Digimon Frontier Episode 5: Thunder Power That Shakes the Ground: Blitzmon | Sub/Dub Comparison

Plot: The group finds a wind factory and decides to stop there to see if they can get something to eat, but Junpei is hesitant of a possibly dangerous area. When he finds out that the Kokuwamon, seemingly workers of the factory, are actually slaves there, Takuya urges them to fight back and regain their freedom. With Tomoki and Izumi agreeing to the plan, the Kokuwamon decide to fight back as well, but Junpei refuses since his lack of a spirit makes him feel unable to help and fearful of what might happen if he does. Can Takuya, Izumi, and Tomoki free the Kokuwamon on their own? Or will Junpei face his fears and join the fight?

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I thought I was done with notes about the recap, but there’s something that needs to be addressed in the dub.

Narrator Rika: “When the Mushroomon Digivolved into Woodmon, Zoe Spirit Evolved into Kazemon!” No, she Evolved before they Digivolved. In fact, it was due to her Spirit Evolution fighting them that made them Digivolve in the first place.

“But when the butterfly blew it, Lobomon showed up and knocked the sap out of him!”

Wow, even Saban realizes how friggin’ lame the previous episode made Kazemon look. They even straight up insult her. “Zoe tried to do something useful, but she sucked, and Koji had to take over and kick ass!” I was finally over the crap fest that was her Spirit Evolution episode, and the recap just punched me in the face with it.

Title Change: Thunder Power That Shakes the Ground: Blitzmon is changed to Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beetlemon!…..What is up with the dub name? Just ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beetlemon’? I know this is literally his introduction, but that’s really lazy. And why is he a ‘The’?

Name Change: Blitzmon is changed to Beetlemon. The original’s name is 100x better….

Hey Takuya, know what’s good to have in a dust storm? Goggles……Real handy….If only….they were right…on your head…..

The Japanese text on the sign is changed.

Subbed:

Dubbed:

Kokuwamon’s Index Screen is changed to English.

Attack Name Change: Scissors Arm Mini is changed to Power Surge.

Junpei doesn’t call Takuya “Tacky.” Also, given proper pronunciations, that nickname should be ‘Tah-key’

Goblimon’s Index Screen is changed to English.

Attack Name Change: Nitpicky, but Gobli Strike is changed to GobliN strike.

For some reason, the dub repeats the flashes of light that are seemingly coming from a bunch of Kokuwamon being tortured, both before JP comes out of the bathroom and after he leaves….way to go Saban, extend those off-screen torture scenes. Ya know, for the kids.

The kids wonder if the high-tech super machine is a weapon of some kind. The dub omits this and does its best to trash-talk the machine as much as possible.

A clock wipe transition is removed due to the commercial break in the dub.

They removed ‘Super’ from one of the batteries, I assume to avoid brand names or something.

Subbed:

Dubbed:

They freeze Tommy’s mouth somehow during the panning shot after we see the electronics and batteries on the plate in order to let Zoe talk instead of giving him his line.

Minomon originally offers them bamboo instead of what they’re eating. In the dub, he offers them a AA pie.

They add a wipe transition after this.

One of the Kokuwamon says “Hello, brother!” to Tomoki and Junpei and then they look at each other. In the dub, he calls them funny-looking, and the Kokuwamon laugh.

The elder Kokuwamon basically says that they’ve lost everything and that their current situation is bad. In the dub, he talks in a riddle and Zoe says she doesn’t understand.

They removed the Goblimon shooting the Kokuwamon out of the trees.

Tommy: “Man, that just blows.” Blows – yet another word I never thought I’d hear in Digimon, especially not from Tommy of all people.

The Kokuwamon emit electricity just by default. In the dub, they emit electricity when scared.

Additionally, the original notes that they emit 100 volts per week. The dub says 1 million. Also, 100 volts is actually piss poor for a whole week of generation.

They repeat the shot of a Kokuwamon talking, causing a reverse pan…..simply to make a joke about his pants…..when he has none….Comedy gold, Saban.

Minomon rushes to the camera at the end of the shot. In the dub, he repels back up…..I dunno.

Eyecatch:

Takuya originally says that Izumi is meant to lure the Goblimon away. She says she understands. In the dub he says “If you think you can handle it.” Considering last episode, no, she probably can’t. Thanks for degrading her unnecessarily, though.

