Episode Stats:

Japanese Episode 070:  "Nyarth's ABCs"
American Episode 216:  "Go West, Young Meowth"
Pokémon Dare Da?  The Rocket-Dan's Nyarth (Japanese), Onix (English)
Dr. Orchid's Pokémon Lecture: Ishitsubute
Japanese Air Date:  November 12th, 1998
American Air Date:  October 9th, 1999
Important Characters:  Madonnya (Meowzie)
Important Places:  Holywood (Hollywood, California)

Satoshi and his friends have been invited to Holywood for the premiere of "Pokémon The Movie!" As they head off to the once fabulous movie mecca, Nyarth of the Rocket-Dan tells his teammates that he used to live there! He recalls growing up on the street together with a gang of wild Nyarth, running from place to place and scrounging for food wherever they could. One day, Nyarth comes across a female Nyarth named Madonnya and instantly falls head over heels for her. He decides to "become human" in order to impress her, so he teaches himself to walk on two legs and to speak human language. When Nyarth approaches Madonnya with his newly learned skills she turns him away, rejecting him for being "gross." After that, Nyarth reveals, he left Holywood and joined the Rocket-Dan. Now that he's back in town, Nyarth is approached by his old gang and finds out that Madonnya has been brought into the group! He tries to take her out of the gang but suddenly finds himself surrounded by his old comrades. Musashi and Kojirou arrive on the scene and take care of the gang so Nyarth can face off with Persian, the leader of the gang. When all is said and done, however, Madonnya still rejects Nyarth for being gross! Meanwhile, Satoshi and his friends finish watching the movie, find out that all their scenes got cut, and decide to return home to Masara Town to continue training for the Pokémon League.

---

Thoughts
I hesitate to call any episode of a TV series "my favorite," especially one that's still going on with no end in sight, but I'd say that this one's pretty high up there. I mean where do I even start? I could write pages and pages and pages singing its praises and celebrating how important it is to the franchise as a whole but that still wouldn't feel like enough, y'know?

This episode was written by Takeshi Shudo and was storyboarded by Kunihiko Yuyama and is the first time the two of them have worked together like this since the first episode. And well, damn, I wish they had collaborated on episodes like this more often! It may seem weird that it took the TV series a year and a half (not counting the hiatus) to finally get around to answering the question of why the Rocket-Dan's Nyarth can use human language but looking back on it now I'm glad they waited to do this story when they were good and ready. Everything about this episode - Nyarth's early days with the Persian gang, falling in love with Madonnya, working to become human, getting rejected - really help make what had been just a silly cat modeled after a combination of a maneki neko and Muttley from Wacky Races into a real, fleshed-out character. There aren't too many kids' shows that can make us want the villain character find happiness and yet this episode manages to do just that. It's really quite amazing when you think about it.

It's also a cool episode because our heroes - Satoshi, Kasumi, and Takeshi - are pretty much shoved into the background to make way for Nyarth and the rest of the Rocket-Dan. We've had episodes centered around members of the Rocket trio before but Satoshi always got shoehorned in at the end to play the hero and send the trio blasting off. But here? The gang travels to Holywood and...watch a movie. The end! Episodes like this where Jaari Boy are given the background role that the Rocket trio usually has to endure are rare so I always be sure to cherish them the few times a series they pop up.

I also really want to talk about how phenomenal Inuko Inuyama is in this episode. Ms. Inuyama hasn't been given much to work with as Nyarth has honestly kind of been a one dimensional character up until this point but then along comes this episode and BAM! all of a sudden she's giving this nuanced performance that we had no reason to believe she ever had in her. Inuko Inuyama absolutely knocks this episode out of the park and even though she's not as famous or popular as her co-workers her performance in this episode shows that she absolutely deserves to be.

