Pokémon in Russia: Difference between revisions

Pokémon in Russia
Flag of Russia
Language	Russian
Continent	Europe and Asia
Original anime airdates
EP001	December 18, 2000
AG001	Never aired
DP001	September 20, 2008
BW001	November 6, 2012
XY001	September, 2014
SM001
JN001
HZ001

The Pokémon franchise first reached Russia in December of 2000, when first episode was premiered. In Cyrillic script, Pokémon is written as Покемон and its plural is Покемоны pokemony.

Pokémon anime

First wave of Pokémon in Russia

Pokémon was originally brought over to Russia by Sargona Ltd., which sold English-language cards from the Pokémon Trading Card Game. The Pokémon anime was first shown on ORT (now known as Channel One), which is the main television station in Russia.

ORT (Channel One) logo

The rights to the series were purchased in early 2000 and episodes began to appear by December of the same year. The Russian translation of the anime, which was conducted by the Kievan Pilot Studio, is based on the English dub. The Russian version of the anime retains all of the English character names to match the Pokémon TCG cards that had been already released.

While the translation quality of the Russian dub is considered to be high by most fans, a few changes had been made. For example, some locations had slightly different names, such as Dark City being retitled Мрачный Город. However, the lyrics to Pokémon Theme were later retranslated and used in the last episodes of Indigo League. Any episodes of the anime which were banned in the United States were also banned in Russia.

In an interview with Afisha magazine, the management director of children's programming on ORT, Sergey Suponev, assured viewers in the harmlessness of Pokémon:

«Our plan to broadcast this show can be called madness by someone. There was a lot of noise around this series all over the world. In fact, it is a pretty harmless thing. A sweet story about a boy who saves animals and teaches them to fight for justice. And there are bad guys who want to send them to the zoo for lots of money - that's all there is to be scandalous.»

Within a day of the anime's television premiere, the management of public relations of ORT had invited journalists and children from an Otradnoye shelter to a Rolan cinema for a presentation of the series. The children received the presentation well, and then took a quiz organized by ORT.

From December 18, 2000 to January 25, 2001, the anime was broadcasted by ORT. In February 5, 2001 they began to show the series again until August 2001. The last episode to air on ORT was Charizard Chills. 104 episodes of the original series were shown.

After this, the Pokémon anime was not aired in Russia for seven years. Many fans wrote to TV channels asking them to air the anime, but the only appearance of Pokémon on Russian TV was the airing of The Power of One and Pokémon 4Ever on ORT at 6:00 am.

Many rumors have circulated in speculation of why ORT stopped airing the anime, including:

• A Japanese channel may have shown an offensive video about Russia. This has been unproven.
• Some believe that ORT canceled the show because Sergey Suponev, the director of children's programming of ORT, died in a snowmobile accident, and the new director supposedly did not like Pokémon.
• Others believe that Russian newspapers and the yellow press pressured the station to cancel the show. Some reported that Pokémon was causing epileptic seizures, others wrote that Pokémon "brainwashes children" with subliminal stimuli. ORT didn't want its reputation to fall, so they stopped airing Pokémon.
• ORT and the Japanese creators of the anime couldn't make an agreement on the price of licensing the anime.

The return of Pokémon

TNT logo

On September 20, 2008 TNT, another Russian channel, premiered the first episode of the Diamond & Pearl series. The tenth season was shown fully.

Pokémon has also recently aired on Jetix. Unlike TNT, both the tenth season and Battle Dimension have been aired fully.

On August 10, 2010, when Jetix-Russia was replaced by the Disney Channel, the airing of Pokémon was finished for the second time. However, the Russian version of Pokémon Diamond & Pearl: Galactic Battles had been aired on Disney Channel Ukraine.

On February 3, 2012, Russian version of Pokémon Diamond & Pearl: Galactic Battles started on TNT. By the end of 2012, twelveth and thirteenth seasons of the anime were shown fully.

On November 6, 2012, simultanously with two last, the Russian version of the 14th season Pokémon: Black & White started on TNT and has been aired fully. As of 2013, there were no plans for airing the two remaining seasons of the series on TNT or any other Russian channel, creating a hiatus in airings of the anime.

