Pokémon English Dub VS Japanese

so when it comes to the pokemon anime there's only really two ways you can watch it dubbed or in japanese most of us english speakers here in the west grew up watching pokemon in the english dub makes sense since it's the most accessible version to us and it's in our own native language because of that however there are many dub fans who are just unaware of the original japanese version and don't even know that there are major differences between the two on the other side of the coin though hardcore japanese watchers believe everything in the dub is trash and it's not worth watching is this true why do people feel this way and what makes these versions so different from one another that's what we're gonna break down for you today i'm gonna need some help covering this huge topic so joining me is austin from resort originals thank you so much for having me in this episode zach as an og stan of the original voice cast i'm more than happy to give some insight of the dub alright and now that the introductions are out of the way let's get started now when it comes to comparing the english and japanese version of the pokemon anime we need to start by looking at the dub as that's where all the major differences really stem from because the dub has gone through many changes throughout the years to make things a lot easier we broke it down into its three major eras we decided to call the four kids era the transition era and the gold farbera we'll be starting off with the four kids era which covers you guessed it the first eight seasons when four kids had the dubbing rights the pokemon anime debuted the american audience in september of 1998 and that began the run of the ash ketchum everyone from the 90s know and that is the one and only veronica taylor veronica taylor's experience voicing ash is very similar to the other dub voice actors the voice actor listens to the japanese voice and then tries to emit the personality and expression of that character into their own for pokemon specifically we were able to see a clip from the show and they wanted the voices to uh somewhat mirror what the original japanese actors had done and so we all auditioned based on that and then there were many many callbacks and it just kind of went on and on and then i got the job and didn't know if i had the job and then i had the job and then luckily um i had that for eight years the first season tends to be a feeler period to figure out how you want to portray that character so you tend to see the most jurassic change of that voice from episode 1 of the first season to the very end of that season where that voice actor finally gets to a groove to how they want to portray that character the maturity of ash's voice was actually a slow growth as time went on if you pay attention to the beginning of the series to the end when veronica taylor was still voicing ash you can tell the maturity grew with ash ketchum that was a compliment to what veronica taylor was able to do with his voice as he aged as a trainer or aged as a trainer all right i've pledged to get all the pokemon in the world now i'm ready to take the next step to be the number one pokemon master wow your power seems excellent you're a lot stronger no doubt about that now next up let me see some high altitude flying a voice actor has to find a way to appreciate the original voice but turn it into theirs to utilize what they're good at as a voice actor that's how you see similarities between the dub version of ash and the japanese version and you can also compare that to the veronica taylor version of ash to the sarah natto cheney version there are similarities but there are also distinct differences to make that character their own this also can be translated to not only just the voice portrayal but also how the lines are said compared to the original and that's where zach has a little bit more to dive into this subject alright now let's talk about script changes back in the 90s and early 2000s having an english dub with an anime make changes to the original japanese script was nothing new the biggest example that comes to mind is how goku was changed to be more superman-like in dragon ball z for american audiences while pokemon was no stranger to things like that especially in the for kids era austin already touched on this a bit when it comes to ash although he was always kind of sassy in the original series four kids a lot of the time went out of their way to make him a lot more savage which made scenes even more hilarious bugs are one of the three most disgusting things in the world aside from you what are the other disgusting things the comedic differences aren't just limited to ash though as this is extended to the entire cast aside from the boy ash i think some of the funniest english dub lines come from brock and team rocket now that's not to say that the original japanese version doesn't have great moments as well but the for kids ever is probably the best when it comes to elevating comedic moments or just adding hilarious one-liners when there weren't any what are you talking about brock i don't see any beautiful girl just turn around misty please only one of us can hallucinate at a time aside from the occasional funny hahas though the english dub changes would sometimes be a lot more drastic to the point where scenes end up feeling completely different compared to the original japanese remember how it was said that brock's mom died but then she actually was alive and well in ag well this was a dub change she never actually died in the original japanese or how about when ash promised to get back pidgey out after the orange islands well that was also a dub change he never says this in the japanese version i think the biggest example can be found in the very first movie mewtwo strikes back while the message and themes in the original version revolved around mewtwo's existentialism the dub changed it into an anti-violence message where fighting is wrong even though pokemon fight all the time that's their thing well at least it gave us two banger quotes from you two and meowth now if we're still talking about script changes then we absolutely have to bring up pokey shipping aka the romantic pairing of ash and misty in the japanese version the hints were definitely there but a lot of the time four kids went out of their way to make it a lot more obvious they'd push poke shipping so much back then that sometimes they'd even add suggestive shipping dialogue when there weren't any to begin with you and i will be married someday too [Music] i feel like one of the most wtf changes happened in movie six when max is sad because he has to say goodbye to jarachi in the japanese version ash talks about how 1000 years will only be an instant for jirachi that's nice but four kids over here completely changed the script and gave us a good friend left me and i miss her every day but i i know we'll always be friends forever this is obviously alluding to misty it still fits with the scene but there really wasn't a reason to add that other than to give us more pokey shipping moments when there weren't any so basically four kids were poke shippers makes you wonder how they would have handled serena if they still have the dubbing rights while pokemon was still trying to get into the groove of