Vol. 3, Issue 17 - Interview with Dogasu's Backpack
An interview with Dogasu from Dogasu's Backpack, a classic Pokémon fansite which began in January 2000, as a guide for the Japanese version of Pokémon. Plus, the latest news and more from our mailbag!
Welcome to Vol. 3, issue 17 Johto Times! For those who celebrate, and those who filled themselves up on chocolate eggs, I hope you had a lovely Easter! In today's issue, we are pleased to share an interview with Dogasu of Dogasu’s Backpack, a website that compares international release versions of Pokémon. It was created in January 2000 and celebrated its 25th anniversary earlier this year!
As always, we have a recap of the latest Pokémon news and more from the Johto Times mailbag!
News
The Pokémon Company have announced an official Pokémon book called Pokécology, which focuses on Pokémon's relationship with the environment and other Pokémon, that will appeal to readers young and old. At the time of writing, the book has only been confirmed for Japan, where it will be released on June 18th, 2025.
Source: Automation, Shogakakun
A Pokémon Scarlet & Violet distribution event has been announced. Players can obtain a Rillaboom based on Wei Chyrto's Pokémon used during the 2024 Pokémon Championships, commemorating the start of the Pokémon Asia Master Ball League championships. Players have until July 31st to redeem it using the code R1LLAB00M2024TW.
Feature: Interview with Dogasu's Backpack
Dogasu’s Backpack began on January 31st, 2000, as a guide for the Japanese version of Pokémon. It was originally called Dogasu’s English-Japanese Pokémon page and could be found on web hosting services such as Geocities, Envy, Terrashare, and eventually Bulbagarden, where it has resided since 2003. In this interview, I was proud to question Dogasu himself about his thoughts and memories of working on the website and his role as the head of anime on Bulbagarden’s forums.
It’s great to speak with you, Dogasu! Please introduce yourself, and tell us more about your website, Dogasu’s Backpack!
Dogasu:
Hi, and thank you for having me! I’m Dogasu, and I’ve been running Dogasu’s Backpack, a website devoted to the Japanese version of Pokémon, for a little over 25 years at this point. The main features of the site include scene-by-scene comparisons between the Japanese and English versions of the animated series, translations of interviews with the show’s cast and crew, monthly roundups of the newest manga releases, on-location event reports, painstakingly researched articles, and a lot more!
You opened your website on January 31st, 2000, and have just celebrated twenty-five years online! What inspired you to create your website in the first place?
Dogasu:
Back in the year 2000 there was almost nowhere you could go to learn about the Japanese version of Pokémon, and so I wanted to create a space where the original got the attention it deserves. Most Pokémon websites at the time treated the English dub as the default and the Japanese original as an amusing little footnote, and so I wanted to create a space where the Japanese version could take center stage for a change.
The central theme of the website is being a guide to the Japanese version of Pokémon, and one of the ways you do this is showing comparisons between the English and Japanese episodes. What inspired you to start making them?
Dogasu:
By the time I started working on my site I had already become fascinated with how Japanese cartoons were being localized for U.S. television. I knew about the changes being made to the English dub of Dragon Ball Z thanks to the website “DBZ Uncensored,” I knew about the changes to the Sailor Moon dub thanks to a mailing list I had been on for a few years at that point, I knew about Robotech being a Frankenstein’s monster of various unrelated series based on various rumblings online, and so on and so on, but there was nowhere you could go to learn the same thing about Pokémon. So I saw an opportunity to fill a void, and I took it.
It’s obvious from the time you have invested in Dogasu’s Backpack that you have a real passion for Pokémon releases in Japan. What is so appealing about them to you?
Dogasu:
I think the Japanese version is a really fantastic piece of work. It has some of my favorite theme songs in all of Japanese animation (Mezase Pokémon Master is in my Top 5 of best 90s anime themes for sure), the writing is oftentimes slick and clever, the background music is absolutely fantastic, and the overall presentation is just really, really great.
And then there’s the voice acting! Pocket Monsters has managed to gather some of the biggest names in the industry and the result is a show that features one iconic performance after the other. You have the regulars who do such amazing work, icons like Rica Matsumoto and Megumi Hayashibara, but then you have amazing special guests showing up as well. Why, just the other week the show featured the legend herself, Ms. Masako Nozawa! The show really is a who’s who of the most talented voice actors in the business, and their raw talent (combined with sound director Masafumi Mima’s incredible ability to put it all together) creates a show that’s truly a delight to experience.
