K-Zone

K-Zone is a children's magazine published in Australia, New Zealand, The Philippines and Malaysia. It is best known in the Pokémon fandom for an article released in April 2008 that listed plots for episodes beyond the point the Japanese airings were currently at. While the article scans have been critised for their poor spelling and grammar, each point turned out to be true.

The article revealed that:

• Dawn's Piplup would defeat Kyle's Crawdaunt in the Wallace Cup. (DP079)
• Dawn would then go on to win the Wallace Cup. (DP079)
• Pastoria City would feature a Croagunk Festival that Brock competed in. (DP082)
• Ash would then win the badge at the Gym. (DP083)
• Dawn would capture a Swinub at Mr. Backlot's mansion. (DP084)
• The group would meet a Lopunny that is a super model in Hearthome City. (DP086)
• Aaron would appear around Celestic Town. (While the article said it would be before Celestic, the episode actually aired shortly after the events there). (DP099)

"Lava" Badge

Notably, K-Zone mentioned that Ash would receive the "Lava" Badge as his fourth badge. Because the fourth badge in Sinnoh in Diamond and Pearl is the Fen Badge, many discarded all of the assertions made by the magazine. As it began to become apparent that K-Zone was in fact, correct, some fans took a look at the evidence again. The Japanese words "fen" (フェン) and "fuen" (フエン, lava) are very similar, and therefore it is widely believed now that the translators made a small mistake.

A similar issue occurred with assertions that Dawn would compete in the "Mikli Cup" and win against another coordinator, "Kite", improperly romanized from ミクリ (Mikuri) and カイト (Kaito). These errors likely stem from a lack of knowledge on the translators' part of many Pokémon characters and items.

Another, unrelated mistake was made, as the article stated that Ash and Dawn did not trade their Pokémon until after Ash's battle with Maylene.

External links

• K-Zone on Wikipedia.