Pokémon Anime Complete Retrospective-A 25 Year Long Journey

0:05 [Music] what does it mean to go on a journey to see the world meet new people and explore wonders you could only dream of look up at the stars at night and wake up early to reach your next destination i'm sure we've all dreamt of that sort of freedom as a kid and maybe you still do that sense of freedom was realized for many people when a simple show called pokemon or pocket monsters was released 25 years ago today in japan the show wasn't all that complex it followed a boy named satoshi and his partner pokemon pikachu and they traveled around the kanto region with his friends earning the eight gym badges of the region and making their way to the pokemon league the show roughly followed the story of the pokemon red

0:50 and green games which were released about a year prior the pokemon anime has since gone on for 25 years with fashion pikachu's adventures still going strong as ever it sure has been one hell of a ride and many people of all ages have enjoyed seeing this iconic duo make their way through the pokemon world today i would like to take a look back at the entire show and honestly explain why ash and pikachu's journey means so much to me and so many others greetings my comrades and welcome back to zonolith today i'm going to give you guys a complete retrospective on the pokemon anime all the way from the original series to the current day now grab a snack sit back and relax as we explore a show that embodies freedom happiness kindness and friendship [Music]

2:27 [Applause]

3:43 [Music] released on april 1st 1997 the pokemon anime quickly grabbed the hearts of many japanese children due to the iconic trio of ash misty and brock along with the cool variety of monsters in the show the original series will always be the odd one out compared to other seasons of the anime the show had a different sense of comedy and arguably had some pretty dark moments compared to the shows of their seasons what's ironic is that the show was actually the first introduction the western audience had to the pokemon series as the games were actually released after the show was already airing in the west western audiences would receive the english dub through 4 kids entertainment which you might know is the guys who dug yu-gi-oh in one piece at the time and that i gotta say guys that one piece rap still freaking

4:30 slaps the dub was even weirder than the japanese version as the show censored some of the darker elements and replaced japanese humor with western humor in my opinion the original series and dub remains the funniest season of the pokemon anime and is always super fun to watch but enough about the series background let's talk about the actual plot like i said before it was a pretty simple concept as it followed ash and pikachu taking on the several cantel pokemon gems from the games to make their way to the indigo league instead of a large building housing the elite foreign champion the show would change the pokemon league to a tournament where all the trainers who would earn eight badges duked it out in epic battles although ash earned most of his badges in let's just say questionable ways the show was so much fun the iconic trio all

5:15 of ash's pokemon and team rocket are all so memorable and are great characters waking up in the morning to see where ash's journey would go next was such an exciting feeling that same feeling exists today with children watching pokemon for the first time after ash only ranks to the top 16 of the indigo league he heads off to the orange islands on a mission to obtain the mysterious gs ball before i talk about the orange islands i want to talk about the first pokemon movie which was released in july of 1998. mewtwo strikes back no not the empire strikes back mewtwo strikes back the movie follows ash and pikachu receiving an invitation from quote the strongest pokemon trainer who turns out to be mewtwo he believes all humans are evil and ash and the others including team rocket faces army of copy

6:01 pokemon the movie is surprisingly intense and dark for a children's movie i mean hell at one point ash even dies but to this day it still remains one of the fan favorite pokemon movies and one of my personal favorites the adventures of ash and pikachu would continue in the orange islands or as i like to call it an excuse to make a filler arc while waiting for gold and silver before we go any further the biggest change this arc made was getting rid of brock who if you didn't know abandoned ash and misty for a lady he found attractive and most likely got dumped by later in the series now who do they replace him with tracy this is the dude who they replaced him with and he's kind of a mixed bag half of the pokemon anime fandom sees him as the reincarnation of jesus christ for meme's sake and the other half

6:46 thinks he's the spawn of the devil and absolutely despises him tracy wasn't the most interesting character and he definitely wasn't popular so it made sense why they would bring brock back for the next season of gold and silver and for every season till 2011. the story revolves around ash taking on the orange league with gems that can ironically be heavily compared to the trials from alola ash takes these on and then faces off against the orange league champion drake and actually wins some people consider ash's first significant win in the series ash vs drake and it certainly was a great milestone for our protagonist however at the end of the season ash misty and also brock who has rejoined the group set out for the johto region and as for tracy he becomes the assistant to professor oak and has been at the lab since then

