Pokémon in Indonesia

Pokémon in Indonesia
Flag of Indonesia
Language	Indonesian
Continent	Asia
Original anime airdates
EP001	March 3, 2001
AG001	April 27, 2008
DP001	February 7, 2010
BW001
XY001
SM001
JN001
HZ001

The Pokémon franchise, including the first Pokémon games, was first introduced officially in Indonesia around 2000, while the Pokémon anime were introduced through the broadcast of the first episode on March 3, 2001.

Pokémon video games

The first Pokémon games, Pokémon Red and Blue, were released in Indonesia in limited numbers around 2000. The first truly well-known Pokémon game for Indonesia was Pokémon Yellow, which was released in 2001.

All internationally released main series games until Pokémon Black and White have been available in Indonesia. Spin-off Pokémon games that are available in English language such as Pokémon Pinball, the Ranger and the Mystery Dungeon series, have been released in Indonesia as well. Usually, these games are available within several months to one year after their North American releases.

Many pirated copies of hack games, as well as official games, are also sold in Indonesia, especially the infamous game ChaosBlack and Quartz, which at first were mistaken by people as official. Pirated copies of official games come in a variety of ways, such as the lack of license or the color difference of game cartridges.

Pokémon anime

TV series

The first episode of the Pokémon anime was aired on March 3, 2001 every Saturday and Sunday at 19.00 - 19.30 (GMT +7) by Surya Citra Televisi Indonesia (better known as SCTV), a commercial TV station owned by Bimantara Citra. According to SCTV, however, the first 26 episodes were temporarily to be aired.^[1] After several months, the broadcast was moved to every Sunday at 10.00 - 10.30 on July 8, 2001.

The Indonesian dub was mainly based on the Japanese version; however, proper names from the English version were used. Some characters of the day's names are changed in the dub, and the most known renamed main character Ash Ketchum, who was given the dub name Ali. In a short period of time, Pokémon became well-known amongst children and young people. However, from the third season, the Pokémon anime lost its popularity in Indonesia. Soon after the episodes around the Orange League season, the show was stopped indefinitely in 2002.

The anime series did not continuously air until December 26, 2004, when Indosiar Visual Mandiri, took over and began their first broadcast from the beginning of the Johto saga on Sundays from 7.30 AM - 8.00 AM (GMT +7). Unfortunately, the inconsistency began when the dub were using the mixture between the English and Japanese names for Pokémon, include main characters, and other things in some episodes cases. These were the most controversial for the Indonesian fans. Despite this, many fans still support this positive effort for retaining the main character's Japanese names.

After the last season of the original series was finished, Indosiar continuously aired the first episode of the Advanced Generation series from April 27, 2008. The special series Pokémon Chronicles, as well as the Pikachu shorts were aired around July 2008 between the season. The Legend of Thunder!, another part of the special anime series, was also aired on November 16 and 23, 2008.

On February 7, 2010, Indosiar skipped half of the Advanced Generation series (until the end of the Battle Frontier saga) and started airing the first episode of the Diamond & Pearl series. This issue was a response to fans who gave request to Indosiar to broadcast the recent saga immediately, due to the fact that the time difference of episodes compared with Japan was very far—about 5 years.^[2]

The Diamond & Pearl series had been stopped from July 25, 2010 until November 21, 2010, in which were brought to reschedule to 8.00 - 8.30 after the retirement. Fortunately, some dub errors were fixed by using proper English name for Pokémon species.

On June 12, 2011, the Pokémon anime were skipped once again from Chimchar's Tears! to Mt. Coronet Ruins! Team Galactic Conspiracy!!.

Movie

In Indonesia, no Pokémon movies have premiered in any theaters. Instead, several Pokémon movies were aired on TV. As the SCTV era, only the first Pokémon movie was aired. As Indosiar took over, they aired several movies from Revelation of Lugia and Lord of the Unknown Tower on consecutive days, June 16 and 17, 2008. Then, Celebi: A Timeless Encounter and The Guardians of Altomare were also broadcast on November 30 - December 7 and December 14 - 21, respectively. Finally, the two most recent movies in Indonesia, Wishing Star of the Seven Nights: Jirachi was aired on December 28, 2008 and January 4, 2009, while Sky-Splitting Visitor: Deoxys premiered on January 11, 18, and 25, 2009.

Home video

Several Pokémon episodes and movies were also sold in DVDs and CDs in some regions and major towns of Indonesia, although most of them are not exactly official or are being pirates. Most of them are dubbed in English or Mandarin and subtitled in Indonesian.

Pokémon manga

Indonesia is one of the few countries that publishes a translation of Pokémon Pocket Monsters by Kosaku Anakubo, published by Elex Media Komputindo. The main character Isamu Akai was given the same dubbed name for Ash, while Clefairy was renamed as Kleferi (The Indonesian pronunciation of Clefairy). These releases were stopped on April 21, 2003 when volume 12 was running in publish until August 8, 2008, where Elex published the volume 14. However, volume 13 was running in publish on March 3, 2010. Like the anime incidence, the Pokémon names were retained to its Japanese name after the recent releases.

Pokémon PiPiPi Adventure and Pokémon Get da ze! (altered as Pokémon Petualangan Baru), were also released under the comic publisher m&c!. Both of their original title, even their Japanese script were retained on the side of their cover.

There is also a translation of Electric Tale of Pikachu, under the dubbed name Kisah Pikachu yang Menggetarkan; however, translated by an unknown publisher.

Pokémon Trading Card Game

Before the Pokémon franchise, especially the Trading Card Game that was introduced officially, the Pokémon cards were introduced when they were imported by Sucianto, the founder of Planet Comics, the famous and the oldest Indonesian Comic Store.^[3]

Many card sets and theme decks of Pokémon TCG have been sold in the Indonesia's convenience stores and malls starting from the very first TCG set, Base Set, until the recent Undaunted, both in English and are uncommon for Japanese versions. Most of these cards were known to be found in Indonesia's Toys "R" Us franchises.

After the popularity began to widespread, several unofficial tournaments are held within the stores' locations in several cities such as Jakarta and Bandung.

Pokémon merchandise

Pokémon anime novelizations in Indonesian

Pokémon Tazos Indonesia version

Indonesia is one of the 85 companies around the world who make officially licensed Pokémon products. The various types of merchandise other than games, trading cards were also available in Indonesia.

The quite popular collectible Pokémon Tazos were available, after the popularity of the anime series. These collectible toys can be found in three different snacks, Chiki, Cheetos, and JetZ. They were producted by Indofood Fritolay Makmur, an Indonesian snack food company—joint venture company with Pepsico. After the first release, it was also accompanied with Tazos 3D, holografical Tazos, usually are featured Pokémon with evolutionary stages. Later, there were another version called Pentazo, pentagon-shaped Tazos, which mostly featured Generation II Pokémon.

There have been Indonesian translations of the Pokémon anime novelization series, which were mostly only published based on episodes from the original series.

External links

• SCTV broadcast Pokémon series
• Indosiar - Pokémon
• Elex Media Komputindo's official website
• m&c! - Pokémon PiPiPi Adventure (Archive)

References

This article is part of Project Globe, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on the Pokémon franchise around the world.