Headscratchers / Pokémon: The Series

aka: Pokemon Anime

Ash and his Pokemon

• Why does Ash want to become the world's greatest Pokemon Master so badly? He has no desire for fame or fortune - so it really begs the question. He has no role-model or someone who inspired him to want to achieve this, because no one has ever been the all-time No.1 Master before. He's not doing this because he wants the impossible either, as there have been many challenges and tests he's failed, yet never reattempted. So is his goal just misguided? Does he not realize what Champions already do? That being a Trainer is about raising the next generation to be better people who treat their Pokemon better than the previous?
  • Because being a trainer is about competing with others and improving yourself, and being the best is a common ambition among boys and young men.
  • Being a Trainer is simply about catching, raising, caring for, and battling with Pokemon. Being a Master is just that - you've mastered that vocation. It can be competitive, but we humans compete for fun. Ash isn't doing this for fun, he's put himself through many trials and hardships that'd test anyone's resolve, and make most people give up and quit (which people in the anime have done). Ash is a kind person, who puts cooperation above competition (e.g. all the filler episodes where he helps others) therefore he isn't doing this for selfish reasons. So again, why the desire if he's not doing it for materialistic reasons, to make his mother happy, or even just put Pallet Town on the map?
  • And what do Trainers catch, raise, train and care Pokemon for? To compete with other Trainers, be it in regular battles, gyms battles, league matches, contests, or whatever. Being a Pokemon Trainer isn't something that "can be competitive" — it is a competitive game at its core. That's the reason the Pokemon League exists. Even regular breeders use their Pokemon for battling, going by the games. If you have Pokemon but don't use them in competitions, you're not a Trainer — the very point of being a Pokemon Trainer is that you train your Pokemon for competitions. Throughout the series we've seen a number of people who have Pokemon as pets, or interact with Pokemon in some way, but aren't labeled Trainers, such as Melanie from the anime, most Pokemon researchers, or the Rangers from the Pokemon Ranger series (although the rangers from the mainline series count as Pokemon Trainers, since they do use their Pokemon to battle).
• Why didn't Ash prepare, or at least study before he left on his Pokemon Journey the basics? Stuff like weakening a pokemon first before capturing it, type matchups, etc…
  • Maybe being a Pokemon trainer is kind of a "trial and error" thing. You learn as you go.
    • But still, how many trainers have to be followed around, slapped hard and nagged to death by a Fiery Red Head.
    • There are Pokemon schools, though (including the first Hoenn Gym), you'd expect someone who devotes his life to Mons to have some prior knowledge on them before embarking on his journey. Then again… it's Ash, our heart-bigger-than-brain hero, we're talking about.
    • I haven't watched the anime in a long while, but didn't most of the students in those schools have relatively rich parentage? I assumed they were pay-for private schools. Ash's mom is a single mother in a small town. Perhaps he just didn't have the ability to go as a result.
    • Those schools probably had entrance exams. Most of the regions in Pokemon are modeled after regions of Japan, after all. I honestly can't see Ash passing any kind of exam, can you?
  • Ash has never been the type of person to look before he leaps until something bad happened first that makes him think twice.
  • From what I've seen all gyms double as schools, albeit specialized in one type (more obvious in Kanto, as we saw students at Saffron and Celadon in the original series and at Cerulean in Pokemon Chronicles), and Ash was homeschooled by his mother. And between her being The Ditz and having a restaurant to manage, and Ash not exactly being the most studious person in the world...
    • Whoa, Ash's mom manages a restaurant? No wonder he likes food so much....
  • Perhaps his obsession with Pokemon was a more spur of the moment kind of thing, after seeing a Pokemon match for the first time.
    • Don't think so. Pokemon training is part of the culture. Young men and women wait their entire lives to get their first official Pokemon and learn more about the world around them. Most young people in the universe have some sort of obsession with Pokemon. If they didn't, they'd have to go to a Poke-shrink.
  • We're not talking about complicated things though. You could brush off things like training methodologies, capture rates, hunting skills, and so on as things you learn in a prestigious school. But we're talking about typing and weakening pokemon. These are things anyone spending 5 minutes on wikipedia would learn about.
    • I think they cover that in the first year of Pokemon School in Alola.
