Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 057: "The Daycare's Secret!"
American Episode 152:  "The Breeding Center Secret"
Pokémon Dare Da?  Utsubot (Japanese), Psyduck (English)
Japanese Air Date:  August 6th, 1998
American Air Date:  May 1st, 1999
Important Characters:  Yamato (Cassidy), Kosaburou (Butch)
Important Places:

Take your pokemon to our daycare and we'll raise them for you! An advertisement for a nearby daycare center catches our heroes' eyes so they decide to go check it out. Once there, Kasumi surprises everyone by announcing that she intends to leave her Koduck there to see if they can make it less pathetic! After dropping off Koduck, Satoshi and the others pass by a restaurant offering all-you-can-eat omrice for Trainers who show its owner his favorite pokemon. It is later revealed, however, that the owner's favorite pokemon is none other than Koduck! An annoyed Kasumi returns to the daycare to retrieve her pokemon early only to find it's already closed for the day! Kasumi is undeterred by this minor inconvenience and storms around to the back entrance where she finds that the door's been left unlocked. Once inside, our heroes discover that the daycare is actually just a front for a scam being run by two Rocket-Dan agents named Yamato and Kosaburou! The duo takes in Trainers' pokemon, evaluates them, and then sends the best ones to Sakaki! The Rocket duo is soon made aware of our heroes' presence and quickly arranges to have them arrested! Luckily Satoshi and his friends are able to convince Junsar that the Rocket-Dan are the real thieves and return to the daycare with her to have them arrested. Kasumi is reunited with her Koduck and before long is able to enjoy a big feast along with her friends. Next stop, Guren Island!

---

Thoughts
There was once a time, long long ago, when I had no other choice but to rely on the English dub for new Pokémon episodes. The very idea of the dub being my first exposure to an episode of Pocket Monsters is absolutely abhorrent to me now but back then that was the only choice I had! Anyway, I remember this commercial Kids' WB! showed promoting their brand new show called "Pokémon" and toward the end is this clip of two brand new Rocket agents who I had never seen before. I was already a fan of the Rocket trio back then so the idea of new Rocket-Dan agents was something very exciting to me. What are they going to be like?! How will they interact with the Rocket trio we already know and love!?

Yamato and Kosaburou didn't end up being the OMG amazing! new characters I had built them up to be in my imagination but I still like them OK. They're basically a more serious / competent version of Musashi and Kojirou while still maintaining these goofy quirks, like the convoluted daycare scheme and their rivalry with our Rocket trio, that helps them stand out as Rocket-Dan members to look out for. I almost feel like Best Wishes! was trying to make Musashi and Kojirou more like Yamato and Kosaburou but then forgot to include any of the personality or charm or people skills or creativity and so we ended up with lobotomized zombies instead. Whoops! The decision not to give Yamato and Kosaburou a talking pokemon to compete with Nyarth was a smart one (that would have felt too derivative if they had) but I do wish they would have chosen something a little better than a freaking Ratta, y'know?

This episode is also an example of a great Kasumi episode, something we've been getting a lot of lately but is also something that has never not been an absolute blast. Kasumi wanting to improve her Koduck is an excellent way to involve our heroes into the Rocket duo's scheme and her hot-headed desire to get a buffet leading her to illegally break into what she assumes to be a legitimate business is something that could only happen in an episode like this. I mean, can you imagine Takeshi taking the lead in an episode this way? Kasumi added this spark to the series that none of her replacements have come close to recreating and episodes like this are a great reason why so many people continue to talk about her even all these years later.

I also like how "The Daycare's Secret" finds a use for Tohru by having him use his photography skills to help solve the episode's problem. The logic that a police officer would take a quick glance at a couple of Polaroids and instantly decide that Satoshi and his friends are innocent is kind of suspect but at least this episode's writer made the attempt to have Tohru do something useful for a change! The end of this episode also marks the end of Tohru's little arc, and while I still don't really know why it even existed in the first place or why this one is the episode they decided to end it on I guess at the end of the day it was alright? Not awful, but not really amazing either. Kind of like Tohru himself.

4Kids ends their first season of the show with one of the worst casting choices they'll ever make and there's yet another embarrassing food rewrite but other than that it's business as usual.

Victreebell is given a dub voice for this episode and this episode only, thank God. The idea of going the rest of this series with that voice instead of the Kiiiiiiiiiiiii we all know and love...? *shudders*

Paint Edit
The very first shot of the episode, guys!

There are a lot of edits in this one! The most notable ones are the kamera (カメラ), or "camera" on the red banner, the pokemon (ポケモン) on the blue banner, and the kamera, pasokon, waapuro (カメラ、パソコン、ワープロ), or "camera," "PC," and "word processor" text on the U-nit sign.

