Takeshi Shudo's Blog Entries About the Incident

Dogasu's Backpack | Features | Pokémon Shock

Below is an English translation of How to Craft a Story: Takeshi Shudo, How Anyone Can Become a Screenplay Writer (シナリオえーだば創作術　だれでもできる脚本家　首藤剛志), a blog written by former Pocket Monsters series organizer and head writer Mr. Takeshi Shudo. The following are excerpts taken from Blog Post No. 158 "The Pokémon Incident: It Started with "Serves you right! Ahaha"," a blog entry related to the Pokémon Shock incident.

Notes about the translation below

I have two notes about the translations you're about to read.

One, the Japanese version of the blog is written the way a lot of Japanese blogs are written in that the author only types out (roughly) one sentence per one line. To a native English speaker like me this makes the blogs seem weird and choppy but that's just the way a lot of Japanese blogs are written, for some reason. For simplicity's sake I've replicated this one-sentence-per-line writing style in my English translation.

Two, the following translation is a truncated version of a much, much longer blog entry. Mr. Shudo is an absolute treasure trove of behind-the-scenes information you can't get anywhere else but his blogs are, as far as your average Pokémon fan is concerned, about 80% filler. The writer had a tendency to trail off into some very off-topic tangents in his blog and so what I've decided to do is to pick out the parts that actually discuss the Pokémon Shock incident and present that to you on the page below. I hope you will find this abridged presentation a bit easier to read that it would have been otherwise. If you're someone who would prefer to read an unabridged translation, however, I've also got you covered; you can check those out here.

Blog Post No. 158 "The Pokémon Incident: It started with "Serves you right! Ahaha""

Posted August 27th, 2008
Original Text (Japanese)	Unabridged Translation

About a week later Mr. Shudo posted a blog entry that touches upon how he first found out about the incident. The actual relevant parts don't come up until toward the end; until then, he spends the blog entry talking about the pressure he felt working on a show like Pocket Monsters, makes some really problematic statements about women working in the writers' room, and gives details about how he went about writing the lyrics to Rocket-Dan yo Eien ni. Toward the end he talks about the incident:

I still remember what happened on December 16th.

I was working on a draft at this sort of satellite office near the fishing harbors in Odawara.

I had recorded that night's episode of Pokémon using a video recorder hooked up to a projector at the place I was working.

I was planning to watch it later on this giant 100 inch screen.

He talks about his daughter for a bit and then returns to his story:

At around 10 o'clock at night the phone at the satellite office rang.

It was a man's voice was on the other end.

"Serves you right! Ahaha."

And just like that, he hung up.

I had no idea what he meant by that.

There wouldn't have been that many people who would've known my work number at the time.

And even if it was a prank call, you don't just go around calling random offices, right?

And so I thought maybe it was just a wrong number.

But then why did he say "Serves you right?" Serves what right?

I later got a phone call from my wife at around 11 o'clock.

"I just got a call from my sister in Tokyo. It seems like something terrible's happened with Pokémon. Have you heard?" she said.

"Huh?"

"It's on the news right now."

I powered up the projector and switched it over to the news.

Children who had watched Pokémon had fallen ill…it's happening all over Japan…the cause is currently unknown…

I thought about asking someone to explain what the hell was happening but since this was happening all over the country I had no idea who to contact.

This isn't the kind of thing a phone call with a producer or a director would be able to clear up, right?
And then the voice of that man on the telephone popped into my head.

"It serves you right"…was he talking about what was going on right now?

I decided to watch the episode of Pokémon I had recorded.

The story continues in the next blog entry.