Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode BW 006:  "The Dream Site!  Mun'na and Musharna!!"
American Episode 1406:  "Dreams By the Yard Full!"
Pokémon Live Caster:  Mijumaru
Japanese Air Date:  October 21st, 2010
American Air Date:  March 12th, 2011
Important Characters:  Makomo-Hakase (Dr. Fennel), Junsa (Officer Jenny)
Important Places:  Shippou City (Nacrene City)

Satoshi's battle with the Sanyou City Gym Leader continues!  Mijumaru uses its hotachi to deflect Yanapp's incoming Solar Beam attack, so Dent responds by having Yanapp knock Mijumaru's shell out of its paws.  Dent is about to gain the upper hand again when Mijumaru quickly retrieves its shell and finishes off its opponent with a devastating Shell Blade attack.  After receiving the Tri Badge from the Gym Leaders, Satoshi takes his pokemon to the Pokémon Center.  Suddenly, Iris runs into the building and announces that her Kibago is in trouble!  A woman named Makomo-Hakase appears and uses her Mun'na to eat the dream that was troubling Iris' pokemon.  She then tells our heroes that she's investigating energy readings from the nearby Dream Site.  She explains that the site had been doing research on converting the dreams of a pokemon named Musharna into a clean source of energy when an explosion at the lab caused the pokemon to disappear.  Makomo-Hakase believes the pokemon is connected to the phenomenon that caused Iris' Kibago to fall asleep and wants to investigate the Dream Site further.  When everyone arrives on the scene, they find that the Rocket-Dan is using a machine that's sending out sleep waves toward Sanyou City!  The Rocket trio is defeated after a quick battle, enabling Musharna to reappear and reunite with Makomo-Hakase.  Later, Dent tells Satoshi that he's decided to join him on his travels.  After bidding farewell to his brothers, Dent joins Satoshi and Iris on their journey to the site of Satoshi's next Gym Battle.

---

Thoughts
I remember finding out the name of the sixth episode and worrying that the Gym Battle that was going to take place in the previous episode was only going to last that one episode.  Nothing about this episode's title screams "continuation of a gym battle," y'know?  Thankfully, the battle is allowed to spill over into this episode.  I do think the Sanyou City stuff should have been spread out across three episodes instead of two - the Site of Dreams plot deserves its own episode, in my opinion - but the two episodes we did end up getting seem to handle the task well enough.

This show has never been good with giving Satoshi’s traveling companions a good reason to follow him, but I feel like Dent’s is the flimsiest.  Do the writers even try to come up with realistic reasons for these sidekick characters to tag along?  I mean, my God, if his battle with Satoshi's Mijumaru impressed him so freaking much, Dent probably would have gotten down on one knee and proposed to Satoshi if he saw his league battle against Shinji.  I do like that the series waited as long as it did back in Kanto to establish the show’s trio because I felt Advanced Generation and Diamond & Pearl got things started off a little too quickly, but I still wish they had used the extra time to come up with a better reason.

This is also the last episode the Rocket-Dan will play an active role in for the next 20 episodes or so.  The show will start to shove them in the background, giving them useless scenes that do nothing to advance the plot before finally phasing them out altogether.  At least they won't be around enough to bring down entire episodes like they've been doing in the post-Plasma episodes.

The English dub goes back to replacing music.  I kept saying that I had been bracing myself for just such an event, and it unfortunately looks like my cautious optimism was justified.  It's particularly frustrating this time around because the company actually tricked a lot of us into thinking that it had finally gotten its act together, only to pull this shit a mere six episodes into the season.  The company tricked us, and I feel like that's a lot worse than if they had been replacing the music from day one.  At least then we wouldn't have gotten our hopes up so high, y'know?

Both Mun'na and Musharna keep their Japanese voices...in a way.  For some reason, the dubbers replaced some of their cries in the later part of the episode with recycled clips from earlier on, meaning we hear some of the same cues over and over again.

