December 2009

Dogasu's Backpack | Old Updates Archive | December 2009

Interview with the sound staff of HeartGold and SoulSilver!
December 25th, 2009

Dogasu @ 15:41 JST -- Happy Holidays, everyone!

For today's update, I've translated an interview with the sound staff of Pocket Monsters HeartGold and SoulSilver. Yeah, I know that's not a very Christmas-y update, but hey - it's new content on Christmas Day. That has to count for something, right?

Anyway, the interview was originally printed in the booklet that comes with the three-disc set soundtrack that came out this October. It's pretty informative and offers some rare insight into the creation process of these games, so I definitely recommend checking it out. There are a few parts where I feel that my translation is a little shaky, but overall I think I did a somewhat acceptable job. Hope you guys agree.

I've also updated the List of Anime Episodes with new Japanese and English titles. The Japanese titles give us that Pokethlon episode we've known about for ages while the English titles bring us up to right before Kotone and Kazunari enter the series.

Final Fantasy XIII + SDTV = Illegible menus :(
December 21st, 2009

Dogasu @ 16:56 JST -- I've got a few housecleaning things to take care of that have absolutely nothing to do with the title of this update.

First of all, I've updated the List of Anime Episodes with a few new titles. There are a few more floating around out there, but I'm waiting on Pokeani to confirm them before posting them on my site.

Second of all, I've updated the CD Guide with the complete track listing for the Dotchi ~ Nyo CD. The long version of the title track is pretty awesome because Dogas gets a mention, so I was pretty happy with that. The fifth track is probably the showstopper here, The Best Everyday (Instant Version). I'm not sure why it's called the "instant" version (and looking up インスト in various dictionaries doesn't produce a lot of alternate results), but it's basically a karaoke version of what I assume to be the TV size edit. And while I can't form a final opinion of the song until the version with lyrics comes out, I can go ahead and say that it sounds like the love child of OK! and High Touch.

I've also added a listing for the first CD single of The Best Everyday!. It's coming out on February 24th, 2010 and will come in two varieties; one with a DVD featuring various and one without. The DVD is going to include all the more recent openings and endings that hadn't appeared on DVD yet, so that's pretty exciting. It'd be even more exciting if it was a Blu-Ray that could actually display the HD content in HD, but I guess we can't be too picky, can we?

Finally, I've added the North American release date of HeartGold and SoulSilver *yawn* and the Virtual Console release of Super Smash Bros. to their respective pages. Fun fact: in the Japanese version of Smash Bros., Silph Company is romanized as Silf.

I have the Region 2 DVD of Arceus - To the Conquering of Spacetime, but I won't be getting around to doing a full comparison of the movie until after Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, I've been working on something that I hope to be able to post by Friday.

"Digda, Digda...DAGU DAGU DAGU"
December 18th, 2009

Dogasu @ 07:49 JST -- Hey, remember how I said I'd have the next comparison up "within a week?"

Well, here's "Dig Those Diglett!"

I know I've been in a super "let's pick apart every plot hole in every episode!" mode lately, but it just seems like every episode I've taken a look at lately has had a bunch of them. I mean, yes, I do like the Kanto region, for the most part. But I'm also not blind to the fact that the first few years of the series had a loooooooo~t of problems.

You may have also noticed that I changed the romanization I used for Kojirou's pokemon there. I had been using "Dogasu" ever since this site opened, but the more I thought about it, the more it didn't make sense. The pokemon's name is clearly a combination of the words doku ("poison") and gas, so having that extra u at the end seems really unnecessary. So, I changed it to Dogas.

My name will remain the same, though. So no changes there.

Speaking of Kanto, it seems like the American Cartoon Network site is streaming the first two seasons of the original series on their website. They're missing a few episodes here and there, but for the most part, Seasons One and Two are available to stream online.

There is a hitch, though.

As you can see, the show has been stretched out to create a faux-widescreen presentation. You'll also notice the edges seem to have had this weird fisheye lens effect put on it, an effect that's even more obvious whenever there's a pan shot. So if you feel like watching the show as if you were watching it through a peephole, then you now have that option.

I really don't know what's wrong with Cartoon Network these days. They crop the 16:9 episodes on TV and stretch out the 4:3 episodes on the website, making it seem as if they have some allergy to presenting the show as-is. You can still get the DVDs on Amazon for really cheap, so if I were you I wouldn't even bother with Cartoon Network's presentation.

Finally, there's some big manga news to report:

That's right; Viz is releasing Volume Eight of Pokémon Adventures. For those of you who don't remember, Viz originally stopped their translations after Volume Seven, so Volumes Eight onwards never got a release in the U.S. The eigth volume begins a new story arc, so I think the chances of Viz continuing to translate additional volumes are pretty good. Nice to see the series is doing well.

Volume Eight comes out on August 3rd, 2010.