    • Wikipedia didn't exist when Ash first set out on his journey.
• What's with Ash's skin? Sometimes it's essentially the same shade as everyone else, when at other times it's considerably darker than most characters besides Brock.
  • He might just be tan from traveling outdoors. I wouldn't expect any canonical answers to that question, though.
  • He doesn't have tan-lines though.
    • He's mostly covered (except for his arms). How can you tell?
    • so? For all we know he tans naked, or in a speedo.
    • I just think he inherited the tan skin colour from his unknown father.
  • From the other side, how is it that Alolan-born and bred Lillie has such pale skin? The only way to do that in sunny Alola is to completely avoid sunlight, spending all day behind thick curtains. Kiawe's dark tan is exactly what you would see on someone who spends all day working on a farm in that climate, and Mallow's dusky skin is fair enough for a character who works indoors but still gets outside regularly. As for Sophocles, the fact he's a geek who spends his time with computers and electronics is the reason he has normal Caucasian skin tone.
  • Neither of Lillie's parents are natively Alolan and her pale design was originally meant to highlight her status as an extremely sheltered kid in the games.
• Ash doesn't have a job, is never seen betting on battles, or receiving money from gym victories… How exactly does this guy eat? On a similar note, the Pokemon stations expend energy constantly- which has to cost something- and they just give it away for the hundreds or thousands of trainers around the world. How do they stay in business? Charity fundraising? Is there a special bimonthly fee that all trainers must pay or they get the Pokéballs revoked?
  • I'd assume that the Pokécenters are run by charity or the state (in the same way we have the NHS for hospitals in the UK). As for money, maybe Ash is being sent an allowance by his mother. There is at least one episode where he got free food (as it was available for anyone competing in the Pokémon league).
    • Given that the NHS is brimming with its own bureaucratic problems, that's probably not the best comparison.
    • Although we don't see it on screen, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine that he simply gets money by winning battles, as you do in the games. It's a simple enough explanation.
    • The staff at the Pokémon Centers use Pokémon to generate power. It was seen in a very early episode that lots of Pikachu powered that Center. Maybe fire types light lamps, candles and ovens (instead of using oil and gas, helping to preserve the environment). Since Pokémon can manipulate the elements, surely they can provide electrical power, fire types can power furnaces, flying types can get wind turbines to turn and water types can power hydroelectric dams. In rural areas where people have water Pokémon, they might not even need plumbing, as long as the water type is kept healthy and sticks around.
    • I wonder, does he get half of whatever the other trainer was carrying at the time? That's what you give when you lose in the games, after all… or maybe there is a fixed amount? Either way we never see him agreeing with his opponent about the amount of money to be wagered on the battle, which one would think would be important.
    • They don't show it because that would be gambling. Besides, kids don't want to see all the messy details.
  • In one of the movies (forget which) you see some kids buying something with a card. It seems in character for the Pokémon world for everybody to carry such debit cards instead of actual coins or bills. Ash's mother probably puts money on his account of a weekly/monthly basis.
    • If it's movie 7 you're thinking of, that's specific to LaRousse City. As for how he gets funds, it's also possible that trainers get an allowance from the Pokémon League. We know that Pokémon Centers provide free meals to trainers and it would fit the above theory that it's a vocational course. Though that just adds to the issue of how much the league actually spends…
    • Just rewatched that part. Yeah, you are right about both the movie number and the card. But I think the idea of a nation-wide framework/infrastructure designed to allow trainers live without money while participating in a "vocational course" is much more of a stretch than the idea that they have another card they normally use for money, or anything more resembling normal economies.
    • OK then.... explain Alola. No "vocational courses" there, just trials. (And in the anime, not even that.)
  • Barry obsessively tries to fine people. Clearly he expects them (and himself) to carry money.
  • Agreed with point above. Pokémon Centers offer their services for free, as stated in the anime and the games. The Pokemon League probably has something to with that. Then, there's the occasional times where Brock is seen shopping in a Poké Mart, so obviously, money exists, but isn't seen anywhere.
  • For young trainers, I'd imagine their parents send money to Pokémon Centers for them to use responsibly. Ash's mom has sent him new clothes to a PC before.
