Part 47: Side Notes #03: SHIGERU Who?

Side Notes #03: SHIGERU Who?



We know him, we hate him, but who is this dashing rogue? The one always one step ahead of us? Well, he has many a name: Green, Shigeru, Blue and Gary. Let's start from the top.

Green is the first name he was given. Green Okido, grandson of Dr Okido and the boy you've known since birth. His name makes sense since you are Red. Red and Green. HMMMMMMM. It really was as simple as that. But they couldn't really have a guy named Green, or Red in the anime series. So they were changed, Red to Satoshi and Green to Shigeru, the names I've chosen for the LP, since Yellow is based off of the anime. In the updated Japanese Blue version, he's still called Green, but it doesn't hugely matter since you can name him anything, like Douche, or Buttz. There are also default names, some of which you cannot access normally.

Firstly, in R/G, Green's default name is Ishihara, referring to Tsunekazu Ishihara, who was the Producer of the game and is currently CEO of the Pokemon Company. Red's meanwhile, was Yamaguchi, or Wataru Yamaguchi, the game's Art Director. For Blue, Green's default name is Kuricha, a corruption on Creatures Inc, who mainly work on side series games and the TCG, as well as the first Mother game. Red's, meanwhile, was Gēfuri, the abbreviation of Game Freak.

Now, when the games were localized, there was no Green, so they instead went with Blue. However, this only applies to the Red version and is switched in the other version, where one of the his default names is Red, while yours is Blue. But, if we look in the code, the actual default name for your rival is Sony, whereas your name can be Ninten. As an aside, a beta name for the rival was Gyarao, since he can own a Gyarados.

So, he's Green on the Japanese side, Blue on the English side, Shigeru Okido in the Japanese anime and Gary Oak in the English anime. He also has a ton of default names and other ones you can call him. So really, it doesn't matter at all.