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Moving is a very time consuming thing
March 23rd, 2011

Dogasu @ 00:48 JST -- Around this time last year, I was moving to a new apartment.  This year, I'm moving to a new apartment in a new city.  Accordingly, things have been hectic lately and I haven't had the time to devote to this site.

For example, I'm only just now getting around to posting the summary for the second chapter of Pocket Monsters Réburst.  My scanner's back at the old apartment for the time being, so I don't have any images to post with this, unfortunately.  I did manage to scan some images from the reprint of the first chapter in the latest CoroCoro Comics before packing everything up, so you can see those sprinkled throughout the summary of the first chapter. 


By the way, the official website for Weekly Shounen Sunday has posted the first chapter online.

The List of TV Episodes has also been updated.  A number of episodes have been delayed because of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan last week, so the list has been updated to reflect that as well.

My Internet access is sporadic at best these days, so I'm not able to provide any sort of timeframe for my next update.  I'm trying the best I can, but it may be a while before I have regular Internet access again. 

"Triple Leaders, Team Threats!"
March 14th, 2011

Dogasu @ 06:50 JST -- Back to business as usual.  Here's the comparison for "Triple Leaders, Team Threats!"


Plenty of little script changes here and there, so give it a read.

I've already started on the comparison for "Dreams By the Yard Full!"  Will this be the week I finally get up to date with these comparisons!?

Miscellaneous Sendai earthquake-related updates
March 12th, 2011

Dogasu @ 21:39 JST -- The official Japanese Pokemon website has announced that the Pokemon Center stores in both Tokyo and Yokohama will be closed today (the 12th) and tomorrow (the 13th).

The official Pokemon Smash! website has also announced that tomorrow's episode will be pre-empted by the earthquake / tsunami / nuclear meltdown coverage.  The episode was supposed to deal with the upcoming Rocket-Dan vs. Plasma-Dan two-parter. 

No announcements have been made about Thursday's episode of Pocket Monsters Best Wishes!, but it's not unlikely that it'll get postponed as well.

Well I guess we'll never the move "Earthquake" in the TV series ever again
March 11th, 2011

Dogasu @ 20:12 JST -- A massive earthquake hit Japan today.  It's the largest one to hit Japan in recorded history.

I'm fine, and my friends are fine, and everything in my apartment is fine.  Things could have been a whole lot worse here.

Just thought I'd check in!

"Pocket Monsters Réburst" Character Bios
March 11th, 2011

Dogasu @ 07:22 JST -- Character Bios are now up for Pocket Monsters Réburst!  Check them out.


Cleaning up these scans was a real pain in the ass since I had to end up manually recoloring every black area due to the cheapness of the ink used in Weekly Shounen Sunday.  Because of this, I might end up waiting for the first chapter to be reprinted in next week's CoroCoro Comics before attempting to do the scans that'll end up on the Plot Synopsis page.

The long time it took to edit these images also delayed the comparison for "Triple Leaders, Team Threats!"  The new ETA for that is sometime before the end of the weekend.

"Pocket Monsters Réburst" Chapter One
March 10th, 2011

Dogasu @ 07:45 JST -- As I said before, Wednesday night was devoted to typing up the summary for the first chapter of Pocket Monsters Réburst.  So here's the summary for Chapter One, "The Beginning of the Adventure!"


The first chapter doesn't really have any pokemon in it - Zekrom is the only pokemon in the above image who actually appears - but it's still a fun read.  It's nice to see a series not rehash the games' plots for the millionth time, y'know?  I hope my summary does a good enough job of giving you an idea of what this series is like.

I usually try to break up my huge wall of text manga summaries with images from the chapter being written about.  However, the summary for this thing took me so long to write (56 pages!) that I didn't have the time to scan / clean up any panels.  I wanted to post this summary ASAP, so those scans will have to wait until later tonight.  Hope you all don't mind.

I'll get the scans and character bios up later tonight.

"The Battle Club and Tepig's Choice!"
March 8th, 2011

Dogasu @ 06:54 JST -- And here's the fourth episode of Season 14, "The Battle Club and Tepig's Choice!"


Edit:  It looks like some hiccup caused this front page to not load properly when I made this update earlier this morning.  Sorry about that.

I'm devoting Wednesday night to writing up the summary for the first chapter of Pocket Monsters Réburst, so the comparison for "Triple Leaders, Team Threats!" probably won't go up until Thursday.

