Entry 26: "This Is The Anime That Never Ends..."

Yo!

Okay, four things: Thing #1, I noticed last week that the BTJM Blog's 500th page view happened, and I want to quickly thank all my visitors and regular readers who've been putting up with me over the last six months. Thing #2, apparently, today marks the five-year anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. My thoughts and prayers are with those who lost family and/or loved ones as a result of the events of that morning. Thing #3, please excuse my lateness again with this Blog. My laptop's on the fritz again, and I completely forgot my timeframe while recovering my files. Hey, any of you ever heard of or seen a virus or something that causes your entire screen to do this northern lights-ish effect and slowly turn the screen white, top to bottom? Anyway, I'll be back in top form next week.

Moving on, starting two days ago, all brand-new season nine Pokemon episodes are airing only on Cartoon Network, which thoroughly screws over the loyal fans who kept the show going all this time, even when it was syndicated in those early season one episodes, early weekday mornings (memories..... light the corners of my mind.....). I'll say right off the bat that The Pokemon Company (henceforth known here as "PokeComp") already did a heck of a job improving the former 4Kids voices over the abysmal "preview" that was the Mirage special that aired this Spring. Max, Jessie and Wobbuffet are almost spot-on impersonations of the 4Kids cast we all know and love, but they're not bad enough to not be able to get past over time. Keep it up. Meowth and Ash are almost as hilariously off as the Mirage actors. Change the voice tone, please. Hey, new guys! When you're fixing your voices for those two, just ask yourselves: "What would Blaustein and Taylor do...?", rent a couple of their Poke-movies, and deliver the voices right. Period. Brock and May are vast improvements, considering how constipated and old (respectively) they sounded in Mirage. James and Pikachu are in pretty much the same boat Meowth and Ash are in. Except they're not really THAT bad. Just change the voices a little bit more, and we'll talk. But not too much. I hate watching history repeat itself.

Story content this go-round, I'd say is about season four- or seven-caliber, meaning us true regular viewers can easily tell these are just filler stories just before yet another major tournament Ash will no doubt lose-- Oops! Sorry, I almost slipped into an old rant for a second there! But seriously, PokeComp. tell your writing/translating staff to step it up. If you expect us to accept the new cast, new timeslot, new supporting Pokemon cast changes (James' Chimeco is gone?!?!? .........eh.), and even the new network, we expect a positive tradeoff. Make the switch worthwhile, and don't you dare try forcing another "Mystery Of The Mirage Pokemon" special on us. The U.S. market that helped build you up to where you are now deserves better than that. And please... Let Ash win one stinkin' championship. The Orange League victory cup from September 2000 is collecting some serious dust.

....And then there was Yu-Gi-Oh. It ended on Kids WB on June 1, and I was relatively fine with that... but then I saw the atrociously patched together resurrection effort that is "Capsule Monsters." (*stomach grumbles from sickness relating to mere mention of the spinoff show. Also, long and wordy explanations.) That's all I can stand writing about that without losing my lunch. .............Again. Read ToonZone's advance review HERE for more on that show. Bottom Line: Pokemon: 3/5 Stars. Good, but not great. Step up the quality, or the fans will stop watching. There'd better be a FullMetal Alchemist Movie-esque quality ending at some point, and if this winds up ending prematurely because you wouldn't get your stuff together, PokeComp, and we have to download out subbed (subtitled Japanese) episodes from torrents because you wouldn't step up enough so CN wouldn't cancel the show, we'll be really pissed off. ...Well, at least that's just me... Yu-Gi-Oh: 1/5 Stars. Nice try, 4Kids, but........ no. If you at home want to form your own opinion, "Pokemon: Battle Frontier" airs Saturdays, 9:30am on Cartoon Network, and "Yu-Gi-Oh: Capsule Monsters" is Saturdays at 10am on whatever your local Fox affiliate is.

See ya next Monday!

-D.

P.S. I almost forgot Thing #4: This week's title pun, in case you didn't catch it, parodies "The Song That Never Ends" from Shari Lewis' "Lamb Chop's Play Along" puppet show last seen on PBS in the early '90s.