While your passion for Japanese Pokémon content is clear, you have often been critical of the Western release. I am interested to hear your thoughts! What are your feelings on the approach 4Kids Entertainment and The Pokémon Company International took with the show?
Dogasu:
So, the month Pokémon debuted in the U.S. I was just a few weeks away from my 17th birthday. I think for a lot of people Pokémon was the very first Japanese cartoon they can remember watching, but for me Pokémon was probably something like my 20th or 30th anime series ever. And so when I sat down to watch the show and heard the narrator or whoever call the characters by those Westernized names I was like, “Oh, I see, this is gonna be one of those dubs.”
And so from literally Day 1 I’ve been holding the Pokémon animated series’ English dub to the same standards I hold every other Japanese cartoon released in the U.S. And by those standards…well, both the 4Kids and the TPCi dubs fall short on so, so many levels. I look around at how much anime dubbing in general has improved over the years, and how for the most part modern day English anime dubs are just as good as their Japanese counterparts, and yet with Pokémon they still insist on doing the same nonsense everyone else stopped doing literally decades ago. It’s really frustrating because we’ll see TPCi do excellent dubs of an inconsequential YouTube short or short little song or whatever, but then when it comes to the actual TV series itself they’re still dubbing the show like it’s 1997.
I might be willing to cut them all a little slack if either company would at least give us the option to watch the Japanese version, legally, but their continued refusal to do so means we’re stuck with whatever awful dub they put out and literally nothing else. We can look at, say, the 4Kids dub of One Piece all these years later and have fun with it because that’s not the only version of the show we have access to anymore, but with Pokémon that simply isn’t the case. If you want to watch Mewtwo Strikes Back!, legally, in the year 2025, your only choice is to watch that same janky dub they released back in 1999.
In 2004, you went to study in Japan temporarily, but later returned to live and work there permanently. How has living in Japan and embracing that culture aided your work with Dogasu’s Backpack?
Dogasu:
I now have access to things I wouldn’t have if I was still living in the U.S. I believe I might be the only person running an English-language Pokémon website who actually buys my own copy of the magazine CoroCoro Comics every month…? I can also go to any number of stores in my area to pick up the latest magazine, or CD release, or Blu-ray, or whatever, without having to rely on a mail-order proxy service the way I would if I was still living in the U.S. So it really has been a tremendous help. I could still probably do a lot of what I’m doing on the site if I was still living in the U.S., I suppose, but it would be a whole lot more difficult and a lot more expensive.
Throughout the years, you have written a tremendous amount of features for the site. I’ve had a lot of fun reading through them, especially the Recycled Characters feature and the Rumor Guide. What are some of the features you have written that you are most proud of, and why?
Dogasu:
I think probably the one I’m most proud of is the huge section I did on the Pokémon Shock incident, a.k.a. the time that one episode of Pokémon sent all those kids to the hospital with seizures and seizure-like symptoms. The airing of the Porygon episode is something that was a massive part of not just Pokémon, but of the history of television as a whole, and yet most Pokémon websites only have a shockingly small amount of information about it. Everyone just kind of repeats the same two or three talking points from Wikipedia and then calls it a day, and so once again I saw an opportunity to step in and fill a void. I translated information that had previously only been made available in Japanese and put it on the site, and so now everyone has access to the same victim testimonies, staff accounts, and overall timeline information that Japanese fans have had for years. And hey, I fansubbed Japanese TV news broadcasts. I can’t think of any other fan, of any franchise, who would go to such ridiculous lengths!
Another feature I’m proud of is the one I did on the Pocket Monsters The Movie “Koko” Podcast. One, because I’m amazed my Japanese had gotten to the point where I can actually do such detailed breakdowns of what are essentially radio interviews, and two, because TV show composer Shinji Miyazaki himself actually reached out to me to praise the work I did on the write-up for the episode he appeared in. I didn’t tag him at all or anything; he just saw my summary of the podcast episode, on his own, and decided to contact me to tell me how impressed he was! It was a pretty amazing feeling.
