Pokémon in Russia: Difference between revisions

The Pokémon franchise first reached '''{{wp|Russia}}''' in December of 2000, when [[EP001|''Покемон! Я выбираю тебя!'']] premiered. In Cyrillic script, Pokémon is written as '''Покемон''' and its plural is '''Покемоны''' ''Pokemony'' (Pokemons) and is [[#Pokémon and grammar|fully inflected]].

In 1997, the {{EP038}} incident was reported on the news. then Pokémon was 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.  

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 {{wp|Kiev|Kievian}} Pilot Studio, is based on the English-based Polish dub, so Pallet Town was called Alapaevsk. Since episode 37, they

started to use 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 {{tt|''Mrachnyy Gorod''|Gloomy City}}. However, the lyrics to Pokémon Theme were later retranslated and used in the last episodes of ''[[S01|Indigo League]]''. (That was because they started using the English dub instead of the Polish dub). Any episodes of the anime which were banned in the United States were also [[Banned episodes|banned]] in Russia.

«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 nice story about a boy who saves little creatures 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 bad about.»

[[File:Charizard chills rus.jpg‎|thumb|right|The last episode shown on ORT: ''Charizard Chills'' (Charizard zamerzayet/ Charizard gets frozen)]]

There were a few reasons why ORT stopped airing the anime, including:

* Others believe that Russian newspapers and the {{wp|yellow press}} pressured the reported that Pokémon was "brainwashing children" with {{wp|subliminal stimuli#Consumption and television|subliminal messages}} of {{wp|Shoko_Asahara|Japanese terrorists}} and {{wp|Shiva|the Indian Shiva god}} . ORT didn't want its reputation to fall, so they stopped airing Pokémon.

* Kids fell for pranks told by other stupid children like "Putting your fingers in a outlet will summon a Pikachu"

* Pokemon was extremely different from what Soviet children watched (e.g {{wp|Soviet animation|soviet animation}} wasn't violent), so now-grown up Soviet children said "Pokemon teaches kids {{wp|occultism}} and makes them gain {{wp|Aggression|aggressive}} and {{wp|Violence|violent}} behavior modules". The anime was oftenly compared to {{wp|Soviet animation}}. They filled complaints to ORT to cancel the show and "show non-violent, directive (Making kids to do everything at your home or else they will get trolled) Soviet cartoons!!"

At first, [[Nintendo]] handheld consoles were not very popular in Russia and Pokémon games were rarely found in shops. The original Game Boy was popular in Russia, but Red and Blue was obscure. The gen 3 games were relatively popular. The games were distributed by "Noviy Disc", Nintendo's official distributor between 2006 and 2011, and games would usually become available long after the European release and at a more substantial cost. This situation changed when Nintendo of Europe opened its office in Russia; they stopped working with "Noviy Disk" and began working with a new distributor named "OCS", and Nintendo opened their own online store. 3DS games were then available for sale on the official store '''[https://mir.nintendo.ru/ Mir Nintendo]''', though they may also be found elsewhere. {{g|X and Y}} were the first Pokémon games to be released in Russia at the same time as the rest of the world due to the introduction of the Nintendo online store. Pokémon video games are not localized in Russian; however, there have been a few fan translations of the GBA games circulating among Russian fans.

|покемо́ны  

*Earlier episodes dubbed by Pilot Studio were based on the {{pmin|Poland|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.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuP444AYK5A Third Episode in Russian] (retrieved September 16, 2014)</ref>