Pokémon came to the west by using either fly or surf

Fun Fact: Ash's starter Pokemon was going to be Clefairy but was swapped for Pikachu to make it appealing for boys and girls alike.

I absolutely remember getting up early every morning before school to watch Pokémon. And I remember all the fuss around violence and evolution, too. God, this brought back so many memories 😅

Porygon did nothing wrong.

To think how close we were to "sexy pikachu" being canon is a troubling thought.

1:22 I like how Eddie got the most British person ever to voice a very Japanese man

“Nothing beats a good old jelly donut!”

24:31 A British man apologizing for being British is the most British thing that ever Britished.

"Hey, are you a furry?" "No, no, why do you ask!?" "You posted a video of big-tiddied Pikachu." "That's based on unused concept art." "…right."

Eyy, thanks for having me on as a cheeky cameo ;) I’m honoured to be included alongside some KZfaq titans!

The Jay Foreman cameo caught me way off guard. That's so cool

The backlash from that strobe effect is still impacting anime today, plenty of shows with sequences with any kind of quick moving colours get filters put over them to dim things down

It feels weird hearing someone declaring Sailor Moon landed with a thud. I remember it being huge. Like local tv network running a marathon and contest leading up to the first season finale.

Hi Eddie, minor correction: Al Khan did not invent the word "Pokemon". This is easy to verify, as the word appears in the second box of text of Pocket Monsters Green and Red, where Ookido refers to himself as a "ポケモンはかせ", Pokemon Professor. I booted the game up real quick to check, but they've been called Pokemon from the beginning. Pocket Monsters is the title of the franchise and was dropped in the west. Originally watched this on Nebula but there aren't comments there so I had to wait for it here.

I think every video essay ever from now on should have a Poke-Rap segment which summarizes the major events or funny moments in the video in the style of the Pokemon rap

Pokémon has gotten a lot more internationalized since the Red and Blue days. The first games and first season of the anime took place in Kanto, which is a real region in Japan. After Gold and Silver, not only were the new regions given fictional names but started being based on different countries starting with Black and White, which was based off of New York City, with characters of various races. Now in the games and anime, they have a fake written language on signs to make it easier to localize. There’s still a lot of Japanese influence in the franchise, but it’s also trying really hard to include other cultures as well.

Honoured to be a small part of this! Thank you Eddie! ありがとございます！🙇🏻‍♀️

Why was Professor Oak boiling a pizza?

Honestly Eddy I'm American but I wouldn't mind to see a episode of you just talking about a lot of the British shows you use to watch

I don't think Americanisation and the way media from the rest of the world always has to drop it's culture is talked about enough. When a story or a joke is changed to erase it's cultural references it becomes a shell of it's original. As an example Ghosts is an amazing show but recently the British version was being aired in America with lots of bits and pieces cut out. I've seen American fans complain how the censoring had completely ruined it, messing up comedic timing and the plot. The fans in America already liked the show in it's original form and by trying to make it more appealing to an American audience they'd ruined it for everyone. The fact is audiences will like media regardless of where it comes from, if it has a lot of cultural elements from the country it's from they shouldn't be changed or removed. In the age of the internet, if someone doesn't understand a cultural reference they will likely search it up and also learn about the culture along with a piece of media they're engaging with.

I guess something interesting about the effect of American media is that outside the English-speaking world, anime has been popular for a lot longer since they don't see too much difference between dubbing an English show or a Japanese show, and they may not have enough home grown cartoons to compete with them.

I thought the name Pocket Monsters went unused in the U.S. because they ran into legal trouble with the toy trademark "monster in my pocket."

I never appreciated just how significant the term "Saturday Morning Cartoon" was before today.

It’s worth noting that with regard to having a “Japanese voice” loads of Pokémon designs themselves are explicitly Japanese cultural and historical references that would mean nothing to people outside the country. Lickitung may be based on a specific yōkai, Froslass is based on the yuki-ona and in Pokemon Legends there is a specific quest that refers to this legend. Bronzor and Bronzong are based on bronze mirrors and dōtaku bells. Bells are significant to the history of religion and metal working in Japan. Baltoy and Claydol are based on Jōmon period Dogū ceramic figures. Jirachi is based on Tanabata.

