Pikachu in Pictures Chapter 9: The Rise and Fall of the 4Kids Empire

And now we enter the Pokémon anime’s jazzy, freeform period. It was a relaxed but spirited bit of time… at least, in the content of its material. But on the production side, the English-speaking side of the fandom got to experience something far less breezy. And that means it’s time for a good old fashioned Wolfman Jew historical dive!

Episodes reviewed:

902: “Sweet Baby James” (October 13, 2005). With May’s Munchlax and James’ Chimecho deeply ill, both teams separately find their way to a large estate for help. It turns out the helpful caretakers knew James in his youth, and he makes both sides pretend he’s not a Team Rocket thug.
912: “Time-Warp Heals All Wounds” (December 22, 2005). May and Meowth find themselves sent back in time. Knowing the sad history of a local Pokémon Breeder, they attempt to stop her husband from riding the train that will lead him to his tragic death.
915: “Harley Rides Again” (January 19, 2006). Harley nets his first victory against May in the Wisteria Contest, defeating Munchlax in its Contest debut. However, in the process he runs afoul of Team Rocket.
918: “Cutting the Ties that Bind!” (February 9, 2006). Ash and Sceptile, who’s unable to battle after evolving from Grovyle, find themselves lost in the deep woods. As Ash’s upcoming opponent Spencer helps search for them, the two struggle to survive.
946: “Once More With Reeling!” (September 7, 2006). With the gang’s breakup imminent, May decides to enter an unofficial Contest—and Ash decides to join her for his first one. Their final battle gets all the more intense thanks to Combusken finally evolving into Blaziken.

Now it’s time for “the 4Kids chat.”

When the internet talks about animation (and the internet loves nothing more than to talk about animation), it forgets how much of a wild west it used to be. Back in the Nineties, you had so many weird and terrible shows, sometimes backed by legit A-list actors or some inane toyline. American and Western shows were often trapped in the shadows of The Simpsons’ excellent comedy writing, Batman: The Animated Series’ gorgeous style, and the stink of toy commercials like Thundercats. But Japanese imports had an entirely different feel and came from a context audiences barely understood. Whether it was Akira, Totoro, or OVAs like the hyper-violent Mad Bull 34, there was an accidental exoticism to “Japanimation” a localization would either hide or sell.

Anime also had no easy international distribution chain; unlike now (where Crunchyroll has the whole medium in a painful grip), the easiest form of localization was to trust that a company could put out your product for a quick secondary profit. There were studios that specialized in longer shows, “mature” material, and kid-friendly stuff. By the end of the Nineties and early Aughts, the latter was defined by 4Kids, a 1970s licensing company that specialized in pitching toy commercial shows (like Thundercats) and celebrity merchandising. Anime dubbing was a new venture for them, and Pokémon its very first dub. It worked. They had a large arm, a sizable bench of good actors, and relationships with most of the networks who deigned to air cartoons. Most of all, though, they had the luck to start with a giant hit. After that, any anime they touched was guaranteed some penetration into the American market. Their dubs of Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece, and, um, Kirby: Right Back At Ya! helped define this era of anime increasingly airing on Western networks.

Of course, these are things of business. If you’re of a certain age and online inclination, the name “4Kids” has far less savory connotations. You may find it symbolic of everything bad about anime localization, where complex or “mature” ideas are reduced or excised. You think of it as the one that erased Japanese culture, not exactly a sell to the kind of people who want to watch Japanese stuff or don’t want to be talked down to. And despite being one of their most faithful dubs, Pokémon played their greatest hits. The editing over Japanese text. The copious rewritten dialogue. The alterations that watered down serious topics. The time a physically androgynous man was rewritten as a woman. The bizarre narrative edits, some of which would come back to bite them years later. The constant pop culture references (that I do actually like). The cut music due to rights issues with the original composers. The antipathy for foreign foods or customs. The time they edited a rice ball into a terrible Flash animation sandwich.

