Animated Television Theme Songs and Redux

For many people, the things they remember most are what they've consumed in the media that was accessible to them as kids. For many people in this age (90's kids), what is remembered greatly are the TV shows and their theme songs for cable channels like Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, etc. I watched a lot of action cartoons and Japanese animation that has been dubbed into English. The biggest cartoon I remember from my childhood would definitely be the Pokemon anime series.

Pokemon is one of the biggest franchises from Nintendo, only being second to the Mario game franchise. Pokemon has not only succeeded as its original video game content (spanning 6 generation of games), it has also gone well in its animated television series with its many animated films, a separate animated four part movie, the comic series that have spun off of the video games and the anime, trading card games, and what is going to be examined by this post: its music.

Let's face it, if you were from the 90s and you watched KidsWB, you knew the first Pokemon theme song released in the English dubbed version of the show. But what's not to like about a song that is telling you to "be the very best" at what you dream of? It presents a challenge to the main character whose aim is to catch all of the Pokemon in the world (at the time, there were only 150...151...152? Little weird with everyone saying there is 150, but one Pokemon is numbered after a Pokemon that was created based off that one... and then a character gets a Pokemon that doesn't appear in the first games...). "Gotta catch 'em all" is the main phrase for the Pokemon games and while the kids are playing on their Gameboys Pokemon Red or Green/Blue, they're watching someone going through the different situations on the journey with obstacles that can come up, but were not programmed into the games. And let's face it, the tune is just way to catchy that even in adulthood, you have people who still remember all the lyrics to the song.

It's probably because of this nostalgia factor that made the producers decide that six generations later (over 10 years later), they would bring the song back in a new remixed way. The Pokemon count is now 718 (well... 721 after the announcement of 3 more Pokemon), and after dropping the catch phrase during the third generation games of Ruby and Sapphire, they're bringing it back in this new and improved season of Pokemon. While it is a more rock-ish, shorter version of the original song we all love, it still keeps the qualities of the lyrics. Because our Pokemon are our "best friends, in a world we must defend"!

There's been a bit of back lash though on the new remake. There will always be fans who enjoy original content over remakes and reboots. Pokemon is in that place where people will argue that the song is too different (there's one line that has "Oh" and the remake has the word "Yeah!" replacing it). It's not just the song that is in this position, many people (genwunners) prefer the first games to the newer games that are coming out. While everyone cannot be pleased with the nostalgia factor that producers tried to bring back with this song, I enjoyed it fairly well. I thought it was well done and still catchy. Compared to other songs used in recent seasons, it is definitely setting a better mood for the show versus some of the other songs. Although, I must say I prefer the Japanese original opening credits to the English dubbed opening credits for this season of Pokemon.

Here are the two different songs:

Original

The Remake

And... just to be fun, here's the Japanese opening for the current season. Just to show how different theme songs are when they are brought to different countries and altered to match the culture of that country:

And for those of you who haven't watched the show since you were a kid, how different those the animation style feel to you in this video? There were a lot of animation changes the show goes through in the last decade the show's been out.