Previous Month

Next Month

---

Rumor Guide: "Brock left the show because of fears of him being seen as a racist stereotype"
September 26th, 2025

Dogasu @ 21:44 JST -- In preparing the comparison for the next episode, "A Tent Situation," I thought now'd be as good time as ever to finally sit down and work on a Rumor Guide entry I've had rattling around in my head for a while now, and so today I present a look at the rumor that "Brock left the show because of fears of him being seen as a racist stereotype."


This newest addition to the Rumor Guide provides a timeline of when the decision to replace him would have been made, what fans in the West think the reasoning is, and what the evidence we have available to us actually says. There's also some discussion on the wider topic of race in Japanese animation, so it's actually quite a jam-packed article!


The Memorial Book of Orange Islands
September 23rd, 2025

Dogasu @ 23:33 JST -- I was working on another site update recently when I realized that I never really made a page dedicated to The Memorial Book of Orange Islands, the absolutely fantastic guide book I've been referencing off and on the past five years or so. I've translated bits and pieces and posted them to the site before, sure, but I never actually created a page for the book itself. And so today I'm fixing that!


The new page I have for the book has the usual section-by-section breakdown as well as links to all the material I've already translated, all in once place. As a recap, that includes:

• Making of Pokémon: Short comments from each of the screenwriters about the episodes they wrote. The page has been cleaned up and the translations tweaked a bit.
• Special Interview with Chouji Yoshikawa:  An interview with the associate producer of the Pocket Monsters (1997) animated series.
• What it Takes to Make the Pokémon Cartoon:  A five-page comic that shows how cel-to-film animation was created in the late 1990s. The scanslation's been cleaned up and a few typesetting corrections have been made.
  

I've also been slowly scanning the production artwork from this book and posting them to social media, and I plan to eventually add those to the site as well at some point.


Manga Guide: Pocket Monsters Special & Let's Protect Nature! Pokémon Ranger
September 6th, 2025

Dogasu @ 23:56 JST -- A new Pocket Monsters Special chapter came out yesterday so that means it's time for the first Manga Guide update of the month.


Pocket Monsters Special Scarlet & Violet Chapter 24: In this month's chapter, Violet and Peper face off against not one, but two Paradox Pokémon! Can they use their teamwork to overcome their powerful foes? Meanwhile, Scarlet concocts a plan to get back into the academy...

Let's Protect Nature! Pokémon Ranger: It has come to my attention that Hidenori Kusaka and Satoshi Yamamoto, the duo behind Pocket Monsters Special, have also just released a new 16-page one-shot called Let's Protect Nature! Pokémon Ranger. There isn't much about this promotional manga online so information is pretty scarce, but I did try to gather what little there is out there so there's at least some record of this manga having existed. I've been scouring various auction sites to see if anyone is putting these up for sale -- they're currently only available in a select few places in Japan -- but so far no luck. I'll keep trying, though, and will update the page if I ever get my hands on a copy.

September's going to continue being another big month for the Manga Guide -- we've got new issues of both CoroCoro Ichiban! and Pokémon Fan coming out in a few weeks -- so there's no shortage of Pokémon related comics to cover in the near future!