Another great feature you wrote was on Japanese episodes BW 023 and BW 024, also known as "The Rocket-Dan vs. The Plasma-Dan!". This two-part story was originally planned to air in 2011, but due to the Great East Japan Earthquake, it was shelved. In 2023, the script for these episodes surfaced online, allowing fans to learn more about it. What did you think of it?
Dogasu:
I actually haven’t had the chance to read it yet. It’s on my To-Do list though! But, I have a feeling the story behind the episode getting canceled and eventually retconned out of the show altogether is probably a lot more interesting than the actual episode itself.
Offering factual information in your content is super important for a resource like Dogasu’s Backpack. What processes do you undertake to ensure the validity of the work you are sharing?
Dogasu:
For me, it’s all about tracking down the original source. When I see what appears to be an interesting piece of trivia, my first question is to ask where that person got their information. Was it in an interview? OK, where can I find this interview? What issue of what magazine was it in? Can I buy it for myself from an online auction site?
As a result I actually have multiple bookcases in my house dedicated to the books and magazines I’ve bought for the site over the years.
You have retired some sections of your website, such as the Video Games, Humor and Parodies, and Pokémon Bashing pages. While you have explained that the content you wrote in the past doesn’t match your vision for the website today, how do you weigh up whether to remove old content that doesn’t match your current vision for the website or preserve its historical purposes?
Dogasu:
A lot of those decisions revolve around whether or not the content I’m removing can be found anywhere else. For the Video Games section, for example, there wasn’t really anything on any of those Dogasu’s Backpack pages you can’t find on literally dozens and dozens of other Pokémon websites online, and so I didn’t really see the value in having those take up the disk space on my site as well. And for Humor and Parodies, a lot of that section was just external links to other sites anyway, so getting rid of those pages didn’t really remove any real content from the Internet. So stuff like that.
In 2022, Ash/Satoshi became the champion, marking the culmination of his journey, and in 2023, his story reached its conclusion. After watching the show since it originally began, what were your thoughts on these historic moments from the anime?
Dogasu:
So I probably have a very different view on this compared to a lot of other folks out there because I never really felt any attachment toward Satoshi as a character. As I mentioned before, I was almost twice his age when the TV series started, and so I’ve never had the same relationship with the character as someone who, say, first started watching the show when they were five years old. I just never really looked up to him, you know? Watching Satoshi lose all these tournaments over the years never really upset me or anything, and so I also didn’t really feel much when he started winning them either. I was just like, “Huh, good for him,” and then went on with my day.
Which story plots and loose ends would you have liked to have seen wrapped up before the show moved on from these familiar characters we grew up with?
Dogasu:
I think the way the show ended was mostly fine. I wish the Rocket trio had been given a better farewell than that half-baked “We’re breaking up the team…again!” thing they tried to shoehorn in at the last minute, but other than that I don’t have much of a problem with how Mezase Pokémon Master ended. I know a lot of people were upset that the show didn’t tackle the laundry list of items they had convinced themselves absolutely had to be addressed before the series was allowed to end, but I didn’t really have any such expectations myself, and so I was perfectly content with the way it all went down.
In 2023, Pokemon Horizons began to air, with brand-new protagonists, story arcs, and characters. After covering the anime for so long, what are your impressions of this new era for Pokémon's anime?
Dogasu:
I really like the new show. The series needed to do things a bit differently to make itself stand out from its predecessor, and I think it’s mainly been doing a pretty good job of that so far. There were some parts I didn’t like at first – having Friede around to bail the kids out of every predicament got really old, really fast – but ever since the Orange Academy arc or so I think the show’s finally found its footing. I’m also a huge fan of Cornish’s score and how it’s such a huge step up from what we had in the previous series.
The only criticism I have of the current show is that I feel like it sometimes takes itself a little too seriously. I miss how the old series had writers who would do things like throw in a parody of an old 70s anime or create some purely chaotic comedy characters to give the show an energy that just isn’t there in the current series. You remember Harley from the Ruby & Sapphire series, right? Well, I can’t really imagine a modern day series including a character anywhere near as ridiculous as he was, and I think that’s a shame.
What are your predictions and desires for the future of the Pokémon anime?