If you were a plugged-in fan, you knew about this, especially once you discovered that Japanese audiences were getting everything months or even years before us. And it was easy to learn about what got edited when you had forums, news sites, and the fansite Dogasu’s Backpack, which dutifully marked every edit of Pokémon’s first decade. And for all the tsuris they gave viewers of this franchise, we still got it easy compared to the other series they dubbed. It was kind of untenable to defend 4Kids on the internet, even in cases where a change was beneficial (like redesigning a One Piece character who was a racial caricature) or necessary (like removing guns because most American channels were never gonna air a cartoon marketed to kids that had guns). They were the enemy.

But things got more complicated by the shocking announcement that The Pokémon Company International (then called Pokémon USA) would take back the keys to the anime—and, more visibly to viewers, replace the entire voice cast. There were reasons for that, namely monetary, as they wouldn’t be sharing proceeds with another studio and could work with lower-paid actors. While few fans would ever “stan” 4Kids or their scripts, many were not unfairly incensed that their favorite performers were left in the dust. PUSA would defend its move, a common and ugly one in the entertainment industry, as the price not being legally allowed to poach contracted 4Kids actors (they were being cheap, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if those contractual issues did exist, and that they’d be prohibitively expensive).

The outcry was huge. “Save Our Voice Actors,” a fan campaign partially started by Veronica Taylor and Eric Stuart to boycott the new show and bring back their old castmates, got a ton of support. Ole’ Joe “Serebii” Merrick literally had banners for it on his website back then. More ugly was abuse the new actors got from the nastiest individual members of a fandom that’s constantly on the edge of revolt. For many fans, this was their first time seeing the loose equivalent of a union bust. But it was the exact kind of online anger that was fated to have no real effect, especially if the legal issue was true and they’d have needed to buy out each actor’s contract. PUSA simply didn’t want to do business with 4Kids. As it turns out, few studios did.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Alongside the other points in his favor, Sceptile’s probably the most interesting example of “Pokémon disobedience” I’ve seen.

Many of the original actors would return to the show over the years as other characters, a few would reclaim their roles (like Rodger Parsons, who rejoined the cast with the voice switch as the narrator), but the move was done. The actors changed, as did the channel; after Kids’ WB! decided to scrub all non-Warner Bros. content, Pokémon moved to Warner’s Cartoon Network, where it stayed for many years before jumping ship again to Disney XD and Netflix. A lot of the reasons for these changes, and the forms they took, were confusing, nebulous, and rarely directly explained. And that’s because businesses are confusing, nebulous, and rarely like explaining themselves. The reason people complained about 4Kids was because of visible things, like an ugly sandwich JPG, and you couldn’t get more visible than a mass actor switch.

Losing the license was just one step in a downward spiral for the studio. While it was throwing money everywhere to expand into online channels and video games, it accrued a lot of losses—and not just properties, thanks to a lawsuit over unpaid Yu-Gi-Oh! royalties. Plenty of other studios were available, and many of them were cheaper or less inclined to the kind of embarrassing edits fans could easily disperse online. For the rest of the decade 4Kids withered away slowly, losing most of its properties before being cannibalized by Konami and Power Rangers owner Saban Brands. Yep, today it’s a hollow IP shell owned by one of the world’s most notorious gaming giants and a studio that funnels money to the monsters of the Israeli right. A sad, ignominious, but fitting end for the house Al Khan helped build.

It should be noted that The Pokémon Company didn’t do away with 4Kids’ edits. They also lacked access to much of the music rights and to this day reuses some of the original dub music. There was and is still editing (including the single largest and most justified edit in the entire series: painstakingly redrawing Lenora’s design over the course of three Black & White episodes to be less racist). You still had the pop culture references, including extremely punny titles. Rhyming and alliteration was way more prominent. But it was more in line with the original. It had fewer canon mistakes, for however those matter. And it was just as valid an adaptation as the original dub.

Image: Bulbapedia. Harley wins! And in a surprisingly good match, to boot.

Of course, the new actors didn’t exactly get a warm reception. Sarah Natochenny (who replaced Kayzie Rogers as Ash following poor reception to The Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon, a TV movie meant as a proving ground for the new actors), Michele Knotz, Carter Cathcart, and the rest of the new leads all took it on the chin. Of course they did; they were somewhat less established, they were replacing beloved actors, but they were also stuck as soundalikes. Cathcart struggles the most, since he has to be both a less exaggerated James and a more exaggerated Meowth. Natochenny brings far less energy or depth than Veronica Taylor did, which I suspect is from Ash having basically one note you have to play constantly and find slight variations in. That’s hard! “Battle Frontier” is the season where everyone is stuck as someone else, with little space for finding their own spin.

