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Nagai Ichirou, 1931 - 2014
January 28th, 2014

Dogasu @ 08:13 JST -- After losing Katou Seizou less than two weeks ago we've got news of another voice actor leaving us.


Nagai Ichirou (永井一郎) passed away yesterday, January 27th from unknown causes.  He was 82.  Mr. Nagai was the voice of Namihei in Sazae-san, Happousai in Ranma 1/2, and Tsuru-Sen'nin and Karin-sama in the various Dragon Ball series.  He also provided the voices of Professor Dumbledore and Yoda in the Japanese dubs of the Harry Potter and Star Wars films, respectively.

In Pocket Monsters, Mr. Nagai provided the voice of the Rocket-Dan scientist Namba-Hakase.  The character debuted in the late Jouto episode "The Mystery of Pokemon X!!" and last appeared in the Diamond & Pearl episode ("Pachirisu is Inside Kabarudon's Mouth!?").  Namba-Hakase was the only character Mr. Nagai voiced for the series.


Condolences to Mr. Nagai's family and friends.  May he rest in peace.

Pokemon The Legend of the Ryuu-Oh
January 26th, 2014

Dogasu @ 22:44 JST -- Hey, did you know that the Pokemon The Legend of the Ryuu-Oh manga was still going on?  I've fallen behind on this manga so in tonight's update I get us up to date with the summaries of the three chapters that have been released since I last took a look at the series..

CoroCoro Comics December 2013	CoroCoro Comics January 2014	CoroCoro Comics February 2014

I've also written up a page on the real world Ryuu-Oh Tournament currently taking place here in Japan.  This manga is sorta-kinda based on this tournament and so I thought it would be a good idea to make a page that tells you what all is going on there and how that relates to what we see in Mr. Ishii's comic.


Finally, I've also updated the character bios for this series.

I just bought a new scanner (remember me saying that my old one was broken?) and I'm still playing with the settings to get things just the way I like them (I feel like those two black and white covers up there are too dark) but I'll be uploading better quality images in the next few days or so.

Katou Seizou, 1927 - 2014
January 18th, 2014

Dogasu @ 18:09 JST -- It always sucks to have to report this sort of thing, but we've lost another voice actor this week.


Katou Seizou (加藤精三) passed away yesterday, January 17th after a long battle with bladder cancer.  He was 86 years old.  Mr. Katou is an actor who's been working since the 1960s and has, among many others, provided the voices of Megatron and Galvatron in Transformers The Headmasters and Hoshi Ittetsu in Kyojin no Hoshi (a series that Pocket Monsters does homages to all the time).  His English language Wikipedia page has a much longer list of his roles but even that only barely scratches the surface of all the work he's done in the last 50 years or so.

In Pocket Monsters, Mr. Katou provided the voice of Instructor Viper from the continuity awkward Side Story episode "The Rocket-Dan!  Love and the Origin of Youth" (though his name was misspelled in the credits as 加藤清三) and of Namidabashi in the Advanced Generation episode "The Lake of Hakuryuu!."  He also, according to his Japanese Wikipedia page, provided the narration for the TV commercial for the original Pocket Monsters Red & Green games. 


Condolences to Mr. Katou's family and friends.  May he rest in peace.

More "The Cocoon of Destruction" Information
January 16th, 2014

Dogasu @ 00:32 JST -- The February 2014 issue of CoroCoro Comics came out yesterday / the official movie website updated yesterday with new information about this summer's movie, The Cocoon of Destruction.


A brief synopsis of the movie's plot has been added to the official site.  Here's my translation:

Long ago, an event in which all life was wiped out known as "The Great Destruction" (大破壊) took place in the Kalos Region. The one who caused this "Great Destruction" was the "Destruction Pokemon" Yveltal, a pokemon said to steal all life.  After it destroyed everything, Yveltal turned into a  "Cocoon of Destruction" (破壊の繭) and fell into a deep sleep. At the time of this "Great Destruction" the only thing that could stand up to Yveltal's great power was the "Life Pokemon" Xerneas.  Xerneas is said to give life to people and pokemon. Now, the journey of the meeting of the two great legendaries of the Kalos Region is beginning!

It doesn't really sound like the most original plot out there but we're still in the very early stages of promotion at this point so there's bound to be more to the movie than what's presented here.  There's no mention of Mega Evolution, for example.


I've also added information about the poll being conducted to choose which pokemon will be distributed as the pre-order ticket bonus this year.  This information probably won't be useful to most of you since Nintendo of America is kind of hit or miss when it comes to these sorts of distributions (neither the Red Genosect nor the special Myuutwo from last year's movie made it stateside, for example) but I still like having it here anyway for documentation's sake. 

(And for the record, I voted for Darkrai).

In other news, the U.S. iTunes store released the it's-been-out-in-Japan-for-almost-five-years-now Heart Gold & Soul Silver soundtrack the other day.  The Japanese release came with a booklet containing a six-page interview with the sound team of the game and I translated said interview back when it first came out, so any of you newcomers out there should definitely check it out.