POKÉMON WORLD IS THE WORLD OF THE DEMONIC!!
December 11th, 2009

Dogasu @ 17:49 JST -- I just wanted to share this little gem that was recently posted on the website Everything is Terrible.

My favorite part is when the guy's all like "Your children need to know that there's a Devil" while showing a picture of Jigglypuff. Haha...wut?

Also, DP Movie 04 stuff.

I haven't really posted anything that you haven't already read on other sites, but I did want to point out a few things.

Just like every other movie before it, there's a really really good chance that exactly 0% of the footage seen in the current trailer will actually show up in the final product.
The early promotional materials for the second movie (The Explosive Birth of the Phantom Pokemon, Lugia) had the letter "X" in place of Lugia's name. It's likely that, in the case of The Illusionary Conqueror, Z, the "Z" is just a placeholder for the unrevealed star of the movie.
The "Z" in the movie's title is pronounced zed, not zee the way it is in America.

Finally, I went into the comparison for "The Double Trouble Header" and made a slight correction. I had called Kyojin no Hoshi a "Japan-only series," but it was brought to my attention that an Italian translation for the series exists. The weird thing is that I actually remember seeing information about an Italian dub when I was trying to find more information about the series, but I guess it must have slipped my mind when I was writing up that comparison. Sorry about that.

I'm approximately halfway down with my "Dig Those Diglett" comparison, by the way. In the meantime, I ask that you don't look at the comparison I currently have up; it's filled with so many errors, both factual and spelling, that it makes me want to cry.

Pokemon 4D " Pikachu's Ocean Adventure," Intereview with John Loeffler
December 10th, 2009

Dogasu @ 07:12 JST -- So after going on and on about how the 3D shorts will probably never make it to America, it was pointed out to me that a dub for the second short actually does exist. The dub, called "Pikachu's Ocean Adventure," was apparently released in the U.S. in August 2007. Whoops.

To be honest, I hadn't even considered the possibility that an English version exists. I had just assumed that the fact that it was a 3D short meant that it was never going to make the trip over, but that is apparently not the case.

So, I've updated the main page and my first impressions page accordingly.

I also wanted to share this interview I randomly came across the other week. The interview is with John Loeffler, the man responsible for composing the music that 4Kids produced for the English dub of Pokémon. There is some good information in this interview from the year 2000, especially the part about how "Brother My Brother" came about.

It's also filled with eye-rolling quotes such as "So for a composer, animation is turning out to be a wonderful thing because it needs music all the time," and "Originally, they were going to literally translate the show exactly the way it's aired in Japan," Loeffler recalls, "but Norman is very creative in his own right. He thought he could do better. He felt that if they changed the music, the textures of the sound effects and worked on the story a bit it would work better in the U.S." *coughbullshitcough*

I've started work on the comparison for "Dig Those Diglett!" and I hope to have it up within a week.

Pokemon 3D Advenure - "Search for Myuu!" and "Pikachu's Big Seabed Adventure"
December 9th, 2009

Dogasu @ 00:00 JST -- I've somehow managed to tear myself away from New Super Mario Bros. Wii - which was just released in Japan on the 3rd - long enough to do this update. Let's see what I've got.

The big update for the night is that I've created pages for the two 3D Pokemon shorts, "Search for Myuu!" and "Pikachu's Big Seabed Adventure." I actually saw the second one a few weeks ago, so I did a full write-up for the thing. Summaries, photographs of the theater, special effects...it's all there.

I'm not one for making New Year's resolutions, but if I were to make one in 2010, it would be to do more first-hand impression features like this one. What do you guys think?

I've also made an update to the List of Anime Episodes.

Miscellaneous
December 2nd, 2009

Dogasu @ 16:24 JST -- Well, I'm at home with the flu for a while. While I'm past the "Oh my God I feel awful" phase, I'm still contagious and therefore have to stay home for the rest of the week. So, why not update this site some?

Today's updates not be that exciting to you guys, but it's stuff I've been meaning to get done for a while now.

I've updated the List of Anime Episodes with two new Japanese titles. The two episodes will, most likely, be the final two episodes of Galactic Battles, so any episode that airs after those two will be a Season 13 episode.

I also went into my comparison for "The Double Trouble Header" that I did a few months ago and added two things: information about the Rocket-Dan's dialogue to Nanako after the commercial break (and the whole "not using a Charizard against rookie trainers" thing) and pictures of the Kyojin no Hoshi scenes that the Rocket-Dan's motto parodied.

Moving on to manga stuff, I've finally finished my summary of the manga adaptation of Arceus - To the Conquering of Spacetime. The graphic novel release contains an additional seventeen pages that finishes out the story, so I went ahead and wrote up a summary of that. I also went into the page detailing the Differences Between the Movie and the Comic and added a few things as well. You get ten cool points if you know what that "wedding day" quote at the bottom is from.

I'll try to pop in later in the week and do another update.

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