news roundup…

oh man – i have a few lousy days and the news just keeps flying off… ok i’m going to try and recap all of it in this news post – oh boy!

Anime News:
Febuary 5th sees the Cartoon Network in the USA premier the 13th Pokemon Movie, Zoroark: Masters of Illusions (check your local listings). One week later on Febuary 12th sees the same channel debut the latest pokemon series, Pokémon: Black & White. When announcing the new show, it announced the English names for Ash’s new companions. Iris keeps her Japanese name while Dento becomes Cilan – these names are important to the new Black/White games as both characters appear. Cilan is one of 3 possible Gym leaders at the first Gym, you’ll fight him if you start with Oshawott as your starter. Iris appears in both games, but in White version she’s the 8th Gym leader.

TCG News:
Not something i seem to post often around here, which is both a shame and something I plan to rectify in future. Following on from the next TCG set, Call of Legends, out on Febuary 9th – The first set to be based on Black and White will be released in April. This is a month earlier than the usual schedule the TCG sets get released, so whether the second B/W set will be released a month earlier or whether there will be a month longer gap is currently unknown – we’ll let you know all we can when we can.

Game News:
Ok, here’s the bulk of the news and we’ve got a lot to get through. First up, Victini, while keeping its Japanese name, has been announced for distrabution outside of Japan. While announced for the UK specifically, the info will most likely apply to the US as well. The Liberty Pass is an item allowed to catch a boat from Castelia City to Liberty Island where you’ll fight a couple of Team Plazma members before having a chance to fight and capture Victini. This item is set to be downloaded via Wi-Fi between March 4th and April 22nd

The Pokemon Company International has announced details on how the Global Link will work outside of Japan. Featuring the same features the Japanese version uses, Global Battle Union (keeps track of your online Battle stats), Global Trade Station (similar to the old GTS site) and the Dream World (allowing you to play with your pokemon away from the game, obtain berries and pokemon with abilities unobtainable via any other method). The Gloabll Link will be accessed using Pokemon Trainer Club Accounts, the account system used at Pokémon.com (which recenly launched reigon variation sites, so now pokemon.com is the official site of not only america, but the UK, Australia and other european countries). If you dont have a Trainer Club account yet – you might want to pop along to pokemon.com to get one now in preperation. We’ll let you know when the Global Link site launches for USA/Europe

Right – last thing, i hope, is that IGN has once again annouced some more pokemon names. All of these names apeared on the leaked list that appeared a few weeks ago – i will be updating the unova dex we have on this site will be updated with these names over the weekend. For now, here’s the new pokemon (with sprites, not sugimori artwork, i dont have time to upload the cooler artwork)

the first 2 pokemon they announced were Pansage, the grass elemental monkey who’s name was revealed on the back of the B/W box art already, and Victini, who’s name was confirmed in the Wi-Fi event above. They did annouce the english name for Pansage’s attack that can hit anybody on the opposing team in a 3v3 match regardless of where Pansage is placed. The attack is called Acrobatics. Meanwhile, Victini’s ability ‘Victory Star’ keeps its Japanese name.

Shikijinka:

Deerling is a pokemon who changes his image depending on the season. it’s herbivore ability is now called Sap Sipper

Basuro:

Basculin has 2 different looks, depending on the version your playing, one type is very common while the other is very rare

Swanna:

Swanna keeps its Japanese name. it’s Gale attack is now called Hurricane

Miruhoggu:

Watchog is the evolved form of Patrat.

IGN also featured Alomomola and Sewaddle as well.

That’s it for the news for now – hopefully we’ll bring you more news as soon as we learn of it.

New Pokémon tentatively announced

A few days ago an image was leaked on a Japanese imageboard purporting to be from a developmental sheet for the Pokémon anime. What is interesting is that this image, while small and blurry, seems to show off 4 new Pokémon including evolutions for two of the starters.

As ‘new Pokémon’ scans always pop up during development of a new Pokémon generation this was not paid much heed until recently when the new girl from the character sheet appeared in silhouette form at the end of the trailer for the new Pokémon anime series, ‘Pocket Monsters Best Wishes’ which was shown after a trailer for the new movie in Japan after this week’s latest Pokémon anime episode.

This isn’t confirmed news by any means but the consistency of the girl lends it credence. Since the sheet is so small it’s hard to clearly see what the names of the new Pokémon are – the best guess given is that the Pokémon to the left of Jesse’s head is コロモリ (Koromori). With such tiny text it’s really anyone’s guess until more information is revealed and we can say for sure whether this is real or not.