Pa-Koo-Cho is my favorite Poo-Kay-Man!!!!

I remember showing my parents the pastors being offended by Pokemon and they thought it was the funniest shit ever

Eddie censoring his son’s face makes me so happy… more people should be sensitive about posting their children online

One part of the anime localization that I believe you missed is that they eventually created a fake written language so signs don’t have to painted over for localization as much.

Thankfully in most Latin America, Sailor Moon came almost unaltered as the Dub studio bought the rights independently from the USA. We didn't have the lesbian outer sailors banned, they were in fact the first depiction of a sex-same relationship in an animated series I watched on TV

As an American I will confidently and proudly speak on behalf of all Americans and American territories, that we would love a very British Episode of Eddache.

RE: Emergency numbers There's a convention for countries to support as many emergency numbers as possible. A lot of panasian countries support 114 for medical services and 115 for fire services too despite those only being official in a few countries, but since they already use 112 for emergency services supporting different kids of emergency services with a slight suffix change is an easy add. I don't think the UK will ever add those BTW, we've reused the 11- prefix already to include things like NHS direct and operator services, it'd get messy if there were any conflicts.

"We can't have kids thinking this Japanese show is Japanese! Erase all the Japanese text and change the onigiri to jelly donuts! Also, let's abbreviate the show's name to Pokemon so it'll sound more Japanese!" also Jynx is so officially purple that the 3DS re-releases of the GBC games were retroactively altered to make the Pokemon purple... which funnily enough actually can't be done on the original hardware. Nintendo wrote special emulator features to *turn Jynx purple*! 28:20 Pokemon absolutely was not intended for US export, and we know that because the moment they learned the show was going to the US, they tried to write out Brock and replace him with Tracey, out of fear that their Southeast Asian character would read as a Black stereotype in the US.

23:47 this is so hilariously dumb

Jay Foreman in a Eddache video is the British version of Spiderman: No Way Home.

And all those people (clips included here) complaining about Pokémon were remixed by Neil Cicierega into showing how Pokémon will outlive us all!

I may have a headache but I’m always up for some Eddache!

26:03 Not going to lie, having this clip have totally different audio from the rest of the video and having headphones on scared the bricks out of me. Scariest kids on halloween 10/10

As Bandet Keith said, "Every country in the world belongs to America"

Honestly, for the entire segmemt at 24:24, I don't think it's that big a deal to sway to a video or two about stuff you grew up with in your specific region. I know Nitro Rad broke off from his usual video game reviews for a video to talk about specific shows he grew up with in Canada - and not a lot of those shows made it to the US. It's fun taking a peek behind the veil & seeing what details of pop culture another country has.

Honestly, I feel like everyone in the media involved in scaremongering Pokemon back then should be taken to task in the present for their ignorance and thinly-veiled xenophobia

26:13 using that clip for taskmaster is so based, such a great bit

I'm kind of glad they missed the Jynx problem before airing. It shows they werent seeing it a human performing something offense, but instead saw it for what it was, a pokemon with a unique look most likely based on Japanese culture. Still, sorry if it did bother anyone else at the time, and happy there was a subtle change instead of a complete Jynx ban.

Edd just continuing to kill it. Happy to wait a while if the content is as good as this

These early years of Pokémon's prominence overseas are such an intriguing time period, and this video is easily among the best of those that cover just how things went down. Also, that Pokérap at the end made me laugh the hardest I had all day.

