Myutsuu no Gyakushuu or Mewtwo Strikes Back was a box-office hit any way you look at it. IThe film opened at the hight of Pocket-Monster fever and, as a result, recieved more attention and media coverage than any Japanese animated film ever released in North America, right up until Spirited Away won the oscar in 2002. Myutsuu no Gyakushuu was released for Japanese audiences July 18, 1998. Even though this was a school day, many children skipped school to see it. In North America, the advertised release date was November 12th, 1999, but the film was pushed forward two days and opened November 10th.

As the first Pokémon movie it was in itself new and intriguing. Viewers familiar with the show were enthralled and impressed by the much darker themes and plot. Young children were simply happy to see Pikachu's chipper face eight feet high. Professional reviewers were of two camps – either they loved it, or hated it, and were accordingly vocal.

Myutsuu no Gyakushuu, when compared to Mewtwo Strikes Back was a film darker, a little more eerie and a little more intense. It lacked the preppy pop-music provided by 4Kids and boasted full orchestral background music. Mewtwo himself came across as a villain in the dubbed film, whereas he was more of a philosopher, and/or victim in the original. All in all, the dub was up-to standards (though not setting any), not the abomination many anime purists would have you believe. Although there are some errors, and the dialogue of one scene in particular rewritten to the point it is unrecognizable, the dubbed children’s film Mewtwo Strikes Back remains enjoyable. The most enjoyable part of the whole Pokemon-in-theaters experience was most definitely the animation and sound quality. The television show paled in comparison to the bright, vibrant colours and effects that played out on screen. As the film begins, with the size of the screen, the viewer was given the impression that they themselves are trapped within the amber liquid of Mewtwo's embryonic chamber. Theatrical viewing also treated audiences to an awesome sound experience as Mewtwo’s voice echoed eerily and resonated throughout the theater. Sadly, this effect is entirely lost with the VHS release, as is much of the colour quality. Mewtwo is almost inaudible at times.

Mewtwo Strikes Back, and it’s sequel Mewtwo Returns were both rated PG, unlike The Power of One (Revelation Lugia) and Spell of the Unown (Lord of the Unknown Tower) which were rated G. The subjects of scientific ethics, identity, and self-responsibility need films of their own, and probably have them, somewhere in the bowels of the cinematic world, but they are touched on, albeit lightly. In other words, although the kiddies went go wild for this movie, it was expected that some would be a little frightened. Older fans, on the other hand, can wince at what they now know as cheesy. But nonetheless, Pokemon got three stars, and that seems about right for a first theatrical outing

Technical Alterations

The "Special CG Edition" is what we overseas audiences saw. 4Kids and Warner Brothers chose to use only the main (and newly Americanized) film, and not any of the extras. The changes are fairly minor, but many fans complain that the CG cheapens the overall effect of many scenes. It is fairly obvious Where CG is used,. Scenes such as the castle doors opening, the Pokemon battling in the arena, and any shot with clouds are among the most blatent. More unfortunate is the pan-scan "cropping" of some shots in the newer edition. The film was changed from widescreen to full-screen for American video release. The now-famous lab shot, in which Mewtwo and Dr. Fuji (Professor Smith in English) are reflected in test tubes as they speak, suffers the most obviously. There is little left to show that the shot was framed by the faces of the scientist and his creation, magnified and distorted, except the tip of Mewtwo's nose on the far right of the shot. Several scenes which were heavily shadowed in the original were lightened and made brighter, a few sequences were cropped short, and others lengthened (although these changes are minimal and only obvious when compared to the original footage).

Despite all of this the film's overall look is not harmed immensely. The English VHS release came a promotional pokemon card tucked inside the case, and on the tape itself, a number a advertisements for Warner Brother's other cartoon releases and television lineup. The movie itself gains a new introduction tailored from unused television clips, in which Ookido Hakase (Professer Oak) introduces the films and is stripped by a trickey pocket monster. This is followed by the short film Pikachu's Summer Vacation, whose Japanese counterpart, Pikachuu no Natsu Yasumi (also substantially reworked) was not packaged with Myutsuu no Gyakushuu. The final addition to the feature film was the first three minutes of Myutsuu to Ai, lacking, interestingly, both of the title characters.