  • In the anime, we've seen restaurants and lodging rooms in Pokémon Centers. It's possible that while healing your Pokemon is free, eating there or staying in a room for the night (or longer) is not and the Pokémon Centers get enough cash from that to stay open.
• So Ash wants to catch all over 600 or whatever pokemon. How does he expect to FEED them?
  • He lets Oak take care of that. The reason he took Snorlax off his regular team was that he couldn't afford to feed it.
    • But shouldn't Ash pay bills for them or something? I mean, Oak can't have infinite budget, and he has hundreds (if not thousands) of pets to feed, each with their specific tastes. And a duty to keep them all ready to kick ass if a trainer'd want them back. That'd be awful lot of money.
    • Maybe he does. Assuming Ash gets money everytime he wins a battle, maybe he sends some of his winnings to Oak in exchange for sanctuary for his Pokémon. In actually makes a nice little business for Oak. He takes care of people's Pokémon and in return he gets paid and has a chance to study them to further his research. I remember an episode where Ash was swapping out one of his team and Oak specifically asked if Ash could send Bayleef because Oak had never had a chance to study one before.
    • Plus, of course, we're all ignoring the fact that he hasn't tried to catch 'em all for ages now. There's a reason they don't use that slogan anymore.
    • I always thought Ash realized the pointlessness of trying to catch every Pokémon back in "Mystery At The Lighthouse"... or at least, that's where it starts to go that way. From then on, he focuses much more on meeting and bonding with Pokémon, which fits more with his goal of Master (its not just about battling, after all).
    • Why would Ash have to pay Oak? Oak uses Ash's Pokemon for his research, the more Pokemon Ash catches the more material he has to work with. It's win-win as is.
  • Not to mention maintaining over 900 species of Pokemon, even excluding legendary ones who should for all purposes remain wild (like the Island Guardians) is a job too massive for any one person to do, even at Oak's huge lab. And then there's all the other trainers from Pallet whose Pokemon he has to take care of.

(Who's saying that other Pallet trainers (Ash and Gary appear to be the only trainers who come from there anyway) even send Pokemon back to be kept?)

• Okay, so every time Ash goes to a new region, he basically dumps all his Pokemon at Oak's with them being lucky if he ever retrieves them once. And they're okay with it?
  • Yes, because they support him in his decision to start fresh in each region, which has improved his skills as a trainer far more than just bringing Charizard, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur into every region. Plus, it's not like he doesn't visit in-between regions, and Oak's place seems like a pretty good place for Pokemon to live. We don't ever see this because it's in-between regions, which opens a whole other can of worms regarding time.
  • Catching a Pokemon creates an initial bond between trainer and 'mon, which the 'mon's species and IVs affect at the start of the relationship. Ash always treats his team with kindness and enthusiasm; yes, there were those who didn't respond well to his attitude, but when they start to trust him they become much more powerful. He does the right thing by them, and they don't mind his long absences because they want to remain with him. Some of his more beast-like Pokemon might not even notice his periods of absence.
  • And he only keeps Pikachu...
  • Krabby, Muk and his Tauros were sent straight to Oak's in the first place and were perfectly happy with it. None of his Pokemon have ever been upset when he swapped out to use one of them, why would they be upset just because he's swapping the entire team? It's not like he doesn't visit and Oak's lab is a pretty cool place to live and they get to hang out with Tracy and Misty probably visits fairly often. Sounds like fun to me. Add in the above point of starting his teams over with each region making hima better trainer and there's no real problem.
  • Also if one of his Pokemon shows they really want to come with him again Ash will relent and take them, like with Aipom to Sinnoh or Phanpy for Battle Frontier. These are the only two to do this thus far, but it shows he's not unwilling to bring them if they really want to.
    • Why did Sun & Moon break this pattern and leave Rowlet, Lycanroc, Incineroar, and Melmetal in Alola then?
• Why doesn't Ash keep his sixth Pokemon spot open and just rotate all his reserves? Does he not realize how strong of a trainer he'd be if he rotates and trains all of his Pokemon?
  • Because he's Ash.
  • Because the writers are scared that kids will be too dumb to recognize Pokémon that aren't there all the time. It's stupid, but the writing staff has been known for being very, very unwilling to take risks.