28:12 I'd recognize Ami Yamato's silky voice anywhere! ❤

The two points I'm most interested in discussing are the last two, which are the two culture points. One is about Pokemon and its Japanese voice, the other is about the cultural effect America has on the rest of the world. Pokemon had a much more distinctly Japanese voice early on. In the first two generations in particular, it "felt" very Japanese, both in the anime and in the games. Their efforts to make it feel more natural to American viewers did work, because as a kid I enjoyed the stuff I could understand much more, but I always knew I was watching a Japanese thing just because I would seek out information about the thing I loved and would find a lot of Japanese stuff with Pokemon on it. I think this is a part of Pokemon's awkward early years where it was still finding its feet, because very early Pokemon had a lot of weird details you wouldn't see in the multi-billion dollar corporate juggernaut it is now; in particular, early Pokemon had a lot of real world animals (in the show, a Gastly transforms into a mongoose to scare an Ekans, and while it is a cartoon mongoose, it is literally just a mongoose, which is extra strange now because we have Zangoose, a mongoose-based Pokemon that has its snake-fighting tendencies baked into the species!) and references to real-world locations (in the in-game Pokedex in Yellow, Arcanine is said to be a legendary Pokemon in China, and Raichu was said to have enough electricity to knock out an Indian elephant, both a real world place and a real world animal). As early as gen 2, a lot of these were being phased out, and now the simple idea of seeing regular fish swimming in a fish tank in the Pokemon world is ridiculous when there's sixteen different fish Pokemon to choose from. This has had the effect that early Pokemon felt a lot more Japanese, whereas modern Pokemon feels a lot more universal. Early Pokemon wanted you to believe the Pokemon world was somewhere in our world you could potentially visit, modern Pokemon pretty conclusively states it's a different world entirely from our own, giving them a lot more freedom to do their own thing without being tied to our real world contexts. As a result, while Pokemon will always be from Japan, it does not feel like "a Japanese thing", it feels universal. Some will say this brings people of all cultures together, some will say it's a direct attempt to silence Japanese culture specifically. Regarding the cultural effect America has on the world at large, many people will cite this as a great crime America is committing, like we're deliberately trying to sabotage the rest of the world to make them more like us. But like Edd says, most of the reason why these American culture details became so prevalent is just because our American movies would be exported out to other parts of the world, kids would watch them, and become used to the American way their media presents it. Which means that the problem comes from Americans making American media aimed at Americans that then...goes out to other places in the world for other people to enjoy, and then they grow used to the American way of things because of that, and now that's apparently...our fault for making American media that Americans would appreciate? It's not like we sent High School Musical 3 over to England to infect them with our senior prom obsession, we just made a movie about an American high school that ended up becoming popular outside of America too. Are we seriously expected to be removing all American culture from our American media just in case someone in England watches an American movie and dials 911 instead of 999? Are we supposed to use 999 in our movies because that's how England does it and now our American kids will all think 999 is the emergency number? This seems absolutely ridiculous. Americans papering over the culture of other countries to make it "make sense" to us, there's an argument to be made there about whether or not that's ignorant, but if British kids watch American movies where we trick or treat and they decide they want to do it too, I'm sorry, I don't think we're gong to ban depicting trick or treat in our movies just in case it spreads across the globe. If you watch an American movie, you should expect American culture, just like if we watch a movie from anywhere else in the world, we should expect _their_ culture. That sort of cultural exchange is how we all learn and grow and become better and more interesting people. Man, you found a country _once_ on stomping out a pre-existing culture and replacing it with your own, and now people think that's all you fuckin' do!

So many amazing voice cameos this episode, loved it!

Loving the variety of voiceovers for the quotes. The Caddicarus one very much caught me off guard

I can't believe we have Jay Foreman in an Eddache video now

I really enjoyed the "international" appeal section of this video, you did an amazing job addressing something that's been on my mind for a while now. It's just crazy interesting to me. We really are seeing more and more Americanization in media and culture to a degree that a lot of people everywhere (I'm in a lot of language learning spaces online, and see this _especially_ on the internet) feel that they have to make themselves "palatable" enough to this weird imaginary American living rent free in their mind (or all around them, constantly). It's crazy how much America has built up this gradual cultural monopoly over the rest of the world when there's so much nuance and so much history that has gone into generations of these chunks of humanity. The line has gotten so blurred, and it's so odd to see

Always happy when Eddache posts anything, and on something I (used to) love, no les!

It's interesting bringing up the Japanese identity of Pokemon, as since Gen 5, (and arguably Pokemon Colosseum and XD on Gamecube) Pokemon stopped being set in Japanese themed settings, to settings based on: the Continental US, France, Hawaii, the UK, and most recently Spain. Only for Legends Arceus to bring back the most Japanese setting yet.