This is a very important episode for a number of reasons, so of course 4Kids pulled out all the stops and produced one of the most well put-togeth- ahahaha I'm just kidding they sucked even more than usual. For example, this episode would have been a great opportunity to explain the English dub's more baffling casting choices - why a Pokémon based on something as extremely Japanese as a maneki neko talks like a Brooklyn gangster in a show where everybody else speaks General American - but 4Kids blew it. According to dub logic, Meowth hung out in some attic, eavesdropped on a class filled with terrible French accents, Ted Lewis and his Giovanni voice, and people speaking with a midwestern accent, and he came out of it...with a Brooklyn accent? Region-specific slang and all? The dub's an embarrassing mess in general but it's episodes like this that really make you wish someone other than 4Kids had gotten the license to this show back in the day.

Madonnya, Persian, and the wild Nyarth all keep their Japanese voices

Dialogue Edit
Why do all the important episodes have so many more script changes than the regular ones?
  Originally, Satoshi says that he, the great Satoshi-kun from Masara Town, trains day and night to prepare for the upcoming Pokémon League (マサラタウンのサトシ君日夜がんばっています). This prompts Kasumi to ask what it is exactly that he's done since he's started this so-called training (とか何とか言って一休今まで何してきたんだか).

The gist is sort-of kind-of there in the English dub but I just wish Misty's line wasn't written to sound like the punchline to some legacy newspaper comic strip that's been around for half a century.

Paint Edit
The movie that Satoshi and his friends made in the previous episode wasn't ever given a proper name but the fact that the title of the episode was "Pokémon The Movie" (ポケモン・ザ・ムービー) then I guess that means that, yeah, "Pokémon The Movie" is probably what this thing's supposed to be called.

In the English dub, however, the title of the movie got changed to "Pokémon in Love" because, hey, why the fuck not!

The problem is that the Japanese title - and by "Japanese" title, I mean the title that's already written out in English - doesn't match up with the new title that the dub decided to give it. So 4Kids erased it. Did they bother to write "Pokémon in Love" in its place? Pfft, of course not, that would make way too much sense!

The text on the invitation that our heroes receive is just the first of several of these edits:

Click on each image for a larger version.

So, to recap: An episode of Pokémon spent the time and money to erase the words "Pokémon Movie" from an episode about a Pokémon movie. Can we all just sit back and let that sink in for a little bit?

Also, I'm kind of surprised that 4Kids didn't do anything to make this promo image look less...sexually harrass-y, y'know? Where is Psyduck's left hand going as it wanders down Wigglytuff's torso? Where are its eyes fixated on? What is with that look on Wigglytuff's face? Why is this image going to appear in my nightmares for weeks to come?

Side Note / Dialogue Edit
The English dub of this episode contains more lies than usual, and one of the big ones is where this whole episode takes place.
 
4Kids tells us that the adventures here take place in Hollywood, California, U.S.A., a real world city that's about 5,500 miles away from the Kanto region of Japan on which this particular series is based. This means that, in the dub canon, Ash and his friends hopped onto a plane and flew halfway across the world to see the premiere of a movie that it's also establishing as being some low-budget B movie that nobody wants to see. OK...?

In the Japanese version, Satoshi and his friends go to Holywood (ホリウッド), a town made up just for this episode. The name is nearly identical to Hollywood - which is written in Japanese as ハリウッド - but that's kind of the point. Remember Aopulco and how it sounds nearly identical to Acapulco? Satoshi and his friends didn't go to Mexico in that episode, they didn't go to the North Pole in the Rougela episode, and they don't go to the U.S. in this one.

If the 4Kids dub is to be believed - and a lot of people have no choice but to take them at their word, unfortunately - then Ash and his friends were quite the little globetrotters back in the Kanto days. Hate to burst your bubble, guys, but according to the original they're really not. This episode, like every other episode in this saga, takes place right there in the Kanto region.

