# First Things First... **Don't @ me. I got enough id over Dragon Ball Z, I don't need that again.** # Language Everything here has audio in English only. Yes, even if the title cards suggest otherwise. Some of the theatrical shorts have their endings (and in the case of 3, the opening) restored; necessarily these are still in Japanese. I had considered adding subtitles, but the ending of "Pikachu's Vacation" was giving me grief. # General Notes To avoid this release going on until the end of eternity, I stopped at the point where the 25-year-long Ash Ketchum saga was finally brought to a close. Quality variation is bound to happen any time a show runs for a quarter-century! I have attempted to present these episodes, specials, movies, etc. as well as I can, but there are many considerations. The episode order is not quite that of US airing, or of US home video, but an attempt to iron out at least some of the differences between US airing order and Japanese airing order. Most, but not all, of these episodes are multiply sourced, and may contain differences from the standard versions. This may be a result of any of the following: * De-editing against a Japanese master * Custom visual edits to replace Japanese text with English text * Removal of Harding edits (Porygon-related revisions) * Restoration of deleted footage * Relocation of eyecatches * Two different English masters Additionally, the episodes "Fire and Ice" and "The Mandarin Island Miss Match" contain footage taken from Australian DVDs which is missing from US DVDs, and several episodes of Master Quest contain footage from two different edits of the English dub before conformation to the Japanese version. In some cases, segments originally removed from episodes have been reinstated. *Please do not use these encodes as a reference to compare the English dub to the original Japanese version.* (Also, sorry about the title card on Legend of Thunder.) # Sources As far as I can remember, since this release took many years to put together, here is a list of different sources used for this release: * US BluRay * US DVD * UK DVD * French DVD * Australian DVD * German BluRay * Japanese BluRay * Australian BluRay * US, UK, Japanese, Korean, German and possibly other WEBDL * Japanese VHS * US analog TV capture via VHS and DVD * US and Japanese HDTV * Tape copies of digital masters acquired and ripped by drfsupercenter Some videos outside of the main episodes may have Japanese titles and credits, or credits for a non-English dub. The massive amount of typos in the movie 1 credits was the fault of whoever retyped them for the BluRay release. # Bonus features Besides episodes and spinoffs, the following bonus features are included: * Music videos for "Don't Say You Love Me" by M2M (from movie 1) and "Chiisakimono" by Asuka Hayashi (from movie 6); both available on the US DVD releases * Pokémon Karaokémon without onscreen text * Full Pokérap and GS Pokérap * Selection of opening and ending themes without credits * The Mystery Dungeon specials * Several Pokémon original net animations from the time period Some of these special features and in-episode segments had to be reconstructed. ## On Incomplete Bonus Content Openings past 10 contain English credits. As such, they would need to be reconstructed to be presented textless. In some cases a reconstruction was either not possible or only possible with great difficulty (11, 15-16, 26). Endings prior to 9 were simply the opening cut down and put in a box with the credits on the side, and from 9-19 were just black screens. The "Sun & Moon" endings have been included from DVD source but there is no attempt to reconstruct the endings from later seasons. Only movie openings or endings available textless on Japanese home video have been so included here (but with the English audio). ## On the Full Pokérap The male and female signs were added to Nidoran. Some other editing errors have also been fixed, usually from later airing masters. ## On the GS Pokérap This is the early unfinished video. A later more polished version exists but we were unable to find it in usable quality. # Resolution Notes Anything in standard definition is presented in 640x480, and anything in high definition is presented in 1920x1080, with exceptions made when aspect ratio requires. Movie 3 and parts of movie 2 have been upscaled from 720p masters due to issues with the 1080p masters. Parts of the movie 3 short have been upscaled from DVD. Some of the Japanese TV sources may have been horizontally compressed (1440x1080), and have been expanded to 1920x1080. # Audio Notes As far as possible, all files contain stereo (2 channel) sound. Where any re-encoding has been done, `fdkaac` has been used, and the bitrate is 128 kbps (192 if from lossless source). Amazon's higher bitrate EAC3 audio has been retained where reasonable. # Subtitles? There are no subtitles, except where some episodes may (inconsistently) have closed captions transferred from source WEBDLs, or: * The Pokémon-only scenes in "Island of the Giant Pokémon". These are 4KIDS' doing. * The Japanese part of the ending theme from "Jirachi Wish-Maker". This translation was done by bluesun for an unrelated Some-Stuffs release and was used with his permission. * The music video for the ending theme from "Jirachi Wish-Maker" (this is only in Japanese). See above. This contains text-based player-generated subtitles. # Credits and Acknowledgements Video editing and encoding (where applicable) by WinxBloom1980 for ColdFusion. Some sources provided by drfsupercenter, shirt, Puto, ABYSS, Akai-Shuichi, junh1024, and others I've no doubt forgotten. Thanks to FMA1394 for holding onto so much content for so long. "Distant Blue Sky" and "The Arceus Chronicles" derive most of their video from the Some-Stuffs fansub. (The subtitles were not used.) "Chiisakimono" translation by bluesun for Some-Stuffs used by permission.