Alola to New Adventure! (944)

[Ominous Wind]

Finally! After not being able to do much for the past weeks, I was able to begin watching the SM anime.

As soon as I saw the speed-up scene where Ash, Delia and Mr. Mime win the trip to Alola, I knew the next couple of years would be entertaining. The animation is good, and the art style suits it very well. We get to see Team Skull right off the bat, which hopefully means we'll see more of them soon. The part where Ash meets Tapu Koko was amazing as well since it means the deity sees something special in Ash, I always like it when my boy gets some recognition.

Overall, a solid 8.5/10 for the very first episode of this new saga.

 

[Pikasaur]

Despite not having Goodra and Greninja with him, it's very possible he still kept their balls.

I'm...sorry if that sounded a tad dirty.

Maybe he kept Greninja's.

But, I assumed that he gave Goodra's pokeball to the owner of the Wetlands. Just incase he wants to call up Goodra for a Pokemon League. Like he did with Gliscor when it was learning Giga Impact.

 

[Pikachu52]

It's a reasonable start to a new series.

Not a huge fan of the animation. The softer lines and colours make him look a lot younger and he's acting more excitable than in XY. Still I suppose battling Team Skull indicates consistency in skill level so that's something.

Not sure what to make of the school setting - how exactly is there an Island challenge if all the Trial captains are school students. And does this mean Ash won't have travelling companions like in every previous series.

Team Skull introduced in the first episode - they've shown up even earlier than Team Rocket. Not since Magma/Aqua has a team shown up this earlier. There's more scope to make them a dominant part of the series as Team Skull didn't have a specific goal in the Games, they were just trouble makers. No sign of Aether foundation yet. Lillie's present but where's Nebby? In fact her character seems to have been changed a fair bit. In the games she didn't like trainers and battles but she certainly wasn't afraid of Pokémon. Not sure I like the fact they've done that given Lillie's central role to the plot of S&M.

 

[jginz1]

Was anyone else surprised when Sophocles turned out to be a little kid?

 

[AuraChannelerChris]

Was anyone else surprised when Sophocles turned out to be a little kid?

I...don't know why anyone would since it's pretty telling he's a kid in the games.

 

[Nerdy McNerdface]

Nice to see Team Skull grunts are a little closer to their in-game appearances (besides the motorbikes). Really, Team Flare Grunts were just office workers who never acted silly once like in the games.

What a huuuuuuge disparity of visuals and effects. The Z-Move looked like it damn blew up the whole school entrance, only to show a small little crater on the road.

Is the music too loud, or is it just me?

Dub talk!

Lillie sounds bad. She sounds like a rich b**** slowly reforming into a decent person.

Mallow...why does she sound like Miette?

Lana is perfect.

Sophocles is alright.

Kiawe sounds very familiar... Is it Paul's VA?

Kukui is alright.

Alolan Oak is horrible.

I think her Japanese VA is Miette, so I wouldn't be too surprised if they did the same thing in the dub.

 

[Frozocrone]

Was anyone else surprised when Sophocles turned out to be a little kid?

Like...all the trial captain's are.

 

[Nerdy McNerdface]

Like...all the trial captain's are.

There is a very rare chance that they're not. All trial captains can only be captains until they are 20 (for some reason) so there is only a margin of two years for a trainer to be a captain and an adult at the same time (going by real-life standards, that is). Either way, Sophocles is still a child.

That makes me think down a random thought path - how old is Mina? She seems older than 20, but she physically can't be. I guess that's a question for another day.

 

[Soaring Pikachu]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Nearly all of the redesigns that I noticed, I dislike. Nitpicking aside, there seems to be more good parts in the episode than bad. Ash is probably qualified to be an instructor at the school but I think its good that he is willing to remain open to learning new stuff and expanding his knowledge.

Team skull looks really weak. Even with a huge numbers advantage they got swept away easily. At least Team Rocket started off menacing and then became less of a threat as Ash improved. By evil team standards, this was just embarrassing.

 

[TheWanderingMist]

Team skull looks really weak. Even with a huge numbers advantage they got swept away easily. At least Team Rocket started off menacing and then became less of a threat as Ash improved. By evil team standards, this was just embarrassing.

That's like the whole point of Team Skull. They're not supposed to be scary.

 

[G4Pokefan]

Anyone know when the Sun and Moon episodes will start on Disney XD? It's kinda weird not seeing Pokemon on cn anymore. The feeling will pass though

 

[TheWanderingMist]

Anyone know when the Sun and Moon episodes will start on Disney XD? It's kinda weird not seeing Pokemon on cn anymore. The feeling will pass though

I don't think anyone knows. They're rerunning XY first though apparently. They may be trying to build up a sizeable buffer of episodes sp that they can drop more than 1/week.