I also think it's worth pointing out that Holywood isn't based on present-day Hollywood; it's based on 1950s - 1960s Hollywood, a Hollywood that was experiencing an unprecedented economic slump. Ticket sales were way down because everyone started staying home to watch this new thing called "TV" and a lot of movie studios were having trouble getting butts into the seats of theaters. I don't think things ever got as bad as they appear to be in this episode - Holywood looks more like it just went through a zombie apocalypse than a simple economic slump - but the town was definitely not as healthy as it is now. And since "Holywood" is a fictional town and all that, they're allowed to embellish a few things here and there like that.

The English dub tells us that this is the real, modern-day Hollywood, aka the same Hollywood that Pokémon The First Movie had its premiere at like a month after this episode first aired on Kids' WB!, yet the two couldn't have been more different.

Paint Edit
Another "Pokémon Movie" edit.

Click on each image for a larger version.

I feel like a billboard for a movie should probably have said movie's title written somewhere on it but hey, I'm no marketing expert so what do I know?

Dialogue Edit
So I guess 4Kids wanted to avoid making any overt references to the previous episode because every time the original version brought it up the dub would make sure to talk about something else instead.

Japanese Version	English Dub
Musashi: "Hey hey! We can't not go to this thing here, right?"	Jessie: "James, I just can't wait to go to the gala premiere of this movie."
Kojirou: "But the three of us weren't even invited..."	James: "But I didn't get an invitation, did you?"
Musashi: "What are you talking about? Don't you remember how much we helped with this movie?"	Jessie: "We don't need invitations. We're the stars! All we have to do is show up."
Kojirou: "Did we really help or did we just get in the way...?"	James: "And all they have to do is throw us out!"
Musashi: "Nevermind that. There's no way we're not not in this movie! Ah~! The world-famous Holywood! Movies! Film!"	Jessie: "Don't be ridiculous, James. This movie is our ticket to Hollywood super stardom. And soon we'll be getting limousines, and movie contracts, and fan mail."
Kojirou: "Maybe we'll even be tomorrow's big stars!"	James: "We might even get our own...informercial!"
Musashi: "Camera! Lights! Action!"	Jessie: "Lights!"
	James: "Camera!"
	Jessie: "Action!"
Nyarth: "Hakushon!"	Meowth: "Cut!"

About that last line: Hakushon (ハクション) is Japanese for "achoo," the sound of someone sneezing. It also happens to sound like the word for "action," akushon (アクション), so you can guess where this is going. The pun is swept aside in the dub and is instead replaced with Meowth saying "cut!"

I also have no idea why they say "Camera! Lights! Action!" in the Japanese version instead of the more standard "Lights! Camera! Action!"

After the title screen:
 
The original narration (which has this really sweet tone to it that Maddie Blaustein doesn't imitate at all) introduces the flashback by saying that it happens "before I had a name, an owner, siblings, a house...anything at all" (名前はまだない。名前どころか親も兄弟も家も何もかもなかった). The dub omits the name part (which is fair enough...Meowth's name is "Meowth") and the owner part and then adds a really odd analogy involving chocolate in its place.

A few lines later:
 
Nyarth simply says "I was always hungry."

The dub introduces this whole "Meowth is looking for love" subplot really, really early in this episode and acts as if he's been focused on finding a mate ever since he was born. In Japan, meanwhile, this whole "being in love" thing doesn't happen to Nyarth until much, much later.

Meowth sees his first movie:
 
Originally, the old man tells the children gathered that this thing he's about to show them is something called a "movie" (I guess Nyarth's hometown is some really remote village out in the country or something far removed from modern entertainment?) and that he goes around to various villages and towns to spread the art of motion pictures to the people (おじさんはみなさんに映画を知ってもらおうと村や町を回っているのです。).

There's nothing about a "Camp Poké-Hearst" in the Japanese version and the movie he shows isn't given a title there either.