    • No such thing happens in the Advanced Generation and Diamond and Pearl. As of the Best Wishes series, I heard he's been rotating his reserves.
    • He has to. He's caught nine Unova Pokemon so far in Best Wishes (and might catch even more), and is still only allowed to carry six. (And Pikachu always takes one of the spots). But instead of leaving them with Professor Oak, he leaves them with Professor Juniper, and only rotates his Unova Pokemon in and out of his team, not Pokemon from the other regions he's visited. (Though given how far away the other region are from Unova, it might be difficult if he wanted to do that anyway).
• Cilan and Iris are shocked that Ash didn't know his Pidove was female? First off, if Ash knew it was female, he would've have used it to battle the Snivy earlier. And secondly, how would Ash check?
  • I'm guessing his response would be along the lines of:
    Ash: Unlike most people, I respect my Pokémon more than to pull their legs apart at odd angles and other things merely to look for "parts".
  • Bonus here in that he could show "his" disdain for such things as Shipping.
    • Couldn't he just check his Pokedex? I mean part of its functions is telling the gender of a Pokemon, him not knowing his own Pokemon's gender despite having a Pokedex is really stupid, considering that there are many different strategies that have to do with taking advantage of a Pokemon's gender.
    • The animé has never showcased that feature in the dex, and even if it did, there aren't any gender differences in these Pokemon. Besides, the Pokedex is about as right as an unprotected Justin Bieber entry on Wikipedia.
    • That still doesn't excuse Ash for not even trying to check, Ash upgrades his Pokedex with every region so its not out of the question to say that at least one upgrade had that simple function, which would have been avaliable had Ash actually been smart enough to look. Also the Pokedex tends to be right when its scanning a Pokemon owned by the trainer that holds the Pokedex, there is also the fact that not just anyone can write a Pokédex entry, its the scientists that do that after researching the Pokemon. If the Pokedex was that unreliable, then they wouldn't even give new trainers one as it would be too unreliable on the journey. Wikipedia the Pokedex is not. Also as said before there are viable strategies that involve taking advange of the opponent's gender, so Ash is an idiot for not trying to check.
  • Ash does use Attract quite a bit with his Snivy now that she's on his team. Plus, he's really not the kind to care that much about what gender his Pokemon are. That might inadvertently come off as sexist to viewers, and besides, he's a ten-year-old Chaste Hero who doesn't notice such silly things as romance. You can't really call him an idiot now that he has the idea of using Attract in his head and uses it to at least some success.
    • With the sexist thing, one of his only two confirmed female pokemon, Pidove, is notable for its stupidity.
    • What indication has been given that Pidove (later Tranquill, later Unfezant) is stupid? She doesn't seem any dumber than the average 'Mon, and is frequently shown to be a competent battler as well. It's true that she's mostly a Team Mom, but that doesn't make her pathetic (watch the Gym Battle with Skyla if you want proof of that).
    • The Pokedex entries make Pidove out to be rather unintelligent Pokemon. They seem to lose it after evolving into Tranquil.
    • Um, what? Since when is being interested in knowing the gender your pet or friend (Pokémon seem to be a bit of both) sexist?
• On Bulbapedia, Ash's article says that what happened to his Gliscor is "unknown". What's that all about?
  • After letting it train with McCann to let it learn Giga Impact, it came back for the battle with Paul. It hasn't been said if it went back to him or went to Oak's with the rest of Ash's non-Pikachu team members. Thus, "unknown."
  • Images from the third Unova season reveal that Gliscor is currently hanging out with all the others at Oak's. So that mystery is solved for now.
• So, Ash has had that Pikachu for who knows how long, defeated countless gym leaders with it, destroyed entire crime syndicates with it, etc. And yet, every time he goes to a new region, the Pokemon there can put up a decent fight against it. Does that mean that, say, an Abomasnow would be able to effortlessly rampage through Kanto?
  • Powering down. Those trips between regions are awfully long.
  • Note how Pikachu's electricity is affected in some way at the beginning of Hoenn, Sinnoh, and Unova. It's a way to explain its powers getting reset.
  • That, and Ash himself is only as competent as the writers say he should be at a specific time. Ash is an experienced trainer but he at times makes sloppy, amateur-ish mistakes unfitting someone of his experience.
