Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" Supporters' Podcast - Episode 03
October 30th, 2020

Dogasu @ 08:50 JST -- The third episode of the Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" podcast was released a week ago so I've written up a (belated) summary that you can read here.


This time around the show welcomes the film's publicity producer, Mr. Michihiro Morita (森田道広). Mr. Morita talks about what it is exactly that he does, the challenges of advertising a new film in the COVID-19 era, and about the pivot the films have taken from being these kids' films to being movies for fans of all ages. Check it out!


spoon.2Di Issue 63 Translation
October 26th, 2020

Dogasu @ 21:29 JST -- It's been a while since I've done a non-Koko update (though I have been surreptitiously updating pages, such as adding the track listing to the Pocket Monsters (2019) soundtrack) so tonight I would like to present you a new translation: an interview with Pocket Monsters (2019) producer Tomoya Negishi from Issue 63 of the Japanese magazine spoon.2Di.


The interview (and accompanying comments) is from the end of June, a few weeks after the show came back from the hiatus it had to take due to COVID-19. How is the show's staff adapting to this post-coronavirus world? How did they decide to have the Kalos Gym Leader Corni be the first "older character" Satoshi faces off against? And who came up with the two-in-one episode idea in the first place? All that - plus an acknowledgment that hey, we're going to have to eventually deal with Gou trying to get legendary Pokémon at some point - can be found here!


Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" Supporters' Podcast - Episode 02
October 20th, 2020

Dogasu @ 22:55 JST -- The second episode of the Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" podcast was released on Friday so I've written up a summary that you can read here.


This episode is a continuation of last week's conversation with the director of the upcoming film, Mr. Tetsuo Yajima, and the voice actor for one of the new characters who appears in the film, Ms. Shoko Nakagawa. The two of them talk to the podcast host about what Mr. Yajima was looking for when he cast the film, what kind of directing style he uses, how the music for the film was developed, and more! They also answer some listener questions including a question about this year's location scouting trip. There's a lot of great stuff in this one so be sure to check it out!

The guests for the podcast's third and fourth episodes will be Mr. Michihiro Morita (森田道広), who's in charge of the film's publicity, and Mr. Taichi Terahara (寺原泰地), the director of the film's trailers. So I'm guessing there will be a lot of talk about the film's advertising, I guess...? The podcast will take November 6th off and then come back on the 13th with for another two-parter with special guests Mr. Masafumi Mima (三間雅文), the film's sound director, and Mr. Shinji Miyazaki (宮崎慎二), a man who has not officially been announced as doing the film's music but it's more or less confirmed at this point.

I've got a bunch of other non-movie related updates in the works during all this so if you don't care about these podcasts then there will still be new things for you to enjoy.


More new Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" songs revealed
October 11th, 2020

Dogasu @ 23:35 JST -- Earlier this morning yet another new song was revealed that'll be used in Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" . Its name is Show Window and I've taken everything we know about it so far and made a page for it in the Lyrics Section. I had to transcribe the lyrics by ear and wasn't able to catch every word being said but I think I was able to get enough of it to give you a good idea of what it's going to be about.


Lyrics to Okite no Uta, an insert song that was revealed back on September 27th, have also been added.

The film's official website states that Okazaki Physical Education is providing a total of six songs for the movie and so these two, combined with the song Fushigi na Fushigi na Ikimono that was revealed on August 5th, means that we have three songs left. I imagine the remaining songs will be teased before the film is released on December 25th.

At this time there is still no word on who will be providing the instrumental music in the film.


Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" Supporters' Podcast - Episode 01
October 11th, 2020

Dogasu @ 00:34 JST -- The first episode of the new official Pocket Monsters podcast, Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" Supporters' Podcast - "The Movie Secrets We Want to Tell You", came out last night. The whole thing's in Japanese and, well, that's not very useful if you don't know Japanese and so I thought it'd be helpful to make up a page summarizing what all they talked about so that you don't miss out. The Episode 01 write-up can be found here.


I would like to do one of these write-ups every week so I'd like to get your feedback between now and the next episode. Do you like the format of this write-up? Do you want it to continue to be this long-form summary or would you like something shorter and easier to skim? Let me know!

The second episode of this new weekly podcast will be released Friday, October 16th at 20:00 JST.


CDs are still a thing in Japan in the year 2020
October 9th, 2020

Dogasu @ 11:19 JST -- We haven't gotten any new Pocket Monsters CDs in a little over a year now but within the past week or so we've gotten word of two (well, three) brand new releases!


The first of these is the CD single for Acacia, that Bump of Chicken song that played during that "Gotcha!" video that came out last week. There are two versions of the CD coming out; one's a Pokémon-centric release that focuses on the song Acacia and comes packaged with a DVD featuring the Gotcha! music video, while the other one focuses on a different Bump of Chicken single and comes packaged with a DVD featuring concert footage of the band. Both versions come out November 4th, 2020.

The other CD release is "Pocket Monsters" The Animated Series Original Soundtrack, a CD release of the background music to the Pocket Monsters (2019) series currently airing as composed by Mr. Yuki Hayashi! This is the first time a Pocket Monsters TV series' background music has been released on CD (not counting the movie soundtracks, of course) since TV Anime Pocket Monsters Original Soundtrack Best 1997 - 2010 back in 2011 so this is actually a pretty major release here! We don't know how many tracks will be included or what kinds of extras (if any) it'll come with but we do know that it also has a release date of November 4th, 2020.

And who knows? Maybe if this CD release does well enough we might even dare to hope that Sony Music Entertainment Japan will someday (somehow) release the music from Best Wishes! ~ Sun & Moon that never got a CD release...?

Information on all these newly announced CDs, including links to where you can buy them yourself, can be found in the CD Guide.
 

Manga: "The Nintendo All-Stars Free-For-All! Smash Brothers"
October 1st, 2020

Dogasu @ 23:07 JST -- Back in 1999 - the year the very first Super Smash Bros. game (called The Nintendo All-Stars Free-For-All! Smash Brothers here in Japan) came out on the Nintendo 64 - the kids' magazine CoroCoro Comics published a short, 20-page Smash Bros manga. For tonight's update I present that manga to you on The Nintendo All-Stars Free-For-All! Smash Brothers page of the Manga Guide!


I've got everything there is to know about this manga: a detailed story synopsis, character bios, and an About the Author page. It's basically everything I can do short of just posting the full manga outright! The Nintendo All-Stars Free-For-All! Smash Brothers is a gag manga from a kids' magazine so don't expect epic battles or deep lore or anything like that; it's just a fun little story for kids, nothing more, nothing less. Still, it's kind of neat to see things like Mario ordering Pikachu around in battle or Samus Aran with a construction hat on, and the art's kind of cute, so definitely take a look!

As far as I can tell this is the only website on all the Internet - Japanese, English, or otherwise - to ever post anything about this manga so this is 100% for sure something you've never seen before. Enjoy!