Side Note
Delia does her Marilyn Monroe impersonation:


So the Japanese version has Hanako say Horiuddo uwaa puppu-pi-du (ホリウッド　うわぁ　プップピドゥ) or "Holywood! Wow! Poop-Oop-Pi-Doo!" And the way Masami Toyoshima delivers that nonsensical "Poop-Oop-Pi-Doo!" part sounds like a weird Betty Boop impersonation. Which is bizarre since she's clearly meant to be doing an homage to Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch and not the cartoon flapper girl from the 1930s.


Is this another one of those weird mix-ups in the Japanese version similar to the "Broadway is where people go to do magic" thing we got earlier in the series? Was the script writer thinking one thing and the animators another? I've looked up the Japanese version of The Seven Year Itch (which is called The Seven Year Affair over here) and Hanako's line doesn't match up with the actual line in the movie, so it's not that.

This bizarre mix-up isn't in the English dub.

Dialogue Edit
Brock and the others look at what's become of Hollywood:

Takeshi explains that the reason Holywood is so desolate is because the cost of making movies has gotten too high over the years and that because of the crap economy the only movie the town will have to submit to the Binnes Film Festival this year is "Pokémon The Movie" (映画はお金がかかりすぎる最近不景気だからなかなか映画は作られない。今年ビンヌ映画祭に出品できるのは1本だけらしい).

The English dub skips all this, leaves out Binnes once again, and also decides to turn Takeshi's guide book into a map.

Paint Edit
More "Pokémon Movie" edits.

Click on each image for a larger version.

Also, I'd like to point out that the dub is very, very inconsistent when it comes to these "Pokémon Movie" edits in that they actually leave more of the text intact than they end up taking out. It seems like they erase the text whenever you can see the whole thing but that they leave it alone when it's really small (like here) or when you can only see one of the words (like here). Maybe this episode was running behind schedule or something?

Dialogue Edit
More of this "love" talk:


Nyarth doesn't even think about love until he lays eyes on Madonnya. Meowth, on the other hand, apparently thinks about it 24/7.

Originally, Nyarth lists out all the food he was able to try out including ice cream, crepes, and yaki-udon (焼きうどん). I'm betting that last dish there is what prompted 4Kids to do the rewrite.

Paint Edit
The text at the top of the rich lady's license plate got removed.

Click on each image for a larger version.

"Horawood" is not a correct romanization of either ホリウッド or ハリウッド (there's no ラ symbol, for starters) so I'm not really sure where the Japanese version got that weird spelling from.

Also, I'm a little surprised 4Kids didn't change the "NYA" there to a "MEOW" or something like that.

Eyecatch
The eyecatch in the Japanese version is "The Rocket-Dan's Nyarth." In the English version? Onix.


So the English dub has been doing this thing where the Pokémon they choose as "Who's That Pokémon?" is the Pokémon who stars in the next episode, not the current one. The next episode is "To Master the Onixpected!," so yeah, an Onix makes sense here. So what was the "Who's That Pokémon?" in the previous one, the one that would serve as a preview for this one? A...Snorlax. A Pokémon that doesn't even appear in this episode.

Yeah, that totally makes sense.

Dialogue Edit
Back from the commercial break:


Originally we hear what sound very much like Musashi and Kojirou reciting lines from Romeo & Juliet. Musashi says "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" (ロミオよ ロミオ どうしてあなたはロミオなの) and Kojirou responds, though Nyarth starts talking over him so it's hard to make out what he's saying.

Also! This woman here, in the dub? The one with the accent? Why doesn't anyone in Meowth's past speak like that and therefore explain why Meowth speaks the way he does???

The dance lessons:


The closed captions on my English dub DVDs say "Un deux trois" but the voice actress is clearly saying "une" instead. The Japanese version, which also has the class counting in French, does not make this same mistake.

Also, hooray to the double standard of leaving French things alone but then trying to cover up everything that's Japanese!

Meowth successfully learns to walk:

Originally, Nyarth says that it took him a while to get used to walking on two legs, implying that he couldn't run as quickly on two legs as he could on four. The English dub adds this line about crawling that wasn't in there originally.