Dogasu:
I would really love to see Pocket Monsters transition into a seasonal anime. The 47-52 episodes a year release schedule they’ve been doing for almost three decades at this point is just not needed anymore, and I think there are only a few series left still doing it [in] the year 2025. I also kind of feel like the staff maybe feels the same way, given how they keep assigning the show new subtitles every 20-some episodes as if they were sort of not really doing a soft reset twice a year. And so, once Liko and Roy’s series wraps up, I would love to see the show move on to releasing 13-26 episodes in the spring or whatever and then taking the rest of the year off. Coordinate it so that you have new seasons of the animated series on TV during lulls in video game release schedules and I think Pokémon fans would probably dig it.
While there have been some subtle changes to the website during its years online, Dogasu’s Backpack has retained a traditional layout and hasn’t adopted a mobile version of the website. What changes do you think we can expect to see with the website’s design in the future?
Dogasu:
Well, a mobile version of the website is definitely on the list! Other than that I do plan to organize things a bit better so that it’s not quite so difficult to find the content I’ve been working so hard on all these years. There’s an old adage that you should be able to move from any page on a website to any other page on that same site within two clicks, and so while I’m not sure how feasible that is with my site I am looking to reorganize things a bit better to make navigation a lot smoother.
Dogasu’s Backpack has had a close association with Bulbagarden for many years. You have been hosted by them since November 1st, 2003, and you were also the former head of anime on the Bulbagarden forums. How has the friendship between your two websites been over the years?
Dogasu:
It’s been pretty good, I’d say. I depend on Bulbapedia quite a bit (though as mentioned before, I also make sure to do my due diligence), and I know there’s certain things they use my site updates for as well, and so I think we enjoy a pretty healthy give-and-take relationship.
There have been many Pokémon fansites over the years, and plenty that have not lasted as long as yours. What has your relationship been like with other fansites?
Dogasu:
I’ve known a lot of the people who have been running the big Pokémon fansites for years and years — I remember having some of the biggest names in the fandom on my AIM friends list back in the day — and so I think we all know and respect the mutual love we have for the franchise.
I think it also helps that most of the other big sites probably don’t view my website as actual competition. I’m not a news site, for example, and so there’s actually very little overlap between the things I post on Dogasu’s Backpack and what a lot of them are posting on theirs. I’m just off over here in my own corner, writing 30-page essays about the Japanese version of an episode that came out 20 years ago, or a translation of an interview from the early 2000s or whatever. We’re not stealing visitors from each other, and I think that’s really helped keep any potential drama from forming.
It’s fantastic to see that you have kept an archive of all news posts throughout the years, but my favourite thing of all is that each year, you share an Anniversary Write-Up for Dogasu’s Backpack, reflecting on your progress. It was such a pleasure to read through these and see the journey you have taken. What has it been like to look back and see how far you’ve come?
Dogasu:
It’s actually really cringey for me to go back and read some of those older updates, but as embarrassing as all that can be, it’s still a great way to, as you said, reflect back on the journey I’ve taken. I’m a very different person now than I was 25 years ago, and every now and then it’s good to look back and remind myself of just how much better the site’s become.
What have been some of your highlights of Pokémon throughout your years of running Dogasu’s Backpack?
Dogasu:
It feels quaint to say this now, but in my mind I still think of Pocket Monsters Advanced Generation as the fresh, hip new series. It’s probably hard to imagine that new car smell the show had if you weren’t around at the time, but the energy in the air was like nothing else. That’s also when I started to regularly do Episode Comparisons using the actual Japanese episodes themselves, and even though I now look back at the work I did back then and think it’s mostly all terrible (I knew almost no Japanese back then and so I missed like 99% of the rewrites), that era was still an undeniably huge part of the site’s rise.
How influential was the Pokémon franchise in your decision to live and work in Japan?
Dogasu:
Not very, to be honest. I like Pokémon, sure, but not enough to make me pack up all my things and move to the other side of the planet. Being based in the country where this show comes from is just a nice perk of living here, but there were other, more real life reasons involved in me making the move.
For those of us who haven’t visited Japan, how much influence does Pokémon have on day-to-day life?
Dogasu:
Years ago I saw a social media post that said something like “Have you ever noticed you literally cannot go a single day on the Internet without seeing SpongeBob SquarePants?” As soon as I saw that I realized, “Oh my God, that’s absolutely true,” but it took having someone point that out before I could see how ubiquitous the show really had really become.