Click on each image to view a larger version.

Music Edit
In the very first shot of the above scene, we hear the show's opening theme Mezase Pokémon Master being played from the giant TV and continue until the weather report comes on. In the English dub this is replaced with stock 4Kids background music.

Dialogue Edit
The weather report is a bit different:

Announcer:  "Now, a Pokémon weather update."
Snap:  "Huh?"
Announcer:  "Our area will remain clear and sunny today with highs in the upper 70s, so get your Grass-Type Pokémon..."

In the Japanese newscast the exact temperature isn't given; the announcer just says it'll be sunny nationwide.

Paint Edit
The sign behind Yamato gets its text erased.


The name of the business is Oneesan no Sodateya-san (おねえさんの育て屋さん), or "Big Sis' Daycare." The English version doesn't bother to give Butch and Cassidy's fake daycare center a name.

I also like how Yamato's filming her commercial in front of her daycare's logo while Cassidy's filming hers in front of a random pink blob.

The same Oneesan no Sodateya-san text is edited in the next few shots as well.



Dialogue Edit
The facilities called sodateya-san (育て屋さん) in Japanese are localized as "day cares" for the English version of the video games. I guess 4Kids didn't get the memo, however, because in this episode they keep calling them "breeding centers" for some reason.

Butch and Cassidy address the crowd:

Japanese Version	English Version
Yamato:  "Yes, yes! Welcome! If you leave your pokemon with Big Sis' Daycare its coat will become glossy and it'll  become well-behaved! Come, come! Line up, line up!"	Cassidy:  "There's no need to push. We have plenty of rooms left in our luxury suites. We guarantee your Pokémon will soon be like new and some may even evolve!"
Kasumi:  "Business is really booming, huh?"	Misty:  "She seems really nice."
Takeshi:  "Ohh!"	Brock:  "Aah! Eeh! Ohh!"
Yamato:  "Our facilities here are super luxurious. We'll take good care of your pokemon...after all, our motto is "Love for your pokemon is everything!""	Cassidy:  "And do you know why we're so popular? It's because we believe in love. We feel every Pokémon is lovable. We believe in Pokémon love power!"
Kosaburou:  "Love is everything!"	Butch:  "Love power!"
Both:  "It is!"	Both:  "Yay!"
Takeshi:  "All of that...is so nice..."	Brock:  "Love...power..."
Tohru:  "It looks like there's nothing for me to do here."	Snap:  "Wow, she sure knows how to attract customers."
Kasumi:  "It's decided!"	Misty:  "Yeah..."

Both versions are wildly different, huh? For one thing, there's this kind of implication that Yamato and Kosaburou are playing a romantic couple for their audience here here (hence Takeshi's "All of that...is so nice....") that isn't really as strong in the dub. 4Kids also changes Misty's last line there to make her sound suspicious of the daycare breeding center while Kasumi's the opposite.

Side Note
I have to talk about the elephant in the room here: Butch's voice.

I mean, what the hell is that? He sounds like a chain smoker. He sounds like he has a frog in his throat. He sounds like he's gargling rocks. He sounds fucking terrible. Why in God's name did anyone want to inflict that voice onto Kids' WB!'s young viewers? Who thought this was a good idea!?!?

Eric Stuart himself kind of answered this a bit when he was interviewed by website Journey of a Frontman back in 2015:

Alex Obert: I read that you also provided the voice for Butch. I feel like that’d be a strain on your vocal cords. Eric Stuart: I came into do Brock and James and the director says, “Okay, so there’s this other Team Rocket that makes this appearance and we’d like you to play Butch. It’s Butch and Cassidy.” But they’re all talking to each other throughout this episode. [...] And of course the majority of the fans are like, “I had no idea you were both Brock and James!” But Butch, I had to pick something that was completely different from both of them. I picked my Harvey Fierstein and Selma Diamond voice. Though it sounds like it hurts, it doesn’t really hurt at all. It’s actually pretty easy to do for me. That way, I can have all three of them talking to each other and arguing with each other and also not be distracted by the fact that it was the same actor.

So the Butch voice comes from Eric Stuart wanting to make his newest character sound different from the other voices he does in the show. Fair enough. And to his credit, Eric Stuart did set out to do what he was trying to do. But why did it have to be that voice?

I read a theory from the Internet from waaaay back when this episode first premiered that might explain what 4Kids and / or Eric Stuart was thinking. This is in no way confirmed but here goes anyway:  James represents effeminate gay men while Butch is a stand-in for their more masculine counterparts. Hear me out. The idea goes that since James is often seen cross-dressing, is given all these high-pitched squeals and giggles, hates the idea of marrying the woman his parents set him up with, and spends nearly 24/7 with a sexy female colleague but isn't trying to get into her pants then that means that of course he's a friend of Dorothy. It is 1998 after all; what other explanation could there be! This may not have been the intention for the character when 4Kids first started but the whole "James is a flamboyant gay man" idea is one that they would definitely end up embracing as the years go on.

