Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 054:  "Gardie the Police Dog"
American Episode 149:  "The Case of the K-9 Caper!"
Pokémon Dare Da?  Gardie
Japanese Air Date:  July 16th, 1998
American Air Date:  April 10th, 1999

Satoshi and his friends are walking along when they spot a gun-wielding thief being chased by the police! Satoshi rushes in to stop the criminal but is stopped by a local Junsar who scolds him for ruining what had apparently been a training session for her pack of Gardie. It seems that the police use Gardie as their signature pokemon and so their pokemon undergo rigorous training in order to help them fight crime. Satoshi asks if his Pikachu can be allowed to take this training and Junsar, after thinking about it for a bit, says she'll allow it as a one-time special. After a difficult obstacle course that exhausts both Satoshi and his Pikachu, the Rocket-Dan burst onto the scene to steal the puppy pokemon. Using a combination of different gases sprayed into the area, Musashi and Kojirou are able to distort the Gardie's senses of smell and hearing to the point where they're no longer capable of understanding Junsar's orders! The Rocket trio then tries to do the same to Pikachu but the pokemon's bond with its Trainer is just too strong for their tricks to work. Junsar is eventually able to convince her Gardie that she is really their Trainer and, with the help of Pikachu, succeeds in sending the Rocket trio packing.  After the attack, Satoshi realizes that his Pikachu is fine just the way it is and decides that the best thing for all of them would be to resume their journey to Guren Island.

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Thoughts
As amazing as the episode "Gardie and Kojirou" was, I have to admit that I did have a problem with how the titular pokemon doesn't even appear until a good 3/4 of the way into the episode. And then when it does show up, it just kind of jumps at Rumika and growls a little bit and that's it? We didn't really learn much about who this pokemon is as a species and so I'm kind of happy that this episode comes along to fix that.

And it turns out that Gardie are actually kind of dumb...? While the Rocket trio's plan to disable each of the puppy pokemon's senses, one by one, was actually quite clever, the fact that every. single. Gardie in the police academy was fooled by a bunch of gas just makes me think they're not all that smart to begin with. Pikachu didn't fall for the exact same trick, which tells me that the electric mouse is either smarter than a bunch of trained police puppies or that its bond with Satoshi is just flat-out stronger than the one between Gardie and Junsar. Either way, the episode doesn't make Gardie look all that bright.

The police pokemon apparently make up for this by being really athletic as demonstrated by the ease at which they clear the obstacle course in the first half of the episode. I liked watching Satoshi and Pikachu struggle through the same course because it served as a nice reminder that our hero is just a little kid and that he honestly can't be expected to be great at everything. This show too often falls in to the trap of making Satoshi way better at dealing with criminals than Junsar are so to see the police in this show actually not suck at their jobs for once is a nice change of pace.

The English dub has some weird music stuff going on but other than that it's your run-of-the-mill series of rewrites and changes for the sake of change.

Pokémon Ondo, which actually debuted in this series way back in "The Big Blazing Pokémon Race!" more than 20 episode ago, replaces Pocket ni Fantasy as the ending theme.

Dialogue Edit
Team Rocket spots its next target:

Jessie:  "Look, a whole pack of police-trained Pokémon. The Boss would certainly love that."
Meowth:  "Yeah, but who knows if their bark is worse than their bite?"

In the Japanese version Nyarth tells his teammates that if they approach those pokemon the wrong way they'll just end up getting bitten (下手に警察犬に手を出すと噛まれるニャ); in other words, there's no "its bark is worse than their bite" idiom present in the original.

The scene inside the police cafeteria has a lot of little changes here and there. Let's start with when our heroes talk about the thief with a gun:

Japanese Version	English Version
Satoshi:  "But those Gardie were really cool, huh? If that had been Pikachu then..."	Ash:  "Did you see the way that Growlithe tackled that guy, Brock? It was braver than Pikachu!"
Pikachu:  "Pi?"	Pikachu:  "Pi?"
Takeshi:  "The guy playing the thief was carrying a pistol. I don't think it would've been possible to just go up to him and catch him."	Brock:  "But the officer playing the thief was holding a gun... you can't expect Pikachu to attack somebody like that."
Kasumi:  "That's right! You really didn't think before acting, did you?"	Misty:  "Brock's right. I bet you never even thought about how badly Pikachu could've been hurt."
Satoshi:  "What are you getting on my case for?"	Ash:  "Of course I did!"

Misty specifically brings up Pikachu while Kasumi scolds Satoshi for just not thinking things through in general. Satoshi's comparison between Pikachu and Gardie is also a bit more vague than it is in the English dub, where Ash specifically mentions Growlithe's bravery.

A bit later:

Japanese Version	English Version
Satoshi:  "We collect pokemon and battle with them...but is that enough?"	Ash:  "So far I've only been using my Pokémon to battle and help capture other Pokémon."
Kasumi:  "What's gotten into you, Satoshi?"	Misty:  "You're thinking of something, Ash."
Takeshi:  "I'd say he's thinking of having his Pikachu go through the same K-9 training the Gardie go through after watching them in action today."	Brock:  "Wait a minute. I hope you're not thinking of having Pikachu train with the police, like Growlithe."
Satoshi:  "How did you know I was going to say that?"	Ash:  "What's wrong with that idea? It'll make Pikachu even stronger."