They shove in a recycled shot of Takuya activating his spirit from the first episode before the three-way Spirit Evolution. Guess we needed to remember that he’s the most important.

After he finishes Spirit Evolving, they add another recycled clip from episode one of Agunimon yelling. They also shave off the very start of Zoe’s Spirit Evolution yet include a longer shot that wasn’t included in the original. Same for Tommy.

So yeah, despite the dub giving Zoe and Tommy technically longer Spirit Evolution scenes, they still added in those shots of Takuya and Agunimon seemingly just to give him more spotlight as leader.

Snimon’s Index Screen is changed to English.

Fairymon’s great show of skill today? She gets hit by the Goblimon and runs away…..It’s sad when I can say the most badass thing she’s done is destroy an alarm.

Attack Name Change: Fire Darts is changed to Pyro darts.

They repeat the scene of Takuya using his Pyro Darts….Does this episode really need padding for some reason?

Snimon: “Dance while you can, Monkey Boy.” How does that taunt make sense when he change into a beetle?

Snimon: “Soon you will taste the fury of Snimon!”

Beetlemon: “The only thing I want to taste is a cheeseburger with a side of fries!” ….Zing?

Also, goddammit, you’ve been doing well this episode not making references to food every five seconds, and now you ruin it at the worst time.

Attack Name Change: Golden Thunder is changed to Thunder Fist. I like the original’s better.

Blitzmon says for Snimon’s evil to be purified by his thunder. Beetlemon says it will now be used for good. Same meaning, but the uniqueness is gone.

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So yeah this episode was exactly how I predicted. It was much better than Fairymon’s Evolution episode, and it was actually the best Evolution episode so far. I’d even go say it’s the best episode we’ve had so far period.

Here’s the thing about this episode. The dub really loses a lot of the main message, which is a decent character development point for Junpei. In the original, Junpei is scared, more than he usually is, of possibly dangerous places and taking risks because he can’t Spirit Evolve like his friends. The others have slowly begun to be more confident and have been taking more risks because they keep gaining more firepower.

At the start, they had nothing and had to be very careful of what they did and where they went. However, they soon got Agnimon, Wolfmon (sometimes) and then Chakmon and now Fairymon (Eh) to help them out in times of peril. Junpei, however, still had nothing, and he also wasn’t able to do anything to help Fairymon in the previous episode. He doesn’t feel like he can quite trust his friends to protect him and cannot defend himself. He has to deal with the fear and become brave on his own without the help of a spirit.

In the dub, it’s just a bunch of “I hate being the only one without a spirit, waaaahhhh. Having a spirit is cool, waaahhh. I wanna be cool waaaahhh.” Yeah, he mutters stuff like saying he’s useless and whatnot, but for the most part all he does is harp on his spirit deficiency in the dub.

This is shown pretty clearly in the shot where Agunimon, Kazemon, Kumamon and the Kokuwamon are overlayed on Junpei. In the original, all of them are talking about braving your fears together and going off to fight for what’s right. In the dub, JP talks about how Agunimon has awesome fire power, Zoe can fly all around, and Tommy can freeze things. He’s moping about how cool everyone is as a Digimon and not thinking about his own personal fears of this world now that he’s the only one without a spirit.

In the end, he comes out looking pretty good especially since he doesn’t showboat and gloat that he saved the day after the battle was won. He even got the final battle by himself against the main enemy. Agnimon couldn’t even beat him. Yeah, our magical girl leader Takuya couldn’t handle Snimon while Junpei could. So the spotlight was never taken away from him by Agnimon or Wolfmon like it was with Tomoki and Izumi. He had tons of focus and quite a bit of development, and his debut as Blitzmon was pretty awesome and well done, albeit predictable.

I like how the crux of him getting his spirit was braving the warzone and doing something as merely Junpei instead of handing him his spirit just by going ‘oh I wish I could evolve and help.’ (Or something stupid like….I dunno…showing concern over someone who tripped….) It showed that he was brave enough to tackle this frightening and challenging situation on his own as a mere human in order to help his friends and the Digimon. I actually gained a bit of respect for the guy.

Next episode, Koji joins up with the group to help some Numemon and fight a frightening new enemy. One who can Spirit Evolve?

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