Pocket Monsters Diamond & Pearl The Movie "Dialga vs. Palkia vs. Darkrai" Box Office Performance
August 29th, 2022

Dogasu @ 13:26 JST -- We're now three weeks into The 25th Anniversary Pokémon Film Festival and the re-release of Pocket Monsters Diamond & Pearl The Movie "Dialga vs. Palkia vs. Darkrai" is the third of three Pokémon movies to make it into the Top Ten at the Japanese box office.


Here's how the Top Ten looked over the weekend:

Rank	Last Week	Title	Distributor	Weeks in Theaters
1	1	One Piece Film Red	Toei	4
2	2	Jurassic World Domination	Toho Towa	5
3	NEW	Akira and Akira	Toho	1
4	3	Top Gun: Maverick	Towa Pictures	14
5	NEW	Pocket Monsters Diamond & Pearl The Movie "Dialga vs. Palkia vs. Darkrai"	Toho	1
6	4	Minions: The Rise of Gru	Toho Towa	7
7	NEW	I've Been Reassigned to the Police Band!	Gaga	1
8	6	Kingdom 2: To the Far Land	Toho / Sony	7
9	NEW	Nope	Toho Towa	1
10	11	PAW Patrol: Jet to the Rescue	Aeon Entertainment	3

Source:  Kogyo Tsushin (posted August 29th, 2022)

This week, One Piece Film Red and Jurassic World Domination are joined by Akira and Akira, a financial drama starring Detective Pikachu actor Ryoma Takeuchi. Other newcomers to the Top Ten this week include the Japanese release of Jordan Peele's Nope and the comedy film I've Been Reassigned to the Police Band!

Pokémon Movie 10's actual box office earnings for the week, much like those of the previous two Pokémon films that're a part of this festival, have not been made public. Looking back at its original 2007 release, "Dialga vs. Palkia vs. Darkrai" debuted at Number 1 and brought in 1 billion 133,400,000 yen during its three day opening weekend. Movie websites at the time speculated that part of the reason it earned such an impressive amount (it made roughly 171% of its predecessor, "Pokémon Ranger and the Prince of the Sea, Manaphy") is because it was the first Pokémon movie to offer audiences with a special Pokémon distribution (Darkrai) just for seeing the film.


This coming weekend the three films that are part of The 25th Anniversary Pokémon Film Festival -- Movie 5, Movie 6, and Movie 10 -- will all be making one more trip back to theaters. Film distributor Toho hasn't announced the exact logistics of how this'll work but we can make educated guesses based on the way the Victini movies were handled back in 2011. That summer Toho released two movies (Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! The Movie "Victini and the Black Hero Zekrom" & Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! The Movie "Victini and the White Hero Reshiram") and individual theaters dealt with this by dedicating certain screens to just "Pokémon" and then rotating its screenings between "Zekrom" and "Reshiram" throughout the day. So for example, a random movie theater might assign Screen 10 as the "Pokémon" screen. They might have shown "Zekrom" during its 8:15 screening, "Reshiram" during its 12:20 screening, "Zekrom" again during its 16:55 showing, "Reshiram" again during its 18:55 showing, and so on.

Theater schedules for this weekend's film festival haven't been made public yet (they usually don't come out until Wednesday) but I imagine the three movies returning to theaters may follow a similar rotation scheme.



Pokémon Radio Show! The Rocket-Dan's Secret Empire -- Vol. 6
August 24th, 2022

Dogasu @ 08:44 JST -- Today I'm continuing to make my way through Pokémon Radio Show! The Rocket-Dan's Secret Empire with a write-up on Episode 6!


This is actually a pretty rare episode as the interview with Pocket Monsters chanteuse Ms. Sachiko Kobayashi is, for some reason, not included on any of the CDs that were released back in 2013! Was it omitted because of a rights issue? Did someone not get the proper contracts in place? Who knows! In any case, Ms. Kobayashi talks about how she got involved in Pocket Monsters, what she had to do in order to learn how to sing the iconic ending theme to the first movie, and what it was like to voice that one Pokémon she did that one time.

The episode also features a music segment that's a lot more fun than those food eating segments we've been getting the last few episodes. Be sure to check it out!



Pocket Monsters Advanced Generation The Movie "The Seven Night Wishing Star, Jirachi" & "The Dancing Pokémon Secret Base" Box Office Performance
August 22nd, 2022

Dogasu @ 13:37 JST -- The Japanese box office results for the second week of The 25th Anniversary Pokémon Film Festival has just been announced and the re-release of Pocket Monsters Advanced Generation The Movie "The Seven Night Wishing Star, Jirachi" & "The Dancing Pokémon Secret Base" has also managed make it into the Top Ten!


