TAJ Not Doing Pokemon

Read the previous news story if you have not been here since last night.

TAJ Productions No Longer Dubbing Pokemon – TAJ Productions, the company that has been responsible for dubbing the Pokemon anime since 4Kids lost its license (and who has worked on the dubbing of the show with 4Kids in the past) will no longer be involved with Pokemon. Yesterday, fans posted on several Pokemon forums that TAJ (specifically, Larry Juris, the president) replied to e-mails stating that Pokemon has decided to hire a different dubbing company, and as a result, TAJ is no longer working on the show. It was unknown if the information was just a prank, so I decided to e-mail Larry Juris myself last night to find out for sure. Below is his complete response:

> Hi, I am the webmaster of PokeBeach.com, and lately, there is a rumor going
> around that TAJ is no longer going to dub Pokemon. Could you confirm or deny
> this and provide more details if it is true?
>
> Thank you!
>
> – Jon (Water Pokemon Master, webmaster of PokeBeach.com)
>
>
Unfortunately it is true. We love the show and have been doing it for many
years. Pokemon has decided to go elsewhere. We tried our best with
TAJ Productions.

So who is going to dub Pokemon now, and what could this mean for the future of the American dub? I doubt this will mean that the voice actors will change, since they are tied to PUSA, not TAJ. We now have a new president of Pokemon USA and apparently a new company that will be dubbing the show… Perhaps PUSA will make their own dubbing studio, which would definitely fit the pattern of them wanting to do everything with Pokemon “in-house” now? Maybe they will go to a better-known anime dubbing company? There is a good chance that this announcement just involves the “technical” aspects of Pokemon (as in the physical dubbing of the show), and that it really will not affect what we see in the show in any major way. We’ll just have to wait and see…