And then, when it came time to dub this episode, 4Kids looked at what they had already done with James and decided hey, wouldn't it make a lot of sense if we gave this other guy a name that means "masculine" and then also gave him this super deep man voice? You know, as a kind of yin and yang thing? So they get Eric Stuart to come in and do his Harvey Fierstein impersonation and BAM! we've got someone the exact opposite of James. When all is said and done, Eric Stuart plays James to be effeminate while he plays Butch to be, well, butch.

This is all just a theory and there's no proof whatsoever that this is what 4Kids was going for at the time. Still, it all kind of adds up. I don't think this was done out of any sort of malice or anything (from what I've gathered both 4Kids and TPCI seem to be very LGBTQ-safe environments) but instead was intended just to be a funny little in-joke among the staff at 4Kids. It's still a terrible, terrible voice though.

And regardless of the reasoning behind it, I can't say that giving someone who's supposed to be a spy such a distinctive voice is a very prudent one. Like, you know that's Butch the second he opens his mouth! Why would Team Rocket keep someone on its payroll whose cover is blown the second the operation begins?!?

In the Japanese version Takehito Koyasu just gives Kosaburou a normal man voice without any gimmicks or funny little quirks whatsoever. It's night and day from the 4Kids did.

Also, Cassidy's given a kind of evil Nurse Joy's voice, which is also not the best casting choice in the world but is not nearly as cringe-worthy as what 4Kids does to poor Kosaburou here.

Paint Edit
Various signs related to the restaurant get changed:

The top says Resutoran (レストラン), or "restaurant." Curiously, the super Engrish-y "Restaurant Hungry" gets left as-is.

The sign on the chef's door gets altered as well:

The 4Kids version isn't a word-for-word translation but it gets a lot of the intended meaning across. In the original the text at the top says Kaiten Isshu-Nen Kinen (開店一周年記念), or "Celebrating One Year Since Our Grand Opening!" The text on the yellow part says Omuraisu tabehoudai (オムライス食べ放題), or "All-You-Can-Eat Omrice."

The dub also tries to tell us that the food in the poster there is "ice cream" and not an omelet covered with ketchup. I guess in the 4Kids version we're supposed to assume this is lemon ice cream? Served on a plate and topped with ketchup??

Various other shots in this scene are altered as well.

Dialogue Edit
Misty gets a reason to go after the buffet today:

Japanese Version	English Version
Chef:  "Just thinking about Koduck makes my chest pound...if I'm allowed to come in contact with a Koduck then you can have as much omrice or whatever else you want as you can eat."	Chef:  "I think Psyduck is the greatest thing since...the invention of the microwave oven. I'm such a big fan that whenever a customer brings in a Psyduck I let 'em eat for free."
Kasumi:  "Oh! Um, can you wait here for a little bit?"	Misty:  "Sir, if we come back in a couple of minutes, will you be here?"
Chef:  "Sure. This opening anniversary event will be going on until the end of the day."	Chef:  "Sure. I've gotta wait here for a delivery of 50 gallons of ice cream."

The dub leaves out the part where the chef says that this is a one-day event, a rather important detail to omit since that's what drives Kasumi to try entering the daycare through the back door later on instead of just waiting for them to open the next day.

Then again, maybe it's just 4Kids' attempt at trying to fix the episode's messed-up timeline? The daycare is "closed for the day" when Kasumi and the others return but is apparently open again when Kasumi comes back to retrieve Tohru's camera in the second half of the episode...? Which means at least a day's passed between the two, right? And yet Kasumi is able to get her all-you-can-eat omrice at the end of the episode anyway?

Paint Edit
The poster, rather than getting its text changed like in every other shot it appears in, gets erased from the door altogether here.

On the way back to the breeding center, the sign behind Misty gets its text erased.

The sign there says disukaunto (ディスカウント), or "discount."

You've got the average "front of the daycare" text edit:

And the sign on the door gets translated.

The Japanese sign says honjitsu shuuryou (本日終了), or "Closed for Today."

See all the Paint Edits from Japanese Episode 057

Dialogue Edit
More changes to the "one day only" idea:

Japanese Version	English Version
Takeshi:  "I guess all we can do now is give up."	Brock:  "Ah, guess we'll have to come back tomorrow."
Tohru:  "And we were so close to getting to eat all that omrice."	Snap:  "We won't get that free buffet today."
Kasumi:  "You've gotta be joking! That event is today only so there's no way I'm giving up! Let's try going around the back."	Misty:  "No way! I'm getting into that dessert bar now! There might not be any ice cream left tomorrow!"

