Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 006:  “Pippi and the Moon Stone”
American Episode 106:  “Clefairy And The Moon Stone”
Pokémon Dare Da?  Pippi
Japanese Air Date: May 6th, 1997
American Air Date: September 15th, 1998
Important Places:  Moon-Viewing Mountain (Mt. Moon), Hanada City (Cerulean City)
Important Characters: Rikao (Seymour the Scientist)

While on the way to Hanada City, home of Satoshi's next Gym challenge, Satoshi, Kasumi, and Takeshi come across the Moon-Viewing Mountain.  There, they spot a man in a lab coat being attacked by Zubat!  After having Pikachu zap the bat pokemon, Satoshi is showered with praise by the grateful professor, Rikao.  Rikao guides our heroes into the mountain, where he points out that someone had strung lights all around the inside.  This, in turn, is causing all of the pokemon to become confused.  Before long, Satoshi and his friends discover that the people who had put the lights up are the Rocket-Dan!  Satoshi sends out his Butterfree while Takeshi sends out his newly-captured Zubat to battle the trio, and before long they emerge victorious.  Later, the gang go deeper into the mountain and enter an area of the cave housing a giant stone known as the Moon Stone.  All of the Pippi who live in the cave start to dance around the stone, and before long Satoshi and the others determine that the Pippi worship the Moon Stone as a god!  Suddenly, the Rocket-Dan appear again and steal the giant stone!  Our heroes chase after them, and, after a brief battle, successfully retrieve the stone.  Now that the Moon Stone has been returned to the Moon-Viewing Mountain, our heroes sit back and witness the Pippi continue their dance until they eventually evolve into Pixy.  Rikao decides to stay behind to continue studying the Pippi and the Pixy, so our heroes bid the scientist farewell and return on the path to Hanada City.

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Thoughts
I liked this episode a lot.  Rikao is a much more interesting filler character than boring old Samurai, and the episode marks the true introduction of "fun Rocket-Dan."  It feels as if the producers decided that, as of this episode, the Rocket-Dan were going to become comic relief villains.  We've seen hints of this in the past few episodes, but a lot of the foundation of what we know as "the Rocket-Dan" today have their start here.

I also like how Takeshi is...y'know...useful in these first few episodes.  He actually volunteers to battle alongside Satoshi instead of just standing in the background doing nothing, but unfortunately, this won't last long.

The dub is alright except for the complete reversioning of Rikao's character.

Zubat keeps its Japanese voice.

Paint Edit
The shot of the outside of NIBI GYM during the recap is replaced with PEWTER GYM, just like the last episode.

Dialogue Edit
So the scientist our heroes run across is a very different character depending on what version you're watching.  Rikao is a scientist from Nibi City (see below) who loves to talk about romance.  He thinks the moon is romantic, and his main virtues are love and courage.  Seymour the Scientist, on the other hand, is a scientist who loves to recite poetry.  He doesn't care at all about love and courage, and is instead dedicated solely to knowledge and research.

While both characters are seen as being nut jobs, the decision to change Rikao's obsession with love and romance is kind of annoying.  God forbid a scientist talk about anything other than knowledge and research, right 4Kids?

We also get this rather important rewrite: 

Seymour:  "Never call me mister!  My name's Seymour!  Seymour the Scientist!" 

Originally, Rikao gives our heroes his name and tells them that he works for the Nibi City Museum.  This connection to Takeshi's hometown is never mentioned in the dub.

Paint Edit
Rikao’s two main virtues are Love and Courage, and when Rikao announces these, the kanji for the appropriate virtue appears in the background.  4Kids erases the kanji, and changes the virtues to Knowledge and Research.

Dialogue Edit
Now you KNOW this wasn't in the original:

That was a dated reference back in 1998; today, it's just embarrassing.

In the Japanese version, Satoshi thinks Pikachu's doing the bon-odori.

Dialogue Edit
The whole scene where Ash tries to figure out what the Clefairy are saying is pretty accurate in the dub.  Originally, when Pikachu lifted the Pippi up, Kasumi says the word mamoru (protect).  So what are the Pippi protecting?  Well, Pikachu pulls a hair from Satoshi's hair.  The Japanese word for hair is kami, and Takeshi guesses that Pikachu means Kami-sama, or "God."  So the whole phrase is "Pippi o mamoru Kami-sama da," or "The Pippi are protecting God," with God being the Moon Stone. 

The general gist of the whole thing was kept in the dub, but of course, you can't say the G-word on kids' TV.

Paint Edit
The sign at the end of the episode that says "Cerulean City" had Japanese on it originally.  It said "The closest path to Hanada City is this way."  Both this and the note that Shigeru scribbled on the sign are translated in the dub.

What's interesting is that when they show the sign in the Japanese version, we see an image of Shigeru doing the "bii-da~" face (when you stick out your tongue and pull one of your eyelids down with your index finger). This image of Shigeru is painted away in the dub.

The funny thing is that If you look in the issue of Pokémon Power (the magazine that came with Nintendo Power a while back) that retells this particular episode, the image of Shigeru is left in.
 

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