Dialogue Edit
After Oshawott's hit with Bullet Seed:


Dent's catch phrase here in the original is Ittsu Teisutingu Taimu (イッツ　テイスティングタイム！), or "It's Tasting Time!"  Dent will use the phrase "It's ____ Time!" a lot in this series, so seeing the dub do away with this fantastic quirk is a real letdown.  Just one more reason to prefer the Japanese version to the English dub, I guess.

It also doesn't help that what we did end up with is overly wordy.  The way the other characters parrot this ridiculously long sentence is really quite stilted, and I can't imagine any group of real humans actually repeating all that over and over.  I know TPCI had about a million mouthflaps to fill in here and all, but there had to have been something else they could have done.

After the battle:


While the lines are more or less the same in both versions, their delivery is completely different depending on which language you're watching the show in.  Iris sounds a lot more confident and eager to battle in the dub than she does in the Japanese version, which kind of messes up the revelation we'll get about her a few episodes from now. 

The very next line,


The word Dent uses to describe Satoshi and Iris is "flavor."  Satoshi asks what that is, and Iris responds by telling him the Japanese word, aji (味).  Since the characters in the English dub are already speaking English, there's no need for Iris to translate a "foreign" word like that and the whole thing got rewritten as a result.

Side Note
Let's talk about this pokemon for a moment.


Its Japanese name, Tabun'ne (タブンネ), comes from the phrase tabun ne (多分ね), or "maybe."  Like Sonansu before it, mentally substituting this pokemon's cry ("Tabun'ne") with its meaning ("maybe") creates some rather amusing little moments.


The English version, Audino, sounds enough like "I dunno" for the same type of thing to work.  It's not a 100% match, but I think we can all agree that it's close enough.  It's certainly better than "Chansey" was, that's for sure.

Dialogue Edit
Before looking up Munna in his Pokédex:


Back in the first episode, TPCI had Trip say "Who's that Pokémon?" before looking it up in his Pokédex.  In that episode, Shooty's original line was sono pokemon wa?, which isn't the same phrase used in the Japanese version of the eyecatch.  In this episode, that same line (sono pokemon wa?) gets changed to "Who's that Pokémon?"

A little later, Fennel introduces herself...as Dr. Fennel.  This is kind of strange for two reasons.  One, Fennel is only known as "Fennel" in the English versions of the games without any titles like "Dr." attached to it.  Two, her title in the Japanese version is Makomo-Hakase, a term that's usually translated as "Professor" in this dub.  So why didn't the TPCI call her "Professor Fennel" like they normally would have?  Why try to make a distinction between her and the other professors in the series?

During Dr. Fennel's' flashback:


In the Japanese version, Makomo-Hakase states that Musharna disappeared together with the explosion of the lab, implying that there's a connection between the two.  Dr. Fennel, meanwhile, speaks as if the disappearance of Musharna and the lab being destroyed happened independently of each other.

Later, Team Rocket changes their motto:


Almost every line here is different from what they had been saying before now, for some reason.  In the Japanese version, the motto is the same.

This is the last time we'll hear the trio recite the motto for the next 20 episodes or so, so it'll be a while before we'll know whether or not this change is a permanent one.

This is also, as of this writing, the most recent episode to use the new Isshu Rocket-Dan motto theme (identified as TV-BGM 02 on the Best Wishes! CD single).  I don't know why the producers of this show would commission Miyazaki Shinji to create this brand new piece of music only to drop it six episodes into the series, but I'd hate to see it go away forever since it's actually one of the very few things I like about the Rocket trio in Best Wishes!.

After Team Rocket captures Musharna:


Musashi tells Makomo-Hakase that Musharna is now theirs.  Kojirou then tells them to be so kind as to not get in their way.  As you can see, the dub rewrote Kojirou's line.

Finally, Cress says "best wishes" at the end of the episode, just like Corn did.  But since this series was renamed "Black & White" for the dub, the winking and nudging being done at the audience in the Japanese version doesn't really carry over.

Previous Episode

Next Episode