Removed from the controversy, “Battle Frontier” is not bad. The ninth Season of Pokémon was a lighthearted filler arc that did a bit of Pokémon Emerald promotion, a bit of May storytelling, and a bit of Ash getting to do stuff fans wanted for years. It was a bit lopsided in how it went about this. It’s set in Kanto for promotional reasons (the original region is always big, and Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen still existed), but it never actually uses any of the memorable Gym Leaders or characters of the day Ash met in Season 1. On the other hand, Charizard and Pikachu each beat a Legendary, Ash rotated in his eight seasons’ worth of Pokémon, and Harley won a Contest, so you tended to always get something. James even got to win an orienteering competition, just him and his precious new Mime Jr.! I suppose you can describe it as “wish fulfillment,” but that’s not a bad thing after the troubles with Hoenn.

Actually, I was quite pleased with the crop I picked. “Sweet Baby James” is a classic Team Rocket farce proving my colleague Cart Boy’s assertion that James has the most compelling relationships with his Pokémon. “Time Warp Heals all Wounds” was sweet, fun, and a good use of May and Meowth (this week was big on twerp / Rocket team-ups with vocal songs). “Harley Rides Again” gave Harley a much-needed and well earned win, thanks to a far stronger fight scene than I’ve been accustomed to. “Cutting the Ties that Bind!” is an amazing showcase for Sceptile, the “ace” of the Ash’s Hoenn team with whom I’m now fully on board as one of the series’ best party members. I even enjoyed the Contest stuff, which bugged me last week! This is what I’ve been talking about; filler plots can wield their very unimportance to do great things.

Image: The Pokémon Company. I imagine some people complained about the time travel mechanics in this one, but c’mon. It’s fun. That’s all that matters.

This is also another time in which the rules of this project—i.e. watching close to two decades afterwards and knowing what happens—come into play. I got to read the forums and see people’s annoyance that Ash would, say, go to Saffron City for a middling two-parter and not hang out with Sabrina. That was always the big problem with the storytelling. But aside from the genuine chutzpah of doing that, and the fact that most of those characters were never great, I don’t mind the loss. What matters most is Ash himself, and whatever it is he’s doing as this burgeoning Pokémon whisperer.

It’s kinda perfect as a testing ground for the new cast in that way. Most of them don’t turn in good performances (of course, neither did most of the original cast at first), but they’re given a ton of character-focused episodes and are clearly trying to figure out where they’re going. That’s part of what made “Sweet Baby James” fascinating; Cathcart gets a James episode right out of the gate, and while he doesn’t exactly “kill it,” there’s an intriguing tone in his take. It’s less broad than Eric Stuart got by the past few seasons, and… I wanna see where this goes. So it’s not great in that field, but that’s okay. I’m hungry for more of this exotic post-4Kids era.

Movie reviewed: Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea (July 15, 2006)

Ash and friends wind up on a journey with a family of aquatic acrobats and the future sea prince Manaphy, who May accidentally imprints on. They help Pokémon Ranger Jack Walker take Manaphy to its Sea Temple home—and out of the hands of the vicious Phantom. But the pirate follows them, steals part of the temple’s famed Sea Crown, and inadvertently turns the site into a flooding, sinking death trap.

Cruel and unthinking as they can be, though, the fans are not always wrong, and Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea is mostly poor as I had come to understand. It’s the weakest one of the Ruby & Sapphire era; it’s the weakest one thus far that isn’t Mewtwo Strikes Back. Even if the new cast weren’t still getting their sea legs (wordplay!), even if it wasn’t coming off three good to great entries, it would be a lesser project. And Pokémon does not enjoy the benefits of The Legend of Zelda, where even lesser tier entries are great. But, as a fan of I Don’t Even Own a Television: A Podcast About Bad Books, I would like to employ the Compliment Sandwich. Because after spending several weeks angry and depressed and this week sick, I’d like to be generous. We’re gonna go high, then low, and then back high.