"Dogasu Strikes Back"...at super old rumors
January 12th, 2014

Dogasu @ 13:46 JST -- I'm putting the finishing touches on the summaries of the Pokemon - The Legend of the Ryuu-Oh chapters I missed during my absense, but in the meantime I wanted to add a tidbit about the first movie.  You've probably heard that rumor that Myuu states that clones are inferior and should therefore die, right?


In today's update, I take a look at what Myuu really says and then try to figure out why the "Myuu wants unnatural pokemon to perish" rumor came about in the first place.

I've also updated the List of TV Episodes with a new Japanese title and a new English title.

Pocket Monsters SPECIAL
January 7th, 2014

Dogasu @ 19:31 JST -- One of the things I fell behind on during the month or so I didn't update was the Pocket Monsters Special manga.  I correct that in tonight's update by posting summaries of the five chapters of XY that have been released so far.

CoroCoro Ichiban! December 2013 (Chapter One)	CoroCoro Ichiban! December 2013 (Chapter Two)	Pokemon Fan Issue 33
CoroCoro Ichiban! January 2014		CoroCoro Ichiban! February 2014

The covers of the first two chapters there were scanned before my scanner died on me while the other three chapters were photos I took with my iPhone that I then cleaned up in Photoshop.  I'll add proper scans once I get a new scanner.

I've also made lots of other little tweaks in the Pocket Monsters Special section of the site including adding a bunch of new English language cover art to the Viz Edits page.

I've also added some information about the whole "Sepultra" thing in my comparison of the first episode of Pocket Monsters Origins behind the meaning of the nickname and why the Japanese version may have changed the spelling slightly.


Finally, I've corrected errors in my List of Pokemon pages and on my page for "Pikachu's Big Seabed Adventure" that several of you have e-mailed me about.

Happy New Year's!
January 1st, 2014

Dogasu @ 23:51 JST -- Every year I make predictions about various aspects of the Pocket Monsters franchise and then check back on them at the end of the year.  Let's see how I did with last year's predictions:

I predict that Pocket Monsters X and Y will come out in Japan on October 12th, 2013.  Why?  Well, video games typically come out on Saturdays in Japan, and October 12th is the first day of a three day weekend (that Monday is Tai'iku no Hi, which you often see translated as "Sports Day").  Kids will therefore not have school on Monday, making that the perfect time to release a new video game.  I think the U.S. will get the games on Tuesday, October 15th.

I absolutely nailed the Japanese release date.  My prediction was made on January 31st, 2013 and the actual release date wouldn't be announced for another five months (June 11th, 2013).  Not too shabby.

The U.S. release date...I didn't actually think they'd release the English version and the Japanese version on the exact same day and was positive there'd be a day or two difference, but luckily for you guys in the West that ended up not being the case. 

I don't want to get into too many X & Y predictions because I'd be here all day if I do, so I'll just make one more:  I think Generation VI will be the first generation to not have all its pokemon spoiled on day one.  The 3DS' ability to do DLC means Game Freak can leave the data for the legendaries off the actual carts themselves and have them added in later, enabling them to actually keep the secret pokemon a secret this time around.

That batch of pokemon discovered post-release - the three legendaries, Mega Latios / Latias, the new Floette and Vivion forms - made the second sentence up there true.  As for the DLC...we'll see about that.  If my theory about this year's movie ends up being correct then we should be getting our first DLC-exclusive pokemon sometime this summer.

I think we'll get one more side game before X & Y come out in October.  Eleven months without a single Pokemon game is a long time, so I'm thinking they'll announce - and then release - a new side game between now and then.  Perhaps a Pokemon Ranger 3DS which will also have some legendary pokemon egg that you'll be able to transfer to your X & Y games later on?

Pokemon Ranger 3DS has sadly not happened yet and probably won't, which is a real shame because I absolutely loved that series.  Instead, we got...Pokemon Scramble U.  Yawn.

But we did get "one more side game before X & Y" came out, so I wasn't too far off.

So, what's going to happen in (deep breath) Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! Season 2 Episode N?  Well...it's kind of hard to say.  We'll see Satoshi's Lizardon come back before July (because of the movie) and the whole thing will end at the White Ruins, but other than that?  Um...I think Charbu will evolve into Emboar, as redundant as having two fully evolved Fire-Types on his team will be?

Charbu didn't end up evolving but I think we can all agree that it really should have.   It was obvious that Satoshi's Mijumaru wasn't ever going to evolve and it seemed like his Tsutarja was stuck as well and so Charbu was the only one that had a chance of ever evolving.

I think "The Rocket-Dan vs. The Plasma-Dan" will air, in some form, later this year.

The Plasma-Dan finally debuting in the TV series and the opening to Episode N featuring reworked footage from the skipped two-parter gave me hope that it would air but then they had to go and retcon out the two-parter the week after I made this prediction.  So much for that.