Watching this after watching the podcast! Dunno how I missed this one. Loved it! 💖

I remember being like 9 or 10 my family and I went to Mexico for a few weeks during summer vacation to visit family and Poke-mania had taken Mexico by STORM. Watched the anime for the first time (in Spanish), bought tons of cards (both legit and bootleg from the local tianguis) everything. Well imagine my confusion when going back to school in the states after vacation and absolutely nobody knew what the heck I was on about. "Poke a what?... Mexico? Ok pal". No more than a month or two later and the poke-storm made it's way north. Would you believe that even after my smug "see I told you so" I didn't become my school's resident Nostradamusmon? Yeah well I wasn't.

Porygon is my favourite Pokemon of all time, and that's largely due to the 'Pokemon Shock' controversy. It made me see Porygon as this forgotten underdog that deserves just as much love as any other Pokemon in the franchise. And I get the feeling other Porygon fans would agree. It's weird to imagine an alternate timeline where the controversy didn't happen and Porygon was featured in the anime just as any other Pokemon. So, while it sucks that the controversy destroyed the possibility of Porygon and its evolutions to take center stage in a new episode, the underdog interpretation has helped the line gain new fans over the years. Bit of a silver lining, if you ask me.

In my school, the Gameboy game was most popular by far. We took the video game far more seriously. Pokemon cards or TV show wasnt that huge, but we still liked Japanese media, Sailor moon and Power rangers, and things like Beast Wars (which is Canadian) were heavily traded on VHS (we didnt have cable TV, we were pretty rural, to get TV channels form the city you needed a HUGE antenna, and that was where the good cartoons came from, I was on top of a hill but had a smaller antenna, but my mate had a better antenna, so sometimes Id get a good signal, sometimes he would. we taped everything, so we'd swap tapes, once we'd seen them, pass them around to the kids without decent reception. a blank tape was a fair swap). we didnt trade cards, we traded tapes. Pokemon was kinda low value, the real pokemon was in the schoolyard with gameboys and a link cable, proper battles. bets were placed and won. never cash, but schoolyard stuff like a cheese sandwich vs a hot meat pie. this also led into things like an immediate acceptance of things like studio Ghibli. and we also got good at copying, movie rentals were fair game. I was a pretty good pirate at like, 8yo. Mum and dad didnt know, just that I needed to 'Borrow' the VHS machine quite regularly. Im Australian, and big part of our culture is to accept most other cultures, and incorporate the better parts into our own. I like having access to japanese games, russian music (which is often hack), German tech, south american foods. and the baked in american and british influences. but there is also pretty much every combination of those. I dont really appreciate the 'americanisation' of other cultures. there is nothing wrong with subtitles. watch it in its raw form.

Wow, I could've never imagined YAT Anshin was gonna be mentioned in an Eddache video about Pokémon lol, the first season of that show is really good, I used to love it when I was little. That rap at the end was amazing.

23:47 i think batman shooting a golbat is the funniest piece of pokemon related media ive seen

The worst thing about cultural reference accommodation is it’s always a one-way street to the US, even if the original reference isn’t hugely local and abstract, and the context is really clear. British comedian Joe Lycett has an early stand-up routine about eating a Greggs sausage roll in an expensive clothes shop, which is hilarious, but when you watch it on Netflix, he says “British sausage roll”. It sounds so unnatural coming from him, especially when he even explains what it is, even in the original routine (“If you’ve never had one, it’s 10% pork and 90% dust”). I’ve heard a British KZfaqr explain a Wagon Wheel, even though I, and everyone else in the video, has known what one is since we were 5 years old. I’ve heard Tom Scott about to say “bap” before catching himself and saying “bread roll”, even though he’s clearly talking about making a sandwich. Meanwhile, how am I supposed to know what Piggly Wiggly is with no context at all? Is it like a Greggs sausage roll?! I know we can just google it, but it’s so infuriating and obnoxious how US writers and producers not only expect us to know their entire cultural sphere, but also overly sanitise our own content to remove any reference to the culture we grew up with, whatever the origin, alienating its original audience in the name of clueless Americans. Also, as a side note: I disagree with the idea that UK creatives aren’t coming up with good enough ideas. The UK is the biggest TV format originator in the world, and yet the US is still dominant because they’ll make their own versions, which then become the standard worldwide (Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, Masterchef, Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, Ghosts, The Office etc.). Taskmaster, in this case, is the exception to the rule. I’ll bet you weren’t aware that the second biggest originator is the Netherlands (Deal Or No Deal, Big Brother, The Voice etc.). The Masked Singer is Korean, Ugly Betty is Colombian, Dragon’s Den is Japanese - the world comes up with the idea, but the US versions get heavily marketed whatever happens. It’s up to streaming platforms and TV channels to give more prominence to non-US, especially non-English language, film and TV shows, to debunk this idea that a show ‘needs’ a US version to be successful. We’re starting to see this in big-budget dramas, but generally something has to be a proven, easy-to-follow hit like Squid Game, La Casa de Papel or Call My Agent, if it’s going to break its original market.