Fan Service of a Different Sort

In Japan, Pocket Monsters has a reputation for considering its fans. English viewers catch few of the cultural in-jokes which are lost in translation. References to famous novels, current singing groups and comedians, commercials, other televisons shows and clever wordplay abound in Japanese, but in English most are reduced to poor puns. However, the cultural cleverness of the writers is not Pokemon's most impressive trait. It is their response to viewer input that has made them so enduring. For example, the original series plan called for the comedic villains Musashi, Koijiro and Nyasu to be replaced by the more threatening Yamato and Kusaburo. Fans wrote in protesting and Rocketto-Dan has remained an important staple of the series for nearly eight seasons. Similarily, Takeshi, the most blatently Asian-looking character, was replaced by Kenji, who had "bright wide eyes" in order to appeal to western viewers. This was not an appreciated move. After only a season, Kenji was retired and Takeshi returned. The reason I mention these fan-influenced decisions is because the US division finally decided to follow the example set by Jr. Kikaku. When the highly touted Story of Mewtwo's Origin turned out to be two-and-a-half minutes of Dr. Fuji narrating, fans were dissapointed. This disappointment was augmented by consistent internet rumours of a "baby Mewtwo" film, and the relative inavailability of the full featurette. Stories circulated that certain DVD versions had the full feature, and, though never confirmed, this would seem to be true in at least one case. Riibu's Splunkyard, a fansite and pirate tape distributor, eventually offered a full download of Mewtwo and Amber, the anglicized version of Myutsuu to Ai. Still, fans organized petitions via the internet, and wrote letters to KidsWB, 4Kids Entertainment and Nintendo of America. Despite the apparent succes of the Save our Sailors campaign of the late ninties, it seemed unlikely that protesting would restore the eight minutes of lost footage. It had never unlocked any of the "banned" Pocket Monsters episodes in the past (though, at a later date, Holiday at Aucopauco was finally aired on the WB channel, minus the breast scene, as Beauty and the Beach) or made subtitled uncut episodes available commerically. With this in mind fans were surprised and delighted to discover Mewtwo's Origin Uncut on the special features menu of Mewtwo Returns (Myutsuu: Ware Wa Kokoni Ari), three years after the initial film's VHS release.

Pokemon: Do You Remember Love?

The decision not to air, or even release, Myutsuu to Ai has never been explained by the American companies in charge of distribution. As mentioned earlier, specific changes were made to Myutsuu's Counterattack in order to enhance its appeal to North American audiences. This included turning a dark but largely neutral character into a meglomaniacal villain. The adaptors may have felt that a short film depicting said villain as a lonely child would weaken the good-versus-evil setup of the film. Additionally, the target audience of Pokemon was in the age range of eight to eleven, but a good number were younger. While Myutsuu to Ai is no more tragic than any run-of-the-mill Disney film, young children (or more likely, the parents of young children) might have been disturbed by the themes addressed in the mini-movie; a father's quest to ressurect his only child, (especially when that father is killed ten minutes into the actual feature) and the death of a playmate both play central roles. The mini-film also details, briefly, the breakdown of Dr. Fuji's marriage -- "I loved our daughter as much as you did," we see written on a note lying next to a housekey and a wedding band "But she's gone. No one can bring her back and I can't go on watching you try. I'm sorry. Goodbye.". Paralleling this in early TV episodes, a character's mother is described as dead, whereas the original states that she has run out on her family. The adaptors chose to "kill her off" rather than address the concept of child abandonment (this gaff was not addressed, even when the "dead" mother appeared in the Pokemon Houso specials (Pokemon Chronicles, in English). In Myutsuu to AI, ideas both of marital breakdown and the loss of a child became an issue. These were not the current standard of mainstream fare in children's entertainment. Additionally, with the human genome project recently publicized, the subject of human cloning was topical and touchy when Mewtwo Strikes Back went to theaters. This may have further influenced the decision to cut the featurette. Mewtwo Strikes BAck's main character may be a clone without raising too much public ire, because he is the villain, and also, is not human. But his sympathetically portrayed companion simply cannot be the clone of a human child. Only years later, when popularity and media attention had waned sufficiently, was the mini-feature made available. Even then, it was not advertised.

Dubbing Disasters

With the mess surrounding Myutsuu to Ai considered, any changes to the actual film seem small and unremarkable by comparison. While most audiences know nothing of the "CG Debate", there has always been an outcry over the "Dubbing Disaster". The older and more hard-core fans looking forward to the English release were dismayed by the all-new soundtrack and what they saw as a simplified version of the story. Many lines of dialogue are added for clarification, narration is added to otherwise silent scenes, and the ending and opening sequences are virtually rewritten.

At the time Pokemon: The First Movie's appeared, 4Kids Entertainment had only just begun to gain a reputation for editing and altering the properties it translated. Someone on the rewrite committee thought it unwise for the Pokémon empire to make reference to God, or to religion in any manner (though in fact early TV episodes do allow Brock to mention Noah's Ark). Despite the fact that less than one percent of Japan's population is Christian, the original Japanese gives Mewtwo is given a line in which he ponders his origin -- and asks if God has created him. In North America, a land where Christianity is the religion of choice, he was not allowed to wonder such a thing (this becomes ironic when observing the blatently Christian imagery and symbolism employed in Myutsuu: Ware Wa Kokoni Ari/Mewtwo Returns). If these lines had been left intact, maybe the angry finger-pointing right-wing religious groups would have attacked the film with less vigour? Probably not, but it remains an interesting point.

