Pokemon Tales #20
Hey all! I'm here to bring up a topic about a piece of merchandise that may or may not exist.
kidgengar and I have been trying to search around for the past two days to find information on.....
You guessed it! I've noticed after awhile that there's conflicting information about the release too.
-it shares the same Tales # as Onix Underground
-On Amazon, it uses this stock art instead of Onix Underground
-Most the information about this book came from https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/PB45
-On the wayback machine, Onix Underground is being sold on Viz's store(http://store.viz.com:80/products.asp?dept=169&pagenumber=2 paste it on the wayback machine to see for yourself.)
-Any information about both Onix Underground and Gengar's Shadow gives the same ISBN:156931571X
-Kidgengar noticed that there's also conflicting release dates for both of these books. Onix Underground was slated for June 2001 and Gengar's Shadow was July 2001?
-To add onto the last statement Kidgengar's mewtwo book lists Onix's release date and not Gengar
(Yikes they misspelled Onix too. >_>)
-There are some listings out there that actually credit Aya Kusube as the writer and illustrator and he only wrote Little Ghost (The haunter story), Mewtwo Watching You and Gengar. Aya Kusube did NOT write or illustrate Onix Underground.
-Kid found someone's collection of all the english release of the Tales.
http://piplups.weebly.com/pokemon-tales.html
Guess what? No Gengar! :(
So that leaves us the question... does it really exist?
-A banned comm member claimed to own it but its been almost 8 years and I'm convinced they lied about having it in their collection.
-My amazing friends in the pkmncollectors discord believes the story was too dark for children anyway, thus, it never got a translation release.
-Kidgengar's friends thinks its an error or misprint on Viz's behalf.
-It could be a photoshopped hoax, but why? Who would want to photoshop this and make all these sites believe its real? Who made the photoshop??
That being said, Kidgengar got in touch with librarians that possibly had Onix in their public libraries and they seemed pretty intrigued about the whole ordeal as well.
I also tried to reach out to William Flanagan on twitter, who seemed to be the translator of most the tales books, but I've yet to hear anything back; he's not used twitter since late '17.
My final opinion, for now, is that this book doesn't exist at all. Unless anyone comes forward with proof, and it can't be just a picture of a scanned cover, I would probably shake your hands and give you hugs lol.
Well, what's your opinion on the existence of this book? I would love to know!
Thanks so much to the pkmncollectors discord members and a big thanks again to kidgengar on helping me push the research onward. (If I've left anything out, plz lmk, or if you have info to add!)
Thanks for reading!!
kidgengar and I have been trying to search around for the past two days to find information on.....
You guessed it! I've noticed after awhile that there's conflicting information about the release too.
-it shares the same Tales # as Onix Underground
-On Amazon, it uses this stock art instead of Onix Underground
-Most the information about this book came from https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/PB45
-On the wayback machine, Onix Underground is being sold on Viz's store(http://store.viz.com:80/products.asp?dept=169&pagenumber=2 paste it on the wayback machine to see for yourself.)
-Any information about both Onix Underground and Gengar's Shadow gives the same ISBN:156931571X
-Kidgengar noticed that there's also conflicting release dates for both of these books. Onix Underground was slated for June 2001 and Gengar's Shadow was July 2001?
-To add onto the last statement Kidgengar's mewtwo book lists Onix's release date and not Gengar
(Yikes they misspelled Onix too. >_>)
-There are some listings out there that actually credit Aya Kusube as the writer and illustrator and he only wrote Little Ghost (The haunter story), Mewtwo Watching You and Gengar. Aya Kusube did NOT write or illustrate Onix Underground.
-Kid found someone's collection of all the english release of the Tales.
http://piplups.weebly.com/pokemon-tales.html
Guess what? No Gengar! :(
So that leaves us the question... does it really exist?
-A banned comm member claimed to own it but its been almost 8 years and I'm convinced they lied about having it in their collection.
-My amazing friends in the pkmncollectors discord believes the story was too dark for children anyway, thus, it never got a translation release.
-Kidgengar's friends thinks its an error or misprint on Viz's behalf.
-It could be a photoshopped hoax, but why? Who would want to photoshop this and make all these sites believe its real? Who made the photoshop??
That being said, Kidgengar got in touch with librarians that possibly had Onix in their public libraries and they seemed pretty intrigued about the whole ordeal as well.
I also tried to reach out to William Flanagan on twitter, who seemed to be the translator of most the tales books, but I've yet to hear anything back; he's not used twitter since late '17.
My final opinion, for now, is that this book doesn't exist at all. Unless anyone comes forward with proof, and it can't be just a picture of a scanned cover, I would probably shake your hands and give you hugs lol.
Well, what's your opinion on the existence of this book? I would love to know!
Thanks so much to the pkmncollectors discord members and a big thanks again to kidgengar on helping me push the research onward. (If I've left anything out, plz lmk, or if you have info to add!)
Thanks for reading!!