#taylor watches anipoke

[kohakhearts]

okay, something i’ve been trying to decide, curious about yalls thoughts…

*official as in, these were natures given to various event distribution pikachus with the ot satoshi and/or ash.

some flavour text if you’re unsure:

naughty nature boosts attack and decreases special defence. preferred flavour is spicy; least favourite is bitter

brave nature boosts attack and decreases speed. preferred flavour is spicy; least favourite is sweet

hardy nature is a neutral nature, so it doesn’t change any stats and is neutral to all flavours

[torchickentacos]

[love-for-burgundy-blog]

Hi guys! This is my updated about me post since the old one was kinda cringe lol. So this one is now going to be the post that talks about me.

I am a very nostalgic person so if I come across content that I saw as a little kid, or a place that was a big part of my childhood then my mind tends to get flodded with memories about that thing or place. So you might start seeing some reblogs on this blog about things that I grew up with.

I really love pokemon generation 5, the games, the anime, and the manga. Even though as a little kid I grew up with Gen 3 for the games, and Gen 6, and Gen 1 for the anime, Gen 5 is my favorite one, and I am kind of obsessed with it!! Like I have so many headcannons for the characters and they are my hyperfixation for fanfiction. Even though most people didn't like the pokemon best wishes anime, I loved it when I watched it for the first time and I still love it. It is my comfort show and I am proud that it is.

I created this blog and joined the community because I didn't have anybody in real life that I could talk about my common interests with. I was heavily encouraged to find people in real life who had the same interests as me, but it was difficult since I am introverted and quiet around other people my age so when I tried to talk to them, they weren't interested in becoming friends. But I now have met very nice people on this site who could talk about Pokemon BW all day with me. So thank you very much everyone!

Favorite Music Artists: Taylor Swift, Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavinge, and P!NK

TV: Anipoke (mainly Pokemon Best Wishes and Pokemon Sun and Moon), Yumerio Pattissiere, and TAWOG

Games: Pokemon White Version and Minecraft.

Books: BW pokespe, Out Of My Mind trilogy, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

Favorite pairings: Negaishipping, Airplaneshipping, Dragonvilleshipping(platonically) Sourgrapeshipping(platonically) and Sommeliershipping.

Least favorite pairings: Amourshipping, Cookieshipping, Ikarishipping, Any Incest or AdultXChild ships.

Quick facts about me.

💗: aspiring writer

💗: Gemini ♊️

💗: Pokemon BW fan/defender 🤍🖤

Other links:

Instagram: polarbearcub7

Ao3: UnovaFangirl868670

BW fan account on Instagram: sourgrapesshipping (kinda deactive)

Feel free to like, comment, reblog, and share any of my posts <3

This blog is not a NSFW blog so I will not reblog or post any content of that type.

[kohakhearts]

in reference to the post i made yesterday(?) about how in episode 63 when gary sends out arcanine he calls it “my honey” in the japanese version, if you haven’t heard it before a) yes it is as adorable as it sounds and b) you’re welcome

[kohakhearts]

tonight's anipoke rabbit hole (actually something i've been largely contemplating since i started rewatching the os, but i've been contemplating it Even More tonight LMAO) is the does gary oak is ash's childhood best friend (established) discussion, which...maybe it's because i already knew the direction of their arc when i went back to episode one, but i think i actually disagree with the notion that episode one presents a continuity error, i.e. that it suggests gary doesn't know ash. to save you all from my ramblings i put them under a cut but tl;dr this is a hashed out conversation i'm putting my two cents into for no reason other than that i can and i want to.

i will say that like...takeshi shudo's novelization does kind of contest my reading here, but it doesn't explicitly say ash and gary don't know each other, either. (iirc, what it actually says is that ash knows gary sort of peripherally and has the impression of him being A Bit Of A Jerk, because he comes from a family of local celebrities and it's inflated his ego - which also debunks the childhood friends thing, just in a different way. all things considered, this does make it pretty clear to me that ash and gary were not originally intended to be childhood friends however the head writers of the silver league arc were part of the team from the beginning or at least fairly early on in the os, so. take that as you will.)

i say this in reference to both the original and the dub, but there are some interesting language nuances that get cut out of the dub because they...obviously don't make a lot of sense. but i was doing my rewatch with the dub, so let me talk about that first. 'cause i actually watched the scene a couple times trying to decide if it really did feel like it challenged the childhood friends thing. and...i don't think it does?

the first line gary says that makes everyone say he doesn't seem to know ash is "well, you must be ash," which. yeah. okay, that'd be a pretty weird thing to say to a guy you already know, but i have one (1) strong thesis here and it's this: that's just how ten year olds are, lmao. the second thing he says (regarding how late ash is) is "at least you get to meet me." that one...okay, fair enough. now i'm starting to sound like the crazy one for saying This Proves Nothing. but you can't tell me ash's response to this isn't straight-up weird, ok, because he just kinda c: and goes "gary?"