what was approved in japan but not in the west there were some growing pains involving censorship for the translation to the western audience there have actually been a total of five instances where the dub had to censor the original version the first time actually being where it felt like the writer was already under the influence where actually it actually did happen that the writer was under the influence a lot so i guess it's not as surprising to hear that james was given a nice large set of this episode actually would eventually get a dub release in the year 2000 however it was brutally butchered to take out any kind of scene that had something that was a little bit controversial for probably a 5 to 10 year old audience maybe 12 15 20 26 2027 the next episode that was actually entirely banned was the use of a firearm in an episode taken out completely it was unfortunate because there were some big continuity issues that came with this episode because that's where ash ended up getting all of his toro so we just ended up getting an episode where he threw out tauros and we're just wondering where did that come from and why does he have 30 of them the next band from the original series was the racially depicted jinx which was later turned from blackface to purple she wasn't changed until generation three but i did hope pokemon would have just digitally altered the color to make the episodes available instead of completely scrapping them the next instance comes from the infamous porygon episode that caused seizures for hundreds of japanese children this incident was so severe that the episode was banned worldwide which is why it never got a dub release the final episode banned from the original series ended up being a situation that was just bad timing and that was tentacruel smashing down buildings and the episode was planned to debut right around 9 11 in 2001 and we all know what happened then so it was bad timing and they ended up pulling the episode off the air and ended up pushing it to a later date where it wasn't so sensitive of material to use that episode did have a continuity issue again because that was where misty caught a horsey and we never knew and the next time we saw horsey we just like oh i guess misty owns that and i would say that's about it for censorship from the four kids era i can't really think of anything else that they censored i mean it wouldn't be any audio or like music that wouldn't make sense there won't be issues about that right right well actually austin the last topic we need to touch on regarding the four kids era is the music this will be a reoccurring topic for all the eras of the anime we touch on so get used to it now unlike other mainstream anime pokemon unfortunately doesn't keep all the original japanese soundtrack or ost if you just watched the dub then you won't even notice this change but if you've been watching both the english dub and japanese then the differences in the background music become more and more apparent the reason the english dub doesn't use a lot of the japanese ost all comes down to money when they purchase the licensing of a show right um and they reformat it when they license it to different countries the voices are being replaced right but if the music is not being replaced then you're making residuals on that end of it so what four kids decided was hey we'll redo the music so that when it's airing in canada or it's airing in you know france or germany or whatever and they're replacing the actors us with their local actors they're still making the money on the licensing of the music so it's all about that which makes a lot of sense so to put it simply if the dub is to use the original music then they'd have to pay the japanese company that produces said music this is a practice that is still done to this day at least for pokemon it's a shame because there's a lot of amazing japanese osts that will never be enjoyed by the dub fans because of this now it's not all doom and gloom because 4 kids did a pretty good job at keeping some iconic tracks for the first couple of seasons on top of that their own dub music wasn't that bad if i'm being honest this might just be my nostalgia talking as i did grow up with the 4 kids dub but a lot of the original music they created is actually really good when you hear these tracks you can't help but think of pokemon specifically ash's early days in kanto and it fits so well four kids also dubbed the music for the first three pokemon movies and if i'm being honest these tracks are also pretty good so good in fact that four kids even started using their movie tracks in later episodes which was cool the downside to this though is that since they had so much of their own music to work with now they slowly stopped relying on the japanese osc by the time we got to hoenn which is why instead of getting scenes like this [Music] we got scenes like this wow just like that the tables have turned again now this is the way a battle is meant to be morrison are you kidding me man they took out the suicune theme the four kids era feels 50 50 to me when it comes to their music as in half the time it feels like it's japanese ost and the other half of the time it's their own music luckily like i said their music worked so it was pretty balanced and with that we wrap up the four kids era and now move on to the extremely controversial transition era named after the transition the dub made after 4 kids lost the rights to pokemon this era covers season 9 of battle frontier all the way until season 16 adventures in univer now as much hate as this era gets this one is actually my favorite but before we get to why austin how about you explain why this ever is so controversial even though it's pretty obvious anyone watching pokemon during the year of 2006 woke up on a very very special weekend and encountered what will live for a day in infamous pokemon history and that is mystery of the mirage pokemon i am so sorry for anyone else that had to be there for that this was actually the transition of ownership from four kids to tpci and that was with a brand new voice cast they decided to get rid of all the originals and bring in a cheaper sound alike cast this was absolutely not taken well by the fans and tpc i noticed because i mean hey this is the year 2021 and i'm still talking about this infamous day that i'll never forget on my saturday morning but the reality was that taj productions undercut four kids for that contract hence why they didn't bring back the original voice actors since the original voice cast was so beloved there was a lot of animosity towards the new cast that represented the characters that we grew up with this is something that tpci did learn from and they have committed to that cast ever since so we've had the new cast longer than the original cast which is something that you can at least appreciate that they took what those issues were then and they decided to commit to what this new cast is and keep them for the long term and it has been almost 15 years since that change has happened but i think it's important to also talk about what the changes were from one voice to the other and that's specifically with veronica taylor to sarah natochenny now some might not know this but sarah was actually the third voice actor to voice ash the voice of ash