#eu countries

So I thought the end of Poland were LGBT Free Zones.

Or the abortion ban.

But noo, they can get even lower.

This is part 3 of 5 PTTs digging into some really cool PokéAni facts from all over the world! This week’s global research was MASSIVE! I really wanted to cover as much EU as I can, since I know a lot of people in this fandom coming from Europe, but tried to make my post as minimal as I can! Due to a lot of info I’ve read, I will only mention 1 or 2 facts for each country (except U.K.). Good thing I had 2 weeks to prepare for this, otherwise this thing would have been more stressful to put together. Shoutout to all my European PokéAni peeps reading this! Let’s see if you may or may not know the trivia behind these countries 👀

Pokémon anime in EUROPE

In the UNITED KINGDOM DID YOU KNOW? The Pokémon anime famously aired on ITV, a public service network station that broadcasts in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

SM:TV Live was a live Saturday morning entertainment show that replace the Who's That Pokémon? segment with small sketches that featured the famous English comedic duo, Ant & Dec as hosts, having their own "PokéFight" and even performed their own Pokérap.

ITV has skipped episodes or canceled airings mid-series. These are planned as the TV guides published over a week before date of transmission reflect this. It commonly happens other animated shows in the line-up such as ReBoot, Cardcaptors, Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh!.

Pokémon has been cancelled prematurely TWICE on different TV channels! Once during the Orange Islands arc, and another just after Pokémon: Advanced started. Neither series has been seen on ITV since.

CN (Cartoon Network) TOO was the channel location for the world premiere of Pokémon Chronicles. The U.K. got their English dubbed The Legend of Thunder! specials first than the U.S. by a year early.

In other EU COUNTRIES DID YOU KNOW?

In the Netherlands (Ik wil ze allemaal!), Fox Kids announced that it would stop broadcasting Pokémon on March 2001. Around 32,000 complaining children called to Fox Kids in outrage because of this, but it turned out to be an early April Fool’s joke. On April 1st, the channel announced that the 3rd season of the anime would begin airing the same day. GOT’EEM!!!

In Iceland (Þarf að fanga þá!), only the first 54 episodes of the 1st season aired. The first five movies were also dubbed. They pulled the plug on the Icelandic dub due to the lack of popularity it received in the country.

In Finland (Omakseni saan!), it was the first Nordic country to air the Pokémon anime, with Denmark, Norway and Sweden followed shortly in the spring of 2000. While it may have been the first, many episodes of the first couple of seasons in the Finnish dub were not shown (or skipped?) for unknown reasons. In fact, Advanced Challenge was the first ever season to be shown completely in the country, and moving forward after that, every season have been broadcasted entirety as well.

In Sweden (Måste fånga fler!), the Battle Frontier season broadcasted exclusively online via TV4+ and TV4′s site, as it got skipped and did not air after Advanced Battle, going directly to the Diamond & Pearl series.

In the Czech Republic (Všechny chytit máš!), Ash Ketchum’s voice actor was Radek Škvor, who was 10 years old at the time when the series first reached the country. He was same age as his assigned character! Eventually he got replaced by his older brother, Jan Škvor some time during the XY series. Ash may be 10 forever, but not the VAs.

In Belgium, the Pokémon anime is distributed in two dubbed languages: Flanders (Belgian Dutch) and Wallonia (Belgian French).

In France (Attrapez-les tous!), they had an unprecedented 2-hour special for the first four episodes of the XY series on May 1st 2015 along with a bonus special airing Mega Evolution Special I afterwards. They did ANOTHER 2-hour special on April 13th 2016 with the premier of the first four episodes of the XY&Z season. The French sure do love the Kalos region...I mean isn’t Kalos based on the country of France?

In Greece (Τα θέλω τώρα εδώ! Ta thélo̱ tóra edó̱!), the anime first aired on Star Channel until it moved to Disney XD when they acquired the rights during Diamond & Pearl. Despite this, irregular broadcasts of specials and movies still show on Star Channel, especially during holiday seasons, but the regular series airs exclusively on Disney XD.

In Italy (Acchiappali tutti!), Brock's first Italian VA was Nicola Bartolini Carrassi. Who is Nicola you ask? He is a journalist, anchor, scriptwriter, anime expert, and the man who brought the Pokémon franchise to Italy in the first place. He has been chosen by Warner Bros, 4Kids, Pokémon INC., Nintendo Games Freak and Buena Vista to become the Italian dubbed voice of Brock and he has been praised for his work, even if it was only for 2 seasons. He left the show after the Orange Islands arc.

In Poland (Czy już wszystkie masz?), when the tenth season was dubbed by a new studio, Sun Studio Polska, they decided to ignore the previous cast of the series and choose all new actors for every character. There were a lot of mixed reactions among fans to the sudden recast, but in February 2009 when DP: Battle Dimension started, most of the original cast of the Polish dub were restored.

