Happy Anniversary! (Year Twenty-Four)

Dogasu's Backpack | Rants | Happy Anniversary! (Year Twenty-Four)

By Dogasu
Posted January 31st, 2024

Dogasu's Backpack turns 24 years old today!

The twenty-four year anniversary mark is the one right before the big 2-5 and so it doesn't feel like I need to pull out all the stops to celebrate, right? Next year I'll go all out, sure, but this year I think I'll just do the usual recap of the previous year and then take a look at what's coming up next.

So what did I do on this site in 2023? Dogasu's Backpack's main attraction continues to be its Episode Comparisons section, and the year 2023 saw three Orange Islands comparisons (with "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" being one of the longest ones I've ever done in the history of this site), a much-needed redo of the Episode 001 "Pokémon I Choose You!" comparison, a look at the first six episodes of Pokémon Horizons, and a long overdue update to the General Edits page. That may not seem like a lot numbers-wise (that's "only" ten comparisons for the whole year) but I definitely believe in quality over quantity. I do recognize that I need to pick the pace up moving forward, but I'll touch on that a bit more later on in this write-up.

The year 2023 is also when I more or less "finished" the Pokémon Shock section I started last year. I fansubbed the last two Japanese news videos out there that I'm aware of -- Pokémon Shock: 12/21/1997 "Sunday Morning" (TBS TV) and The 'Pocket Monsters' Animated Series Special Investigation -- and have added pages like Pokémon Shock: Effects on Scheduling, Pokémon Shock: Rumor Guide, Pokémon Shock: Does an English Dub of "Cyber Soldier Porygon" Exist?, and a comparison between the pre and post Porygon edits of Episode 003 "Get Pokémon." The Pokémon Shock section of my website is one of the things I'm most proud of and even though I'm more or less done with it I'm sure I'll continue to find new things to add as the years go on.

Dogasu's Backpack also became the home for all things PokéTsume, that live action Japanese series that around 99% of the English speaking Internet (understandably?) paid almost zero attention to throughout its ten-week run. Being here week after week, documenting everything there was to know about this unique take on Pokémon meant I had to end up neglecting other portions of the site (sorry Pokémon Radio Show write-ups!) but I think in the end it was worth it to have a page I can point new fans to whenever they inevitably ask "waitaminute...there was a live action Pokémon show!?" I still have a few things I want to add to the section (interview translations, some more character bios, more details about the home video release, etc.) but I'm overall very happy with the amount of information I've managed to get on this site.

Other updates included finally adding all the Generation 9 Pokémon to the List of Pokémon, translating 40 more pages of the book Pokémon Story (something that didn't seem to make that much of a splash, unfortunately), write-ups for two episodes of Pokémon Radio Show! The Rocket-Dan's Secret Empire, various additions to the Lyrics Archive and Manga Guide (comic adaptations of the first episode of the Pocket Monsters 2023 TV series were really big last year), a page documenting the Cast / Staff Reactions to the end of Pocket Monsters Mezase Pokémon Master (a personal favorite of mine), and some new translations related to Pocket Monsters The Movie "Mewtwo Strikes Back!" & "Pikachu's Summer Vacation."

So yeah, 2023 was a pretty exciting year for Dogasu's Backpack. Next January this site will be celebrating its twenty-fifth birthday and I've already got a few things cooking to commemorate this website's quarter of a century on the Internet. I've already started doing a lot of little housekeeping type tasks -- dusting off old pages I hadn't touched in years, fixing broken image links, getting rid of pages and other old files I have no intention of ever doing anything with, updating name conventions to make things a bit more consistent, etc. -- and will continue to do so throughout the year. While I'm doing all that I also plan to finish the the rest of the (broadcast) Season 2 comparisons, redo the "Mewtwo Strikes Back!" comparison for the dub's 25th anniversary, and work my way through my giant backlog of interview translations. The year 2023 was a big one for the site, and I think 2024 will be even bigger.

I always end these site anniversary write-ups with a set of predictions for the coming year. And so, without further ado, here's my completely half-baked, not-at-all serious predictions for what I think will happen with Pokémon in the year 2024:

Video Games

So what will be the big Pokémon Day announcement as far as the main series goes? I think there will be two:

Pocket Monsters Black 3 & White 3 for the Nintendo Switch. I can see these games coming out either late 2024 or sometime in 2025.
Pocket Monsters Generation 10 for the Nintendo Switch 2 (or whatever they end up calling it). We won't get much more than a teaser (maybe white text on a black background that says "Brand new Pokémon game has started development!" or something like that) but we will at least know the next Generation is officially in the works.

Pokémon Go will have to release the Galar starters at some point, right? So I'm thinking that point will be sometime in 2024.
I get the feeling we're going to see a new Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game sometime this year. I don't know why, I just feel like the timing's right.
The Switch will see the Pokémon Pinball games for the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance come to its Virtual Console service. The latter was already put up on the Wii U Virtual Console back in the day and so it'd be an easy one to throw on the service, and Nintendo's included Rumble Pak functionalities in lots of other Virtual Console games before so doing the same for Pokémon Pinball shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

Animation

I think Liko and Roy will get the other three heroes before the end of the year and that Terapagos will leave the group, but beyond that? It's hard to say. I can see Amegeo maybe joining forces with the Rising Volteccers at some point to take down some super powerful Pokémon or something, but that truce will end up only being temporary.
Since the black Rayquaza is kind of the central point of the show right now it would make sense for our heroes to head over to the Hoenn Region at some point.
Once the Terapagos story is done I can see the show bringing in Ogerpon and the other Momotaro Pokémon.
I think at least one of the heroes' starters -- either Nyahoja or Hogator -- will evolve before the year's up. But! I don't see it happening for both starters; it'll either be one or the other.
Satoshi and his friends won't show up in the TV series in any capacity in the year 2024.
I can see us getting a CD release of the show's background music sometime in 2024.
I don't see us getting a new movie this year. I know there are supposedly "leaks" out there that "reveal" a new movie's in the works or whatever, but I haven't seen anything to suggest any of that's anything more than baseless Internet rumors. If we were going to get a new movie this summer we would've already had a teaser by now, and after the way Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" did in the box office I don't see a December release being likely either.

Other

I don't think PokéTsume will get a second season. I would love it if it did but I really see that series being just a one-and-done deal.
With the recent success of its One Piece live action series I can see Netflix really ramping up production on that live action Pokémon series Variety announced a few years ago. I don't think it'll actually come out before the end of the year (I see it being released in 2025 at the absolute earliest) but I think we'll at least get some cast announcements and/or promotional imagery before the end of the year.

And that's about it! Until next time!

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