Iris and Dent will have their farewells and will not go to the X and Y series.  Iris will return to Souryuu City and become a Gym Leader while Dent goes back to the Sanyou City Gym to be with his brothers.  Hopefully, hopefully they'll both get a full episode to themselves, but after the way they handled Takeshi's departure back in DP I'm not holding my breath.

Man, I really like my version of those characters' departures better.  Iris' made some amount of sense (though really, why would you set up the whole Souryuu City Gym Leader thing and then never come back to it?) but Dent going to Jouto for a freaking fishing competition?  Really!?

Also, their departures were only like five minutes long and ended up being even worse than Takeshi's was, so it's a good thing I didn't hold my breath.

Satoshi and Pikachu will stay for the new series.  Obviously.

Every time a series is about to come to an end people start talking on and on about how this will be the series they finally write Satoshi off the show and that the next one will star a brand new Pokemon Trainer.  This time, however...there was still some of that, yes, but I didn't really see it around as much as I usually do.  Could people have finally realized that Satoshi and Pikachu are going to be with the show forever?  And that if they were ever going to leave then they would have done so over a decade ago?  Is the fandom actually capable of...gasp!...learning?

The Rocket-Dan, on the other hand...that's kind of 50/50.  I'm leaning toward them being written out at the end of BW (and for real this time...none of that "Don't miss the Rocket-Dan's final battle!" bullcrap from before), though, because there doesn't really seem to be any point in keeping the trio around anymore.

Best Wishes! started with the Rocket trio being all serious, and a lot of people - myself included - wondered if this drastic change in these characters was a sign that they were going to be written out at the end of the series.  Surely they wouldn't just up and change them so drastically for no reason, right?  And there's no way they'd have them revert back to their old selves at the end of the series.

The funny thing is - that's exactly what ended up happening.  I knew that the Best Wishes! Rocket-Dan story arc (if you can even call it that) was a haphazardly thrown together collection of half-assed ideas but even I had given up hope on the writers coming to their senses and having the trio go back to being entertaining again.  They did, though, and now I can actually enjoy watching the TV series again without cringing every time they're on screen.  2013 was a great year for us Rocket-Dan fans.

An all-new Generation VI pokemon will be teased at the end of the Genosect movie, just like how Victini was teased at the end of the Zorro'ark one back in 2010.

Nope.  We just got the starters and the legendary duo.

CD-wise, we'll get the four Rocket-Dan radio show CDs, a Yajirushi ni Natte! 2013 single, a Sakura-Go-Round single (Shiritsu Ebisu Shougakkou is not on Media Factory's record label so I think a release with both the opening and ending on it is unlikely), a soundtrack for the Genosect movie, two CDs for the movie's ending theme (one regular and one limited edition), a Pocket Monsters X and Pocket Monsters Y video game soundtrack (I'm guessing a four disc set), a CD for the new TV series' opening theme, and a CD for the new TV series' ending theme (which will feature some other young girl idol group).  So twelve CDs altogether.

We got five Rocket-Dan radio show CDs if you count the rare pilot version (also I'll be doing a write-up of that sometime, by the way). 

Yajirushi ni Natte 2013 never got a CD release even after all this time.  Weird.

Sakura-Go-Round didn't end up getting its own single but it did get thrown onto a CD with Te o Tsunagou, the ending theme to the TV series / Eevee short.  There were three variations of that release.

I didn't count on there being a Natsu Meku Sakamichi CD because I didn't count on Decolora Adventures ever being a thing.  I think a lot of us assumed that Episode N was going to last all the way until the end of the series and so I had assumed that Yajirushi ni Natte 2013 was going to be it for Best Wishes!

The Extreme Speed Genosect and the Awakening of Myuutwo ended up getting two CDs - a regular version and a version with a DVD featuring the trailers for the movie. 

Egao did end up getting two CD releases - one regular and one limited edition - so at least I got one right.

The Pocket Monsters X & Y soundtrack got a four disc release.  I hadn't counted on it getting a North American iTunes release (or FireRed & LeafGreen), though, so that was a nice surprise!

The CD for Yuusuke's V (Volt) came out in three different packages.  The ending theme hasn't gotten a CD release yet, but I was at least right in my assumption that it was going to be sung by a girl group.  So...yay?

All in all, 2013 saw seventeen CD releases.  I predicted twelve.  Whoops.

At least two new manga series will pop up related to Pocket Monsters X & Y; one will be a short, one volume dealie that won't leave Japan while the other will be a much longer series.

Can the XY chapter of Special count as "the much longer series?"  As for the first part, I think Pokemon - The Legend of the Ryuu-Oh will end up fulfilling the role of "one volume dealie."

Every time a new pokemon is revealed, cries of "It doesn't look like a Pokémon!" or "It looks like a Digimon" will be echoed across the Internet, much to our annoyance.

That's not so much a "prediction" as it is "stating the obvious," is it?

I'll have a fresh batch of predictions when I do my site's fourteenth anniversary write-up at the end of the month.