Clemont and Bonnie are adorable!
I haven't been so excited to watch the pokemon anime in so long...For some reason I just wasn't really interested in the Black and White anime.
IK!!! i was so pumped these past two episodes have been great!!!
Clemont and Bonnie are adorable!
I haven't been so excited to watch the pokemon anime in so long...For some reason I just wasn't really interested in the Black and White anime.
very good first episode
I'm watching the half hour episode right now and I like how they remixed the first theme song.
Ash showed more skill in the first ep then all of BW lol
The new theme remix was wonderful even if short but I blame FCC and not the dubbers since networks seems to really cut down themes these days. All the voices fit so well but some parts felt redubbed like the gym computer voice doesn't sound like it did in the preview to me.
It is the exact same voice, I dvr'd the preview and just saw it again recently.
The new remixed version of Pokémon theme song was a nice surprise, It was great, but.....it was too Short. Only 30 seconds! Geez, CN should've cut some of their commercials for a longer opening.
Yeah, that's CN for ya, so I can't say I'm surprised. They were so lazy that they kept Musashi's voice in a trailer for DP one time, IIRC, when everyone else was speaking English in a promo for the dubbed version.CN gave zero promotion for it as far as I know, maybe they advertised it on their website because I saw zero TV ads for it. Not surprised, after the Wallace Cup Pokemon on CN got very little promotion. Anyway the episode was the same as I watched it the first two times.
Episode Review of XY001:
Honestly, fairly weak opening for the start of a series: it's literally the most bland and generic one yet in my eyes. Ash is still on the plane to the Kalos Region with Alexa and he gets off, shouting and proclaiming that he has arrived in the Region, with all the townspeople staring at him like he's nuts (this was funny, I admit). Then, Alexa questioned him on why he did so, and he basically said he was trying to express his joy at making it there, saying hello to it (in the Original JPN Version, there was no cool speak in that line), more or less. Then, Alexa decides to leave a bit later. So, then, we get Ash trying to go into a gym because, heck, there was such a need to do so! Then, he gets his butt fried and nearly falls on the ground, but is saved by Clemont with his inflatable bag and meets him as well as his little sister, Bonnie. Then, the three discuss who they are and why they are here, and Bonnie as well as Clemont show a keen interest in Ash. Then, Clemont and Ash decide to battle, until idiot Team Rocket decide to interfere and pull their usual crap. Then, the most dramatic part of the episode appears when Ash says he'll never give up against TRio in a fantastic 1-2 line speech, where Bonnie and Clemont simply smile and agree in a "hmmm" tone, because that was obviously the hardest TPC JPN tried making this episode. They end up getting owned by a Froakie that watched Ash fend TR off that then helps Ash out, but is injured in the process, and thus the episode ends off with them rushing to Sycamore's lab to get it healed.
So, in short, it was pretty lame and sucked: a 65/100 is a fair enough rating for this.
Dub Review of XY001:
Well, none of the English dub voices fit the characters' or their ages at all, apart from Clemont and Serena's. I'll admit that those two have good English dub voice actors: the rest range from bad to horrific depending on the character, but then given how the English dub of Pokemon has been over the last several years, I'm not too surprised at the lower standards TPCi have brought to it at this point. Why? Well:
--> Ash's voice has gotten deeper than it was in BW (that's not a good thing considering how old Ash is), and now Sarah sounds like she's using her DP Ash dub voice here, with her improved acting skills from BW's dub, in the XY dub. Problem is, the voice itself doesn't work at all, especially considering Ash is still 10 years old. I miss Veronica Taylor playing him in all seriousness: I want to chuckle at this guy's goofy antics and silliness, but cry when he gets emotional and worked up, but I can't do this anymore in the English dub because I just cringe instead anytime he does so. Only way I can somewhat enjoy this is by watching Rica Matsumoto do so these days, but even that has gone flat due to TPC JPN's weaker writing it recent years, and this episode is a good example of that. So, Ash's dub voice is bad now, but it's better than I can say for Team Rocket or Bonnie.
--> James' sounds more congested and nasally than ever before: I'm actually literally having trouble trying to understand what he's saying half the time now, and some of the phrases he used in this episode were never used before in the history of the English dub. I mean, was "swala" really necessary when he threw the collar at Garchomp? I've never been a fan of Carter in this role, always finding his rendition of the role a bad Hoenn Stuart imitation with a nasally tone, but that sounds too good to be him now. He just sounds like a fat older man with a cold now in the dub, and considering how old James is, it doesn't fit at all. While also bad, the next three dub voices are the worst of the lot.
--> Jessie sounds like Michele has gone back to using that valley girl tone in her tone and unfortunately it seems like the higher-pitched registered she used for the character in DP's dub is slipping out again. I really don't know why Knotz has to be so inconsistent in this role: sometimes, she'll do great (e.g. BF's dub, BW's dub), and other times she'll do terrible (e.g. DP's dub, here in XY's dub), but it's jarring to hear her regress as the character once again. IMO, she should use her BW dub voice for Jessie again: that's way better than this one.
--> Meowth's dub voice is the worst of the remaining OS characters, though: don't know what happened to Carter in the role, but he's absolutely unbearable as Meowth now. Not only has he continued to get worse and worse with each progressive saga TPCi has dubbed in the role, but he keeps adding more gravel and deep tone in addition to that. Hearing him say "Meowth, that's right" made my ears hurt just hearing him talk. Honestly, Carter was way better in BF's dub than he is now as Meowth: at least back then, he was trying to imitate Maddie a bit and Inuko Inuyama, but now...I don't know what he's doing. Is he smoking cigarettes before recording, or what? Horrific voice, bad acting = no.
--> Bonnie's dub voice is...awful. Rarely does the English dub mess up casting a characters' voice correctly the first time in Pokemon's case, but this is an exception to that. Her voice sounds more like an adult woman's than anything else, and additionally it is very screechy and inappropriate: it's definitely not the voice I imagined coming out of the character, and Alyson Rosenfeld needs a LOT of work to iron out her performance here. Honestly, I think she was completely miscast in this role.
The dub's script writing? Simply awful. Ash's *cool speak* returns with "sayin' hi-ya" as well as out of context lines like "I slept like a log," and TR can't go 3-4 minutes without some rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and the like. "One more pushy wushy," "swala," and "Then you're going to be seeing re-runs" being the worst lines in my eyes from Meowth, James, and Jessie, respectively. Even Bonnie seems to suffer from this, with "you are such annoying bad people!" making me cringe. Someone please fire Cathcart and Z Pang America already, please: put them out of their misery already-- they can't write for crap.
In short, the current English dub is still sucking as much as I thought it would, and to quote someone's response watching it on YouTube: "This dub hurts my ears. 1 minute in, and my ears are bleeding." While that is an exaggeration even in my eyes, it is quite bad indeed.
That being said, I have no room to judge the full remix yet if that is the dub's 17th Opening, but based off of the preview in the XY Trailer, it sucked there. I'll have to hear it in full before I can have an actual opinion on it, though.
Keep in mind this is just my opinion and I have nothing against you if you disagree, though.
Only one thing you said is right. TR's rhyming is annoying. But honestly Ash isn't ten anymore, and no one know how James is. Tne voices are awesome imo, (especially Ash's) They probably went back to the DP voices because almost EVERYTHING was horrible in BW.
As for the story I tohught it was done very well. It's only the first episode come on.
In short, this is freaking awesome and at the very least deserves a 95/100.