Pokémon (TV series)

• 1. Introduction

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  Pokémon, the Japanese anime television series, has broadcast more than 1,300 episodes and now airs in 192 countries at the same time. It began on TV Tokyo with a simple premise. A ten-year-old trainer and his partner Pikachu would travel a world full of creatures called Pokémon, enter tournaments, and chase the title of Pokémon Master. The show is regarded as the most successful video game adaptation of all time. How does a formula built on friendship and battles hold a worldwide audience across decades? Why did one episode in Japan make headlines across the globe? And what becomes of a hero who spends years losing before he finally wins? The answers begin with the road that boy walks.

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• 2. Ash's Long Road

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  In Pallet Town, a boy named Ash Ketchum receives his first Pokémon, Pikachu, from Professor Oak. That gift launches a journey through the regions of Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola, and Galar. In each place Ash challenges Gym Leaders and enters the regional Pokémon League, a contest among the strongest trainers of that region.

  In Japan, the anime is organized as eight sequential series, and each one follows a main installment of the Pokémon video games. International broadcasts divide the same run into 28 seasons. Ash stays the main protagonist for the first twenty-five of them.

  For most of that time, his League campaigns end in defeat. The breakthrough comes in Alola, where he attends Pokémon School and becomes the region's first-ever Champion. He then faces Leon in the Masters Eight Tournament of the World Coronation Series and wins. That victory makes him the strongest trainer in the world, a title called Monarch.

  Reaching the summit does not end his travels. Ash keeps wandering with Pikachu, meeting and befriending new Pokémon, because the dream of becoming a Pokémon Master is still his goal.

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• 3. Friends, Rivals and Villains

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  Misty, a ten-year-old Water-type trainer, first joins Ash in the Indigo League series. She began as one of four Gym Leaders of Cerulean City, alongside her three older sisters. After the Master Quest series, she is the only one left in that role.

  Brock, fifteen years old and a former Pewter City Gym Leader, first dreams of being the world's best Pokémon Breeder. Later he aims to become a Pokémon Doctor. He falls for every girl he meets, and a running gag has Misty or Max yank him away by the ear. Sometimes his Croagunk hits him with Poison Jab instead. He leaves at the end of the Diamond and Pearl series. In the Orange Islands, Tracey Sketchit travels with Ash as a Pokémon Watcher, someone who studies Pokémon in the wild the way bird watchers study birds. He later becomes an assistant to Professor Oak.

  May, daughter of Petalburg City Gym Leader Norman, loves Pokémon Contests, which judge a Pokémon's appearance and appeal. Her younger brother Max travels with her. Dawn, from Twinleaf Town in Sinnoh, follows her mother into Contests, picks Piplup as her partner, and aims to be Top Coordinator. Iris comes from a village devoted to Dragon-type Pokémon, and her Axew evolves into a Haxorus. She later becomes Unova Regional Champion, then loses to Cynthia in the Masters Eight Tournament. Cilan is a Pokémon Connoisseur who can judge how well a Pokémon and trainer fit together. He shares Gym Leader duties with his brothers Chili and Cress, and he enjoys fishing, cinema, and subway trains.

  Serena, from Vaniville Town, competes in Pokémon Showcases hoping to become the Kalos Queen. She first met Ash at Professor Oak's Pokémon Summer Camp, after he helped her when she hurt her leg. Clemont, the Electric-type Gym Leader of Lumiose City, carries a backpack of inventions that mostly explode. His little sister Bonnie is too young for a Pokémon, so he catches a Dedenne for her. Later she befriends one of Zygarde's cores and nicknames it Squishy.

  At the Pokémon School on Melemele Island, Ash studies beside Lillie, Kiawe, Lana, Mallow, and Sophocles. Lillie loves research but cannot touch Pokémon because of a childhood encounter with a Nihilego. Kiawe runs a dairy farm on Akala Island with his parents. Mallow cooks at her family's restaurant, Aina Kitchen. Sophocles outgrows a fear of the dark because he wants to become an astronaut. In Journeys, Goh joins Ash with a plan to catch every Pokémon and eventually reach Mew. He later enters Project Mew and then travels across Kanto alone.

  Ash also meets rivals named Gary, Paul, and Trip, often across League tournament brackets. Wherever he goes, Team Rocket is close behind. Jessie, James, and Meowth are the main antagonists for the first twenty-five seasons, and they mostly serve as comic relief. Jessie's Wobbuffet keeps popping out of its Poké Ball at the strangest moments. James grew up in a rich, noble family and badly wanted to escape it. Meowth can speak human language, a skill rooted in his failed attempt to win over a Pokémon named Meowzie.

  Every town also has the same pair of recurring families. The Joy sisters treat injured Pokémon and assist the regional Professor, while the Jenny sisters act as local law enforcement. In each case the sisters look identical.