During the Pokemon anime's first year in broadcast syndication, it premiered on over 200 local U.S. TV stations, most of which were UPN, The WB and Fox affiliates, with the only outliers being a Pax affiliate in Eugene, Oregon and two independent stations, one in Wichita, Kansas and another in Honolulu, Hawaii.

WOW this video was excellent. I thought I knew pretty much everything about 90s pokemon, but turns out there was way more to it!

Supporting the argument of Pokémon being "made for export", over time the series started creating its own written language to replace the Japanese text. What's more, as the world expanded and more Pokémon were added, many references to real-world locations and creatures have been altered (like a PokéDex entry referencing an African elephant changed to use new Pokémon Copperajah (SwSh)). Though why some PKMN are still called things like "the Mouse Pokémon" perplexes me to no end.

Happy new year Eddy!!

I'm an american/japanese man but I must say I am very interested in any of your takes on british media. I would love it if you dropped a video now and then.

It is so interesting to hear all of these broadcast news snippets of pokéhysteria outside of the marvelous remix Neil Cicierega made out of them hahaha

From what I remember reading the voice actor for Meowth stated that the Proygon episode was dubbed but never released

Pokemon as well as Video Games as a whole in the late 90s was the first time I was exposed to how people who never knew anything about that I enjoyed suddenly had beliefs that what I loved was somehow problematic to society. This, as a kid and teenager at the time, really was a cold and harsh reality that no matter what you do and what you enjoy, someone somewhere is gonna be offended by it and they will try to lobby the Gov to screw your hobbies.

I honestly would love to hear you talk more about the shows you grew up with.

As an American, I’d love to see you make a video about British shows - especially Only Fools and Horses (love that show)

"From girlfriends to cousins" Made-for-Alabama dub.

Thanks for the shoutout!

Finally Blessed with another Eddache Video

This was such a fun summary of how choices made helped it integrate into western audiences, the commentary got me a few times! If you ever do a follow-up on this I have so much research and displays I made in the first few years of it coming out - happy to share if needed!

23:45 This caught me so off guard,golbat is freaking dead

Eddache: "Pokemon has never been edgy." Gen 4 and 5: *Enters the Chat* Adventures Manga: *Enters the Chat*

Thank you Eddie for a new video :)

LOVE the bbc ghosts shoutout, genuinely one of the best shows I've ever seen

Hey man, I know it's not much, but I really enjoy seeing the british stuff in your videos. Us Americans have so much representation already that it honestly kind of sucks being stuck in this sort of cultural echo chamber. We don't get to see things outside of our culture too often, and when we do, most of the mainstream audience tends to view it with disdain, so it ends up being changed. I know I'm just one person, but I really hope you don't end up erasing your British identity just to appeal to us.

Love to see you do a video on Bottom!

Excellent video! You know, there IS an audience for learning about other places' childhood media, be the change you want to see in the world and tell us about some of that stuff in a way that you'd feel is approachable! Everything in media IS too USA-centric and the occasional video about other countries' culture helps make sure the context of the wider world and their experiences isn't completely lost! The only way we close the gap between us is by sharing those experiences.

