So, Detective Pikachu's 'Pika Pika!' Is Voiced The Same In Every Version Of The Trailer... Except German

TheGamer

By Josh Coulson

Published Nov 16, 2018

There's one moment during the Detective Pikachu trailer that remained the same no matter what language it was in. Unless you watched it in German.

via collider.com

There's one moment during the Detective Pikachu trailer that remained the same no matter what language it was in. Unless you watched it in German.

It feels as if we have been talking about the potential of a Detective Pikachu movie for years with nothing really gaining any traction. Well, no longer. Earlier this week, the first trailer for the live action movie, coming in 2019, took the world by storm. Pikachu, voiced by Ryan Reynolds, and any number of other Pokémon as we've never seen them before. What's not to love?

While the entire plot of the movie remains unclear, it was only a two-minute trailer, after all, we have been given some of the basic premises. Tim Goodman, played by Justice Smith, discovers Pikachu in his apartment. The two of them quickly discover that Goodman can understand what the Pokémon is saying.

Their connection is put to the test on the streets of Rhyme City. Goodman asks a passerby if she can understand his furry new friend. When Pikachu speaks, all the lady can hear is the "Pika Pika" we have become so used to hearing over the past two decades. In case you didn't know, that iconic sound-byte comes courtesy of famous Japanese voice actress, Ikue Otani.

As you will have likely assumed, Pika Pika means the same in every language. That's because, well, it isn't technically a part of any language. Nevertheless, the trailer has naturally been translated into numerous languages and in every country, Pikachu's famous catchphrase is voiced by Otani so sounds exactly the same. Well, in all languages except one. German. For some strange reason, Otani's Pika Pika has been replaced in the German trailer by a slightly deeper and out of breath version.

You can check it out for yourself above in a short clip that we still can't stop watching. At the time of typing this, the video had been viewed around 660,000 times and we'd venture to guess that around half of those were us. We are at a loss as to why Pikachu's voice needed to be changed for German fans and would love to know whether Pikachu has always sounded different in Germany than he does elsewhere.