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• 4. The Horizons Generation

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  Liko, a girl from Cabo Poco in the Paldea Region, owns a mysterious pendant given to her by her grandmother, Diana. Diana turns out to be the Legendary Pokémon Terapagos in a dormant state. This is the premise of Pokémon Horizons: The Series, which carries the franchise from the 26th season onward with a new cast.

  An organization called the Explorers targets Liko for her pendant. To protect it, she joins the Rising Volt Tacklers, a band of adventurers traveling the world. Roy, a boy from the Kanto Region, joins the group after meeting a Shiny Rayquaza. He holds an ancient Poké Ball and dreams of becoming the sort of adventurer his grandfather described in childhood stories. He soon discovers a link between the Shiny Rayquaza and Liko's pendant.

  Their search leads to the legendary adventurer Lucius and his six Pokémon, known as the Six Heroes. Along the way, Liko, Roy, and a companion named Dot spend a short time at Naranja Academy studying the Terastal phenomenon.

  After they meet Lucius and clash with the Explorers, the story leaps forward by one year. When it resumes, the group defeats and exposes the Explorers, destroys Laquium, and clears the name of the Rising Volt Tacklers.

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• 5. Making the Show

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  Pokémon premiered on TV Tokyo on the 1st of April 1997. It airs first on Thursday evenings across the TX Network, then reaches other major Japanese broadcasters, including All-Nippon News Network, Fuji Network System, and Nippon Television Network System. Production is handled by TV Tokyo, MediaNet, and ShoPro. The show earned millions of dollars in Japan when it first aired, and an average episode costs about $100,000 to make.

  Kunihiko Yuyama served as chief director until the 2023 episode titled "To Be a Pokémon Master". Animation comes from OLM, Inc. Until episode 259 in 2002, which was episode 262 in Japan, the series used cel animation. Starting with "Here's Lookin' at You Elekid!", every episode has been digitally animated.

  In a 2018 interview, the creators of Detective Pikachu, a film that features a talking Pikachu, described an abandoned idea. The anime was originally meant to have Pokémon talk, but OLM could not come up with a concept that Game Freak, the developer of the main games, would accept.

  The franchise also spans 23 animated films and one live-action film. The first nineteen animated films tie into the television series, and the original film was remade as the 22nd. The 20th, 21st, and 23rd are set in an alternate continuity. OLM, Production I.G, Xebec, and Wit Studio animated them, and Toho distributes them in Japan. Kunihiko Yuyama and Tetsuo Yajima directed, with writers including Takeshi Shudo, Hideki Sonoda, Atsuhiro Tomioka, Shōji Yonemura, Eiji Umehara, and Aya Takaha. Several films became among the highest-grossing anime films in the United States and Asia. The series also helped boost anime's popularity worldwide, and it is credited with lifting the game series, and the reverse.

  Specials fill the gaps between films and seasons. Many revolve around legendary Pokémon or around main characters who are separated from the regular cast.

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• 6. Reaching the World

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  On the 8th of September 1998, a localized English version of Pokémon premiered in first-run syndication in the United States. It arrived twenty days before the North American release of Pokémon Red and Blue. The company 4Kids Entertainment produced the adaptation, and The Summit Media Group syndicated it.

  In February 1999, the series moved to Kids' WB as a Saturday morning cartoon. Its first week there earned a 3.9 rating, and by September it was reaching 3.1 million viewers. By that November, Nielsen stated that "half the boys (ages 6-11) watching TV (at 10 a.m.) are seeing Pokémon". Pioneer Entertainment and Viz Video sold 25 million units of the series on VHS and DVD in 2000.

  The dub changed hands over time. After the eighth season in 2006, The Pokémon Company took over the dub. From the 2009 film Arceus and the Jewel of Life, DuArt Film and Video led production, until the twenty-second season in 2018. New episodes aired in syndication and on Kids' WB, Cartoon Network, and Disney XD. Library episodes also ran on Cartoon Network from 2002 and on Boomerang from 2010, along with Spanish airings on TeleXitos and Discovery Familia.

  In 2020, Netflix gained exclusive US streaming rights to new episodes. Pokémon Journeys: The Series, the twenty-third season, ran from the 12th of June 2020 to the 5th of March 2021. Pokémon Master Journeys: The Series, the twenty-fourth season, followed on the 10th of September 2021.

  Netflix carries the show in 216 regions and countries, and every one has at least English audio. As of 2016, it ranked among the most widely watched shows on the service. Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Jiohotstar also stream it in various places. At the end of March 2022, Netflix removed the Sun & Moon series, I Choose You!, and The Power of Us. The Pokémon TV app and website shut down in January 2024. Starting on the 6th of December 2024, episodes arrive on the Pokémon TV YouTube channel five days a week.