It's wild with how popular sailor moon was among the girls at my school and how I used to watch it after school all the time - I was super surprised to learn how poorly it did. Being a Sailor Scout was something a lot of girls played pretend at recess for and I remember discussing if Zoicite [sp?] was originally a man in Japan with friends because of "her" less feminine design. [And note: we didn't have the internet to check, we literally just argued about it, and I actually never realized the character was even MEANT to be female in the American show lol] And every girl said Tuxedo Mask was her boyfriend lol. Then again knowing how poorly "made for kids" it was when the original comic was meant for an older audience [teens and young adults] and that the creator has always disliked that kid-friendly adaptation ESPECIALLY the even MORE KID FRIENDLY American version ...I'm not surprised. [Though thinking back I do remember having to get the 2 VHS tapes I had from the mall at the Wizard's of the Coast store ... so I guess I should've realized it wasn't popular, but a lot of TV shows back then you couldn't find a VHS for until the seasons were pretty old ... then again that might've just been a supply issue in my particular area lol]

They renamed all the Pokemon but they still didn't rename the grass type to plant type

Another banger from Eddache, my favorite international appeal content creator

What's weird is that Digimon didn't shy away from it's Japanese origins. OK, so the dialogue is americanised and they mention American food, but only a handful of Digimon received localised names. The majority still had their Japanese names. The town where the kids live received an American name in the dub, but it was still in Japan. The children received americanised nickname versions of their Japanese names. For example, Taichi is his name in both versions, but most people in the English dub shorten it to Tai. And Japanese text is still prevalent. It's strange to think that this didn't work for Sailor Moon.

In the Netherlands Black Pete is rapidly declining, with only a few more conservative places keeping the actual black face. Now he just has a couple of soot marks on his face from going down the chimney. No longer the black face with red lips. Cause as much as the older people want to claim they are black because of the chimney, no, they are representing black helpers. So not every corner anymore

Tentacruel wrecking the skyscraper episode was also pulled post-9/11. I don’t remember if they went back and edited that clip out of the theme song or not though.

Heck that red blue seizure thing was a problem even with Cyberpunk 2077. They patched it out

how to solve the porygon scene: turn the flashing into solid bright white

I'd love some content on British animated shows from the 80s/90s/00s, It pretty much doesn't exist on KZfaq at all. You can find the intros, or sometimes whole episodes, but there is pretty much no media analysis of most of my childhood. Shows like The Dreamstone may as well have never existed at this point, though at least Dangermouse and the Gerry Anderson shows have a bit of longevity thanks to the remakes.

Jay Foreman?!? Hells yeah! Great work as usual Eddache

26:13 as an American my family and I really enjoyed Ghosts UK. We all love the writing and the characters.

Oh damn, got some Jay Foreman too. Nice 👌

I actually watched an English sub of the Porygon episode, as well as one of Legend of Dratini, the episode with a trigger-happy Safari Warden where Ash catches all of his Tauros

Hey Eddie! Question - you gonna be at MCM again this year? Will 100% come see you again! - The really awkward ‘I Actually Like Trains’ sign guy

7:25 Dude you gave me a headache what the heck. 😂

Toonami once aired an unedited version of Goku vs Vegeta kamehameha vs Galic gun and the strobing lights by the end of it left my eyes hurting, it was horrible

I mean the thing about Pokémon’s Anime is that the Japanese exclusive voice was over by the time Joto came around

Hearing Eddie say he has to keep his references more broad so he doesn't alienate his international fans is so weird as I subscribed specifically because all the examples he used were from British media. And it was so refreshing to see our media being used for the topics he covered

Another reason Pocket Monsters became Pokemon in the West: There used to be a brand of small plastic movie-monster figures in the 90s called Monsters In My Pocket. Nobody wanted to risk the trademark being considered too similar, since Pokemon toys were also marketed in the US at the same time as Monsters in my Pocket. Also, I think the word you mean is "alienate," not "ostracize." I'm not being attacked or offended by references to British telly; I'm just not familiar with it.

I was only a baby weeb when Brock threw that "donut" and even then I gave it some serious side eye