EpisodeStats:
Japanese Episode016: "The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures ofPokémon"
American Episode116: "PokémonShipwreck"
Pokémon DareDa? Koiking
Japanese AirDate:July 15th, 1997
American AirDate:September 29th, 1998
Above the sea,Junsa and a group of officers mourn the deaths of Satoshi, Kasumi,Takeshi, Musashi, and Kojirou. Unknown to them, however, is thefact that all of the people they had assumed to be dead are stillalive, trapped within the St. Anne! After regainingconsciousness, Satoshi and his friends try to figure out a way out ofthe sunken ship. Kasumi figures that the ship is upside down andadvises everyone to climb toward the hull, but a number of obstaclesmakeit difficult to do so. Along the way, our heroes run intoMusashi-tachi, causing a battle to break out. Before long,everyone is convinced that the only way they'll get out of the shipalive is to work together, so a temporary truce is formed. Thegang eventually arrives in the engine room and is able to open a holein the ship so they can escape. Using their water pokemon,Satoshi and his friendsswim to the surface while Musashi-tachi are forced to settle withswimming alongside Kojirou's Koiking. Once everyone gets out ofthe water, they aimlessly drift on a raft, trying to figure out how toget to land. Hunger sets in after a while, and almost everyonedecides to eat Kojirou's Koiking. However, the structure of itsbodyprevents it from being edible, causing Kojirou to become fed up withthe pokemon. Upset at his pokemon's inabilityto battle, swim, or be used as food, Kojirou renounces ownership ofKoiking and kicks it into the ocean. This jumpstarts itsevolution into Gyarados, prompting everyone on the raft to paddle fortheir lives. They aren't fast enough to escapeGyarados' powerful Dragon Rage attack, however, and the twister itcreatesswallows our heroes upWill they survive the attack of the Gyarados!? To be continued!
Thoughts
So there are some things I really like about this episode and then somethings that I don't like. I really like how the episode startedout with our heroes' funeral because it's just such an unusual way tostart an episode. I really liked how everyone had to figure outways to get out of the ship. I really liked all the funny momentswith Koiking. I liked the Rocket-Dan funeral scene.
The thing I didn't like, however, was howhorribly out-of-character everyone acted in this episode. Why isKasumi so calm and cool-headed? Why is Takeshi acting sohot-tempered and eager to fight? Why is Nyarth afraid of water inthis episode and only thisepisode? Why is Pikachu acting like such a little asshole?The OOC-ness of this episode is through the roof, and when I watch thisepisode, I sometimes wonder if the writers even knew anything about thecharacters they were writing for.
There are quite afew logical flaws in this one as well. Like when the Rocket-Danare discovered inside the ship by Satoshi and his friends in thatlittle flooded stairwell but then, one scene later, everyone magicallyteleports to this hallway that doesn't seem to have any flooding in itat all. Or how Ishitsubute is heavy enough to cause the ship totilt precariously while Iwaku is able to prance around without havingany effect at all. There are a lot of other things that kind ofhad me scratching my head as well that really brought down the episodefor me.
Now I don'tactually hate this episode oranything despite my grumblings. It just has someparts that bug me, that's all.
The Englishversion of this episode doesn't really have too much done to it,really. The funeral scene at the beginning, something that 4Kidswould have most definitely cut if this was a Season 8 episode orsomething, is completely intact in the dub. And while the Englishversion may dance around saying the word "die" quite a bit, thegeneral idea still manages to get across.
Gyarados keepsits Japanese voice.
DialogueEdit
At the end of the Japanese version of the recap, the narrator does thestandard "will our heroes make it out OK?" spiel. Toward the end,we see that image of the ship sinking into the oceanand the narrator starts acting like he's sinking along with theship. It's really quite funny.
The Englishversion, on the other hand, just has the narrator talking normallywhile making a bunch of ship-related puns.
Also, the Titanicreference at the beginning is dub-only.
Later, whenMisty's telling everyone to put their pokemon away:
Misty: "Call your Pokémon back,too. What's more important? A Pokémon battle or yourlife?"
Jessie: "She'sright. Good point."
In the Japaneseversion, Kasumi isn't quite so nice; she instead tells the Rocket-Danthat if they don't retrieve their pokemon, she'll throw them back intothe water. At this point, Musashi and Kojirou get a scared lookon their face and hastily agree.
Paint Edit
The blueprint of the St. Anne that's shown on the screen while Kasumiexplains the ship's layout has some Japanese erased: The text atthe bottom says 甲板 ("deck") while the text at the top says 船底 ("bilge").
Click on eachimage to view a larger version.
It'd kind ofstrange that 4Kids would redraw the arrows and then not bother toattach labels to said arrows. Why didn't they just erase thearrows altogether if they weren't going to bother to translateanything??
DialogueEdit
We get a lot of instances of dancing around death in this episode:
James: "Jessica?"
Jessie: "Yes, James?"
James: "Whoever said 'beautydoesn't last' must have been thinking of us."
Jessie: "I'll always rememberwhat a wonderful dresser you were."
James: "So will I."
Misty:"Will you two knock it off!? There's gotta be some way to get off thisship! There must be some angle we haven't thought of yet."
First of all,Musashi and Kojirou's dialogue is more or less the same minus thereference to being good dressers. In the Japanese version, theyjust say that they'll never forget each other.
Kasumi's line ismore or less the same except that she also states that she doesn't wanttodie in a place like that in the Japanese version.
James: "Ican't cross that inferno! Jessie and Meowth, you go ahead!I'm staying here!"
Jessie: "JamesJames James James James! Snap out of it! How long do youthink you'd last on thisside? Now let's go. We'll cross together."
Musashi says moreor less the same thing but adds that if he doesn't go with them, he'lldefinitely die down there.
Like I saidearlier...the whole "we don't want to die down here" is present in bothversions; the Japanese version just states it more explicitly.
Later, whenTakeshi is recounting the tale of Noah and his ark, he mentions that a鳩 ("dove" or "pigeon") went and got the branch to let him know that dryland wasnearby, making the fact that Satoshi use his pigeon pokemon for thesame purpose kind of a neat parallel. In the dub, Brock simplysays that "a bird" went and got the branch.
Further on in theepisode, duringthe little funeral service Satoshi and the gang hold for theRocket-Dan, both Takeshi and Satoshi talk about how regrettable it wasfor the trio to die the way they did. The dub isn't quite asblunt.
This lastdialogue edit actually fixes a problem I had with the original versionof this episode:
Misty: "Nowyou've done it! Magikarp has evolved into Gyarados!"
In the Japaneseversion, Kasumi says that she hadheard that Koiking evolves into Gyarados. Which impliesthat this is something that she didn't really know about and had onlyheard stories.
Now ignoring afuture Weekly PokémonBroadcasting episode forasecond...wouldn't that be a strange thing for her to say? Youwould think that, after being the Gym Leader for quite some time, shewould know something really basic like that and be confident in that knowledge,right? That's what we get with Misty, anyway. Kasumi, onthe other hand, seems to be really wishy-washy about the whole thing,which I guess really helps her fit in with how just about everyone elsein this episode is acting really out-of-character.
SideNote
When Team Rocket's being sucked into Gyarados' Dragon Rage, listenclosely because you'll be able to hear Nyarth, in Japanese, scream out"Ya na kanji!" Don't believe me? Checkit out for yourself.
I guess thatscene was one of those eleventh hour audio mixes, huh?
AddedFootage--1 second
A second is added to the TO BE CONTINUED... screen.
Really?Again?
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