Pokefan531's Posts

Ok, so I made my fun experience of how I got into Pokemon and what I did in the last 16 years. They were fun topics to cover about. While I mostly covered the positive stuff, I want to extended it a bit here, just to explain about my other part of the fandom, even if it’s a place I don’t look as often, but it’s considerably long enough that it just fits as its own page.

Do I follow the Spanish fandom?

As a matter of fact, I do, but not as often as the English one. I’m not fluent with Spanish, despite being with my family who knows Spanish well enough. Besides that, I do check on the Spanish fandom from time to time, and I mostly follow the Latin American fanbase, but I also pick up a bit on Spain’s fandom too. My first time being involved with the Spanish fandom was me going to Costa Rica in late 2005, seeing one of Pokemon Advance Challenge episode, Winona’s first introduction. At the time, I laugh at how the Spanish voices are so different, and they can be funny as a kid. It wasn’t the first time I had this thought, it was seeing Nickelodeon Latin America when I was in Peru in late 2003, seeing my favorite cartoons. But yeah, also on the same day, I watched Mewtwo Strikes back on that same day after my trip from the airport. It was few hours after the main series from Cartoon Network, and I first saw the first movie alone, in Spanish. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but it was still fun to watch and I could kinda see what was going on. I also then saw Pokemon Chronicles there, when it was ongoing there as new episodes, starting with the Gary episode. I saw a couple of them, and I did not even knew that spinoff existed, as it wasn’t shown in the US yet back then. Seeing Misty have Luvdisc, and Casey saving a Charizard, and also, Christmas special with Ash and his friends appear faceless for some reason. LOL. I even saw more of it on another trip, and also saw English Dub around the time before another trip. While I had cousins who are quite friendly, they were not into Pokemon unfortunately, so I don’t really have someone I know who can directly tell me the experience of the LA fandom. I also seen a couple of episodes on other trips in my life so I saw some LA dubbed episodes. I even went to a Spanish Anime website where you can download episodes that are in the LA dub. There was one for Season 13 where someone used a Japanese recording that contains Japanese audio, English dub, LA Spanish Dub, and Castilian Spanish Dub, all in one MKV file. As what I can see by searching the fandom myself around 2011-2012 from finding those episodes, they are really active. I remember they were really happy to get Pokemon B2W2 on launch day. LA countries share the same release date as North America. Well, Nintendo products are distributed by a third party company called Latamel. Well, even though they’re not first party markets as Nintendo does in European countries, Pokemon games are still profitable. I mean, the hardware and games are more expensive in those countries, like nearly twice the price, usually. Well they would mostly get English imports as there was a lot less support for Latin America in the gaming industry.

Pokemon games in LA and its problems:

Right now, they’re getting more support, Legend of Zelda already got its LA dub since BotW, and Nintendo’s most recent franchise to have LA translation is Animal Crossing since last year. Sadly, no Pokemon games have LA translation yet, except for Pokemon GO. Despite LA Spanish fandom being really active, The Pokemon Company never had an actual support with Latin America for the games yet, and even if they added language support since X and Y, the Spanish Translation is a complete import from Spain, which means the moves, the character names, and the dialects are pretty different and some fans may not like that approach. Playing a game that only has Castilian Spanish is still common and not really an issue as long as you understand the translation pretty well. For Pokemon specifically, it has a couple of problems. You would think since X and Y release, that they would start using the Spanish names for characters, attack moves, and city names for XY anime’s LA Spanish dub, right? NO! They still decide to stick with just use the English character names and cities, translate their own Attack moves if the moves are new or use an existing one from most recent dubs (Some moves have multiple names throughout the anime, as the show got five different dubbing studios), which doesn’t match with Castilian Spanish game translation at all. You will be confused about who’s name is that person or attack move of you watch any available Spanish translation of both anime and the games, which is why LA Pokemon fans want the games to finally have the LA Spanish translation being made. It’s likely that TPC decided to have the anime to not change even when X any Y came out with language selection. The fandom think it’s best if the player knows a good level of English at least and just play the games in English. There’s also a Reddit thread about why the games should have the translation for LA Spanish audiences, as this persons went a bit more detail as to why Castilian Spanish translation may not work for LA audience as a Kids game, like certain words can be considered vulgar:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TruePokemon/comments/jcf7ix/pok%C3%A9mon_in_latin_america/

 
More example of LA fans seeing some words being common in Spain is vulgar:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/1ogdln/vulgarity_in_the_spanish_version_of_the_game/

 
And to give you another example how TPC has less support for their fandom, none of the anime game trailers, Pokemon Generations, or Twilight Wings got LA Spanish dub at all, as none of the games as of now have the LA Spanish translation. TPCi would instead use the LA spcial media accounts and LA Pokemon websites link the Castilian Spanish dub. I do believe TPCi really needs to take a look at the LA Spanish fandom as they are really big. Peru of all Latin America is one of top 5 countries where they have most Pokemon fans. It’s really interesting that one of my family’s country was the top 5 largest fandom, and as a matter of fact, I do see Pokemon merch being made there. I only see images of the merch. But yeah, I so hope TPCi decide to include the LA Spanish translation as a lot more games in 2010s decide to give more supports to LA Spanish audience. This isn’t the 90s or the 2000s anymore, when it was where most video games’s only translation was Castilian Spanish, and pirated stores sell bootleg disc that are taken from PAL games to play the games in Spanish. It got a lot better in last couple of years. Crash series got LA translation, and so did most of Sony’s and Microsoft’s franchises too.

Overall:

So all in all, despite the games lagging behind, Manga doesn’t have all volumes translated, and TCG only getting English cards, the LA Pokemon fandom is one of the top biggest communities in the world. I still think the top 3 are Japan, US, and China, based on the statistics, but yeah, the LA fandom is pretty active, and they still play the games and stuff, and most of them watch the anime. The anime was dubbed in Mexico, Ash’s first VA was very popular as he voiced Ash, and his got changed by Season 13. Only Jirachi and Deoxys movie was dubbed in Argentina, having sets of different VAs. I see merch everywhere relating to Pokemon, hearing about the games launch day being celebrated in cool areas, and seeing the fans of the anime. I may not be fluent with Spanish, but I do see the fandom are still enjoying Pokemon. I know they would also have an issue with Dex Cut from Sword and Shield just like the entire world does, but still, I do see a couple of fans enjoy the franchise. I even saw a relative who has a boy who had a Pokemon birthday party for the last four years, which seems interesting.

Castilian Spanish?

And if you ask me about Castilian Spanish, I don’t mind seeing CS dubs of any anime. I remember watching Mermaid Melody in Castilian Spanish as there was no subs for all episodes at the time and English Dub never made it. I actually liked the Spanish dub, and as for Pokemon, when I got the episodes a decade ago, I finally hear what the dub sounds like. It’s interesting how Ash’s VA is still voicing him, even to this day. I find it interesting that the games give characters different names, and in most cases, I prefer English names. Meowth’s voice sounds really close to his current English voice, which is funny to me. I don’t have much experience with Spain’s fandom as I do with Latin American one. I prefer LA’s first theme song over the Spanish one, but I do prefer Advance Battle Castilian one over LA Spanish one, even if I like both of them. Oh and also, Johto Journeys one, as LA one was badly edited, not using the TV version and use full theme song that is just cut down and missed some lyrics. But yeah, I don’t mind the Castilian Spanish translations. I find them to be interesting.

Next:

My part 3 will just be discussing about my other experiences in the fandom and compare it with other ones, and it’s gonna be concerning and stuff, but I do want to get into it as I had friends who had different experiences, each of them.