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• 7. Variety Shows and Spin-offs

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  From the 19th of October 1999 to the 17th of September 2002, TV Tokyo broadcast Pocket Monsters Encore. It was a variety show of reruns offering both Japanese and English audio. A closing segment taught Japanese children simple English words and phrases, and its segments were later compiled into three volumes. For the release known as Pokémon de English, the original voice actors from both Japan and the United States recorded new English lines. Rental VHS and DVD versions followed in 2002 and 2007.

  Weekly Pokémon Broadcasting Station replaced it, running from the 15th of October 2002 to the 28th of September 2004. This animated variety show mixed clip shows, reruns, movie broadcasts, cast interviews, and live-action footage. Mayumi Iizuka hosted as Kasumi (Misty) and Yūji Ueda as Takeshi (Brock). The comedy team Shio Koshō appeared, along with the voice cast of Team Rocket: Megumi Hayashibara as Musashi (Jessie), Shin-ichiro Miki as Kojirō (James), and Inuko Inuyama as Nyāsu (Meowth).

  Pokémon Chronicles is a name made up by 4Kids for a set of specials that had not been dubbed before. English broadcasts began in the UK between May and October 2005 and in the US between June and November 2006. Most of the episodes came from the side stories shown on Weekly Pokémon Broadcasting Station. The rest were The Legend of Thunder and parts of Pikachu's Winter Vacation, which had first come out on video.

  Pokémon Sunday aired from the 3rd of October 2004 to the 26th of September 2010. Alongside reruns, it ran live-action "Research" episodes. Regular guests included Golgo Matsumoto and Red Yoshida of TIM, the trio Robert, Becky, and later Shoko Nakagawa. Pokémon Smash! followed until the 28th of September 2013 with the theme song "Endless Fighters" by AAA. Pokémon Get TV ran until the 27th of September 2015, with Nakagawa joined by Yukito Nishii and the comedy team Taka and Toshi.

  Meet Up at the Pokémon House? ran from the 4th of October 2015 to the 29th of March 2022. Its hosts were Nakagawa, Rinka Ōtani, Hyadain, and Abareru-kun. It was the first of these variety shows to drop reruns of earlier anime episodes. Where Are We Going with Pokémon!? premiered on the 3rd of April 2022, with Nakagawa, later replaced by Shuhei Nakano, plus Ryōgo Matsumaru, Abareru-kun, and Hikaru Takahashi. Its focus is the hosts' travels.

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• 8. Critics and Controversies

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  In February 2008, Jeffrey Harris of IGN gave the Indigo League series 2 out of 10. He wrote, "Ultimately, the show's story is boring, repetitive, and formulaic." Common Sense Media gave it 3 out of 5 stars that April, praising an imaginative fantasy that cut across cultural, gender, and age barriers while warning about its heavy commercial pull.

  Carl Kimlinger of Anime News Network graded the dubbed Diamond and Pearl series a C in August 2008. He found the formula rigid, yet called the show "colorful, silly and lively (if insanely simplistic and cheap)". Wired's Kevin McFarland, writing in 2016, called it "a largely silly show with slapstick comedy and colorful battle sequences". TV Asahi's poll of the "Top 100 Anime" put the series 38th, and Paste placed it 44th in October 2018. IGN ranked it 70th among animated series. Paste's Sarra Sedghi wrote that "the show's pervasiveness is a testament to the power of nostalgia."

  The most notorious episode, "Dennō Senshi Porygon", aired in Japan on the 16th of December 1997. A repetitive flash of light in it caused 685 children to experience seizures or seizure-like symptoms. Pikachu's actions caused the sequence, but the episode's featured Pokémon, Porygon, vanished from the story. It appears only in one brief cameo in the film Pokémon Heroes and one scene-bumper in the first season. Its evolutions Porygon2 and Porygon-Z show up only briefly, in the opening of Pokémon the Movie: Kyurem vs. the Sword of Justice.

  Real-world tragedies have also pulled episodes from the schedule. In Japan, the 2004 Chūetsu earthquake, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and the 2014 sinking of the MV Sewol led to cancellations or postponements. In the United States, the September 11 attacks in 2001 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 led to two episodes being temporarily removed from syndication. On the 1st of September 2006, China banned the series from prime time, from 17:00 to 20:00, to protect its struggling animation studios. It later extended the ban by one hour.

  On the 18th of August 2016, fans reacted with anger when Ash lost the Kalos League to Alain. Fans pointed to the misleading title and trailers, and to Ash's losses in every earlier League. They also argued that Ash's Greninja had clear advantages over Alain's Charizard, including its Water typing against Fire and its rare Bond Phenomenon. Several of the series' animators said they were disappointed too. TV Tokyo's YouTube teaser for the next episode collected an overwhelming number of dislikes.

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