Image: The Pokémon Company. Manaphy’s cute, but it doesn’t get to do too much.

First off: I do really like the central family. The Marina Group is fun, engaging, and visually cool; they do underwater acrobatics where the Pokémon psychically move the stage! Their backstory—the descendents of an ancient migratory nation—is interesting and avoids cliché. When the movie’s about them trying to help this creature to its home, and there’s a personal stake in wanting to protect this temple their ancestors called home, it’s strong. And that’s always at the margins whether we’re having some down time in a chase, solving a mystery, or having a moonlit conversation about the upcoming loss of a friend.

But of course, many of those beats were done in Jirachi Wish Maker. In general, it often feels like a callback, and not always in helpful ways. There’s a chase, and it has a bit more content than the montage in Movie 6, but it’s also not as memorable. The main relationship is also about a human having to say goodbye to an immature Pokémon, and May’s greater maturity than Max does make it different, but it has less holding it up. Manaphy certainly lacks the glamor of the movies’ other Legendaries; its body swapping move is fun but inconsequential, and as a newborn it lacks any of the depth or age that we’ve gotten from other movie leads.

The movie just lacks cohesion, and that comes most from its role in promoting the recently released Pokémon Ranger (on top of promoting the upcoming Diamond & Pearl, which already had two years of buildup). It was a game where you had Pokémon solve puzzles, got poor reviews and a couple sequels, but was a bizarrely huge part of Pokémon merchandising. Like, the Japanese version of the “Battle Frontier” opening has Jack Walker, our movie’s hero. Walker is fine; he’s basically a low rent riff on Kidd from the last movie. But his super spy energy clashes with the best part of the film, May’s parenting Manaphy (though those come together in the best scene, when May intrudes on Walker as he asks Ash for help sabotaging their relationship). He and the way too broad Phantom feel grafted in from another script.

Image: Bulbapedia. Man, I hope that Wiki is wrong and Walker isn’t named after Walker: Texas Ranger.

But these are unrelated to the biggest problem with the movie, which is how it fails to live up to the promise of the Gen III era. It’s ostensibly a film where May is the co-lead as she is in the show; by acting as Manaphy’s mother, she bonds with and has to come to terms with losing it, just like Max in Wish Maker. It’s the best character work of the story. But it also undercuts her wholesale at the end when Ash literally seals her, Pikachu, and Manaphy alive in a coffin to be the hero and solve the puzzle. That sucked. I don’t know what more I can say other than that it and Lucario and the Mystery of Mew should be in each other’s place. That movie rose over Season 8’s middling endings as a triumph; this lives down to the failings of the Advanced Generation during its victory lap.

But, but, compliment sandwich. And I don’t want to be too mean to any one of these movies, certainly not the last one to be made with cel animation before the movies switched to digital. So let’s be nice. The big temple was cool, and I’m always down for solving giant puzzles in a dungeon. It was nice getting a cameo from Kyogre. Buizel, one of the last promotional Diamond & Pearl Pokémon, is adorable. And I do think the idea of a series about a Pokémon Ranger could be cool, if not necessarily the Pokémon Ranger series we got. So if this was kind of a wash (wordplay!), it wasn’t an unmitigated one.

Conclusion: “Battle Frontier” is the same show. Harley’s even more of a cliché (though his animations make me suspect that was across the board), the new opening and ending are truly terrible, the dialogue and acting are a tad less good, but it’s still Pokémon in the English language. It’s still perfectly serviceable mediocre television. The boons of the arc are still there. I had seen a lot of varying takes on the filler arc, from people who liked its big moments to those who were frustrated at the lack of continuity, but I found the episodes to be some of the strongest since this whole “Hoenn” thing started. Even if it was only 9.4% of the season (and less if you take into account the Battle Frontier episodes at the end of Season 8).

Image: Bulbapedia. Mime Jr. is as great as Mr. Mime is not great.

But it definitely does feel different thanks to the voice actor switch, and rather jarring for longtime viewers. I mean, I read the reactions, but seeing and hearing it does put things into perspective. It is a bit odd. Okay, it’s really odd. Part of it is that I’ve known many of the original voices since my childhood, but the sudden jump is disconcerting. It was never gonna be anything else. It’s a lot, it’s awkward, and I’m gonna try to not dwell on it. We’re gonna be with the new actors for here on out (by my approximation, as of 2023 less than a third of Pokémon was even dubbed by the original cast), and I’d rather I got used to them than not. But the strangeness was there in bulk this week.

