I was recently re-watching the old Pokemon episodes for old times sake (I have most of the first season episodes on DVD, and Cartoon Network currently has some of the early second dubbing season episodes on demand; they even had the infamous "Holiday Hi-Jinx" up for a while), and I remember noticing something regarding Ash's Pokedex.
In "Who Gets to Keep Togepi," when Professor Oak contacts Ash to have his Pokedex upgraded, he mentioned one of the features of the upgrade was a new voice. As a result, after the upgrade, the Pokedex voice changed from its classic voice to sounding more like the Johto version (with a more nasally sound and a different kind of reverb effect resulting in a more cleaner sound.) Though it took a couple of episodes for the voice to fully develop (it wasn't until the start of the second dubbing season, with "Riddle Me This" that the voice was perfected.)
I don't know why they did the voice upgrade thing. Was this exclusive to the dub only? Or did something similar happen in the original Japanese version? Was the old voice-modulator effect not good enough? Most sources say Eric Stuart voiced Dexter since day one, although there are rumors that Ted Lewis initially voiced Dexter, but then Eric Stuart took over, hence the reason for the voice upgrade (maybe Ted Lewis was also busy with other things at the time so he couldn't always voice Dexter, at least until they introduced Tracey!)
Sometimes I may wonder if the voice change was necessary (it makes sense for the Johto Pokedex, but it does sound a tad unusual hearing it come out of the old Kanto version.)
Any comments?
In "Who Gets to Keep Togepi," when Professor Oak contacts Ash to have his Pokedex upgraded, he mentioned one of the features of the upgrade was a new voice. As a result, after the upgrade, the Pokedex voice changed from its classic voice to sounding more like the Johto version (with a more nasally sound and a different kind of reverb effect resulting in a more cleaner sound.) Though it took a couple of episodes for the voice to fully develop (it wasn't until the start of the second dubbing season, with "Riddle Me This" that the voice was perfected.)
I don't know why they did the voice upgrade thing. Was this exclusive to the dub only? Or did something similar happen in the original Japanese version? Was the old voice-modulator effect not good enough? Most sources say Eric Stuart voiced Dexter since day one, although there are rumors that Ted Lewis initially voiced Dexter, but then Eric Stuart took over, hence the reason for the voice upgrade (maybe Ted Lewis was also busy with other things at the time so he couldn't always voice Dexter, at least until they introduced Tracey!)
Sometimes I may wonder if the voice change was necessary (it makes sense for the Johto Pokedex, but it does sound a tad unusual hearing it come out of the old Kanto version.)
Any comments?
