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Comparisons
April 28th, 2002

Gather around children, I have a story to share.

A few Thursdays ago, my school was showing an anime as part of the Japanese Film Series.  Every Thursday in April, there would be a showing of some important Japanese movie and anyone who goes to these things will get extra credit for Japanese class.  Even though I have like a 98 average in the class (heh...I really need to fix a lot of the errors on my site because some of you won't believe me...) I went to them anyway.  Hey, free movie, free snacks, and a nice big air conditioned room.  When you're in a hot dorm all day with no AC, you'll sit through even the Final Fantasy movie to cool off. 

So I went to see the first one, Kagemusha (a good movie but a bit long) and the second one,  Kikujiro (a hilarious movie made in the year 2000--very highly recommended).  I missed the third one because I had class, but I did get to see the fourth one:

Akira.

Yes, Akira.  This is considered one of the most "classic" anime ever.  It's what "started the big Japanimation trend."  It had been years since I saw the movie last, and from what I remembered it was terrible.  I never understood why people liked it so much.  It's one of those movies I think of when I think of fanboys--you know, the stereotypical otaku who watches WWF and Dragon Ball Z and won't stop talking about how hot Rei Ayanami is when she's naked and who calls everyone who disagrees with them "gay" and usually doesn't bathe--you know the sort (There's a great music video to the Van Halen song "Right Now" that makes a very funny joke toward these people--go dowload it, it's worth leaving your computer on all night to download it). 

Thankfully, we saw the subtitled version, but that didn't help much.  The subtitled version (on the DVD) was just terrible.  About 1/3 of what was said wasn't even translated.  Typos just littered the script (unlike my site, which has absolutely no typos...don'cha just love my alternate spelling of "comparisons" in the previous update?), and there was extremely poor grammar throughout.  And they usually forgot some important words, like "to be" and "have."  A typical sentence:  "Dont' be wordy!  You no right ahve talk me like that to."  Seriously.  I'm not joking.  I think all of five minutes was spent on the script.

But the movie itself just didn't hold me.  I didn't care for any of the characters.  The music sucked.  The plot was very muddy and hard to follow (well, the script didn't help).  And it was one of those films that depended on blood and explosions to hold the audience's attention.  I'm sorry, but I need more than that.

So you may be asking...what's with the mini-rant?  Well, thanks to Kennith-san, I've found the URL to DBZ Uncensored again.  So, I did a DBZ Uncensored-like update.  But unlike one of those updates where Chris just told a story and then had nothing to update with, I do.  Go over to the Episode Comparsions section to read about Episodes 35 and 38.  The Episode 35 page has been redone, and the Episode 38 page has all the info I could find about it.  These took a lot longer to do than I thought (I mean, since neither episode was dubbed, it shouldn't take long to write about them, right?) but I think they're worth it.  I've also added some new episode titles, both for the dub and for the Japanese version.   One of the dub's titles reveals Kakureon's American name, so I've added that to the big list. 

Gonna get some new lyrics up soon!

House Cleaning
April 17th, 2002

Hey everyone.  I've got some housecleaning items to take care of.  First of all, I've updated the episode guide with the titles of two new dubbed episodes.  The titles (with their synopses) appeared on the official website briefely yesterday, but for some reason aren't there anymore.  Maybe someone posted them before they were supposed to?  I dunno, but the titles are up on the episode guide.  Also, I've gone through the Episode Comparisons and have cleaned up coparisons 1-28.  Y'know, correcting typos, deleting stuff I thought sounded good when I first wrote it but now sound stupid--stuff like that.  And lastly, I've updated my links section.  OK, not really, I just deleted the ones that don't work.  Does anyone know if Dragon Ball Z Uncensored has moved?  Because the URL doesn't work, and I kinda doubt the webmaster would go back to the site he left a while ago to keep the link from being dead.  Other than that, this is a pretty boring update. 

On the PokeMasters site, they have several links to pictures of the new Pokemon Advance game.  To tell you the truth, I'm rather disappointed with it.  I mean, it looks like nothing more than a Super Nintendo conversion of the Game Boy games, and that's the last thing Nintendo needs to do.  I mean really, do we seriously need more of the same!?  And why is everyone making such a big deal out of the reflections on the water and the footprints in the sand?  It's not that big a deal!!!  I can barely get through Pokemon Gold (yes, I'm still playing my way through that one...) and I doubt I could go through one more version of the game.  Plus, the new pokemon, except for Sonano, look hideous.  They look like they fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.  I mean seriously...