If 4Kids hadn't rewritten the chef's line earlier about this offer being a one-day-only kind of thing then they wouldn't have had to rewrite Misty's line here either.

Eyecatch
The eyecatch pokemon is different this time around:

Unlike many of the other changes 4Kids will make to the "Who's That Pokémon?" over the years, this one actually makes sense as Koduck is indeed a prominent Pokémon in this episode.

Dialogue Edit
The real Team Rocket infiltrate the breeding center:

Japanese Version	English Version
Musashi:  "Tiptoe, tiptoe..."	Jessie:  "Be quiet as a mouse."
Kojirou:  "Tiptoe, tiptoe..."	Meowth:  "Did you say Meowth?"
Musashi:  "Take three steps forward and check your surroundings..."	Jessie:  "Oh...This way."
Kojirou:  "Take three steps forward...and two steps back!"	James:  "This is so...exciting! Ah!"
Nyarth:  "And what do you think you're going to do then Nya?"	Meowth:  "Keep it quiet, James Bond."

In Japanese the phrase "three steps forward, two steps back" (３６５歩のマーチ) is equivalent to the English phrase "take two steps forward, one step back." The only real difference is the number of steps taken.

Also, there's no James Bond reference in the original.

Next up, the new Rocket motto:

Japanese Version	English Version
Yamato:  "If we're asked about this and that..."	Cassidy:  "You don't know who you're dealing with."
Kosaburou:  "...it would be normal not to answer you."	Butch:  "But we'll be glad to show you."
Both:  "Well, we'll make an exception this time."	Both:  "Prepare for trouble and make it double."
Yamato:  "To prevent the Earth from being destroyed."	Cassidy:  "To infect the world with devastation."
Kosaburou:  "To protect the peace of the Earth."	Butch:  "To blight all peoples in every nation."
Yamato:  "To carry out the evils of love and honesty."	Cassidy:  "To denounce the goodness of truth and love."
Kosaburou:  "We, the cute and stylish villains."	Butch:  "To extend our wrath to the stars above!"
Yamato:  "Yamato!"	Cassidy:  "Cassidy."
Kosaburou:  "Kosaburou!"	Butch:  "Butch."
Yamato:  "The Rocket-Dan who holds up the cosmos are the two of us..."	Cassidy:  "We're Team Rocket, circling Earth all day and night."
Kosaburou:  "Shocking Pink! A peach colored tomorrow is waiting!"	Butch:  "Surrender to us now, or you will surely lose the fight!"
Yamato:  "Something like that!"	Cassidy:  "That's right."
Ratta:  "Rachina"	Ratticate:  "Cate!"

While the Japanese version and the English version have their differences, they're both equally derivative of Musashi and Kojirou's / Jessie and James' motto so I guess that's all that really matters.

The next few changes are classic 4Kids nonsense. First, Jessie explains how she knows Cassidy:

Here, Musashi tells Kojirou that she knew her from her training days, something we would actually get to see years later in "The Rocket-Dan! Love and the Origin of Youth." (Of course, that special contains a number of things that contradict what happens here, such as Kojirou meeting them in that special but not knowing who they are here, but eh)

The English dub makes it sound like they were just schoolmates or something and don't make it explicit that they didn't meet until they both joined the Rocket-Dan..


The Rocket trio didn't "steal" their motto. Nyarth mentions that their motto is an original (それはニャーたちのオリジナルニャー！) while Kojirou simply tells them not to copy them.

The Rockets continue to feud:


Originally, Nyarth is worried that they'll receive a pay cut, not get thrown off the team altogether.

Paint Edit
A few more shots of the breeding center get changed when the police arrive:

The breeding center gets changed again when Misty goes back to get Snap's camera.

And then the police station gets its kanji erased.

The text going down the corner of the building says kotsuu anzen (交通安全), or "traffic safety." The text on the banner that 4Kids erased off the side of the building altogether says kotsuu ruuru o mamorou (交通ルールを守ろう) or "Let's Follow the Traffic Rules."

And again when the police go back to arrest Cassidy and Butch.

Dialogue Edit
As the new Rocket duo is being arrested:


In the Japanese version they say ya na kimochi (やな気持ち), or "This is a bad feeling~," a clearly derivative version of Musashi and Kojirou's ya na kanji. The dub version should have been equally derivative of Jessie and James' "we're blasting off again" but I guess maybe there was a mouthflap issue?

Paint Edit
One last shot of the restaurant before we go.

And that's a wrap on Season One!

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This page was last updated on July 2nd, 2017