I don't understand why the pokemon speedrunning community treats Japanese runs as different but ruby and sapphire are the same when the differences between the English and Japanese are much smaller than that of Ruby vs Sapphire. In most other games its run whichever version is faster but for some reason this is not the case with the pokemon runs and they treat them as different categories.

i definitely agree with what you're saying timlink. of course the main complaint most would have is that pokemon requires at least an intermediate level of reading, so being able to tell what move the opponent used, what items you're buying/using, etc., would be difficult for english-speaking runners who can't read japanese. personally i think this is still a fairly weak complaint given that other runs who use the japanese version have similar obstacles, and at least for me since i studied japanese it would be an easy thing to get used to. also there are plenty of recordings of japanese runs of sapphire (on niconico anyway) that english runners could learn from. plus i would have no problem routing the japanese version myself and writing a guide for people. it's all a matter of whether it could gain acceptance in the community, which seems to be pretty stubborn and uncompromising on this front.

if there wasn't a japanese speedrunning community for this game i would understand, but it's not just us 'muricans that like to go fast.

Yea I understand that it would be difficult however you could learn the moves that you are being hit with plus you would know based off how much damage they deal/what they do ext.

augh post on the actual forums not these scrub mock-ups of a forum.