Those comparisons I keep promising should be up with my next update, whenever that'll be...

New Important Pokemon Bios
April 14th, 2002

You notice how the Rocket-Dan are given so much more attention than Satoshi-tachi?  I mean, there seem to be more episodes centered around them than any of the heroes!  That's probably why it took me longer to do the bios for their pokemon than for any other.

So anyway, I've divided the pokemon by their trainers--Musashi's pokemon, Kojirou's pokemon, Musashi & Kojirou's pokemon (pokemon that neither one of them really own, like Nyasu), and Miscellaneous Rocket-Dan pokemon.  The latter really only has one bio (Persian), but I didn't know where else to put it.  There are several new bios, such as Delibird's, Shellder's, Koiking's/Gyarados', and Persian, to name a few.  Only one more section of the Important Pokemon section to redo!

At the end of the month, after I get my paycheck, I'm going to send in for the Envy advanced package.  That'll give me a lot more bandwidth and storage space, so I should be able to do more with the site.  I might even go ahead and buy a domain name!  Who knows!? 

New Rant, New Info, and News
April 6th, 2002

I've got some news for you guys!

The Anime News Network site reported about Pokemon falling off the Lycos Top 50 charts for the first time since the chart began in 1999:
 

posted on 2002-04-02 11:56:41
Yahoo Press Release Excerpt: 

For the first time in the history of The Lycos 50, Pokemon has fallen off the list after 136 weeks. Pokemon was the first-ever number one on The Lycos 50 when the list launched in Sept. 1999 and was the number one most searched term for the year ending 1999. From January 4 through July 25, 2000, Pokemon camped out in the number one spot. But in June 2000, Pokemon began to drop, plunging to the bottom of the list in Dec. 2001. The demise of Pokemon means only one Japanese cartoon remains on the list: the unstoppable Dragonball (#3). But Japanese anime fans, fear not. The new toy-turned-cartoon Zoids is not far from The Lycos 50, rising to number 57 this week. 

That doesn't speak very well about the franchise's popularity.  Oh well...maybe this news will cheer you up:

Miramax, the Disney-owned company who brought you Spy Kids and the Princess Mononoke dub, have announced that they have the rights to the next two pokemon movies (Movie 4 and the soon-to-be-released-in-Japan Movie 5).  Their rights cover any theatrical, televised, and home video releases, meaning that Movie 4 may still have a chance at being released in theatres.  Miramax said they will "reinvigorate the franchise" and will "come up with a bolder, smarter marketing concept."  Miramax hopes to have "Pokemon 4" out by October.

Anyway, on to the updates.  Providing the site's fifteenth rant is Wujaman with "What is a Pokemon Master, Anyway?"  It's a pretty interesting read, so go check that out.  In addition, I've added some information about two of Satoshi's pokemon, Spear and Gomazou.  I hope to have the remaining two pages in that section (the Rocket-Dan pokemon and the miscellaneous pokemon) redone to the newer format soon.

By the way, Serebii.net has pictures of the Yadoking's Day special (the one that was never dubbed), for those of you interested.

New Feature
April 2nd, 2002

I hope everyone had a great "poisson d'avril" (April Fool's) day.  I seem to have fooled quite a few people (about six e-mails and several IM's asking me what had happened to the site) with my little prank yesterday.  I'm surprised that people weren't more alert--it WAS April Fool's Day, after all.  But it shouldn't have been too difficult to figure out--I mean, the e-mail address on the site was the EXACT same as my e-mail address. 

So no, my site wasn't hacked into.  Sailor Stars isn't being dubbed right now.  And there's no coalition in Japan to make fanfiction illegal.  Now that those April Fools rumors are put aside... 

I have the big update for everyone today.  After a long time of not updating, I present my site's very first feature!  Click here or on the link above to view it.  It's a sort of "tour" of the New York Pokemon Center!  There's a lot of neat info that I'm pretty sure you can't find anywhere else, and I thank Raichu 526.  He did all the work, I just put it into html form.  One reason it took so long to put the feature out was because we kept sending e-mails back and forth with problems/corrections.  Also, that image map I have (the first image map on the site!) took a while to get right.  Anyway, I hope you thoughroughly enjoy and send lots of feedback to Raichu 526! 

Expect some more comparisons up soon!