For some reason Brock is actually opposed to Ash putting his Pikachu through the K-9 training while Takeshi doesn't seem to have the same objections in the original.

Music Edit
Something weird happens in this episode regarding the music.

In pretty much every other episode of this show, 4Kids does one of two things with the music they have John Loeffler create for them. One, they use it to just out right replace music from the Japanese soundtrack. Two, they use it to fill in any scenes where there wasn't any music playing in the original. The original Japanese version isn't wall-to-wall music but the English dub apparently has to be, for who the fuck knows what reason, so 4Kids uses their home-made music to "fill in the gaps," as it were.

In this episode, however, 4Kids actually does something quite out-of-character for them. In the Japanese version of the scene where Satoshi explains why he wants his Pikachu to go through police training, the piece of BGM known as "1997-1998-M09 Reunion" (1997-1998-M09 再開) is playing in the background. But in the English dub? Dead silence. That's right, 4Kids actually removes the background music from the scene but then doesn't bother to put anything in its place.


The same thing happens again later in the episode when Team Rocket explains how they're going to use Growlithe to rob banks and museums and whatnot. In the original the song "1997-1998-M75 A Brutal Pokémon Appears!" (1997-1998-M75 凶悪ポケモン出現!) plays from the moment the Gardie start to surround the Rocket trio all the way up to the commercial break. In the dub, however? 4Kids starts to play it like normal at first, then abruptly mutes it when the Rocket trio begins to dream about how much money they'll make, only to bring it back once the fantasy sequence is over.

I don't know what was going on at 4Kids that day to make them abandon their 24/7 music rule but they'll go back to their old ways in the very next episode so it's not something that ever lasts.

Dialogue Edit
Officer Jenny decides to let the children have their way:


In the Japanese version Junsar tells Satoshi that, for one day only, she'll allow Satoshi to attend a special trial lesson. The fact that this is a special lesson just for Satoshi, just for one day, is something the dub kind of leaves out.

Paint Edit
The sign under window 4 at the bank there that says yonyuu ohiki-dashi (預入　お引き出し), or "deposits / withdrawals," as well as the text on the sign beside it that says uketsuke bangou 26 (受付番号 26), or "now calling customer #26" all gets erased for the dub.


Click on each image to view a larger version.

Dialogue Edit
The Rocket duo readies to gas our heroes:


Cute pun, but it has nothing to do with the picture of the Gloom that's on that gas tank there now does it? I personally would've gone with something like "Gloom Fumes" instead.


In the original, the name of the gas was kusai gasu (臭いガス), or "stinky gas." The picture of the Kusaihana on the gas canister is, obviously, because the pokemon's name also has the word kusai right there in it. Kusai gas, Kusaihana...pretty obvious, right?

Eyecatch
The picture of Gardie that's used for the eyecatch is different depending on which version you're watching.


I'm guessing the eyecatch pictures are drawn by whoever's in charge of the key animation for the episode which is why the Gardie in the Japanese eyecatch matches the rest of the episode much more than the stock art 4Kids uses for the English dub.

Dialogue Edit
The gas continues:

Japanese Version	English Version
Musashi:  "Whether your voice is beautiful..."	Jessie:  "Take a sniff of this!"
Kojirou:  "...or it's a little more hoarse..."	James:  "Just a whiff of this!"
Rocket-Dan:  "You'll all get to enjoy Operation: High Pitched Voice!"	Team Rocket:  "And hear the metamorphosis!"

The gas canister having a picture of Koduck on it, by the way, is probably in reference to how high pitched and kind of buccal Rikako Aikawa's Koduck voice is. If you breathe in this gas your voice will become as high pitched as Koduck's!


Michael Haigney's Psyduck voice is comparatively deeper so this connection doesn't really work the same way in the English dub.

After the voice change occurs:


Thanks to the 2007 reboot of Alvin and the Chipmunks there are kids today who definitely get this reference. But back in 1999 this would have been dated as hell. The Chipmunk trio's TV series ended in 1990 and while there were a few odd TV specials here and there (apparently the most recent one at that time was an Easter special in 1995?) the singing rodents were mostly yesterday's news by the time this episode debuted on Kids' WB!

In the original Nyarth simply states that his voice sounds weird now.

Jenny-James orders the Pokémon around:


While Japan does have the concept of "house arrest" (nankin (軟禁)) it's a very rarely used form of punishment in modern Japan. Originally Kojirou orders the Gardie to simply arrest Junsar.

Finally, this last one's fairly well known but just in case; when Jessie first dresses up as Ash, Veronica Taylor's Ash voice comes out of her mouth before Jessie starts to use the voice changer. This same goof doesn't happen in the Japanese version.

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