and mystery of the mirage pokemon was actually voiced by casey rogers it was an older voice actor and the voice was just too raspy and just sounded just flat out awful with the strong backlash to the new voice of ash in mystery of the mirage pokemon she was immediately replaced by sarah nanto cheney what in the world brought you here my amazing training skills that's what you see doctor young sent me a letter inviting me to cut my amazing training skills that's what you see dr young sent me a letter inviting me [Music] [Music] now although sarah was an improvement to casey rogers the transition was still a bit rough sarah tried to completely replicate what veronica taylor did as ash but you could tell that the transition just didn't work it was really hard to fill veronica taylor's shoes they wanted me to sound like her but as the show progressed uh i kept getting kind of redirected and i don't blame anybody for that that's fine um but it definitely made me even more nervous and then i saw the fans like all the negative comments and the death threats and i'm like oh my god this is just horrible but for me personally i mean i didn't i wasn't i wasn't particularly nervous i was just i i just knew i had really big shoes to fill because this was such a huge show with the comfort ability with sarah voicing ash you did start to see a transition that better suited her voice than what she was trying to do with veronica's she had to make asher own but also preserve what made ash ketchum ash ketchum sarah's solution to this was getting rid of the raspiness all together and going to more of a high pitch that suited her voice level but also embodied the personality of more of an immature ash ketchum which isn't necessarily a bad thing it just took us back a little bit to maybe more of an actual representation of a 10 year old versus what maybe ash was by the end of his era with veronica that could be maybe 14 15. it was almost as if sarah reset the tone of ash's voice to progressively mature all the way up into the peak of x and y right you haven't met yet i want you to meet starly who's my very first pokemon buddy from sinnoh and who helped me find you you're all the best and as long as we're all together we can't lose everything's leading me to become a pokemon master there's no doubt nothing will be able to beat or compete with what that original group did create with the pokemon franchise however i can really appreciate what sarah and the rest of the new cast has done to really portray those voices in the best way possible and really carry the torch of maybe what not be maybe as perfect as the original cast but bring a strong representation to who they are and what they can continue to be for the many years to come all i really look for at this point is to see if they're showing the love and care within those characters going forward and that's really the best a voice actor can do now besides the obvious as something different because of the voice acting changes in this area of the anime ash was a lot different in the way that he spoke many people have pointed this out while ash had his own personality with his spunk and sassiness during the four kids era in the transition era ash talked a lot more like your average shonen protagonist his personality was a lot more cookie cutter here and it's something that is stuck with the english version of ash till his personality shift in sun and moon but something that is worth mentioning though is that like the transition error of the dub ash himself was going through a bit of a transition in the anime ash's whole arc in holland was overcoming his cockiness asking with his losses against brawley and drake so by the time the hoenn league is over and the battle frontier begins ash is a lot more toned down which is why he seems like he's lost a lot of his original personality and this just so happens to be when the voice acting changes happen this also leads up to the next big point we want to touch on unlike 4 kids that made tons of script changes to the dub pokemon usa script was a lot closer to the original japanese for the most part ash and almost every character in the anime minus team rocket a bit were speaking the way that they did in the japanese version so this is why some of the characters might feel a bit different compared to the 4 kids counterpart the only exception is team rocket like i said where instead of making a bunch of puns they've now switched to alliterated jingles which i don't mind to be honest i thought it was a fun change that fit with their characters on top of having a more faithful script the transition era is also where the dub kept the most japanese music they still had their own dub music thrown in there but they definitely kept a lot of amazing tracks that were never heard in the 4kids version of the anime which was great something cool to note is the fact that they actually used some of the classic four kids tracks during seasons 9 and 10 which is a nice way to keep both errors connected in a way starting season 11 battle dimension is when things began to change however because that's when touch production had left and dual art film and video joined the scene to help pokemon usa during this era the four kids themes were completely gone with more and more japanese osts in its place on top of that because of this little change behind the scenes the devil is a lot less cheap and this time brought back a lot of the old four kids voice actors like the original voice of giovanni gary and wabafete to name a few we even got the voice of missy return to voicemail lean and son goku himself sean shimmel returned to play cyrus and many other roles throughout diamond and pearl it was awesome we got a great mix of some old voices as well as the new ones getting better and better with each season on top of that we had the most japanese ost the dub had ever kept which is why i believe as controversial as it was this was the best era of the english dub because it's the closest to the original japanese seriously by the time we reach cinder league victors and early black and white the devil is almost identical to the japanese in fact the first eight episodes of black and white kept 100 of the japanese ost and added zero dub music over silent moments that's the kind of dub we deserve unfortunately by the time we got to rival destinies they slowly started to use less japanese osts and more of their own and now that brings us to the final and current era of the english dub the gold farbera named after current english dub composer ed goldfarb he joined the scene starting with season 17 xy and that's what sparked the next shift in the dub this is often regarded as the english dub at its worst because it's the one that uses the least amount of japanese soundtracks like you could probably count on one hand how many japanese osts they kept in a single episode nowadays and it's kinda sad this is also the era where the pokemon movie started to go back to exclusive dub music done by you guessed it now nothing against ed goldfarb himself as i'm sure he got the job because of his musical experience but when it comes to pokemon at least his stuff just doesn't do it for me part of what makes scenes in the anime work are the accompanying tracks that help elevate moments of emotion action and intensity but when