Thread: Pikachu is ill!

Ikue Ohtani is not well, apparently, and has taken sick leave.

So... any guesses on:
1. Who will replace her for the time being?
2. When will we first see the replacement?

Ow. Any information on what is the illness she has?

I just hope the replacement doesn't screw up with Pikachu's voice. :/

If you want to find the amount of time that will pass before we hear the new voice, find out the delay between Megumi Hayashibara's maternity leave and Akiko Hiramatsu's debut as Musashi.

You know, with Pikachu, they could re-use old voice clips. If the voice is replaced, the name that keeps popping in my head is Satomi Koorogi. She's Pichu.

Aww......

I hope Ikue Ohtani gets better soon.

That sounds logical. I mean this is a Pokemon we're talking about, they can easily re-use old voice clips from the previous 400 episodes of the show in her absence.

Yeah, it would make a lot of sense to do that.

Well whatever they do, they should do it well cause wouldn't it affect the dub? (If I remember correctly, Pika's voice is one of the few retained from the Japanese episodes)

In all but one episode (they had Rachel Lillis do the replacement voice in School of Hard Knocks, because they couldn't seperate Ohtani's voice from the rest of the cast in that one).

Pikachu, to my knowledge, is undubbed the world over.

Originally Posted by Argy

If you want to find the amount of time that will pass before we hear the new voice, find out the delay between Megumi Hayashibara's maternity leave and Akiko Hiramatsu's debut as Musashi.

Three weeks from birth (June 28, 2004) to AG085 (July 15, 2004) -- however, she may have started leave a week (or more earlier). She came back in AG093 (September 9, 2004) - which seems rather short for maternity leave. My theory is that as soon as she was available, they started rerecording episodes starting from the one nearest airdate.

You know, with Pikachu, they could re-use old voice clips. If the voice is replaced, the name that keeps popping in my head is Satomi Koorogi. She's Pichu.

And Mew of Rōta, and that Mew as Pichu. And Togepi. And Hiroshi's Pikachu, Leon. The elder Pichu was Tōma Yumi, who is also Haruka's mother, Marina's Pink-chan, and Miyamoto in that drama.

Let's not forget Pikatwo, Megumi Hayashibara.

4Kids reuses Pika clips all the time and you can't tell the difference. I'm sure Japan could do the same. They have a plethora of Pika clips from the movies/eps.

How long will she be out for? A few episodes, a few months even? If it's not a serious illness then I wouldn't suspect she would be out for too long.

Pikachu only really has a vocabulary of about 15-20 different phrases. The only time any real dialogue comes in for Pikachu is in eps where it's been seperated from Ash. Unless one of those crops up in whatever space of time Ohtani is ill, I'd say they'll probably just use the clips they're bound to already have lying around.

It's a shame to hear that she's ill, here's hoping she gets better soon ^^
But in the meantime I'm sure whatever they do, whether it's using old clips or choose another VA to do Pikachu for a while, I'm sure they'll do a good job in it ^^

Yeah, they could problably actually let Ohtani go on a permanent basis and just continue to use her old voice clips while paying her royalties.

Reminds me of an eppy of the Simpsons where Homer met the voice of the Roadrunner and found out she only said the word "Beep" in one recording session.

Originally Posted by Blackjack Gabbiani

Pikachu, to my knowledge, is undubbed the world over.

Partly true. Pikachu is, as fa as I know undubbed all over the world, but it wasn´t always undubbed. The first US season of pokemon ( until "The March of the Exeggutor" I think, I´m not sure) had a dubbed Pikachu in germany. And I mean dubbed, the german voice actress replaced the japanese voice in every scene. Same with Topgepi before OI. Nintendo forced the dubbing company to remove the dub-tracks from the episodes and we got the original voice of pikachu in the re-runs.

Funny thing...in the official Club Nintendo magazine was a question from a fan why they changed the voice and their response was: " the german voice actor became ill"


mh, too much offtopic ^^;

I wonder if the current One Piece episodes will suffer the same fate and they´ll get a different chopper for a few episodes.