Japanese and Korean Shocked By Pokemon Name Differences Around the World l France, Brazil, Germany

Fun fact: A Brazilian artist made an entire fan-made Pokédex-like collection with monsters inspired by Pokémon artstyle, but based of Brazilian culture and memes. It's called Bágdex, complete with stats and everything. It got so popular on Twitter that he's gonna turn it into an actual game. The designs are really good!

Pokemon naming was a budget decision. During the first generation gamefreak selected the main markets to focus on. Following that decision only the language of these countries (English, German, French, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese) had a translation team to work on pokemon names, every other country (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, etc...) use the English pokemon names, or the transcrition in its own alphabet of English (Russia) or Japanese (Thailand) name. Now that is a global franchise they must mantain this method for pokemon names, except for Type Null and Paradoxes.

Fun fact: the guy that sang the English version of I Wanna Be The Very Best did backup vocals for Michael Jackson.

France asked to have names different from the Japanese ones from the start. The one who persuaded Nintendo to not use the Japanese names in France actually took charmander as an example. In Japanese he is called Hitokage and the sound of "kage" in French sounds exactly like the word "caguer" which basically means taking a shit... 😅 (his name actually Salamèche in French thanks to them) So Julien Bardakoff and his team worked on the names for the first and second generations. And then some other teams continued afterwards. He was interviewed for the 20th anniversary of pokemon and he said that at that time the American team was nearly finished with the names for the 1st gen so they basically tried to see the translations of the names in Japanese and English names. And based on the look of the pokemon they worked and the translation they worked on the names. They also did a lot of world play too, they also tried to keep the Japanese meaning in mind. They also tried to keep the names related for all evolutions of a pokemon

it's funny because, speaking about the anime itself, all the content we get until nowadays here in brazil is distributed from the usa (and not from japan or any other country), so the pokemon and characters names (and probably many other names) are translated from the usa. that's why they have the exact same names, but we have a "brazilian way" to call them.

them all repeating the German names in their own accents was so cute and wholesome it makes me appreciate the german pokemon names for the first time <3

As far as the first theme goes, the reason why its the same was due to how marketable it was. It needed to be changed from the Japanese version to the US, so when they were coming up with the song, they liked it so much that every other country ended up adapting the US version and just translating the lyrics. Hence why its the same. Also the opening used parts of the Japanese opening and made some edits such as Pikachu originally went underneath the girl's skirt/dress, but was adjusted. They also used clips from the show to make up the opening. It's why its so different.

Thank you guys so much for this!! 🥺❤️ Rocket Punch is such an awesome group, so they definitely fit right in with Awesome World! 😆❤️

As a someone who watched the entire show in russian The same thing with Brazil Our dubers didn’t change names at all, they put even english lines when pokemons speaking. All names its english version sometimes it changes the pronunciation

For those not in the know, Jason Paige is the singer of the iconic US version to the Pokémon theme. He did the full version of it, in which you can find on his YouTube channel!

In Squirte's case, in french, Carapuce, the first part is true, it's from "Carapace" aka the shell, but "Puce" is actually from the bug, the flea. The name was made to fit the japanese idea of making a very small turtle, and a flea is very small, although, he wasn't fully wrong, it adds a certain cuteness to it, and it can be used as an affective term for little girls

This was so fun! Thank you for the comparisons!

All French people who love Pokemon understand how difficult it is to explain why our Pokemon names are different but in France each Pokemon has its name with a reference and in France the names of Pokemon are more popular than any version.

That poor girl from Brazil constantly looked sad that the US guy kept stealing the name thunder :(

JURI AND SOHEE ARE SO PRECIOUS AND FANTASTIC, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS VIDEO, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH ROCKET PUNCH, FIGHTING ♡♡♡♡♡

The Japanese girl was so impressed by the English opening and Charizard name

The Brazilian girl could have read the unofficial "bolsodex", it would have been way funnier

European countries mostly take the songs/names from the american version, because there are more english/native lanuguage translators, and the english language is easier to translate than the original (when it is japanese or korean), so the whole animation is mostly taken from america, and not from the originating country, and then translated from english into the native language. Therefor we mostly have the same names as in english, or word-for-word translations of the english version.

Thank you so much for that🙏🙏🙏 Sohee and Juri seeing them, just grateful Edit: Also typical for us in germany, always giving stuff different names🤣🤣🤣

Another day, another dose of entertaining Rocket Punch content :face-red-heart-shape: The world is in fact more awesome with Rocket Punch in it.