7:32 the pokemon company also released the second pokemon movie pokemon 2000 which was also a really solid film now i'm not gonna go in depth for every single pokemon movie otherwise this video would just be way too long but i'm gonna talk about the movies that were released with each generation and my brief thoughts on them as well ash is now in the johto region and therefore we begin the gold and silver portion of the pokemon anime now this part of the anime is also a mixed bag not nearly as much as the orange islands but it still remains one of people's favorites and least favorites at the same time the actual story for jodo was one you would expect as ash just takes on gym leaders and enters the johto league standard pokemon stuff whatever however the series has a lot of

8:19 which takes away from some of the more critical moments however this portion of the anime does have a lot of really incredible moments such as the ash and gary fight and them finally settling their rivalry gary finding his new dream of wanting to become a pokemon professor and the ash brought into this deep farewell scene that still makes me cry to this day don't judge me okay anyways the series was pretty solid and i would still recommend it for first time watchers the movies released during this gem were the pokemon movie 3 mystery of the unknown pokemon forever celebi and pokemon heroes latias and latios movie 3 is one of the best pokemon movies no question please go watch it if you're gonna watch the pokemon anime and movies four and five are also really solid however movie five did sort of debate about ash's sexual preference and

9:06 whether he's attracted to pokemon but we're not gonna get into that conversation and movie five also started the trend of showing off a pokemon from the next generation and let's just say the next generation was a bit more advanced than its predecessors [Music] now the kanto johto and orange island portion of the anime would all be under one shell called pokemon just the original series it was all one shell with kanto the orange islands and johto however the pokemon anime would have a follow-up series known as pokemon advanced which followed ash and pikachu's adventures through the hoenn region the third generation of pokemon the first difference was two characters

9:53 that replaced misty may and max may was a great character and her character arc was very exciting and this is also the anime's first introduction to pokemon contest which would remain around in the anime till best wishes in 2010. max on the other hand was just kind of there he was frankly kind of annoying at times and he really didn't add much to the plot but i guess he was tolerable unless you're asking zack he'll tell you otherwise the series was very exciting as people argue that ash's main rival this time around was himself and his overconfidence the arc ash goes through and hoenn was very interesting and sadly this series is forgotten amongst the others but it's still really really great however the adventure of ash may max and brock didn't end in hohen as ash also took on the battle frontier in kanto during this generation this is the

10:39 part of the series that a lot more people remember and this was also when the pokemon dub transitioned to a new studio this season was super action-packed and we got some super awesome fights such as ash vs nolan and ash vs brandon the series was awesome and i really really enjoyed the battle frontier portion of the pokemon anime it felt like all of ash's experiences and battles was coming full circle as ash used a lot of his previous pokemon from other generations and was using some really awesome strategies now if you haven't ever watched this section of the pokemon anime i would highly recommend you watch it the movies were also okay during this generation none of them really stood out to me personally but they are still your average pokemon movie and a fun watch besides with cardio and the mystery of new that movie is really good please go

11:25 watch it lucario's great ash is great and people have still made theories about ash and his connection to aura ever since that movie came out please go watch lucario and the mystery mew it's one of the best pokemon movies pokemon's third series was pokemon diamond and pearl this series was very similar to that of advanced generation and the original series still the series took steps forward by further developing the character of ash by introducing the character of paul these two shared completely opposite philosophies and it really pushed ash to his limit the journey of chimchar into infernape made the story for ash's generation something truly special and we also got introduced to don who was a great character and a fan favorite i loved how she interacted with ash and brock and i loved the sibling banter between her and ash like mei don wanted to do contests which were

12:12 also expanded upon and arguably made way more investing this generation this generation would also be the last time brock would be accompanying ash on his journey for the entire adventure as he would be replaced in the later series by other characters who would fill his role along with the new pokemon new region battles characters and the many story arcs in this season of the pokemon anime this portion of the pokemon anime is one of the best in the entire series and is arguably some of people's favorites only tied with i'd say x and y and sun and moon which we'll get to later on in this video this series also had its fair share of flaws as it had a lot of filler similar to the johto series like a whole damn year of filler however the highest points more than makes up for it i have to say diamond and pro is personally my second favorite series in the pokemon