Major catch up update - Pocket Monsters Réburst, Victini and the Black / White Hero, List of Pokemon, more
March 7th, 2011

Dogasu @ 23:42 JST -- This is one of those updates that started out small but ended up taking me way longer to finish than I had hoped. 

The new information on Pocket Monsters Réburst was meant to post earlier last week obviously didn't go up as scheduled, but there's a good reason for that.  You see, it turns out that Weekly Shounen Sunday is printed on some really crappy quality paper, making the clean-up process a real female dog. 


I'm not at all happy with the image quality here.  Yet no matter how much I fiddled around with my image editing software (Paint Shop Pro), nothing I did made it look any better.  I'm used to the CoroCoro magazines where clean-up only takes a few minutes per image, but this thing took me about two hours to do.  Needless to say, I'm rather frustrated at the moment.

I've been looking around various scanslations websites, trying to get some tips on how they clean up the manga they work on, but nothing I've seen has been of any help.  Do any of you have any tips?

Speaking of manga, it looks like Viz is releasing a series called Pokémon Black & White later this year.  Here's what Viz said about the series in their press release:

POKÉMON BLACK & WHITE Vols. 1-2 · Rated ‘A’ for All Ages · MSRP: $4.99 US each / $5.99 CAN each · Available July 2011 Meet Pokémon Trainers Black and White! White has a burgeoning career as a Trainer of performing Pokémon. Black is about to embark on a Training Journey to explore the Unova region and fill a Pokédex for Prof. Juniper. Who will Black choose as his first Pokémon? Who would you choose...? Plus, meet brand-new Pokémon Tepig, Snivy, Oshawott, and many more never-before-seen Pokémon from the unexplored Unova region!

That sounds an awful lot like Pocket Monsters Special to me.  If it is that, then why isn't the series being released as Pokémon Adventures Black & White?  And are they sure they'll have two volumes worth of material by the time July comes around?  Adding to the confusion is the fact that Anime News Network posted an image from Master!  Pokemon Black & White, not Special, with their report on the press release.  It's all very confusing.

The List of Pokemon has also been updated with the rest of the English names for the Generation V pokemon.  I'm always amazed at how quickly fans are able to toss out the Japanese names in favor of the English ones, but my amazement became even more pronounced when I actually sat down and took a good look at the new batch of names.  I just can't understand how people can throw away the names that have been working perfectly fine for them for the past six months or so in favor of crap like "Roggenrola" or "Amoonguss."  And am I the only one having trouble spelling a lot of these names?  Gah.

The little blurb for Battle & Get!  Pokemon Typing DS has been updated with the game's release date (April 21st, 2011).  The official Pokemon site is listing the game as having an MSRP of 5800 yen (approximately US $70), so, y'know, fuck that.  I think my typing speed is just fine, thank you very much.


The final update of the evening is to the page for Victini and the Black / White Hero, Zekrom / Reshiram.  I've added a plot synopsis, information on the ending theme, information on the location hunting, a short staff list, information on the voice actors appearing in the movies, character bios, and a guide to the differences between the two movies.  Check it out!

I'm putting the finishing touches on my comparison for "The Battle Club and Tepig's Choice!" and should hopefully have it ready for you guys tomorrow.

"A Sandile Gusher of Change!"
March 3rd, 2011

Dogasu @ 07:09 JST -- Continuing to push forward, here's the comparison for "A Sandile Gusher of Change!"


This one's a lot shorter because the script is a lot better this time around.  I hope TPCI can keep this up!

I've also updated the List of Pokemon with the English names for Futachimaru and Janovy, as officially revealed by last weekend's episode.

I neglected to pick up yesterday's issue of Weekly Shounen Sunday, so I'll do that later today and post the new information about Pokemon Réburst later tonight.

"Enter Iris and Axew!"
March 1st, 2011

Dogasu @ 23:53 JST -- It's about time I get this posted, part two!  Here's the comparison for the Black & White episode that aired weeks ago, "Enter Iris and Axew!"


I've seen quite a few people online describe Season 14's dub as being an exact one-on-one translation, but from what I've seen, the rewrites are as plentiful as ever.  The music's fixed, sure, but the writing is just as off as it's always been.

I've also updated the DVD Guide with a number of puzzling new releases that quietly popped up on Amazon recently.  A company named Platinum Disc, who apparently doesn't have a website and hates free publicity, is re-releasing Pokémon 4Ever and Pokémon Heroes in the U.S.  We don't really know anything about the discs other than the fact that they're coming out in April, but I'll be sure to update that page if any more information surfaces before they come out.