Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 016:  "The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Pokémon"
American Episode 116:  "Pokémon Shipwreck"
Pokémon Dare Da?  Koiking
Japanese Air Date:  July 15th, 1997
American Air Date:  September 29th, 1998

Above the sea, Junsa and a group of officers mourn the deaths of Satoshi, Kasumi, Takeshi, Musashi, and Kojirou.  Unknown to them, however, is the fact that all of the people they had assumed to be dead are still alive, trapped within the St. Anne!  After regaining consciousness, Satoshi and his friends try to figure out a way out of the sunken ship.  Kasumi figures that the ship is upside down and advises everyone to climb toward the hull, but a number of obstacles make it difficult to do so.  Along the way, our heroes run into Musashi-tachi, causing a battle to break out.  Before long, everyone is convinced that the only way they'll get out of the ship alive is to work together, so a temporary truce is formed.  The gang eventually arrives in the engine room and is able to open a hole in the ship so they can escape.  Using their water pokemon, Satoshi and his friends swim to the surface while Musashi-tachi are forced to settle with swimming alongside Kojirou's Koiking.  Once everyone gets out of the water, they aimlessly drift on a raft, trying to figure out how to get to land.  Hunger sets in after a while, and almost everyone decides to eat Kojirou's Koiking.  However, the structure of its body prevents it from being edible, causing Kojirou to become fed up with the pokemon.  Upset at his pokemon's inability to battle, swim, or be used as food, Kojirou renounces ownership of Koiking and kicks it into the ocean.  This jumpstarts its evolution into Gyarados, prompting everyone on the raft to paddle for their lives.  They aren't fast enough to escape Gyarados' powerful Dragon Rage attack, however, and the twister it creates swallows our heroes up  Will they survive the attack of the Gyarados!?  To be continued!

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Thoughts
So there are some things I really like about this episode and then some things that I don't like.  I really like how the episode started out with our heroes' funeral because it's just such an unusual way to start an episode.  I really liked how everyone had to figure out ways to get out of the ship.  I really liked all the funny moments with Koiking.  I liked the Rocket-Dan funeral scene. 

The thing I didn't like, however, was how horribly out-of-character everyone acted in this episode.  Why is Kasumi so calm and cool-headed?  Why is Takeshi acting so hot-tempered and eager to fight?  Why is Nyarth afraid of water in this episode and only this episode?  Why is Pikachu acting like such a little asshole?  The OOC-ness of this episode is through the roof, and when I watch this episode, I sometimes wonder if the writers even knew anything about the characters they were writing for.

There are quite a few logical flaws in this one as well.  Like when the Rocket-Dan are discovered inside the ship by Satoshi and his friends in that little flooded stairwell but then, one scene later, everyone magically teleports to this hallway that doesn't seem to have any flooding in it at all.  Or how Ishitsubute is heavy enough to cause the ship to tilt precariously while Iwaku is able to prance around without having any effect at all.  There are a lot of other things that kind of had me scratching my head as well that really brought down the episode for me.

Now I don't actually hate this episode or anything despite my grumblings.  It just has some parts that bug me, that's all.

The English version of this episode doesn't really have too much done to it, really.  The funeral scene at the beginning, something that 4Kids would have most definitely cut if this was a Season 8 episode or something, is completely intact in the dub.  And while the English version may dance around saying the word "die"  quite a bit, the general idea still manages to get across.

Gyarados keeps its Japanese voice.

Dialogue Edit
At the end of the Japanese version of the recap, the narrator does the standard "will our heroes make it out OK?" spiel.  Toward the end, we see that image of the ship sinking into the ocean and the narrator starts acting like he's sinking along with the ship.  It's really quite funny.

The English version, on the other hand, just has the narrator talking normally while making a bunch of ship-related puns.

Also, the Titanic reference at the beginning is dub-only.

Later, when Misty's telling everyone to put their pokemon away:

Misty:  "Call your Pokémon back, too.  What's more important?  A Pokémon battle or your life?"
Jessie:  "She's right.  Good point."

In the Japanese version, Kasumi isn't quite so nice; she instead tells the Rocket-Dan that if they don't retrieve their pokemon, she'll throw them back into the water.  At this point, Musashi and Kojirou get a scared look on their face and hastily agree.

Paint Edit
The blueprint of the St. Anne that's shown on the screen while Kasumi explains the ship's layout has some Japanese erased:  The text at the bottom says 甲板 ("deck") while the text at the top says 船底 ("bilge").

Click on each image to view a larger version.

It'd kind of strange that 4Kids would redraw the arrows and then not bother to attach labels to said arrows.  Why didn't they just erase the arrows altogether if they weren't going to bother to translate anything??

Dialogue Edit
We get a lot of instances of dancing around death in this episode:

First of all, Musashi and Kojirou's dialogue is more or less the same minus the reference to being good dressers.  In the Japanese version, they just say that they'll never forget each other.

Kasumi's line is more or less the same except that she also states that she doesn't want to die in a place like that in the Japanese version.

James:  "I can't cross that inferno!  Jessie and Meowth, you go ahead!  I'm staying here!"
Jessie:  "James James James James James!  Snap out of it!  How long do you think you'd last on this side?  Now let's go.  We'll cross together."

Musashi says more or less the same thing but adds that if he doesn't go with them, he'll definitely die down there.

Like I said earlier...the whole "we don't want to die down here" is present in both versions; the Japanese version just states it more explicitly.

Later, when Takeshi is recounting the tale of Noah and his ark, he mentions that a 鳩 ("dove" or "pigeon") went and got the branch to let him know that dry land was nearby, making the fact that Satoshi use his pigeon pokemon for the same purpose kind of a neat parallel.  In the dub, Brock simply says that "a bird" went and got the branch. 

Further on in the episode, during the little funeral service Satoshi and the gang hold for the Rocket-Dan, both Takeshi and Satoshi talk about how regrettable it was for the trio to die the way they did.  The dub isn't quite as blunt.

This last dialogue edit actually fixes a problem I had with the original version of this episode:

Misty:  "Now you've done it!  Magikarp has evolved into Gyarados!"

In the Japanese version, Kasumi says that she had heard that Koiking evolves into Gyarados.  Which implies that this is something that she didn't really know about and had only heard stories.

Now ignoring a future Weekly Pokémon Broadcasting episode for a second...wouldn't that be a strange thing for her to say?  You would think that, after being the Gym Leader for quite some time, she would know something really basic like that and be confident in that knowledge, right?  That's what we get with Misty, anyway.  Kasumi, on the other hand, seems to be really wishy-washy about the whole thing, which I guess really helps her fit in with how just about everyone else in this episode is acting really out-of-character.

Side Note
When Team Rocket's being sucked into Gyarados' Dragon Rage, listen closely because you'll be able to hear Nyarth, in Japanese, scream out "Ya na kanji!"  Don't believe me?  Check it out for yourself.

I guess that scene was one of those eleventh hour audio mixes, huh? 

Added Footage--1 second
A second is added to the TO BE CONTINUED... screen. 

Really?  Again?

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This page was last updated on September 20th, 2010