Espeon-EX · BREAKpoint (BKP) #117

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1. 

   Ambassador

   (2 years ago)

   This is the first appearance of the move Psyshock in the TCG, provided you ignore the appearance of the move Psyshock in Generations 1, 2, and 3 of the TCG. Because – and it is disappointing to have to break this because I was always fond of the attack – that wasn’t Psyshock.

   Psyshock debuted on Base Set Abra as an attack that does damage and lets you flip for paralysis. It’s a weird move to discuss because the original name of the attack, ねんりき, exists as the name of an attack in the video games. It got translated as Confusion there which makes sense since it.. you know, causes Confusion. But in the TCG it can instead cause Paralysis and WOTC actually made a change I can see some people liking, since it doesn’t have the name/effect mismatch.

   This card is the debut of サイコショック, which is the name of what we know as Psyshock in the video games, and ねんりき, which we knew as Psyshock but was actually Confusion started being translated as Psy Bolt starting with the BW era* – with one exception so far. CES Lunatone, to stay faithful to the name of the attack on LM Lunatone, has the Psyshock attack it originally had. (This isn’t really a problem in the Japanese TCG but it’s a bit contradictory for the EN TCG, since Psyshock has essentially been ‘retconned’ to be the attack matching the games.)

   *The situation where BW is used as an opportunity to ‘reset’ attack names to undo any legacy localization that’s aged poorly reminds me of the situation with Lightning Strike/Bolt Strike/らいげき in the TCG in terms of timing (see LM Lanturn for a breakdown of that). This also would’ve been the opportunity to reset ねんりき to be ‘Confusion’ instead of ‘Psystrike’, but it looks like they decided to make a new TCG-unique name for the English edition just to avoid the apparent ‘problem’ of a move called Confusion causing Paralysis. The actual source of the problem is the way NOA translated ねんりき for the games, as the name of the attack doesn’t really suggest any status condition either which way and it seems fine in the Japanese branch of the franchise for the attack to cause Confusion in the games and Paralysis in the TCG.

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