CoroCoro Leaked With Black and White Starters

Edit 13 May: confirmed info at bottom of post

Ok, before I start I just want to post something I thought I updated in the last news post on the anime show. Shortly after that post, tv guides from America named the new series of the DP saga as ‘Pokémon Diamond and Pearl: Sinnoh League Victors’ which also indicates it will finish the Sinnoh saga off. That begins airing in the USA on 22nd May on Cartoon Network. Meanwhile, in the UK, Disney XD has began advertising last weekend that they will be showing the 12th Movie, Arceus and the Jewel of Life on Friday 28th May, which is the Friday before the Bank Holiday. Right, with that out of the way, onto the news you’re probably here for.

Leaked scans of this months CoroCoro magazine are now emerging from Japan. They show the new starters for the game, which look a little weird (although I thought that about the 4th gen starters when I saw them first).

As you can see, I guessed the grass and fire starters the wrong way round. The fire starter looks like a rabbit crossed with a pig and the water one looks like abit like a sea otter or beaver (or a combo of the two), while the grass one is a bit lizard like.

Also revealed so far is that the new region will be called Isshu – which is further away than any other region so far (based on America maybe?). There’s artwork of a port city from the region (the same one from the footage from a few weeks ago by the looks of it). There is also artwork of the new trainers, and it says that they are older than the trainers have been in the past.

If you look closely at the wrists of the two new trainers, it looks like they’re wearing the new Poketch/Pokegear/Pokewhatever – also, am i the only one thinking the Female trainer is wearing some Latios inspired shorts?

The starters names have yet to be confirmed, and we won’t post them here until we can confirm them. We are also waiting on other info we expect from this months CoroCoro, such as how Zorua evolves into Zoroark.

We’ll edit this topic with new info and scans when they become available and confirmed to be legit. In the meantime, you can discuss anything about the new info in either the comments here or in This Topic on the forums.

Edit 13th May

We’ve finally got some new scans with some confirmed info. We’ll bring you the scans a little later, for now here’s what we know. The port city shown in the scan above is called Hiun City, there’s a massive 2 page artwork in CoroCoro on the city as well, which we’ve got below (sorry if they dont display side by side, this blog doesnt let me do that often for some reason).

The starters are have names and are: Tsutaaja, The Grass Snake Pokemon; Pokabu, The Fire Pig Pokemon and Mijumaru, the Sea Otter Pokemon. They will have the same abilities all other starters have had (Overgrow, Blaze and Torrent). Tsutaaja is listed as it is 0.6 m tall (2 ft) and it weighs 8.1 kg (about 17.9 lbs). Pokabu’s stats are 0.6 m tall (2 ft) while it weighs 9.9 kg (about 21.9 lbs). Mijumaru is 0.5 m tall (1.6 ft) and it weighs 5.9 kg (13 lbs). Interesting Side Note, Assuming that the starters and thier evolutions will be the next 9 Pokemon in the national dex after Arceus, Mijumaru will be number 500 in the national dex.

More details on Zoroark has also been revealed in the scans. Zoroark is catchable by an event unlocked with the shiny dogs given away for the 13th movie pre-order (although its unknown if just one is needed or all 3). It will be level 25. As you fight it, its New abilitiy kicks in. Called Illusion, it lets it apear as other Pokemon (how it works in battle and how it differs from the move Transform are unknown at this point). Only when Zoroark apears as itself will it be catchable. It’s unkown if it will be obtainable in any other way yet. Zoroark also has 2 new moves, Trickery, which the amount of damage given to the opponent depends on the opponents stats and Claw Sharpen, which will raise both attack and accuracy, a deadly combination. Zorua is also known to have the Illusion ability.

Here’s the rest of the scans, starting with Hiun City, then a page with some shots of Zoroark using his transform ability to change into an Entai, and then the 3 Profiles of the new starters

Dont forget, you can discuss your thoughts, ideas or theories on this news or anything to do with the new games either in the comments or in This Topic on the forums. We’ll bring you more news when we know it, or edit this if any more infor from CoroCoro is made known

Pokémon DP: Galactic Battles to air in UK

Sorry, I found out about this over the weekend but I wanted to wait until I had an exact time and date before I posted. I know it’s been a slow news time, of course everytime I say that some big news seems to pop up in the next couple of days… well it could happen.

The latest (dubbed) adventures of Ash, Pikachu and the gang is finally going to be aired in the UK. The DP series, Galactic Battles will beging showing on Disney XD from May. It was half expected that the channel would be airing this series at somepoint, as it currently airs the Battle Dimensions series (the one directly before it). However, the channel rebranded from Jetix to Disney XD since it took the rights for Battle Dimensions from Cartoon Network (and has the rights for the 10th and 11th pokemon movies, which have been shown since becoming Disney XD), it was unknown if the rebranding would mean that they wouldnt pick up the rights to show the latest series. Thankfully it would now seem this is not the case. With this, there is a greater hope that the channel will be showing Movie 12, Arceus and the Jewel of Life at some point in the future.