Japan and Pokémon are a lot like that. Pokémon stuff is just everywhere, probably so much so that I don’t even really notice it much anymore. I honestly can’t remember the last time I went out in public and didn’t at least see a Pikachu something out in the wild, for example. I was in a Japanese equivalent of a dollar store the other day and they were just casually playing the current ending theme to the animated series over its radio station! Phone companies and vending machines have Pikachu images on them! Pokémon really is absolutely everywhere in Japan.
It would be great to learn more about your earliest memories of Pokémon and how you were first introduced to the series. What can you tell us about them?
Dogasu:
The very first time I ever heard of Pocket Monsters was because of the Pokémon Shock incident. So this was back in December 1997, and I remember it somehow made it to the front page of my local newspaper that day. Anyway, I also had a subscription to Nintendo Power at the time, and so about half a year later I got that video tape that was sent out to subscribers, the one that had live action segments featuring American actors playing characters like “Ash’s aunt” or “Ash’s teacher.” I found out when the animated series was scheduled to start and began watching it from Day One.
It took a little while longer before I was able to actually track down the Japanese version for myself. These days they’re all available online (legally or otherwise), but back in the 90s/early 2000s it was extremely difficult to find the Japanese version of this show no matter how hard you looked. No one was recording it off Japanese TV week after week, and so you had to just kind of make do with whatever random episodes people on the Internet happened to have. The first episodes I ever got in Japanese were probably the three “banned” episodes, and then as the years went on I very slowly started accumulating more and more of the show for as long as I continued to use VHS.
Twenty-five years is a long time to run any project, but it feels like you’re far from done. What are your future plans for Dogasu’s Backpack?
Dogasu:
For 2025, I plan to finally finish up comparing the rest of the Orange Islands episodes. Other than that, I have a lot of ideas for new features just kind of swirling around in my head, waiting for me to sit down and actually get them done. Without giving too much away, I have a few features based on audio content (radio shows, podcasts) and some based on various magazines and books that’ve been released over the years that I think will be really helpful in keeping track of what was released when. I also hope to do some more translations from the “Pokémon Story” book at some point.
Dogasu, it has been a pleasure speaking with you, and congratulations on the longevity of your website. Do you have any closing comments you would like to make?
Dogasu:
It’s been fun! I would like to thank everyone for supporting me and the site all these years, and I hope everyone enjoys the stuff I have coming up in the future. The Japanese version of the show may seem like this huge, daunting monster of a challenge, and so if any of you have any questions about it, please don’t hesitate to ask!
A massive thank you to Dogasu for taking the time to respond to my questions. Anyone who has run a project for as long as he has deserves huge respect, and we wish him the very best of luck for the future!
Mailbag
We have another new addition to our mailbag this week from a familiar face! Desja, an artist from the United States who got in touch with us during December of last year, is back with more artwork! The title of this piece is “One Thing Not Like the Other”, and you can view it for yourself and see what Desja has to say about it below!
My friends and I [have] been in [a] Snom mood as of late. I decided to make a quick sketch at work only to add color once [I got] home. I admit rush[ing] since Easter [was] coming. I had fun though!
Desja, United States
It’s lovely to hear from you again, Desja! Thank you for sharing more of your great artwork with us, and I’m sorry I couldn’t squeeze it into the previous issue in time for Easter! I’m a big Snom fan, so it’s always great to see it represented and admire the different interpretations the talented artists within our community take with it. I think we can allow Snom to be an honorary bunny for this Easter occasion. As always, please keep up the great work; you’re a wonderful artist!
That’s all for this week’s issue! If you enjoy what Johto Times provides, be sure to share our newsletter with your friends and loved ones to help us reach even more Pokémon fans. For Discord users, you’re welcome to join our server for the latest notifications from our project. We are still open to sharing your mailbag entries, so if you have anything you would like to share with us, drop us a line by visiting this link to contact us directly!
I absolutely LOVE reading Dogasu's Backpack, so it was especially awesome to read this interview! The work that Dogasu puts into comparing anime episodes and translating Japanese content for an English-speaking audience is incredibly valuable and has helped me with tons of personal research projects. Congrats on the 25th anniversary, Dogasu, and thanks for everything!! And thank you Johto Times for another excellent interview! :D
Impressive collection! I have this website already bookmarked but nice to read more about it.