this is...a poor translation, for the most part, but i'll get to that in a second. even watching this with no knowledge of the original, that call and response kinda feels like someone playing along with a bit. there's no way that he knows this guy's name just from the cheerleaders he literally bowled over to get to the lab. it's clear he already knows it from somewhere else (and following with the novelization, it's definitely the family of local celebrities thing, although that same novelization stipulates that gary doesn't even attend school in pallet town, so this is all around just a really Absurd series of events - that's why i love it so much, but still).

anyway, then gary says "that's mr gary to you" and ash's c: turns into a o: he's like. flabbergasted lmao. and he only reacts again to be like whaaat you got your first pokemon???

the rest of their interaction is just "can i see your pokemon" and "sucks to suck, sucker," so not incredibly noteworthy other than that ash goes from, like, weirdly polite with his little "um, excuse me" to when gary fucks off and he's suddenly pissed.

so in my efforts to like, dig into this more, i found that fan subs don't...completely translate the intention here, either. mostly i only got to thinking about this tonight because i was making a Joke and i pulled up a scene from this episode and it happened to be this one. for whatever bizarre reason, my choice to download Every Episode Of The Pokemon Anime led me to downloading japanese raws, not the dub. but that's beside the point. i actually sat down and listened to this scene with no english subtitles, and i was like. wait. i think this fits my thesis. let me explain.

(it all started when i noticed that when gary goes from addressing ash to addressing the crowd around them, he switches from using the pronoun "boku" to using "watashi," which probably is meant to show that he's trying to come across as Serious and Mature. i have not watched all of gary's episodes in japanese, but i've watched enough to know this is pretty irregular. i thought it was really silly, especially when...put in context.)

SO, in the japanese version, that whole "at least you get to meet me" bit isn't there - that was the translators' attempt at working around something untranslatable, because the actual progression after ash bumps into him here is something like:

>you're satoshi, aren't you? >yeah, it's satoshi-san >or should i say satoshi-kun?

which is...where the nickname comes from, obviously. and it's why he gets that Look on his face...you know the one

(this whole scene is very expressive and i love it, lmao)

even in subs, this is a weird thing to translate, so most people seem to emphasize the reference to ash's tardiness, like in the dub. but it misses some of the character beats laid out here, unfortunately. the satoshi-kun to ashy-boy pipeline is very complex. the shortcomings of the english language and all that.

anyway, gary's next line being "that's mr gary to you" does imply something about honorifics, but when ash just calls him "shigeru," he actually says "hey that's shigeru-kun to you," which doesn't suggest that he's telling ash off for being too chummy with him, as a stranger, so much as he's trying to say hey, we aren't friends, make some distance. because the next thing he says is something to the point of "you're supposed to be my rival, but you're already falling behind."

then the polite little "excuse me" of the english dub is actually ash saying "shigeru-kun?" which does seem awfully polite of him, but then he immediately drops it in his next line and just refers to him as "shigeru" again, so i maintain that it literally feels like he's just humouring gary here a bit lmao.

also worth noting, when gary drives off, ash in the dub says "i'll show you," but in the original just repeats the word "rival," looking very Worked Up.

also, just in general, i do think some of gary's lines here are like...pure exposition. he tells ash he's professor oak's grandson because the audience needs to know it. that doesn't really mean that we as the audience need to - or even should - assume it means he thinks ash doesn't know it, because he clearly does. i mean, he knew his name. that probably speaks for something, lol.

anyway, back to my thesis: this literally just reads like classic "first day of middle school" fuckery. gary oak is literally displaying symptoms of 12-year-old girl syndrome and ash is playing along because that's what pals do, right. like all i'm saying is that these two entered sixth grade and gary suddenly was like hey you can't sit beside me anymore and ash just kinda shrugged and was like haha ok, you're so quirky, and then only later when he heard gary shit-talking him realized hey wait a second, you're a bitch, we aren't friends anymore (and if this feels like an exaggeration, i work with children in this age bracket and believe me when i say i wish it were shdfhjdk).

in conclusion? yeah, the childhood best friends thing makes perfect sense. did they have a fight before this scene? has it been Years? no. gary just woke up and decided to start shit one day. most compelling relationship of the century, if i'm being honest.

ADDENDUM: when professor oak sees ash, he says something about "thats right, there were four people scheduled to see me today," but gary already seemed to know ash was going to be there, which leads me to believe they have at least enough of an established relationship for gary to know becoming a pokemon trainer was a goal of ash's and he had in fact gotten his license. because clearly professor oak didn't give him that info!