Here's how the Top Ten looked over the weekend:

Rank	Last Week	Title	Distributor	Weeks in Theaters
1	1	One Piece Film Red	Toei	3
2	2	Jurassic World Domination	Toho Towa	4
3	5	Top Gun: Maverick	Towa Pictures	13
4	3	Minions: The Rise of Gru	Toho Towa	6
5	NEW	Pocket Monsters Advanced Generation The Movie "The Seven Night Wishing Star, Jirachi" & "The Dancing Pokémon Secret Base"	Toho	1
6	4	Kingdom 2: To the Far Land	Toho / Sony	6
7	8	Even If Love Vanishes from the World Tonight	Toho	4
8	6	Tang	Warner	2
9	NEW	The Violence Action	Sony	1
10	NEW	Sonic the Hedgehog 2	Towa Pictures	1

Source:  Kogyo Tsushin (posted August 22nd, 2022)

To nobody's surprise, One Piece Film Red continues to remain untouchable in its Number Jurassic World Domination kept its Number 2 spot and Top Gun: Maverick, which is now in its thirteenth week in theaters, jumps back up to the Number 3 spot.

Other new films debuting this weekend included The Violence Action, a live action adaptation of the manga series of the same name, and  Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the sequel to the 2020 film which is only just now coming out in Japan for some reason.

The sixth Pokémon film's actual box office earnings for the week, much like those of Pocket Monsters The Movie "Latias and Latios, The Guardian Deities of the Water Capital" & "The Glittering Starlit Camp" last week, have not been made public. For comparison's sake, the 6th Pocket Monsters movie debuted at Number 3 and managed to bring in 445,271,493 yen during its first weekend back in 2003.

Next week the third and final film that will be part of The 25th Anniversary Pokémon Film Festival, 2007's Pocket Monsters Diamond & Pearl The Movie "Dialga vs. Palkia vs. Darkrai," will take Movie 6's place. The week after that -- September 2nd -- all three movies will return on a rotating schedule for one last week.


Pocket Monsters The Movie "Latias and Latios, The Guardian Deities of the Water Capital" & "The Glittering Starlit Camp" Box Office Performance
August 15th, 2022

Dogasu @ 13:51 JST -- The Japanese box office results for this past weekend have just been released and the re-release of Pocket Monsters The Movie "Latias and Latios, The Guardian Deities of the Water Capital" & "The Glittering Starlit Camp" , as part of The 25th Anniversary Pokémon Film Festival, has managed to make it into the Top Ten!


Here's how the Top Ten looked over the long holiday weekend:

Rank	Last Week	Title	Distributor	Weeks in Theaters
1	1	One Piece Film Red	Toei	2
2	2	Jurassic World Domination	Toho Towa	3
3	3	Minions: The Rise of Gru	Toho Towa	5
4	4	Kingdom 2: To the Far Land	Toho / Sony	5
5	5	Top Gun: Maverick	Towa Pictures	12
6	NEW	Tang	Warner	1
7	NEW	Pocket Monsters The Movie "Latias and Latios, The Guardian Deities of the Water Capital" & "The Glittering Starlit Camp"	Toho	1
8	6	Even If Love Vanishes from the World Tonight	Toho	3
9	NEW	PAW Patrol: Jet to the Rescue	Aeon Entertainment	1
10	7	Ghostbook The Ghost Bestiary	Toho	4

Source:  Kogyo Tsushin (posted August 15th, 2022)

First place went to One Piece Film Red, the latest One Piece film that'll likely stay in the Number 1 spot for weeks to come. Second place went to Jurassic World Domination, which came out in Japan a few weeks after the U.S. while third place went to Minions: The Rise of Gru.

Other new films debuting this weekend included Tang, a movie about a man who finds an amnesiac robot starring a famous member of the Japanese boy band Arashi, and PAW Patrol: Jet to the Rescue, a theatrical release of the 2020 PAW Patrol TV movie.

The fifth Pokémon film's actual box office earnings haven't been made public yet but since it did manage to make it to the Top Ten we should hopefully expect to see some numbers reported later in the day. Update: None of the usual news sources reported any box office numbers for the film. It'll be interesting to see how the film stacks up to its performance 20 years ago: according to this old page on the Japanese Pokepale! fansite the fifth movie debuted at Number 4 and earned 320 million yen in its first weekend back in 2002. For comparison's sake Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko," the most recent Pocket Monsters film to get a nationwide release, earned 276 million yen during its initial weekend in theaters.

There was no post-credits teaser for Pokémon Movie 24 at the end of the Movie 5 showings and so we still have no idea when the next film is coming out. It's reasonable to expect Toho to look at how well these 25th anniversary re-releases do before deciding how to proceed, though it should also be pointed out that the company hasn't made any official statement connecting the two.


Episode Comparison:  "Meowth Rules!"
August 6th, 2022

Dogasu @ 20:39 JST -- I just did an episode comparison not all that long ago, right? That's what I had assumed when I went to update the "Next Episode" link in the last comparison I did but it turns out I haven't posted a new one since May!? And it's now August!?

So without further ado, here's a comparison between the Japanese and English versions of the Orange Islands episode "Meowth Rules!"


The episode has a lot of rewrites and so it actually ended up taking quite a bit longer to do than your average comparison. It's also one of my favorite episodes of the saga so I may have been a little overzealous in documenting all the changes that took place...? Either way, I hope you enjoy this deep dive into one of the more famous episodes of the show's second year on the air.

I'll try to pick up the pace and aim to get the next comparison out before the end of the month.