Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode BW 014:  "Shippou City!  The Great Adventure in the Museum!!"
American Episode 1414:  "A Night in the Nacrene City Museum!"
Pokémon Live Caster:  Kibago
Japanese Air Date:  December 23rd, 2010
American Air Date:  May 7th, 2011
Important Characters:  Kidachi (Hawes), Aloe (Lenora)

Now that they've finally arrived in Shippou City, Satoshi and his friends seek out the city's pokemon gym.  When they find the gym, located in the city's museum, they find that it's currently closed!  The assistant curator of the museum, a man named Kidachi, tells the children that the facility is closed until they can figure out what's causing a recent series of bizarre paranormal incidents.  Iris assumes the museum is being haunted by a disturbed spirit, but Dent insists that everything can be explained away scientifically.  A quick tour of the museum reveals nothing, so Satoshi and his friends decide to spend the night to see if they can witness the events firsthand.  That night, the sound of crying leads them to the main exhibition room.  There, they discover that a Deathmas mask that was on display has tears flowing from its eye holes.  When Kidachi opens the case to investigate, the mask leaps up and attaches itself to Dent's face!  The now possessed Dent begins to attack everyone until Kidachi's wife, the Shippou City Gym Leader, arrives on the scene!  She explains that the "spirit" is really the pokemon Deathmas and that it's upset because its precious mask was sealed away from it in the display case.  Kidachi returns the mask and apologizes; happily, Deathmas forgives him.  Now that the mystery of the museum has been solved, Satoshi challenges Aloe the Gym Leader to a gym battle.  Will Satoshi be able to defeat Aloe and earn his second gym badge?

---

Thoughts
I have a lot of complaints about Best Wishes! - some of them legitimate, even! - but even *I* have to admit that Satoshi's traveling companions this time around really make the show.  This episode displays what I'm talking about perfectly.

While this episode is enjoyable enough on its own, the chemistry that Iris and Dent have really make this one so much more entertaining than it could have been.  From Iris' determination based solely on her gut feeling to Dent frantically trying to explain everything away, their roles in this episode show us that the writers have finally figured out how to make all three of a show's main characters entertain us.  It's about time.

The mystery of this episode is one of those things that everyone on-screen can't figure out even though it's all extraordinarily easy for us viewers to see.  I mean, the assistant curator of the museum just happens to find a Deathmas mask on the ground the day before yet doesn't see the connection between it and all the psychic-type things going on?  No one could put two and two together here?  I also wonder what Deathmas was going for with all the shenanigans it was causing.  Like, it manipulates a suit of armor and has it charge toward Kidachi with its sword drawn, so does that mean it was trying to kill him?  And why didn't it just use said suit of armor to break the glass and free the mask for itself?

This episode introduces us to Aloe, the Isshu region's most controversial Gym Leader.  Production on this episode started before Aloe's existence was even announced to the public, so it was already too late to change her to her less racist design by the time all those complaints came in.  Quite frankly, I don't really care one way or the other.  Aloe's apron doesn't really make a whole hell of a lot of sense in the first place (who wears an apron to go to a museum in the middle of the night?), so its omission, like Rougela's skin color change, doesn't really change the character in any significant way.

I really have to praise TPCI for not dumbing down all of Dent's various scientific explanations.  I have a feeling that if 4Kids was still dubbing this show, they would have simplified everything the fuck down to keep little kids from being confused by phrases like "low frequency sound waves" or "a change in the magnetic field."  Can't have none of that "science" in this here Po-kay-man, nosiree!  In other news, bravo to TPCI for finding a way to pronounce "Cofagrigus" that doesn't draw attention to the fact that the name has a pejorative term for gay people in the middle of it.  I'm sure there are still people who are going to be mispronouncing it, of course, but at least the official pronunciation has been put out there.

Dialogue Edit
Let's get the non apron stuff out of the way.  First up is this exchange from the very start of the episode:


Originally, Satoshi mentions that having a gym inside a museum is rare, not awesome.

Later, Kidachi tells Satoshi and his friends that he was being chased by the Kabuto no Kaseki (カブトの 化石), or "Kabuto Fossil.," a made-up item that does not appear in any of the video games.  The dub decided to change this to the "Dome Fossil," an item that is in the games.  Not really sure why.

When Hawes recounts the events of the previous night:


We actually get to hear the cry that Kidachi heard after his equivalent line in the Japanese version.  The dub, for whatever reason, decided to mute it out.

At the end of his story:


According to the Japanese version, Kidachi actually went back home after his terrifying encounter.  He then came back to the museum with the staff the following morning.  Hawes, on the other hand, apparently decided to stay in the museum the whole night.

As Iris and Cilan are arguing about which of their perspectives is better:


Dent's line in the original is that this whole situation has a "thrilling taste."  Cilan doesn't get to keep his "____ taste"-type lines, I guess.

After Ash asks about a Gym Battle:


When Kidachi brings up his wife initially, he refers to her as Mama (ママ), his pet name for her.  He doesn't say her actual name until his second line.

Also, what's with the mix up in verb tenses there, Hawes?  "When I refer to Lenora, I meant my wife?"  Shouldn't that be "mean?"

And speaking of Aloe and her name, the Japanese pronunciation of her name comes from the Dutch pronunciation ah-low-eh, not the English pronunciation ah-low.  Maybe I should start writing her name out as Aloë to both match the Dutch origin of her name and to bring attention to this difference in pronunciation?

During the tour of the museum:


I thought this was a bit unclear in the dub, so I thought I'd explain it here.  Hawes is supposed to be praising Iris' quick identification of the skeleton here, but the way Hawes' voice actor delivers the line makes it sound like he's not really addressing Iris at all. 

During the Team Rocket scene:


Pierce says the trio got the fake meteorite "several days ago."  In the original version, Flint tells us that they got it senjitsu (先日), or "yesterday."

This means that the events in this episode happen on the same day as the events of the previous episode.  Which, in turn, shows us that all the stuff the Rocket trio's been doing lately doesn't necessarily happen at the same time as Satoshi's adventures even though they occur in the same episode.

After we hear Yamask crying:


Ash's "whatever" sounds a lot more impatient than Satoshi's tonikaku ("in any case") did in the original.  Like Hawes' compliment to Iris earlier, the delivery really makes a big difference here.

Side Note
In the original TV-Tokyo airing of this episode, Aloe is drawn with her older design featuring her wearing an apron.  In the version of the episode TPCI dubbed, Aloe was redrawn to match the redesign that features her without it.

In a few of the shots, her hair got edited and her headband got redrawn as well.  You can view images of all thirteen edited scenes here and here.

The explanation of the whys and hows of this edit is a bit on the long side, so I gave them their own page here.

Dialogue Edit
Finally:


Satoshi calls Deathmas a cute pokemon in the original.  But I guess that doesn't fit in with the dub's image of Ash or whatever, so his line got changed to "cool" instead.

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