Starting with an episode dedicated to Rotom first shown in May last year in the USA, The series continues Ash and Pikachu’s journey across Sinnoh with Dawn and Brock, including getting new Pokémon, Defeating Gym Leaders and New Contests for Dawn to take part in. Hopefully there will be no breaks in the series as it airs on Disney XD as not only is this starting a year behind the USA, the Galactic Battles Series should be nearing an end over there before starting a yet unammed last DP series, while the Diamond and Pearl saga in Japan is aproaching its own end, with a brand new saga (most likely based on Black and White) will be starting in the Fall of this year.

Pokémon DP: Galactic Battles will beging with ‘Get your Rotom Running’ on (bank Holiday) Monday May 3rd at 3.30pm, with new episodes every weekday at 3.30pm (until Disney XD deside to change the schedule or thier minds on the new episodes bit… its a bit less predictable on that kind of thing with these digital channels)

It’s all we’ve got news wise for now, we’ll try to bring you more as soon as possible

Ruler of Illusions: Zoroark theme song announced

Japanese website Oricon Style has recently announced details regarding the theme song for the 13th Pokémon movie, Ruler of Illusions: Zoroark, starring so far the only known Pokémon from the 5th generation.

Ruler of Illusions Zoroark movie poster

The theme song is called “Ice Cream Syndrome” and will be performed by Sukima Switch , a jazz fusion duo. The song has been described as a “medium-tempo love song” and it has been said the lyrics are supposed to express sad feelings.

Japanese duo Sukima Switch

We’ll let you know more as it develops.

Just A Quick Update

Sorry about the lack of updates recently around the site. Along with the lack of news in relation to Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver, we’ve been busy behind the scenes working on our upcoming Pokédex. Details on that later…

First up, this year’s Pikachu Short Movie has been announced. Pikachu’s Great Sparking Search will be aired on ANA flights during August, and will likely end up on the 12^th Movie’s DVD when that is eventually released. This short features Pikachu and Piplup getting separated from the gang and bumping into a Smoochum and a Notched Eared Pichu who are fighting over a gift that has disappeared. The search is on for the missing present.

We’ve also got a few Anime episode titles. In Japan, after Ash and Paul battle it out, the gang stick around Lake Aucity and meet Uxie. Title for episode 601 is Yukishii’s Shadow and will air June 25^th. (Yukishii is Uxie’s Japanese name, in case you didn’t know).

In the US, Pokemon D/P: Galactic Battles ticks on with titles for episodes 5 and 6 announced.

Episode 5: Leading A Stray airs on June 6^th where Ash and co find a Wailmer trapped in the sewers of Canalave City.

Episode 6: Steeling Piece of Mind! airs on June 13^th and finds the gang on Iron Island where, along with Riley and Barry they discover a Team Galactic plot involving all the steel Pokemon there.

Lastly, we know that Australia will also be getting the Secret Key for Rotom’s extra forms over wi-fi at the same time as Europe will be (June 8^th-July 19^th) along with a physical Nintendo tour hitting Target and Toys R Us stores between June 25^th and July 8^th. Check the Australian Pokemon Site for further details.

And that’s a quick round up of what we haven’t updated with in the last few days. Nintendo’s E3 Conference is tomorrow, its highly unlikely Pokemon HG/SS will appear, but you never know – we’ll bring you any Pokemon related E3 news ASAP

Pokemon 11 Movie UK Air Date

The 11th Pokemon Movie: Giratina and the Sky Warrior is scheduled to air on the UK channel Jetix on Saturday May 23rd at 9am, probably to celebrate the release of Pokemon Platinum on Friday. The movie features Ash, Pikachu and traveling companions coming across a Shaymin on thier travels after it gets in the middle of a battle between Giratina and Dialga. During the movie, Ash and friends end up in the reverse world that Giratina inhabits in its Origine Form. But while Giratina want’s Shaymin for its own purposes, there is somebody out there who wants the power Giratina posseses and will do anything to take it. During the course of the movie, Shaymin also changes to its Sky Forme.

The movie will be repeated on Sunday at 12.30pm, after a showing of the 10th Movie: The Rise of Darkrai at 10.30am, the events in that moive influence the events that take place in the 11th movie.

In other Anime news, in a few weeks time Pokemon will air its 600th episode in Japan. To celebrate, the 599 and 600 will be a two part massive battle between Ash (or Satoshi as he’s known in Japan) and his main Sinnoh rival Paul(known better as Shinji in Japan), the episodes are entitled ‘Full Batte! Shinji Vs Satoshi (Part One)’ and ‘Full Batte! Shinji Vs Satoshi (Part Two)’ and will air on the 11th and 18th of June respectivly.

More when we learn it

The Pika Club

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