Episode Stats:

Japanese TV Special 002: "Pocket Monsters Crystal - Raikou, the Legend of Thunder"
Pokémon Chronicles Episode 02:  "The Legend of Thunder - Part Two"
Japanese Air Date:  December 30th, 2001
American Air Date:  June 10th, 2006
Important Characters:  Minaki (Eugene), Kudou (Kudo)

The battle to protect Raikou continues!  Kenta sends his Bakuphoon up against Buson's Haganeil, but the steel-type pokemon is able to get the best of the fire-type pokemon.  Marina steps in and has her Mumaa use Perish Song, which disables the Rocket-Dan's pokemon and forces them to retreat for the time being.  Raikou, after collapsing from exhaustion, is carried to the Pokemon Center, where Kenta and Marina look after the legendary pokemon.  As they stay by Raikou's side, Minaki, a man who studies the legendary beast pokemon of Jouto, along with a friend of Utsugi-Hakase named Kudou, introduce themselves to the gang.  Raikou eventually gets its strength back and breaks out of the Center, rushing off toward the Rocket-Dan's Crystal Field Generation System.  Kenta and Marina catch up with the pokemon and find that Bashou and Buson are at it again.  A battle begins in which Marina is threatened, but she is saved by a Solarbeam attack from a Meganium.  The Meganium belongs to Kenta's and Marina's friend, Jun'ichi, who joins them in the battle to protect Raikou.  The Rocket-Dan eventually use Buson's mecha to grab Raikou, accidentally capturing Marina at the same time!  As Kenta and Jun'ichi are left behind, Marina quickly figures out a way to free Raikou.  However, Marina is still in captivity, and they're not going to waste any time trying to recapture Raikou.  To be concluded!

---

Thoughts 
Now that the initial shock / disgust that fans felt during the first part has more or less worn off, fans went into Part Two with pretty low expectations.  We all knew that the main characters would have names that are inconsistent with an episode in the main series, and we all knew that Bashou has become a woman for no reason at all.  We also knew that Marina's character would pretty much be destroyed, and that the original Japanese background music was done for. 

What fans didn't expect was to see 4Kids screw up even more than they did in Part One.  Minaki, who's known as Eusine in both "For Ho-Oh the Bells Toll" and the English version of the Pokemon Crystal video game, was renamed Eugene in this special.  It seems like yet another case of "we forgot that he already had an English name," but the fact that his new name sounds an awful lot like his old name (Eugene) really makes you wonder.

And then, just to throw us all off, 4Kids keeps Kudou's name as-is.  4Kids makes up for this by eliminating the fact that Kudou is a friend of Utsugi-Hakase (Professor Elm), getting rid of every reference to the professor in the script and making him an even more useless character than he was in the Japanese version.

Added Footage--1 minute, 50 seconds
The 36-second opening to Pokémon Chronicles is tacked on to the front of the episode.

Then, a minute-long recap of the previous episode is created for the TV airing.  There was no such recap in Japan because the special wasn't broken up into three episodes the way it was for the dub.

Finally, a fourteen second title screen for the episode is added.

Music Edit
One thing that's actually consistent with this special is the fact that all the music was replaced by 4Kids-produced stuff.  Because, you know, hearing Japanese music would cause the little kids to change the channel in disgust or something like that.

Dialogue Edit
Just like the script for part one, the script for this episode is really crappy.  Here are some highlights:

Hun:  "Steelix, Bite now!"

Originally, Bashou ordered his pokemon to use Crunch attack, not Bite.

Atilla:  "Just cuz they're busy doesn't mean I can't round up Thunder Wonder!"

"Thunder Wonder?"  How lame can you get?

This next one occurs during Kenta's stand-off with Raikou:

Jimmy:  [thinking] "You can trust me, Raikou.  [pause] I promise."

The problem with this line is that in the Japanese version, Kenta doesn't say anything at all.

4Kids will do this sort of thing throughout the rest of the episode; that is, they'll have characters talking, usually off-screen, when those same characters in the Japanese version won't be saying anything at all.  They don't do it to the extreme that they'll do it in, say, their One Piece dub, but it's still aggravating how talkative everyone is in the dub.

Cut--20 seconds
Part two of this special has a lot of cuts all over the place.  This is the first of them.

After this exchange in the dub:

Marina:  "You know what?  I'm glad we saved it."
Jimmy:  "Yeah, me too."
Marina:  "And YOU~...you and Typhlosion were really way awesome!"
Jimmy:  "Come on!  It was you and Misdreavus who saved the day!"
Marina:  "Hmm..."

After this scene in the original, there was a 20-second scene in which Marina explains the effects of Perish Song before asking Kenta if he thinks she and her Mumaa look cute together. 

This scene is cut from the dub.

Cut--2 seconds
This scene in the dub, in which Eugene says "Do you realize what a most extraordinary moment this is?" was originally two seconds longer in the Japanese version.

Cut--4 seconds
During Kudo's introduction ("I'm Kudo, archaeologist and researcher"), there's a four-second shot of the camera zooming in on Kudo's face.


This is cut from the dub.