Speech class begins:
The Japanese version, obviously, uses a completely different phrase than the tongue twister that the dub ends up using. The one used in the original is iroha ni hohe to chiri nuru o (いろはにほへとちりぬるを) and it comes from an old poem called Iroha Uta (いろは歌). You can read more about the poem here.

Paint Edit
Nyarth gets himself a picture book that includes hiragana and katakana in it. Guess what part of that 4Kids had a problem with?


As you can see, the Japanese version of this book has four circles on each page - two with English letters, one with a hiragana character, and one with a katakana character. Here, we have "R" for rocket, ろ for ろけっと (roketto), ロ for ロケット (roketto), and "P" for...planet, I guess?

If you look at the dub screenshots closely, you can still see where the three missing circles used to be.


Here, "T" is for tooth / teeth and "L" is for "lips." The は and ハ are for ha (歯), the Japanese word for tooth / teeth.

Click on each image for a larger version.

Music Edit
Surprisingly, 4Kids actually bothered to create their own version of Nyarth no Uta (which I guess is called "Meowth's Song"?) for this episode. Their version is terrible and doesn't go with the melody of the song at all, and I'd even go as far to say that it's not so much a "song" as it is just Maddie Blaustein talking over music, but it's at least better than completely scrapping the whole thing in favor of one of the Pikachu's Jukebox songs like they did with Lucky Lucky in the previous episode. So hooray to 4Kids for sorta-kinda getting it right?

The lyrics are also completely different depending on which version you're listening to:

Japanese Version	English Version
On a blue and quiet night	Under the evening sky with the moon high up above
I'm philosophizing by myself, nya ~	I learned to speak human 'cause this cat's got puppy love
The bugs in the grass go	I'll stand on two legs, hold my head up high, and she'll want me
Chirp chirp	Wait and see
They're chirping deliciously, but	I'll write poetry and recite it myself!
I won't eat them tonight, nya ~	For Meowzie

It's kind of interesting when you think about how Japanese audiences would have already been very familiar with this song because it had been used as the ending theme for about thirteen episodes before this episode aired. Fans of the English dub, on the other hand, wouldn't have had any reason to know "Meowth's Song" was even a thing because 4Kids never bothered to dub any of the ending themes.

So for Japanese fans this is an ending theme being used as an insert song while for English dub fans this is a brand new song created just for this episode. That's kind of interesting when you think about it.

Dialogue Edit / Paint Edit
One of the biggest lies the dub tells us is that this episode takes place in the California. Another lie it tells us, one that's equally as big, has to do with the way Meowth learns to speak.

First up:

At this point in the episode, the Japanese version changes to the phrase to "i" wa iroha no i (「い」はいろはのい), which "translates" to "the "i" in "iroha"." The word  iroha means "the basics" or "the ABCs," so it might actually be easier to think of this phrase as meaning ""A" as in "A-B-C"."

I guess this is also a good time to point out that the phrase "She sells seashells by the seashore" is a nearly impossible phrase for a non-English speaker to say correctly and that the idea the dub presents us of Meowth learning how to speak by listening to this tongue twister is ridiculous. Yes, even more ridiculous than the notion of a cat with a coin attached to its forehead learning how to speak human language.

This next section has a mix of visual and script edits so I'll present the whole thing first and then break it down bit by bit:

So let's start with that first line there:

I'm not sure why Meowth says "so I got myself a picture book" now when we saw him with this same book a few minutes earlier, but that's besides the point. Nyarth shows us another page of his book, which means 4Kids got to editin' again:


The English version has the letter P, presumably for "pain." On the Japanese side, we have the letter H, for "hurt" (or maybe ha (歯), or "tooth," since it looks like he maybe has a toothache?) and the letter I, for itai (痛い), the Japanese word for hurt / pain.