 

[doofinc]

As expected, the official dub airing replaced a majority of the background music with their own dub music. Most confusing part was replacing one of the old tracks with one of their new tracks, but keeping that old track when it plays later. Why does Goldfarb like dissonant melodies and harp/mallet percussion monophony so much?



The dub theme song is also with the episode; is there a place to discuss it?

 

[NPT]

Just saw the "official" dub of this episode. The english opening is average, and the ending is just an instrumental version of the opening. Although I'll give them some credit for using footage from the Japanese SM Ending.

As usual, most of Shinji Miyazaki's music has been replaced by Ed Goldfarb's terrible compositions. Only 4 pieces of Japanese music were kept in dub...
-Title card
-Two tracks during the Team Skull battle
-The track at the end.

Goldfarb even replaced the SM Wild Pokémon battle theme and Kalos Route 2 theme. *sigh* this sucks. TPCi should just drop their music replacement practices, It's only making the dub worse.

 

[Sceptile Leaf Blade]

Anyone know when the Sun and Moon episodes will start on Disney XD? It's kinda weird not seeing Pokemon on cn anymore. The feeling will pass though

No idea. Here in the Netherlands we only get the Dutch dub on Disney XD, which is just the English dub literally translated and redubbed, but with the same musical score, same footage, and same voices for non-talking pokémon. And the Dutch dub always comes later than the English one, as it uses the English one as a basis. We only get the superior English dub on the pokémon website.
It's inferior to the English both in voice acting quality (which is still alright though) and choice of words. The translations are so literal that the characters use words in contexts where they are normally not used in Dutch. For example the Dutch word for damage is 'schade', but we generally do not use this word when it comes to injuries or damage to living beings, yet the dub does it over and over again. Another example was on the pokémon website, where they tell a bit on the new pokémon for Sun and Moon. In the piece of Primarina, it says it is bad in back-to-back battles. On the Dutch website, it says it is bad in 'rug-tegen-rug gevechten', where rug is the Dutch word for the body part back, and we don't use it as an expression like this. So if you don't realise it's an expression in English, it gives the impression that Primarina is bad in pokémon battles that are performed cowboy style (as in, literally backs touching).

I often think that the translations are done by people that know the languages well but don't have any clue on what a pokémon actually is.

 

[Frozocrone]

No idea. Here in the Netherlands we only get the Dutch dub on Disney XD, which is just the English dub literally translated and redubbed, but with the same musical score, same footage, and same voices for non-talking pokémon. And the Dutch dub always comes later than the English one, as it uses the English one as a basis. We only get the superior English dub on the pokémon website.
It's inferior to the English both in voice acting quality (which is still alright though) and choice of words. The translations are so literal that the characters use words in contexts where they are normally not used in Dutch. For example the Dutch word for damage is 'schade', but we generally do not use this word when it comes to injuries or damage to living beings, yet the dub does it over and over again. Another example was on the pokémon website, where they tell a bit on the new pokémon for Sun and Moon. In the piece of Primarina, it says it is bad in back-to-back battles. On the Dutch website, it says it is bad in 'rug-tegen-rug gevechten', where rug is the Dutch word for the body part back, and we don't use it as an expression like this. So if you don't realise it's an expression in English, it gives the impression that Primarina is bad in pokémon battles that are performed cowboy style (as in, literally backs touching).

I often think that the translations are done by people that know the languages well but don't have any clue on what a pokémon actually is.

This is why TPCi makes their own music. Why pay Japan for their music when you can make your own and charge everyone else (it's probably easier to translate English than it is Japanese).

Still, aside Lillie's VA (which is hopefully adjusting to VA) the VA cast isn't too bad, it's more the music.

 

[DatsRight]

You mean after they teased a good dub with a preview episode that kept ALL the music intact they revert back to this bull crap? Don't they ever learn?

Unless they dramatically improve acting and dialogue translations I think I'll skip the dub completely this time.

 

[OshyHikari]

I think her Japanese VA is Miette, so I wouldn't be too surprised if they did the same thing in the dub.

In the dub, Mallow is voiced by Jessica Paquet who also voiced Alexa in the XY series.

 

[Frozocrone]

So I just had a chance to watch the dubbed music in the episode...

Oh my, it feels like they sucked the life out of the anime.

 

[OshyHikari]

So I just had a chance to watch the dubbed music in the episode...

Oh my, it feels like they sucked the life out of the anime.

It's a shame, because we all thought the music replacement would come to an end, but of course it wouldn't considering how expensive the original Japanese music is.