To a certain extent, I see the dub switch as ultimately an inevitability, if a somewhat painful and poorly-executed one. 4Kids was a product of another time. Granted that “time” was the late Nineties, but the media landscape was utterly different by mid-2006 (when we started getting Season 9—as always, we get this stuff months after their Japanese premieres, with the movie airing in April of 2007 over here). If the past is a different country, that studio might as well be in another solar system. When you look at their history, there are so many terrible directions and perspectives that could only have come from a company so mercenary, so desperate, and so dependent on this one brand. They weren’t an institution that was ever going to last.

The change has also made me even more intrigued about the Diamond & Pearl years than I already was. One thing I enjoyed about the first few weeks was seeing the original actors grow and settle into their new roles, and while this was a somewhat rough start in a season that was meant to be light and breezy, the first season was rough, too. So I’ve got that to look forward to, not to mention what’s often called the best entry in the Gen IV movies. So let’s sally forth, and see you in Sinnoh.

Errant thoughts:

This was the first diary entry that I started writing before the last one was published—a day to be precise. It was just easier adding the 4Kids history stuff first, since I knew that was gonna be the focus of the article. Plus, I got badly sick halfway through.
This was originally one super-long list, so here it is: the new actors:
- Michele Knotz comes across strongest in this batch as May and Jessie (following Rachel Lillis’ work as Misty and Jessie) as both a soundalike and a good performance.
- Sarah Natochenny is the weakest so far, which I again chalk up to Ash being a deceptively hard role to play. He does everything at a ten, which is hard on its own, but you have to find points of depth within that. Veronica Taylor was great at that, though it really did take a while for her Ash to get there, so I do imagine Natochenny has a similar growth.
  - A good counterexample would be my favorite punching bag, Naruto. Always at a ten, far less depth than Ash, and Maile Flanagan translates that obnoxiousness as precisely as possible. Admittedly, Naruto is a black hole, so I doubt you can do more.
- Carter Cathcart is also not great as Meowth—Maddie Blaustein was on her own level, and copying her was always gonna be bad—though as I said, I’m interested to see where he takes James.
- Of course, this wasn’t Cathcart’s first Poké-rodeo: he’s been Gary all along! And Kayzie Rogers, who’s good as new Max and was the original choice for Ash’s replacement, has been killing it as Wobuffet for years.
- Not to disparage Mike Pollock, who’s one of 4Kids’ strongest and is the best part of the entire Sonic the Hedgehog franchise as Dr. Eggman, but I will also say that it is nice having Parsons back as narrator.
Yes, yes, Meowth; we know “Diamond and Pearl” would make a good name for a game. Though I at least enjoyed the follow-up later in the movie, where after hearing the words again he simply wheezes “let’s get through this season first.”
I imagine many people assumed the all new, less good Team Rocket intro was a sole product of the dub. It’s actually not! At this point, the motto kept changing in Japanese as well, though it’d always, slowly, return to the original.
James’ “Nanna” sounded like Tree Trunks from Adventure Time. I liked that.
While the American openings continue their meteoric fall, the Japanese theme, “Spurt!,” is one of the series’ best.
Among its other successes, like having what’s probably the best Pokémon Battle I’ve seen in an episode so far, “Harley Rides Again” follows the Advanced Generation playbook well: Harley’s seemingly innocuous comic run-in with Team Rocket ends up directing the rest of his time on the show.
This week also got me invested in Contests again. I really liked the Appeals round in “Once More with Reeling!,” and I appreciated them treating dodging as a legitimate technique. I mean, Ash and May’s fight was about as boring as Pokémon battles would be if they were transposed from the games directly, but the Appeals were fun.
I have in my notes “Great opening movie narration.” I’ll believe that.
Movie’s music has kind of a “low rent Lupin III Part II” vibe. Man, I cannot wait to get to David Tennant Zenigata in like three weeks.
It’s not in them much, but Movie 9 and Movie 7 both endeared me to Ash’s rambunctious and adorable Corphish. Way better than Squirtle. I’ll think of you every time I train a Crawdaunt again, buddy. And I will train one again.
I was a hundred percent certain Phantom died at the end. He didn’t, since this is Pokémon, but Kyogre, the embodiment of the oceans, shot him point blank with a Hyper Beam that blew up his entire boat. And then, we see him and his secret cyborg suit getting very obviously crushed to death. He does get better, but still.
No joke: when it comes to Sceptile, the hype is legit. I mentioned it in the main article, but I actually think he’s got a far more interesting depiction of disobedience in Pokémon than Charizard did. Charizard’s was generic; his trainer wasn’t tough enough, so he constantly acted out. But Sceptile has an independence streak that comes up in specific situations, for personal reasons, and it’s Ash’s job to understand why and support him.
Okay, one last 4Kids story: back in the days before they dubbed Pokémon, they and Haim-Saban did this show called WMAC Masters. It was a… kid-friendly Mortal Kombat ripoff game show where the coordinated fights had health bars, every episode had a life lesson, and the first host was Bruce Lee’s daughter. That’s what they were doing before Pikachu came along. That‘s where that notoriously bad One Piece intro came from.
Like what I did in Week 5, here’s a list of my favorite Hoenn Pokémon: Sceptile (not Grovyle, Sceptile), Milotic, Flygon, Gardevoir, Crawdaunt, Absol, Shiftry, Banette, Sableye, Mawile, Blaziken, Swampert, Metagross, Zangoose, Rayquaza, Deoxys
- I think I’m like one of five people on Earth who prefers Sceptile to Grovyle. Hot take, I suppose. Just wish it had a few more good Special moves.
- For a more deliberate hot take: Hoenn has the best starters. All three are amazing, all three have a lot of cool stuff, all three seriously diverged from the template of the original starters, and all three are equally valid competitors in Hoenn. The worst one is Unova, which is sadly not a hot take.
And finally, hey, (some) new Pokémon news! And new Pokémon! I’m already quite a fan of Walking Wake; Suicune is one of my favorite Legendaries as it is, and its primordial ancestor keeps that going. Real pain in the ass of a fight, though. Had to use a Lv. 96 Florges to spam Solar Beam.