Remember how I said earlier that the voice training phrase the class was using in the Japanese version was "i" wa iroha no i? Well, Nyarth overhears the class and is eventually able to produce "i" wa itete no i (「い」はいててのい), or ""i" as in "i-te-te"." Itete means "ow ow ow!" or "ouch ouch ouch!" And, considering that Nyarth had recently gotten used to being beaten up because he kept getting caught by that one chef, the sound was something he was already used to saying. At this point in the Japanese version, Nyarth states that itai was the first human word he learned (いは痛いのい。それが最初に覚えた人間の言葉).  Meanwhile, in the English version, Meowth just sort of ignores this page with the guy with the toothache on it and flips over to the next one.

So there's another paint edit, same as the first:


More importantly, Meowth says here that "rocket" was the first word he understood. Which is incorrect because we literally just saw him being able to say "She sells seashells" not two sentences ago.

More importantly, though, is that In the Japanese version, Nyarth outright states that "rocket" is the second word he learned (ロはロケットのロ。２番目にこれを覚えなければ…), not the first. Itai is number one.

Another paint edit:


Nyarth doesn't praise the Rocket-Dan as being "illustrious" in the Japanese version. He just says that he joined the group because he saw the word "Rocket" in his picture book.

Click on each image for a larger version.

Paint Edit
Two more pages in Nyarth's picture book:


"H" is for "happy" and "M" is for "marriage." The shi (し and シ) in the Japanese version are for shiawase (幸せ), or "happy."


The dub changes the lowercase "h" to an uppercase "M," I guess to make it consistent with the previous page.

The ha (は and ハ) in the Japanese version are for happii (ハッピー), or "happy."

Click on each image for a larger version.

Side Note
And then, after all that, we get this shot filled with hiragana and katakana, aka the devil's writin', aka the alphabet that 4Kids erases every time one of these things dares to make its way on screen. And 4Kids just...leaves it as-is.


I guess it was too difficult for 4Kids to edit well - Meowth pops up all over the place and there's just too much movement going on in general - and so they just left it as-is. But, y'know, it's still quite weird that they'd bother to edit all the other Japanese characters out of this show and then leave this scene intact.

(Also, for those of you wondering, Nyarth is going through some more Japanese pronunciation exercises in this scene while in the dub he's reciting his ABCs).

On an unrelated note, when Madonnya calls Nyarth "gross" (気持ち悪い) later on there's this shot of Nyarth kind of flying into the distance like a balloon with its air let out, all while this amazing scream can be heard in the background. Happily, that same scream is used in the English dub. I feel like that's worth pointing out.

Dialogue Edit
After being called a "freak," Meowth walks toward the camera angrily:

Originally, Nyarth says "If that's the way it's going to be then I'll just become even better than humans and become evil. And then I'll make Madonnya mine, even if by force" (こうニャったら人間をしのぐ悪になって腕ずくでもマドンニャちゃんを自分のものにしてみせるニャ！). The dub changes that final, somewhat rape-y bit to make it sound more like Meowzie will want to go back to Meowth willingly instead.

And then, about a sentence later:

This line makes it sound like Team Rocket has this reputation for being somewhere to go to get rich quick. And maybe it does! But in the Japanese version of this line, Nyarth doesn't actually state why he decided to join the Rocket-Dan; he simply says that he became a grunt for the group some time later (そしてニャーもいまだに悪の組織ロケット団の下っ端にすぎない).

Paint Edit
The last of this "Pokémon The Movie" business.


Click on each image for a larger version.

The very next shot isn't edited even though you can see a bit of "The Movie" text there. Whoops!

Dialogue Edit
Meowth finds out what Meowzie's been up to since then:

Japanese Version	English Dub
Nyarth: "What did you do after that nya?"	Meowth: "You didn't wanna join, did ya?"
Madonnya: "Nya Nya."	Meowzie: "Nya Nya."
Nyarth: "You forgot all about the past? What are you going to do nyaow?"	Meowth: "But the rich lady left ya with nothin', and ya had no other choice, did ya?"
Madonnya: "Nya Nya."	Meowzie: "Nya Nya."
Nyarth: "You have no idea nya?"	Meowth: "Well, you're not thinkin' of stayin' with them, are ya?"
Madonnya: "Nya."	Meowzie: "Nya."
Nyarth: "That's no good nya! This is no place for my sweet Madonnya-chan!"	Meowth: "I can't believe it! She leaves you all alone with nobody to turn to but a bunch of bums!?"
Madonnya: "Nya."	Meowzie: "Nya."
Nyarth: "I'll help you nya!""	Meowth: "I'm gettin' ya outta here right now!"

