Покемон (Russian)

Produced in, by Pilot Studio, the dub first aired on Channel One (previously known as "ORT") in  on December 18, 2000, lasting until August 2001, leaving only the original series to be dubbed for seven years. It has also aired on PBK in and Inter in.

Cast

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History
The was originally brought to Russia by Sargona Ltd., which sold English-language cards from the Pokémon Trading Card Game. The anime was first shown on ORT (now known as Channel One), which is the main television station in Russia.

The rights to the series were purchased in early 2000 and episodes began to appear by December of the same year. The Russian translation of the anime, which was conducted by the Kievian Pilot Studio, is based on the English dub. The Russian version of the anime retains all of the English character names to match the Pokémon TCG cards that had been already released.

While the translation quality of the Russian dub is considered to be high by most fans, a few changes had been made. For example, some locations had slightly different names, such as Dark City being retitled Мрачный Город (Gloomy City). However, the lyrics to the Pokémon Theme were later retranslated and used in the last episodes of Indigo League. Any episodes of the anime which were banned in the United States were also banned in Russia.

In an interview with Afisha magazine, the management director of children's programming on ORT, Sergey Suponev, assured viewers in the harmlessness of Pokémon:
 * «Our plan to broadcast this show can be called madness by someone. There was a lot of noise around this series all over the world. In fact, it is a pretty harmless thing. A sweet story about a boy who saves animals and teaches them to fight for justice. And there are bad guys who want to send them to the zoo for lots of money - that's all there is to be scandalous.»

Within a day of the anime's television premiere, the management of public relations of ORT had invited journalists and children from an Otradnoye shelter to a Rolan cinema for a presentation of the series. The children received the presentation well, and then took a quiz organized by ORT.

From December 18, 2000 to January 25, 2001, the anime was broadcasted by ORT. In February 5, 2001 they began to show the series again until August 2001. The last episode to air on ORT was Charizard Chills. 104 episodes of the original series were shown.

After this, the Pokémon anime was not aired in Russia for seven years, when TNT would air a dub of Diamond and Pearl in 2008. Many fans prior to this wrote to TV channels asking them to air the anime, but the only appearance of Pokémon on Russian TV was the airing of The Power of One and Pokémon 4Ever on ORT at 6:00 am.