Animedia Week Day One: Rica Matsumoto
June 30th, 2020

Dogasu @ 00:03 JST -- One of the interesting things about the various COVID-19 related hiatuses we saw in the anime industry here in Japan is how a lot of the anime magazines that came out in late April and early May just kind of went on with their regularly scheduled promotional features. I mean it makes sense if you think about it. Deadlines for the kinds of features these magazines print take place weeks in advance, and too much work goes into the various interviews and other write-ups to not print them.


One such magazine is the June 2020 issue of Animedia. The issue went on sale on May 9th and it had a huge eight-page feature that included five separate interviews with the show's cast and crew to hype up the 27th episode of Pocket Monsters (2019) "The Legend of the Heroes! Dande's Greatest Battle!!" The episode was originally scheduled to air May 24th, if you remember, so this coverage actually would have been right on time if the episode had aired as intended. Well, the episode's finally airing this coming weekend so I thought I'd do my part by translating those five interviews.


The first interview is with the voice of Satoshi herself, Ms. Rica Matsumoto! She talks about working with Daiki Yamashita, what she imagines Satoshi would do on his day off, and what she would do if she could try her hand at being a Research Fellow in the Pokémon world.

Tomorrow's interview translation will be one with Mr. Daiki Yamashita, the voice of Gou. Wednesday's will be Daisuke Ono (Dande), Thursday's will be Tatsuhisa Suzuki (Kibana), Friday...well, Friday will be Twilight Wings Episode 6 updates, and then Saturday's interview will be with the Pocket Monsters (2019) series' director Daiki Tomiyasu.

Until tomorrow!


Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" Updates
June 24th, 2020

Dogasu @ 23:29 JST -- Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" has a new release date. Kind of.


On Monday, June 15th both CoroCoro Comics and the movie's official site / social media accounts announced that the film, which was originally scheduled to come out July 10th but then got pushed back due to COVID-19, has a new release date of "Winter 2020" (今冬公開).

The release date is most likely being kept vague in case they have to postpone the movie again. The number of novel coronavirus cases is steadily increasing in the wake of the country's lifting of its state of emergency declaration last month; Tokyo reported 55 new cases today, which may not sound like a lot compared to many other countries but is the highest single-day increase the city's seen since May. The Tokyo metropolitan government shutting everything down a second time is not entirely out of the question.


It was also announced that the movie's pre-order tickets, which were supposed to go on sale April 17th, will now go on-sale August 7th. Details about the downloads have been updated here. Both the "Celebi of the Okoya Forest" and the "Zarude of the Okoya Forest" will be made available for download on August 7th as well.


It was also announced that an "Adventure Cap," a special Fashion Item modeled after the hat Satoshi will be wearing in the film, will also be made available as a pre-order bonus. Details for that can be found on my page for the movie's Distributions.

Meanwhile, merchandise related to Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" is starting to come out as originally scheduled despite the fact that the movie's not coming out in July anymore. We've got Koko related Pokémon Bread, Koko popsicles, Koko Happy Meals at McDonald's, Koko jigsaw puzzles, Koko snack crackers, and so on and so on. To be honest, I'm not surprised; contracts for many of these things would have been signed months ago and in many of these cases it was probably deemed too late and/or not worth the hassle to renegotiate. It reminds me of how the Sonic the Hedgehog movie was pushed back so the VFX team could redo the Sonic design but Halloween costumes using the older version came out anyway.

If anything noteworthy comes out here in Japan related to the movie - any movie novelizations, or CD soundtracks, etc - I'll be sure to cover them on this site.


Twilight Wings, Episode 05
June 7th, 2020

Dogasu @ 23:58 JST -- It's a few days late but here's the usual information - episode link, complete cast list, complete staff list - for the fifth episode of Twilight Wings, "Secretary."


I'm using "Secretary" as the episode's title because, well, that's what 秘書 translates to. I imagine TPCI went with "Assistant" instead because maybe they thought "Secretary" had sexist connotations, probably? *shrugs*

Anyway, the animation staff on this episode is quite different from the other four episodes (outsourcing to a completely different studio tends to do that!) so that's kind of interesting!