    • Not to mention that since he's Not Allowed to Grow Up, Ash can have all the experience in the world but lack the emotional maturity that comes from being older than ten. On top of that, it's possible that he has an ambiguous disorder, which would explain why he's a bit slow at times; heck, it's sometimes indicated he's odder than the average person even by the Pokémon anime's standards... it's almost confirmed that Ash was modelled, personality-wise, on PKMN creator Satoshi Tajiri (whose first name he shares in the original Japanese) and since Tajiri himself was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome...yeah.
    • Also consider the following: a) When the latest games/generations were released, how many of us gamers managed to not rely on any player's guide and make a single mistake that is, on hindsight, could be seen as utterly stupid? (Not me.) b) More specifically, how many of us managed to not rely on trial-and-error in regards to new Pokémon/Abilities/Moves, also while not relying on a player's guide? (Also not me.) c)While we are at it, were you aware of all the retcon changes made to Pokémon/Abilities/Moves from previous games? (Again, not me.) d) And finally, would you expect such perfect and extensive player's guide to exist in the anime universe? (I doubt it - it wouldn't be very realistic.) If you consider the above, then I think Ash screwing up initially in the early stages of a new region would not be as far-fetched.
    • Wrong about always being ten. Any references to time passing at least one year were either dub added, like in the episode Battle for the Badge, or Non-Canon, like in the Pikachu Short where ash celebrates his one year anniversary with Pikachu. Come to think of it that means Ash traveled five Regions in under one year. Yes Ash is still ten, but it was still under one year.
  • Pokemon are blood knights. Utterly pwning every enemy would be boring to Pikachu.
  • The anime treats Pokemon as living creatures instead of just game characters so they need to maintain their physical conditions to maintain peak power. Ash relys on Pikachu less and less as he gets better so Pikachu's stats drop since he's not working as hard as he used to. Plus, no matter how hard you train there's going to be a point where your power peaks and you just can't get any better meaning each Pokemon will always have weaknesses that can be exploited by their opponents.
    • Yeah. That peak in power is called Level 100 in the games.
    • Actually, I always thought that Pikachu's "power-down" at the start of every region is based on the player starting a new game in each generation.
• By the same token, he's met Team Rocket and had them attempt to steal Pokémon at least 450 times. Why does he continue to trust every bossy red haired woman and blue haired effeminate man/slightly masculine woman with a small white cat like compatriots that he meets with his Pokémon?
  • Change Blindness, someone once studied before on a rumor of a gang cashing in false checks over and over, so they experimented by going into the bank, cashing some checks, changing clothes and then coming in again and they still weren't recognized as the same person.
  • Because the moment he starts recognizing them through their disguises, Team Rocket lose about half of their little remaining usefulness to the show.
    • Actually, the group has instantly recognized them through their disguises a few times for comedic effect.
    • Because Team Rocket have the (unconscious) psychic power to cloud the minds of their opponents when they really feel like they need to. When they dress up, they believe they look totally different…and therefore, so does everyone else around them. (Remember "The Ultimate Test" from Season 1? They sometimes don't recognize each other in disguise.)
  • Also, Jessie's hair is purple, not red.
    • It used to be VERY red in earlier episodes.
    • Actually, it's magenta, which is a purplish shade of red. In animé terms, it's close enough for her to be called "a redhead."
  • Because if he smartens up, then Team Rocket will start disguising themselves as harder-to-recognize people?
  • Perhaps, when they're in disguise, being The Nondescript is their special ability...?
    • Judging by the way she looked after she got drenched several times in "Noodles: Roamin' Off!", I can vouch that Jessie is completely capable of being The Nondescript. If she ever wanted to, that is.
  • I always thought that they saw through the disguises, but didn't care because they're Team Rocket.
  • The Pokemon world is full of people who look identical. They know for a fact Jessie has at least one look alike, better to get tricked by Team Rocket than mistreat an innocent look-alike.
• Small complaint: If the Tepig in episode 4 of Best Wishes had a rope around its snout and couldn't eat, how was it able to breathe? Or make Tepig noises?