12:58 anime and i think ash's character really did peak development wise in this series well maybe besides one other series we'll get to later on and maybe that will top it as for the movies they took a different approach to the movies this time around as the first three movies which focused on dialga palkia gary tina and arceus weren't interconnected a trilogy this is something the anime has never done before and still hasn't done again to this day these movies were all very solid and the darkrai movie remains one of my favorites till this day as for the last movie zorwark and the master of illusions it was entirely separate from the previous three it was mainly used to promote zorb work and the next generation of pokemon pokemon black and white similar to pokemon heroes and lucario and the mystery of mew which did that for the previous generations the movies were really solid and the

13:45 generation overall was fantastic and now we end what i call the old era pokemon and enter the new era which starts in 2010 with pokemon best wishes or pokemon black and white [Music] the fourth pokemon anime series pokemon best wishes or black and white in the west would serve as a soft reboot for the pokemon series the show reset the main protagonist of ash ketchum who wants to relearn things that he naturally could do in previous seasons he was also accompanied by his new friends iris and silen and he made his way through the universe region and its pokemon league the series is quite controversial but is still very enjoyable in my personal opinion while

14:30 some aspects of the show may be frustrating mainly ash's character in the beginning of the show ass eventually reaches his previous level he was at in diamond and pearl and overall the show was just really entertaining this was also the first time ash's character arc didn't carry over into the next series and instead the trend of ash having separate individual character arcs in each new series became the norm and still relatively remains like this till today best wishes was also the first series that fully replaced misty and brock as brock was finally replaced by a new character being silent and since black and white brock has never been a main character in the pokemon anime series ever again although he has made several reappearances since his departure in special episodes and the main series misty has also been doing this since her departure in the original

15:16 series as she would come back in uh special episodes side seasons stuff like that iris and silent were also really enjoyable characters iris was a great character and i loved her story and her goal of wanting to become a dragon master it was really engaging and i'm super excited to see where her character art goes especially since she returned in pokemon journeys and we got to see her growth and yeah iris was overall just a really good character and silent is my boy i love this guy this guy he's got so much going on he's got the trains he's got the fission he's got the detective work but silence character and his dream of wanting to become an s-class connoisseur was something never seen before in the pokemon anime up to this point it's something we haven't seen anywhere else in the pokemon world so yeah silent was great and he was a breath of fresh air for people who had

16:03 seen the pokemon anime up to that point and i don't care what anyone says silent is just as funny as brock you can fight me on this the first movie for this generation was pokemon black slash white victini and reshram zekrom and this was basically two different movies with the same exact plot just changing the roles of the legendary pokemon of restaurant and zekrom in the movie so they essentially made it two movies for one film the other two movies were also really solid and definitely worth a watch best wishes is a series that a lot of pokemon fans have recently started appreciating still its follow-up series cannot be described better than a fan favorite pokemon the series xy was the follow-up series to pokemon best wishes and to this day is probably still the most popular portion of the pokemon anime its popularity is for good reason as the

16:50 show had a more mature tone absent in previous seasons of the anime people had watched ash all these years and they felt like he was finally going up as his characterization in xy was a lot more mature than previous seasons they also introduced an arguable love interest for the character of ash in serena who was also now a fan favorite due to her excellent development the animation also went crazy this series and has never reached the same level of quality again in my personal opinion the series has the same premise as every other series up to that point with fashion his friends traveling around the kalos region and ash taking on the kalos league however aspects such as the characterization of the main group greninja the whole mega evolution special series with milan and his story team flare and lysander and the overall mature tone made this series something

17:36 special and a fan favorite many actually wish for the pokemon anime to go back to this type of show in the future now xyz movies aren't the best but i wouldn't tell you not to watch them i just think they just aren't the same level of quality as the previous generations movies but they're all solid films and i think you should check them out if you have the time xy was a very special series and the whole pokemon community was united and everyone thought that such a successful formula would be used when adapting the generation 7 games pokemon sun and pokemon mode but what the pokemon company decided to do shocked all pokemon anime fans the generation 7 anime was revealed [Music]

18:22 pokemon the series sun and moon is probably the most unique portion of the pokemon anime first of all after about 20 years the pokemon anime decided to switch art styles which was to accommodate for more fluent animation and make it easier to make the characters more expressible the reason for this is because unlike previous seasons where pokemon was pretty much focused on solely battles sun and moon would take the spotlight away from battling and place more attention on the world in characterization pokemon sun and moon's plot has asked joining a pokemon school in the alola region a region with no pokemon league throughout his time in alola he bonds with the culture people and pokemon of the region and by the end of the series ash considers alola to be a second home the art style change was necessary as before pokemon sun and moon pokemon character