you replace that with something that's so bland and basic then most of the excitement that's in the original japanese version is lost what makes this even more apparent is that it all began during x y the series that is the most action oriented and has the most epic moments when you remove most of the epic tracks that are meant for specific scenes you're left with something that is far less memorable in my opinion [Music] [Music] now to give credit where credit is due the gold farber has produced a few good dub tracks like the epic colors region theme using xy and the battle theme used during ash vs guzma for example i like those but still those are just a few standouts not a lot just when you thought that censorship was long gone after getting to a good rhythm of what can and cannot be shown to the western audiences the censorship made an unexpected return in the ever-changing art style era the first being cuts left and right to prevent religious implications because they decide to put a crucifix and apparently you can't do crucifixes but whatever goes over the kids heads anyways the censorship issues continued when they decided to make intense scenes less intense by making different cries to be a little bit less painful because i guess the more it hurts the more emotion you get out of an audience but that's i don't i don't know censorship like that is what really frustrates me because you're taking away how evil a character can be and it makes you want to beat them even more so when that finally does happens you have a higher gratitude and satisfaction when that bad person is defeated and when you kind of butcher how mean and evil they are just it takes it away and it's frustrating to see even for a younger audience the next sensor edits bring us all the way into the sun and moon era of alola and that is actually involving mimikyu and meowth where meowth actually sees a clothless mimikyu and it technically kills him but it's an anime so no nothing really like dies dies or at least we don't get a sea of death on screen we jokingly see his spirit float away but i guess you can't really do that because then maybe it implies he's dead even though we're really he's really not dead but let's just let's just roll with this and instead of having his spirit flow away from his body they just took that all out together even though he's not really dead in episode 64 of the sun and moon series it featured an entire band to the western audience due to the perceived depiction of blackface ash disguised himself as passimian in the episode and tpci did not want to face any potential backlash for the episode this was pretty unfortunate for me as i have been waiting for passimian's anime reveal as it was one of my favorite pokemon in the alola region then we get to episode 118 in the sun and moon series and that is encountering a very first of censorship and that is editing the sound yeah and i'm not talking about music or the dub censorship decided that shuriken couldn't be too sharp so they had to make a less sharp sounding noise that apparently would have huge implications on a child watching something i just i can't even finish this one oh and then one other thing they also decided to paint the shirt in pink yes [Music] and finally the most recent sensor comes in the pokemon journeys anime where we encounter someone that has a mustache that's just a little bit too narrow but like how bad can a mustache oh oh okay i i see it now yeah good choice pokemon now despite all these controversies the dub has nowadays one thing i will give this era credit for is it's awesome voice acting this is probably the best voice acting we've ever gotten for the dub sarah naruchani is the best she's ever been as her voice for ash fits perfectly with ash's personality in sun and moon and in journeys on top of that every english voice is on point and sounds the way they should in my opinion the voice actors for characters like clemen serena elon kiaway lana malo kakui chloe cerise and even go for example all knock it out of the park lily being the only exception she kinda sucked besides the main cast the english voices for supporting characters are also really good as well especially in pokemon journeys the dub is not produced by the pokemon company international and immuno sdi group before this the dubbing for pokemon was done in new york as that's where the main headquarters is at meaning they were limited to working with voice actors who were near the area pretty much but because the uno's offices are in burbank california the dub has now expanded their voice acting talent to lots of other great actors across the country as a result voice actors like sean schimel who left pokemon because he moved away from new york have returned in pokemon journeys we even got the original voice of lance wayne grayson returning to reprise his role which was pretty sick one thing i actually never expected the pokemon company international to do was go back on their decision of not bringing any four kids voice actors back under tpci but luckily they finally have come around to it well as the saying goes time heals all wounds and that seems to be the case with tpci and some of the four kids cast from the return of the original giovanni nurse joy the champion lance a few other reoccurring roles we have seen much of the four kids cast return however i'm still waiting for an eric stewart and veronica taylor return as we actually did get rachel lillis not as misty but a different character to bring back to the fold as we can get a nice representation of all the characters former and all the characters current into one niche pokemon anime community and i can't wait for that day to fully be here so that wraps up our breakdown on the differences between the english and japanese version of the pokemon anime for you english dub watchers out there i hope this video was able to help you get a better understanding of the japanese version and why many people prefer it over the dub and as for you hardcore sub watchers i hope you're able to get some newfound appreciation for some of the great things that the dub has to offer minus english dub lilly it's so warm but regardless of whether you watch it dub or sub or even both at the end of the day it's still pokemon we all love it which is why we all watch it so at least we have that in common huh this ending was a lot more wholesome than i thought it'd be well thanks for joining me austin no problem zack it was an absolute pleasure to be a part of this video as i love talking about the history of the pokemon anime and more importantly the original dub voice cast but shout out to the current cast you guys doing a great job and now we have the new hot take discussion of our debate series returning and that is what league was tougher to defeat orange island league or the alola league see you guys there that's a debate you do not want to miss but for now thank you all for watching this video and huge thanks to austin for joining me i also want to shout out tom sauce and tss for helping me with some of the information regarding the japanese side of the anime without them we probably would have left out a few important details links to them will be in the description last but not least remember to live your life to the fullest and have yourself a damn good one

