnic basket is removed.

Later, three seconds are removed from everyone's reaction to seeing Nyasu all beaten up and bruised.

Finally, the last sixteen seconds of the first short are removed.  This includes another reaction shot from the pokemon, a wide shot of Nyasu, and a shot of the city with the words TO BE CONTINUED on it. 

A second is trimmed from the shot of Buby's fire burning the rope during Nyasu's cleaning job.

Video Edit
In the original version of this episode, we see the shot of Nyasu crying because of how happy he is to be admired.  Then, the camera pans up to show us the city's landscape and the words TO BE CONTINUED appear on the bottom.


In the dub, the shot of Nyasu crying is looped over and over to get rid of this pan-up (and, of course, the TO BE CONTINUED text).  Kind of a random way to end the episode, if you ask me.

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