  • Well, it was tied around its snout, which presumably from Tepig's anatomy, only kept its mouth closed. It's like how if you put tape over someone's mouth, they can still breathe of course and make (albeit) muffled noises. Um, probably a bad comparison, but you get the general idea…?
• Why doesn't Ash take all the Tauros he doesn't use and trade them away? He even had a chance to do just that during Johto!
  • Because he is Ash!
    • Keep in mind, his first trading experience (Butterfree for Raticate) was a bad one and he probably felt it just wasn't for him, regardless how close he may or may not have been to the Pokémon being considered for trade. When he finally agrees to trade Aipom for Buizel, it's to a friend he can trust to take good care of it. Plus, since she's traveling with him, he'll still be around Aipom anyway. In addition, he knew that it was what Aipom really wanted, to take part in contests rather than battles.
    • He probably doesn't want to separate any them from each other.
  • Why should he? They're his, they're happy, they're well taken care of and Oak isn't close to running out of room. So what if he doesn't use them much?
    • That's like saying "why spend money, my bank has plenty of space". The fact is that Ash likes different varieties of pokemon, has many duplicates of one type that he never got emotionally attached to like with Butterfree, and there's no reason he doesn't try trading some to get new pokemon he doesn't have.
    • Actually, there is an excellent reason why he doesn't want to get rid of his Tauros. They are a symbol of a colossal feat that no other Pokémon trainer in history may have ever accomplished - successfully capturing twenty-nine Pokémon in a row (one of the thirty was captured for him by Brock), on the same day, without battling a single one! He virtually perfected the Safari Zone on his first try, using all thirty Safari Balls in one session with all of them succeeding - something that's almost impossible in the games because the chance of none of them breaking out is extremely low. Not to mention, twenty-eight of the thirty Tauros were captured by accident, so almost all of them were captured without him even aiming for them!
• In between "The Problem with Paras" and "Charizard Chills." Why didn't Ash DO SOMETHING about Charmeleon/Charizard? Making a face and protruding a sweat drop would clearly do nothing about it.
  • To be fair, Ash never used it that much when it was a Charizard, only bringing it out when he needed a big powerhouse Pokémon. Add to that that it was abused early on as a Charmander by it's previous owner, and Ash's reputation in the early seasons in regards to training, it's no wonder…
  • Because Ash was a moron. Both Misty and Professor Oak point out that Ash seriously dropped the ball in training Charizard and Ash isn't smart enough to figure out the problem on his own.
  • And not only that, it wasn't solely a question of Ash's skill being too low, as Charmeleon, it's personality did a 180 and it lost respect for Ash. In "Charizard Chills", Ash showing his devotion to Charizard is enough to earn back that respect.
    • Plus, Ash isn't aware that he needs to do this, logical thinking not being his strong point this early in the series. He doesn't understand the problem so he can't fix it.
    • Um, the above doesn't explain why Charizard still doesn't listen to Ash even after gaining the Earth Badge. (Or is this a case of the writers using Artistic License and Gameplay and Story Segregation ?)
    • The badges aren't some magical objects that force Pokémon to obey their trainers. They're simply objects representing a victory over a Gym. The more a trainer has the more skilled and worthy of respect a trainer is supposed to be. Having the required eight is usually enough to convince any Pokémon that you're a worthy trainer since you're on your way to the Pokémon League. In the case of Ash and Charizard, well, Ash is a moron, lost Charmeleon's respect and didn't do anything to regain it. No number of badges was going to fix that problem, especially since Charizard would know Ash didn't deserve most of the badges he'd received. Ash only legitimately earned about three of his badges (Thunder, Soul, and Volcano) everything else was for learning a lesson or defeating Team Rocket. What Ash needed to do was sit down and talk to Charizard, figure out what it really wanted and what it's problem was. Of course, you know Ash is never gonna do it....
    • Even if Ash does try to sit down and talk to Charizard, I doubt it would have made any difference. Charizard's problem is that its ego has grown way too big for its own good, no doubt to the fact Charizard came from a trainer who values power over friendship and that Ash constantly used Charmander second only to Pikachu. As such it does whatever it wants because Might Makes Right and Ash is not experienced enough to rein in such a powerful Pokémon. Only when Charizard straight up loses to Poliwarth does his ego deflate, and that's when he starts to take notice of Ash's devotions.