Further attempts to explain story elements and fit the film to more conventional western story ideas show up throughout. The "Tears of the Pokémon" legend carefully spoon-fed to us by Miranda the Harbour Master was never uttered by Boijer, who instead reminded the trainers to use their heads -- "If you want to know the weather, just ask the seagulls on the dock! There will be no boats today!". The addition of a narrator overpowers the film's opening shots. Glaring script flaws -- "let us hear its psychic powers!"-- and sloppy character mixups (pidgeot becomes pidgeotto, Sandshrew becomes Sandslash, Scyther becomes Alakazam, etc.) cheapen the film to the point where one wonders what Warner Brothers was actually trying to accomplish. The dub also stresses that Mewtwo wishes to control the world, whereas the Japanese Myutsuu simply wanted to hurt those who had hurt him. At the film's climax, North American audiences were blasted by a grafted-on pop song "Brother, my Brother" where once was an intense instrumental theme. In fact, the entire musical score was unnecesserily rewritten. \The last glaring edit is found in the scene in which the human characters huddle in a corner and watch their beloved pets tear each other apart -- much was rewritten to give this scene an anti-war sentiment (sometimes referred to as "Misty's Public Service Announcement"(Dogasu)) where the original script gave an explantion about the territorial nature of pokémon and the issues of identity Mewtwo is grappling with. The hypocrisy of a "fighting-is-wrong"sentiment in a film like this is blatent to even the youngest viewer

Of course, one cannot blame 4Kids and Warner Brothers for all the downfalls of the English version. Sensibilities differ from country to country, and the goal of a film in one place may not match the marketing environment of another. Sometimes, no matter how high quality a dub job is, it cannot quite match the original. In no way is this limited to anime -- Just take a look at any anglicized foreign film! The issue of things "lost in translation" is visible, or, rather, audible in several anime shows which must deal with accents. In Japan, the Tokyo dialect is the one used on television, but occasionally characters are given an Osaka dialect to make them stand out (Examples include Pokémon's Masaki (Bill) and Rumika (Jessibelle)). Osakan-Dialect translation is usually skirted by giving the English character a southern accent. However, on this occasion, the issue wasn't an Osaka accent, but an American one! Early in the film, Satoshi is challenged by a pirate -themed trainer. This was actually an in-joke regarding the musical group Suzuki-San?, who had worked on a number of songs for Pocket Monsters CD collections and even the Trading Card Game! As a joke, one of the lead singers, Boston-born Raymond, was asked to voice the pirate. The Pirate Trainer challenges Satoshi to fight, and, stunned by his dramatic loss, howls "Oh my God!". For Japanese audiences, this jab at gaijin was hysterical. There really wasn't any way to emphasize this silliness in English, and it's a pity to lose one of the most humourous scenes. The Pirate's "Oh my God!" is changed to to a drawn out "Oh Nooooo!"

Other changes worth noting are, of course, the translation of titles, songs, names. Satoshi, Kasumi and Takeshii are once more Ash, Misty and Brock, though Pikachu is always Pikachu. The film titles are replaced by a giant CG pokeball and back-to-the-future style headlines. A myriad of pop songs are painfully crammed over the credits replace the beautiful theme Kaze to Issho Ni (In the Company of the Wind) for no reason other than to justify them a place on the movie soundtrack. In the film itself, a cover of I Wanna Be The Very Best replaces a jazzed up Mezase Pokémon Master '98, and works fairly well. In other musical notes (no pun intended) the entire film score is altered, featuring either new music, or placing existing music at different points.

Conclusion

Overall, this film suffers for being the first, the "guineau pig" and practice run that would set the mark for the following films. While Mewtwo remains a perrenially favorite pokémon, whose film popularity has never been matched in the poké-verse, the movies that followed were much more tolerable, and, indeed, adept dubs.

Bibliography

Pocket Monsters: This is Animation!
Shogakukan Inc. Japan, 1998

The Art of Pokemon The First Movie
(English adpatation of Pocket Monsters: This is Animation)
Viz Communications Inc, San Francisco, CA, 1999

Pokemon Movie Super Encyclopedia (Japanese, details unknown)
Shogakukan Inc, Japan, 1998

"Pokemon' wa naze Beikoku de Seiko shita ka"
Ronza Magazine, April, 2000
Kubo Masakazu

Why Pokemon was Succesful in America (translation of above)
Kubo Masakazu
Japan Echo Online
Volume 27, Issue 2; ISSN: 0388-0435

Sound Picture Box Mew Two -Myutsuu No Tanjou CD Drama
Pikachu Records Japan
English script provided by PMTranslations (now defunct)

Dogasu's English-Japanese Pokemon Site
http://www.bulbagarden.net/~dogasu/

Splunkyard.com
Now defunct.

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