Channel: Lumiose Trainer Zac

Views: 276,085

Keywords: Pokemon Anime, AniPoke, Pokemon Anime English Dub, Pokemon Journeys English Dub, Pokemon English Dub, Pokemon Anime Japanese, Pokemon English VS Japanese, Pokemon 4Kids, Veronica Taylor, Veronica Taylor Ash Voice, Sarah Natochenny, Sarah Natochenny Ash Ketchum, Rica Matsumoto, Ash Ketchum, English Dub VS Sub, English Dub VS Japanese, English Dub VS Japanese Pokemon, Lumiose Trainer Zac, Pokemon Master Journeys

Id: pruODMQdMug

Length: 28min 14sec (1694 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Post this in r/pokemonanime

[u/xSteveRogers]

Boom is right my g 🐐

[u/Pope_FrancisBaconJr]

Ohhh, this could be very interesting. Also happy cake day :)

[u/UltraMaster69]

Happy cake day!

[u/NoNoNoNoNo2476]

Watched it and instantly felt dominance lmao

[u/EyLin9900]

It's a slap in the face😂😂

[u/Dezbiskits]

Woah, I feel more confident about amourshipping knowing now that Pokeshipping's basis was biased, and that amourshipping was supported by the devs in both versions.

[u/cricktlaxwolvesbandy]

Misty: Ash and I will be married one day

Serena and me: Yeah about that...