The Pokémon & Detective Conan Crossover Stage Play - Conan in The Land of Pokémon
3,485In the year 2000, there was a stage play that crossed over the Pokémon and Detective Conan anime series, featuring the voice cast from the Arabic dubs of the time, making it an official crossover of those versions of the shows. This is Conan in The Land of Pokémon, a play that promotes the channel Spacetoon, Pokémon and Detective Conan.
Team Rocket have created a fake Ash doppelganger to trick his Pokémon into destroying the Earth! Luckily, Detective Conan is here to uncover the truth and save the land of Pokémon.
This video covers the play itself, what we know about its production, home media releases, other similar plays, and more.
The footage of the play used comes from a DVD transfer of the IVC VHS, so it is not the greatest quality, but the best that could be found. It’s possible an official DVD release of the play exists somewhere, and that would have higher quality footage. It's also likely more releases of it on VHS exist and a VCD release is possible as well. The app referenced in this video does have a higher quality version available for purchase, but it has watermarks and is stretched and cropped.
One thing skipped over in the video is the actual live performances. There’s a poster promoting it, a date of performance (December 23rd, 2000), but the footage we have is the edited for home version. The live shows could have had differences, but we don’t currently have much information. We can assume there was at least this filmed run, and at least one live showing, but there were likely more performances than that. The number of shows and other dates or areas it was performed is unknown. Think of this video as mostly focusing on the home media version.
This year, Ash is leaving the Pokémon anime, so it’s a perfect time to showcase this story about everyone celebrating Ash and his accomplishments. Additionally, a new English dub for Detective Conan also began releasing episodes on the streaming service Tubi earlier in 2023, the first time official English dubbed episodes were released in over a decade. Conan is successful in most countries, but North America is one of the few where it relatively isn't as well known, so we all wish the best to the new English dub’s production team if they plan on doing more episodes or movies, as well as other companies dubbing the series around the world, such as Venus Centre who continues to dub Conan to this day.
The goal of this video was not only to get this documented and more well known, but also to hopefully inspire future documentation of other lesser known content, especially international media. If this, a crossover of two of Japan's biggest series, has existed relatively unknown around the world for 20 years, who knows what else could be out there.
Credits for the play & additional info: https://elcinema.com/en/work/2011639/
Important terms (English & Arabic):
Detective Conan: المحقق كونان
Pokémon: بوكيمون
Conan In The Land of Pokémon/Conan in Pokémon Land: كـونـان في أرض البوكيمون
Conan Play in Pokémon Land (name from writer's website): مسرحية كونان في أرض البوكيمون
Spacetoon: سبيستون
“Conan on The Air” Spacetoon show: برنامج كونان على الهواء
Playlist of sources, stage shows, music & other videos of interest: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd9K3Vyfq1xe32M40qGaNPG5EZcCCrYDa
Special Thanks:
-DerbyDali, someone who is incredibly knowledgeable on Spacetoon and their shows. The first one to bring this play’s existence to me, and also created the great animation shown before the play segment.
-The thumbnail and in-video artwork were commissions drawn by the artist Aerobian-Angel, who did a great job.
-The first English translation/subtitling was done by DerbyDali, with a second version done by nadasaab22 on Fiverr, who also watched the video to confirm everything was good. The video was then also checked over by arab4translator, also on Fiverr.
-Shabab Block 1 Channel, the source of uploads of the CGI Conan on The Air show. Hopefully more clips of that surface.
-The sellers that had copies of the play on VHS, and tapes of the Conan anime as well. When importing the tapes of the play, I thought might as well get some of the dub too. Importing international stuff is one of my favorite hobbies, so this was lots of fun.
Derby's Archive account where we uploaded my scans, photos, as well as video uploads: https://archive.org/details/@derbiii
YouTube upload of the play with English subs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2A1ONGHY40
Archive of the writers’ website: https://web.archive.org/web/20220125194808/http://alaaaljaber.net/DetailsPlaytexts.aspx?ID=10
Dubbing Database article about the Arabic dub of Conan that mentions the play: https://dubdb.fandom.com/wiki/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%82%D9%82_%D9%83%D9%88%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%86
This video was made for all ages for educational and archival purposes. Made in tribute to the mediums involved and to spread awareness of their existence. Thank you for watching and to all that helped make this possible!