[kohakhearts]

in the episode where chloe meets her eevee we see goh go to school for the first time and he says to his teacher something about how he kept his promise to come in when there was a test. and chloe is surprised by this, suggesting it’s a new development…which implies that prior to him becoming a research fellow, she just got the notes and homework for him because it was the nice thing to do i guess. because he wasn’t showing up to write the tests anyway LMAO

[kohakhearts]

mirror world and gates of warp are such beloved anipoke moments for me. like they're so much more fun in japanese than in english because of the speech patterns of the characters........but none of those changes combined is beating whatever the writers were doing when they had alternate world goh call himself ore-sama unironically

[kohakhearts]

so basically. after watching all twelve hundred whatever episodes of the pokemon anime my final take is that ash has 7384849384 hands and they are ALL for pokemon battling

[kohakhearts]

i feel like yeah i mean, gary is essentially a palaeontologist, but he has this like, Thing established early in the narrative about Bonds between pokemon and humans - emphasized in his eevee evolving into umbreon, of course, but this part of his character is…interesting, because we’re given hints that kind of go against the idea that in the indigo league he’s not as emotionally attached to his pokemon as, say, ash (a nod to his character inspiration in blue, obviously, who professor oak says can’t win because he doesnt love his pokemon enough or whatever. similarly in the anime prof oak is the one to point out the difference in ash’s and gary’s styles of raising pokemon, that ash values friendship and gary values strategy, which……..aren’t really mutually exclusive and ash shows us this too but whatever. my point is gary has lines and actions prior to that exchange that are kinda contrary to what prof oak says there). anyway i just woke up from a pretty intense nap to say that i think we all should lean into gary being more anthropological in his pokemon research compared to goh in particular who is a lot more scientific and whose character arc kinda functions around learning to accept that humans and pokemon can and do have mutually beneficial relationships, something he rejected initially under the assumption that pokemon can’t learn to help themselves if humans are always rushing in to do the hard stuff for them. like in a way they have a common goal of research yes but i think this is an interesting disconnect that would be fun to explore because its a big area of potential conflict that the anime doesnt show us because they have so many OTHER conflicts that make them good foils to each other And by the time they meet this isnt something goh is grappling with nearly as much as he was in the beginning. but i feel like later in his life it’s something he believed so deeply for so long maybe it could affect his research. i dont know how to coherently put this into words - that nap really drained my brain power, which was already low anyway - but i am so interested in the idea that a cold, detached view of science is antithetical to the study of it. and like who better to prove that to you then the guy who pisses you off so bad you stop being cold and detached about things without even realizing it

[kohakhearts]

pokemon is crazy cause every time someone or somewhere is haunted the characters are like clearly theres a scientific explanation for this. like yeah there sure is. its the entire subset of observed and studied creatures explicitly identified as GHOSTS.

[kohakhearts]

i feel like professor oak’s pokemon camps must be like kind of…exclusive. or expensive. like serena travelled pretty far for that - even if she had already been visiting kanto, pallet town is kinda out of the way? the only other characters we seeing going to one are ash - my guess is he probably gets to go for free or at a major discount because prof oak knows delia’s situation (something something the novelization, but forget it) - and goh and chloe. but prof oak is like lol who are you when he sees goh there and goh’s like oh chloe invited me. which makes me think prof oak personally invited chloe or at the very least had already met her long before the camp, especially since he then explains chloe’s dad is a researcher just like him and a very good one at that. kinda reinforced by the fact that he commutes to vermilion city just to be there when cerise’s new lab opens up. he actually even calls him a “genius” which seems like…pretty high praise from professor oak of all people. mostly just Thinking but . obligatory MAN chloe and gary DEFINITELY knew each other as kids

[kohakhearts]

when i realized delia calls pikachu pika-chan but the dub never gave him a cute nickname from her?!

[kohakhearts]

i keep tweeting about this because i find it so hilarious (more hilarious is that it just never registered for me before? it's so obvious when you realize it and other people have absolutely pointed it out) but it's like, INCREDIBLY meta that goh's family is named Like That. like you know

クルネ -> (来る)ね (to come) / camille -> ok, this one i'll give it to. that's not obvious in english. but if you do the same thing you get (came)ille. so i guess i can see where they were coming (ha) from

イクオ -> (行く)お (to go) / walker -> WALK?? i mean ok i kind of noticed this one like haha that's funny since to walk and to go are sister verbs

トメ -> 止め(る) (to stop) / halta -> HALT. COME ON, ME. IT WAS RIGHT THERE.

like WHY is this such a coherent meta analysis of the family dynamic. you have the parents always coming and going. and grandma stopping by to cook the meals, i guess. and make sure their child is alive. tangentially, i keep making the joke that if you want to think about the timeline of like, making a company and all, it kiiinda makes more sense if they named goh after their company than the other way around...but it's also pretty funny to think that they essentially just merged his and his dad's names together to create go^2- i mean, gogo systems. i am so baffled by this writing decision, but i guess i shouldn't be. i mean this is the professor plant franchise after all

[kohakhearts]

whys he looking at him like that lmao

[kohakhearts]

ever since i watched the os ive had this essay festering in my brain about, like. gary oak and the themes of femininity and self-acceptance but the problem is the only thesis i can really come up with it He’s Gay, Your Honour, which while true isnt really that exceptional of a conclusion to draw based on the fact that the narrative makes certain gendered associations with him late in his arc

[kohakhearts]

OOOH MY GOD.................THEYRE BABIES YOUR HONOUR...........