Meowth kind of leads Meowzie on with a bunch of questions and concludes that Meowzie joined the group against her will while the same thing isn't so much as implied in the Japanese version.

I also find it kind of weird that Meowth would suddenly turn around and call his old gang "a bunch of bums" when, up to this point, we've had no reason to believe that he feels anything other than gratitude for being taken in and helped out in his time of need.

Music Edit
The dub keeps two Japanese songs in a single episode!? Wha!?

The Japanese version uses a different verse of Rocket-Dan yo Eien ni the one that debuted in "Sing! Purin" (the full song had been out for over a year by this point) but the English dub sticks with the same lyrics they used back in "The Song of Jigglypuff." Here's a side by side comparison of the lyrics, for those of you interested:

Japanese Version	English Version
If light can be seen at the ends of the universe	You know us as Team Rocket and we fight for what is wrong
You'll see our faces there	We're tired of our motto so we thought we'd try a song
Musashi!	Jessie!
Kojirou!	James!
Nyarth, Nyarth!	Team Rocket to the rescue!

Again, it's better than just scrapping the original song outright, which is what 4Kids tended to do most days, but I also kind of wish dub fans had gotten as much of a variation as fans of the Japanese version got.

Dialogue Edit
Team Rocket to the rescue!

Japanese Version	English Version
Musashi: "There are certainly one or two things that you can't tell anyone else."	Jessie: "We may be mean and nasty, but we never turn our backs on a teammate in trouble."
Kojirou: "But the way forward is down the path of evil. The same's true for a heart that wanders back and forth."	James: "As long as we're not exposed...to any actual physical danger."
Musashi: "If you look around you you can figure something out."	Jessie: "We saw you the scruffy looking gang."
Kojirou: "And you can see the carnage happening at the eleventh hour."	James: "So we followed you here just in case."
Musashi: "But the way of humanity is to help those in need without asking any questions."	Jessie: "We can't let anything bad happen to our little buddy."
Kojirou: "That's what friendship is, isn't it?"	James: "Because we're more than teammates...we're friends!"

The Japanese version of this speech is flowery nonsense (which is what the Rocket trio excels at) but it also has this added bonus of not making Kojirou sound like some fair-weather friend with the whole "as long as we're not exposed to any actual physical danger" part.

Back at the theater:
Heat Minamino's reasoning for dragging everyone out to the premiere is because they all worked together to make the movie. This reference to the previous episode is removed from the dub.

After the Rocket motto:

After Satoshi asks the Rocket trio what they're doing, they reply by saying that they showed up to make sure everyone remembers who they are. After they dance off with a hilariously sing-songy ya na kanji~ (though Eric Stuart's delivery of "Looks like Team Rocket's dancing off again~!" is pretty good, too), Takeshi and Kasumi break the fourth wall and point out that, actually, they're the ones who were forgotten about this time around. Togepi chirps, everyone looks out into space for a second, and then lets out a heavy sigh. During all this, Satoshi's mom just sort of hangs out in the background, oblivious to everything.

This wasn't a pun, it wasn't some weird Japanese culture thing (that's the next line I'll bring up), and it wasn't anything that the censors would have had a problem with - just a nice, good, perfectly translatable joke. And so 4Kids decided to turn it into a non-sequitor about our heroes' movie careers instead.

Final scene of the episode:
  Originally, Nyarth asks why the moon is round (ああ月はどうして丸いのニャ).

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