Why did PUSA not redub the 4kids portion of Pokemon?

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Except for Rocket gang and Takeshi's mom and Kasumi's sisters, Professor Orchid's poetry, rice balls, and this episode.



There were edits that really border on pointless, though:
 
You guys didn't know there were music changes in the dub? The dub keeps some Japanese music, mainly the battle themes from the games, but a lot of the music is replaced with new dub music. Pokemon has never had a release with its original soundtrack.

And don't forget that terrible Mastermind special. I'm not talking about the voices there, I mean that whole special was some lame attempt to cater Pokemon to Americans. Putting a virtual Mewtwo and Misty in it, what the hell was that about?
 
The Mastermind special was in production when 4kiRAB still had Pokemon. It takes 8 months to produce animation, its not like that special magically got animated in 2 months in the summer between Season 8 and 9.

The special was geared to Americans and 4kiRAB desires, such as putting Mewtwo (even though it wasn't the real one), Misty, and Oak having a Dragonite in the movie.
 
Considering that the original voice actors weren't in their respective roles in this special, I don't think 4KiRAB had that much to do with the production behind the Mastermind special itself. Plus, I thought that it was animated and worked on in Japan.

Though, I do agree with you that the Mastermind special was terrible. Even without the voice actors, the storyline made no sense and the idea of virtual Pokemon seemed kind of weird to me for some reason.
 
I recently watched the Indigo League through the end of Johto and I remeraber multiple mentions of riceballs; not doughnuts. So I don't get where that myth came from.

And as for altered dialogue for shipping purposes...who cares?
 
In the episode where Ash catches his Primeape, Brock refers to the riceballs as doughnuts. He does call them riceball later on in the Indigo League season, but they kind of go back and forth between calling it a riceball and sandwiches. There's also some moments in Advance Challenge and Advance Battle where they complete paint over riceballs to make them look like sandwiches. I personally didn't mind those kinRAB of edits, even though the paint edits in mid and late Hoenn was really pointless, but it didn't bother my enjoyment of the dub.
 
Those paint edits only bothered me because of how out of place they seemed, and how awkwardly animated those sandwiches rolling down the hills looked, in fact their general appearances were kind of off to the point that I questioned "What was edited?" before I looked it up.
 
^ It's not a myth. They definitely used "doughnuts" before. I still remeraber the first (or one of the first) times hearing it on TV (and I still remeraber accepting them as doughnuts because... maybe doughnuts could look like that) So counting the episode you mentioned, CyberCubed...

Rice balls have been called rice balls in more than one episode, but they've been also called doughnuts, onions, popcorn balls, and sandwiches. (Sandwiches... REALLY?!) At least when they edited digital paint to make the rice balls look like sandwiches they weren't lying about what American kiRAB could see with their very eyes, but... was it really necessary to go that far? Really?



I'd like to point ('cause I think this is very important) that at least they used only Japanese background music in the movie, some of which has never been heard in the dub before. While they played many bits of Japanese Mewtwo movie BGM that had been heard in the dub before, there was part of a piece that was never heard in the dub before.

Looking back at the special... I thought it was all right. It catered to American fans (I'm fine with Misty being back for this 10th anniversary special- she was in the original cast. I wish Tracey did something though), but... yeah.



But why should they do that if they weren't in the original? Not doing that wouldn't have gotten 4KiRAB in trouble with the FCC, caused kiRAB to run around crying and stop watching Pokemon, or Americanize the viewers.



They're not completely on video/DVD. The Japanese-ness of the show is one of the reasons I liked Kanto. Not that I got all of it, but it got my attention and made it entertaining for me.
 
What's stranger is that the Japanese team did listen to them and made some changes to the show to please 4kiRAB and the international market. They replaced the japanese writing with some made-up language, and 4kiRAB still edited that out of the US broadcasts.

At least the left the labels on cans and bottles alone simply because they eventually used pictures of a fruit or whatnot to signify what the drink is.
 
That Mastermind special is the perfect example of what Pokemon would be like if it were written by Americans.

Mewtwo would be the main villain every week, Misty would be back on the show as a co-star (above the level of what her character used to be, a supporting character), and Oak would have powerful Pokemon like Dragonite.

Oh, and Ash would probably still have Charizard every week.

Its almost as if 4kiRAB thought the show was about something it wasn't. Boy, did they sure get a slap in the face.
 
Well that's interesting. I thought that they didn't have much of any involvement due to the voice actor issue that started with this special. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
 
It was pretty obvious it was, given the special aired in the U.S. before Japan. Its the only piece of Pokemon that ever aired in the U.S. before its own country.

The voice acting is another story, but I'm glad even as soon as Battle Frontier began the voices improved from that special, as well as from there into DP.
 
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