19:08 animations weren't very fluent and so because battling wasn't the main focus they needed to make characters more vibrant although the series still has its fair share of battles i mean there are some really good battles in pokemon sun and moon like ash versus kakui ash versus gladion and ash versus naughty there's just when there is a battle there is a battle and it is absolutely fantastic the characters in the region of alola really steal this series of the pokemon anime and ash's characterization and how he develops is one of the main reasons i absolutely fell in love with this series and this was also the series where spoilers ahead ash finally won a pokemon league and became champion of a region something fans have been waiting 20 plus years to see sun and moon is a series i hold very deep to my heart and is one i

19:54 would recommend to all pokemon fans it takes some time getting used to but it doesn't disappoint the movies also took a new turn during generation 7 as this would mark the beginning of the pokemon anime au or alternate universe the movies would follow a new iteration of ash ketchum and his adventures throughout the pokemon world the world isn't nearly as developed as the main timeline but the movies have great stories and characters and they also take the opportunity to explore more areas of the pokemon world they never got the chance to explore as well as revisit locations from previous seasons many fans argue that most of the au movies have been fantastic and are of higher quality than most of the other movies in the series overall generation 7 really expanded pokemon in regards of storytelling world building and overall tone and was a fantastic follow-up to

20:40 generation six being x and y now we've reached present day with pokemon journeys which is most likely almost finished at the time of this video as we've entered the series his third and probably final year while i can't give my full opinion on this portion of the anime because it's not finished i can give some overall thoughts the series is something brand new and that is having two protagonists instead of one ash is now accompanied by go a pokemon trainer whose goal is to catch every single pokemon together the two become research fellows at professor suisa's lab in the kanto region and explore the world of pokemon this is the first time ash isn't solely the protagonist as the two characters are granted equal screen time this is also the first time a pokemon series has not been an adaptation of the game from its respective generation as the series does

21:26 not follow the pokemon's sword and shield plot the show is called pokemon journeys not pokemon the series sword and shield while the anime has aspects of the gala region and its games the show showcases the entire pokemon world with fashion go making their way to every single region in the pokemon world this series also brought back a lot of fan favorite characters which was also a nice touch finally the series did something brand new as most of the series follows an episodic format now whether this was a good thing can be left up to interpretation still it once again shows that the pokemon anime writers wanted to do something new and different that they hadn't done previously in other seasons pokemon journeys is personally a mixed bag for me but i'm still very excited to see how the show ends and its final year

22:11 is looking very promising [Music] so we've reached the end i've tackled every single series of the pokemon anime i can't believe the show started 25 years ago today and many people of all ages are still so eager to watch ash and pikachu's adventures throughout the pokemon world personally this series means so much to me and i know it means the world to so many others this channel would most likely not be here today if pokemon as an anime didn't exist and while i think i can be overly critical of the show sometimes i still love it for what it is i hope the show continues for years to come and i can't wait to see what direction the writers hit the show for

22:57 future generations pokemon means so much to me and so many people it's gotten me through some of my darkest times and it's been the light for me in so many situations and i hope many more people can learn to appreciate this small little show that many of us have fallen in love with so to answer the question what does it mean to go on a journey well if i were to answer that question i think it's seeing the world meeting new friends having fun participating in new experiences and sometimes failing and bringing yourself back up you don't have to go on a journey with pokemon and collect gym badges to do this you can start this on your own in your community all you need to do is take those first steps go see the world meet new people try new things these are all things you can do but only you can decide if that's

23:42 the journey you want so i can't answer this question very well because everyone's journey is so different i know my journey is nothing like ash and pikachu's however i still continue to look forward to what it has in store for me and i still look forward to seeing where ashton pikachu's journey goes as well thank you so much pokemon for being an amazing show and just giving me so many awesome memories this i don't know i have so much love for this show and i don't even know what to say i'm falling off the script guys i'm just talking pokemon is fantastic pokemon has been with me my entire life and just i hope it continues on i hope it keeps going and i just i can't wait to see where the show goes thank you so much for watching today

24:27 guys i really hope you guys enjoyed this video and i hope you guys loved going throughout the pokemon anime with me today if you guys did enjoy the video remember to leave a like subscribe to the channel turn on all notifications so you never miss an upload and then share these videos with friends they can come here and join me for my journey i hope you guys all know this i honestly got hope you guys know this you can be the very best like no one ever was all you have to do is find out what going on a journey means to you [Music]

25:27 you