Next movie: Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai.

Next episodes:

1001: “Following A Maiden’s Voyage!”
1003: “When Pokémon Worlds Collide!”
1007: “Like It or Lup It!”
1008: “Gymbaliar!”
1020: “Mutiny in the Bounty!”

Other movies watched:

Parting Glances
The Princess and the Goblin
Seat Belts: The Life Saving Habit
To Catch a Yeti

Other television episodes watched:

30 Rock 101, “Pilot.” You know, it’s really weird how 2000’s comedies just sucked at their first episodes.
30 Rock 312, “Larry King”
30 Rock 318, “Jackie Jormp-Jomp”
30 Rock 701, “The Beginning of the End”
30 Rock 702, “Governor Dunston”
Assassination Classroom 221, “Trust Time”
Assassination Classroom 222, “Happy Birthday Time”
Assassination Classroom 223, “Final Boss Time”
Assassination Classroom 224, “Graduation Time.” No, I didn’t cry. Don’t put it in the paper that I cried. Actually, though, Nagisa’s a counterpoint to Ash as a shōnen boy. He’s so bottled up and demure that playing him is probably insanely different.
Assassination Classroom 225, “Future Time”
Cobra Kai 206, “Take a Right”
Cobra Kai 207, “Lull”
Cobra Kai 208, “Glory of Love”
Cobra Kai 209, “Pulpo”
Cobra Kai 210, “No Mercy”
Columbo 504, “A Matter of Honor”
Frasier 412, “Death and the Dog”
The Owl House 201, “Separate Tides”
The Owl House 202, “Escaping Expulsion”
The Owl House 203, “Echoes of the Past”
The Owl House 204, “Keeping Up A-Fear-Ances”
Regular Show 331, “The Last Laserdisc Player”
Star Trek 123, “A Taste of Armageddon”
Star Trek 125, “The Devil in the Dark”
Star Trek 126, “Errand of Mercy”