Onigiri or rice balls are a popular type of Japanese food that I'm sure a lot of you will
have seen before and maybe have even tried for yourself.
Now, with how popular the food is in Japan, it will naturally be included in many Japanese
shows and games.
However, during the localisation process of bringing Japanese media to the West, food
such as this will sometimes be changed to more Western meals.
This depends very much on the media in question, as well as the localisation company in charge.
Today, though, we'll be taking a look at the Pokémon TV series and how localisers 4Kids
handled the foreign food.
4kids are notorious for their heavy edits to Japanese shows, with one of these types
of edits being the removal of most Japanese themes.
In regards to the rice balls, they must have felt that altering the food to something Western
would be more understandable to Western audiences - especially the younger demographics that
typically watch Pokémon.
And so, foods such as this were edited regularly all throughout the show.
Episode 2, for instance, didn't have Professor Oak talk about his "pizza" being delivered.
Instead it was his "ramen" overcooking.
Pokémon's long history of rice ball edits, though, all began in episode 12 - "Here Comes
The Squirtle Squad".
This was the first time that rice balls appeared and here's how 4Kids handled the appearance
of the Japanese food...
Needless to say, the Japanese version didn't talk about donuts and éclairs but, of course,
rice balls and sandwiches.
By the way, if you're wondering where they got "éclairs" from, it appears to be this
long food substance shown here, that isn't mentioned by name in the Japanese version.
This was the first time for rice balls to appear in an episode, but, one of the most
infamous cases would occur a little later in episode 25 - "Primeape Goes Bananas".
Here's why...
Donuts... donuts...
donuts...
This episode and, in particular, Brock's "jelly filled donuts" lines are so popular that they
have even become a meme, commonly used when discussing localised Japanese food or just
questionable localisation decisions.
Comparing Brock's lines with the Japanese version, Misty kicks things off by saying
"Well, you'll cheer up after eating a rice ball."
And Brock says "The round ones have pickled plums.
The triangular ones have kelp.
I picked up some pretty good kelp."
Yep, Brock says nothing to do with jelly, donuts or even anything being his favourite.
Most of the episode's other changes are pretty much as you would imagine, but, there was
a case of 4Kids adding donut references where not even rice balls where mentioned originally.
At the end of the episode in the Japanese version, Team Rocket simply says "This feels
bad" after getting attacked by the angry pokémon...
Overseas though...
4Kids would keep up changes like this all throughout the show, but, it wouldn't be till
the later episodes where they would start to really change things around.
You may have noticed how they were only changing the dialogue and not the graphics to go with
it.
But in later episodes, such as episode 366 shown here, the rice balls would be visually
changed into other foods such as sandwiches.
Episode 392 visually changed rice balls in multiple scenes - the first of these being
a giant rice ball rolling down a hill, which was changed into a giant sandwich.
Another food that 4Kids changed rice balls into in this episode is crackers, both on
the plate, as well as getting eat by Munchlax in the next scene.
These types of edits, though, wouldn't last forever.
The Pokémon Company took over the English production of the show at the start of season
9, when 4Kids were let go, and rice balls have commonly been depicted as rice balls
ever since.
4kids would also then go on to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2011 and leaving the anime
business altogether.
This means that 4Kids are no longer making edits like this to not just Pokémon but any
other shows too, with them once upon a time being in charge of most anime released in
the West.
Censored Gaming has many other videos on 4Kids and Pokémon and lots of other localisation-related
topics.
If this is something that interests you then please make sure to check out the description
for some links to previous videos and hit that subscribe button and, until next time,
thank you for watching.