In Portugal (Vou apanhá-los todos!), the show aired in an irregular pattern, shifting from 6am to 10am, but it always in the same programing block, named LOL@SIC. On a side note, Ash Ketchum had no less than ten different Portuguese VAs over the years. Y I K E S

In Spain (¡Hazte con todos!), Adolfo Moreno has provided the voice of Ash Ketchum in the entire anime. This is quite rare as a lot of foreign dubs, constantly change VAs for their cast, and even the English dub had to recast Ash’s voice after Battle Frontier. One exception is the 3rd Pokémon movie and the Mewtwo Returns special since it had a different VA cast. On another interesting note, there were 2 different dubs for the Pokémon anime in Spain: an Iberian Spanish dub, and a Catalan dub.

In Norway (Fanger alle nå!), the setting of the Pokémon movie Giratina and the Sky Warrior is based on Norway's nature. Three places were used as inspiration; Sognefjorden, Jostedalsbreen, and Bergen. The scene with the Glacier threatening to destroy the town was based on a little town of Geiranger, which is threatened by a collapsing mountainside in real life! Speaking of other movie trivia, the single Don't Say You Love Me, promoting the official soundtrack worldwide for Pokémon the First Movie, was performed by the Norwegian group M2M.

In Denmark (Jeg ska' fange dem!), the anime took a 3-season break from Danish TV after the episode Charizard Chiils. The series would not return until Address Unown! (with a new cast of voice actors) leaving no explanation as to why the episodes in between were never aired.

In Ireland, there is no Irish dub in the country since over 90% of people there speaks English as their primary language, and what they got was the English dub from the United States. For some reason though, two episodes from the Hoenn saga didn’t air. Specifically speaking the episodes: The Bicker the Better and Who, What, When, Where, Wynaut?.

In Slovakia, only the first four seasons of the anime have been dubbed into Slovak, nothing else after. All the English theme songs were left in their original form, untranslated, however the Pokémon movies had both their opening and ending themes Slovak dubbed.

In Albania (Duhet ti kap!), Pokémon movies were dubbed in Albanian by "Jess" Discographic. This company is recognized for providing "illegal" dubbings of other shows they have done.

In Lithuania, the Pokémon anime debuted the Lithuanian dub at Christmas Eve of 2005 on BTV. The first seven Pokémon movies, on the other hand, aired at different channels, though the dates of their original airings cannot be traced and have gone lost.

In Germany (Komm und schnapp sie dir!), one of Ash’s German VAs is named Veronika Neugebauer. She shares the same name (sort of) with Verinoca Taylor who is famous for being the original English dub voice actress for Ash. Unfortunately, Neugebauer died during the production of dubbing Diamond & Pearl, and they had to bring back the original German VA for Ash, Caroline Combrinck, who previously quit the show to study in New York City. Ash is currently voiced by, Felix Mayer, Sun & Moon. *Also I want to briefly mention one of the largest German Pokéfan sites: Filb.de. because I have been to that site a lot looking at screen-caps, and even using some of them for my posts (specifically PokéAni Highlights/Rewind). Basically the German Serebii.net!

In Croatia (Fes-te'ls tots teus!), they have dubbed a few Pokémon movies in their language, however the theme music remained in English.

In Romania (Să îi prind pe toți!), the Romanian dub has aired the first 5 seasons in the country, but everything else after that was skipped EXCEPT Diamond & Pearl (Sinnoh League Victors was SKIPPED though), and Sun & Moon which just recently debuted last month (as of this post).

In Serbia (Треба да скупиш све Treba da skupiš sve!), the only seasons to be fully dubbed in Serbian dubbed is the original series and Black & White. Advanced Challenge, and some of Pokémon Chronicles were dubbed as well. In the very few Pokémon movies they have dubbed, the opening and ending themes remained in English.

In Bulgaria (Да ги уловим! Da gi ulovim!), the anime was originally broadcasted on Nova Television, but eventually made the jump to Disney Channel Bulgaria. Some other countries air the series on Disney as well, so I guess America wasn’t the first country to make the jump, huh?

In Russia (Всех их соберём! Vsekh ikh soberyom!), after the first 104 episodes of the original series were shown, the Pokémon anime was not broadcasted in Russia for SEVEN years. Many Russian fans wrote to TV channels asking them to bring back the anime. Countless rumors of why the ORT channel pulled the anime off air included: newspapers and the yellow press pressuring the station to cancel the show for showing “offensive” content, while some say that Pokémon was “brainwashing children with subliminal stimuli”. ORT was worried about its reputation, so they stopped airing Pokémon, and that they couldn’t make an agreement on the price of licensing the anime with the Japanese creators. On September 20th 2008, the Pokémon anime made its miraculous return to Russian television via the TNT channel, where they premiered the first episode of the Diamond & Pearl series.

Source: Bulbapedia