Bulbanews has an article related to this subject:

Pokémon anime, TCG return to Russia

The hiatus was broken on March 12, 2014, when 2×2, the Russian channel, which specializes on teenager-oriented animated series signed a five-year contract with Pokémon Company International to broadcast the anime. The series starts airing on May 1, 2014 running the redubbed version of the Pokémon: Black & White. The seventeenth season of the anime, Pokémon the Series: XY premiered in September. The schedule of the Pokémon Black & White: Rival Destinies and Pokémon Black & White: Adventures in Unova are yet to be announced.

Pokémon movies

Aside for the anime series, the movies were translated too, but they were dubbed by different studios. Mewtwo Strikes Back, The Power of One, The Spell of Unown, as well as their respective Pikachu Shorts, also, there are dubs of Celebi: The Voice of the Forest, Jirachi: Wish Maker and Destiny Deoxys. All those movies were officially released on DVD and VHS. Giratina and the Sky Warrior was aired on Jetix, also, the Russian dub of Zoroark: Master of Illusions was revealed to be on Polish DVD release of this movie^[1]. The movies connected to the Best Wishes series: Black – Victini and Reshiram, White – Victini and Zekrom, Kyurem vs. The Sword of Justice and Genesect and the Legend Awakened will be aired on the Russian TV channel 2×2 during 2014.

Cast and crew

Pilot Studio dub

Ash Ketchum had been voiced by Anna Leshchenko (Анна Лещенко). Tatiana Zinovenko (Татьяна Зиновенко) had given her voice to Misty. Anatolii Zinovenko (Анатолий Зиновенко) is the voice of James and Professor Oak. Dmitrii Zavadskii (Дмитрий Завадский) is the voice of Gary Oak, Meowth, Brock and Tracey.

TNT Dub

Dawn had been voiced by Anastasiya Fomicheva (Анастасия Фомичева) and Olga Shorohova(Ольга Шорохова).

Pokémon games

Since Nintendo handheld consoles are not popular in Russia, Pokémon games can be rarely found in shops. The games were distributed by New Disc, Nintendo's official distributor, and usually games became available with great delay after the European release, but it had been changed when Nintendo opened its office in Russia. All Pokémon video games are sold in English, however, there have been few fan translations of the games circulating among Russian fans. The games have been translated and sold by pirates as well, although these translations contain notoriously poor grammar.

Pokémon Trading Card Game

The Pokémon Trading Card Game was released in Russia, and obtained "the same cult status" as it did in Britain.^[2] The Russian government attempted to ban or, in the least, censor the game in late 2001-2002, but it seems that this was not carried through.

The Trading Card Game was evidently released in English, as the government wanted the cards to be translated into Russian as part of the censorship.

With stopping airing the anime, the Pokémon Trading Cards stopped releasing as well.

The Pokémon Trading Cards returned in Russia when they were distributed along with toys in Happy Meals in Russian McDonald's in January 2012.

The Pokémon Trading Card Game: XY goes on sale in Russia at the end of 2014. It will be the first Pokémon Trading Card Game in Russia since the original Base Set.

Pokémon merchandise

There is a lot of Pokémon merchandise, which used to be especially popular during the airing of the anime on ORT. Toys, playing cards (not Trading Card Game ones), official magazines, pogs, clothes, and other merchandise found a quick sale. In 2001, PepsiCo had released its drinks with stereoscopic screenshots of the anime placed on the bottles' caps — these caps are highly valued as collectibles among Russian fans. The Official Pokémon Handbook and the The Official Pokémon Handbook 2 by Maria Barbo were translated and released under the name "The Manual of the Pokémon Champion" and "The Manual of the Pokémon Champion II" respectively.

Trivia

• Some episodes dubbed by Pilot Studio were based on the Polish version instead of the English dub. This is why Pallet Town and Viridian City are called "Alabastia" and "Vertania". Also, there was a dub error in EP003 where Polish words can be heard.^[3]
• Anastasiya Fomicheva, the actress who voiced Dawn, is registered at the Russian Pokémon League.^[4]
• Pilot Studio also dubbed the Pokémon anime in Ukrainian with the same actors.
• In non-English material in Russia, English names are used for Pokémon and characters, but transliterated into Cyrillic characters (as is the case with the Pokémon logo, above).

External links

• Russian version of Pokémon.com
• Pokemon.ru - The site is dead and redirects to pokemon.com (Internet Archive)
• Покемон.рф - Site in newly registered .рф domain. Redirects to pokemon.com/ru
• Русская Лига Покемонов (Russian Pokémon League) - The oldest and the most popular Russian fan Pokémon site.
• Sargona official site
• Pilot studio official site

References

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