Side Note
There's a line in this episode that has some fans convinced that Bashou didn't really get a gender change and that we all pitched a fit over nothing.  Here's the line:


People look at the line and say that it proves that Hun is a man despite the fact that he has a woman's voice and is a female in the Latin American dubs.  The argument is that nobody in his right mind would refer to a man/woman duo as "men," and that if Bashou's gender was changed, Kudo would have said something like "duo" or "thieves" instead of "men."

The thing is, "men" is really quite a gender neutral term nowadays.  You know how people will say "you guys" even if there are girls in the group being addressed?  Or how, in English class, you're taught to use "him" or "he" when you don't know the gender of the person you're talking about?  It's the same thing here.  Kudo has never met Atilla and Hun, and his information about Team Rocket being involved at all is probably all second-hand.  It's perfectly logical that he would refer to a group of people he's never met (and never does meet during the course of the special) using the gender-neutral "men."

Eyecatch
Another episode, another set of eyecatches.


Congratulations, Utsugi-Hakase.  You are officially the only pokemon professor to get his own eyecatch.

Click on each image to view a larger version.

Cut--3 seconds
The shot of Marina talking after the flashback to Jimmy's encounter with Raikou was originally three seconds longer.

Scene Lengthening--1 second
The shot of Raikou's profile after it breaks through the Pokemon Center's wall (and right before the shot of the lightning in the sky) was made a second longer in the dub. 

Dialogue Edit
The second half of this episode has a lot of bad dialogue.  First up, Atilla:

Atilla:  "Any more major power bolts like those it'll make the crystal totally unbeatable."

Aside from being a bad sentence grammatically, this isn't what the Japanese version said at all.  Originally, Buson was expressing his surprise that Raikou had come to destroy their machine, not because it was attracted to it.

Next up is the argument Kenta has between Bashou and Buson.  The dubbed version starts off faithful enough, but before long it starts to wander far away from the original script.  Just like with the last comparison, the translated Japanese version on the left comes from the Excalibur Fansub:

Japanese	English
Kenta:  "Don't you lay a hand on Raikou!"	Jimmy:  "What'd you do to Raikou?"
Bashou:  "Take a good look at the pokemon before your eyes."	Hun:  "We just softened it up a little bit so we can capture it."
Buson:  "You're trying to save a wild pokemon!  You pokemon trainers are supposed to catch wild pokemon!"	Atilla:  "I don't know why you're all tied up in a knot.  We're just adding to our collection; it's no different than what you did with your flamethrower pal."
Kenta:  "It's your methods that are the problem!  If you want to catch Raikou, battle him fair and square!"	Jimmy:  "Except I didn't hurt Typhlosion!  Why don't you fight Raikou fair and square and then see what happens?"
Bashou:  "Pokemon exist for the sake of humans.  We want Raikou's power to achieve our ambitions.  You pokemon trainers and your desire for strong pokemon are just the same."	Hun:  "That's a cute little idea you have there, kiddo.  But our goals are far too grand to be restricted by something as quaint as a fair fight.  You don't get to run the world by being fair; you get to run the world by being nasty!"
Kenta:  "I don't want 'strong' pokemon!  I want to raise them, and become strong with them!"	Jimmy:  "It's wrong to hurt pokemon!  And it's also wrong to use their power to hurt other people!'
Buson:  "But don't you need great power?  To win battles?"	Atilla:  "Gimme a break, kid.  We're just doing the same thing as all pokemon trainers."
Kenta:  "Pokemon battles aren't just about winning or losing!  We don't battle for the sake of defeating the opponent!  So we can be glad whenever we win or lose!  Because there were people who wanted to use pokemon as tools,	Jimmy:  "You don't know pokemon trainers at all!  When we battle, we have respect for each other.  When we battle, it's to learn and to get better!  When we battle, it's for the love of the contest, and not to steal the powers of a noble and legendary creature!"
Raikou broke off his relationship with them, and he's been alone all this time!"	*Raikou looks at Jimmy*
Kenta:  "You two don't deserve to even have pokemon!"	Jimmy:  "We're gonna to stop you.  We're not gonna let you take Raikou!"

It's not as big of a rewrite as the conversation between Kenta and Marina in Part One, but it still has a number of differences that stem from bad translation.

Atilla:  "It's rodeo time!"

I really wish 4Kids would stop trying to cram this "Atilla was a wrangler!" aspect down our throats, especially since he isn't one in the Japanese version.

Atilla:  "It's like three people squeezing at once on a giant zit!"

Not only is it a stupid line, but it's just a really unrealistic thing to say.  If three kids were combining their power to thwart my plans, the last thing I'd do is make some hackneyed acne analogy.

Eugene:  "Oh, tragedy, misfortune, and woe!"

A lot of people bring this line up in their complaints of the dub.  I actually think it's a pretty funny since it is so corny and over-the-top, but I know a lot of people disagree with me.

Cut--1 second
The shot of Jimmy saying "What!?  They took Marina too!?" was a second longer in the Japanese version.

Video Edit
The final shot of the episode is given a faux letterbox effect for the TV version.  In addition, the words TO BE CONTINUED... are added to the bottom of the screen, just like in Part One.

Japanese Special 02 Continues...

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