• So Ash wants to give the DynamoBadge back to Wattson because Pikachu was overcharged in the match and too powerful…y'know, in the exact same way that Ash tried to win the BoulderBadge off Brock.
  • Ash is a better person than he once was.
    • You can see it elsewhere too. When he helped Erika to save her gym, she handed over the Rainbow Badge as a reward. When he helped save Blaine's gym, he expected to be handed the Volcano Badge for the same reason, but instead, his reward was a rematch. Learning from this, after being beaten by Whitney, he instead struck a deal with her. If he beats her in a friendly match, he earns a chance to battle her again for the Plain Badge.
    • Erika gave him the badge because he learned the lesson she had been trying to teach him, empathy with Pokemon. During their battle she compliments him on his skills but points out his lack of empathy, when he saves Gloom he learns empathy and she rewards him. Alternately, Blaine didn't reward Ash with anything more than a rematch because Ash had done very poorly in their actual match (Squirtle one shotted, Charizard ignoring Ash and Pikachu overpowered). Hell, Blaine even said they could have a rematch even before Ash helped save the gym. Brock's badge was given for showing compassion and showing a sense of fair play. Only Misty's badge was undeserved and he only got it because her sister's handed it over, she had every intention of breaking the tie. Also, keep in mind that Ash has probably learned that getting badges without earning them properly backfires when he gets to the final tournaments.
    • The reason that there was a tie in the first place was that she had withdrawn Staryu! How can you be a Gym Leader and not know the rules of a Badge Battle? Ash would've been victorious (albeit more by Misty's incompetence than any skill of Ash's) had Team Rocket not intervened. Furthermore, one of Daisy's justifications is that Ash accepted that Pikachu didn't want to fight Misty; had Pikachu wanted to do so, he would've swept Misty's roster. (On that note, proof that Ash had some notion of Empathy back then; it's just that with Erika he merely got a second chance to make a first impression.)
    • Technically, since Pikachu refused to battle that should have counted as a loss, as it always does afterward, so Misty technically could have called it a win for her after beating Butterfree. And Misty wasn't an official Gym Leader at the time, she was just filling in for her sisters since they wanted to just give the badge away, so it makes sense she wouldn't know the no withdrawing Pokemon rule. It also doesn't matter if Pikachu could have beaten Misty's Pokemon since it was not used, theoretical battles don't count and we don't know how well Staryu or Starmie might have done against it since they never got to battle. Can't just assume based on type. But yes, Ash already understood empathy with his Pokemon, but Erika didn't know that since Ash had been such a hard headed jerk that episode.
    • As a counter-technicality (at least to the Misty battle), Pikachu refusing to battle doesn't really count as a loss since it never entered the battle in the first place. It never got onto the field and actually fought. At least in the other cases (particularly Charizard in the battle against Ritchie) the Pokemon was on the battlefield, but in the battle with Misty Pikachu never even got that far.
  • Wasn't charging Pikachu Flint's idea in the first place? Sure, it doesn't make it okay for Ash to go along with it, but it wasn't like he was the one to go on and suggest it. It's also worth noting that, during that same episode, Ash intended to refuse the badge because he did win it when Onix was (albeit accidentally) weakened. It's possible that he had a change of heart in the gap between the charging attempt and the gym battle…
• Why don't we know anything about Pikachu's past? How did it wind up with Professor Oak anyway? I mean, we know Meowth's entire past, but why not Pikachu's?
  • I think you figure out more about each Team Rocket member's past than any of the protagonists. This isn't unusual. A lot of works in a lot of media do this, or take it to a greater degree, since it's probably a lot easier to write a character people can empathize with if that character doesn't have a lot of foreign experiences. Even though Pikachu's treated a bit more like a pet or mobile Deus Ex Machina, people still might have problems understanding its actions if his or her history were dramatically far from their own. If Yellow is canon (unlikely), then Pikachu was just caught a few minutes earlier anyway.
• Ash has been back to Pallet Town plenty of times since the first season. Is there a reason why he can't be bothered to drop by the forest and visit his Pidgeot, like he promised oh so long ago? We've had cameos from all the other Pokemon he released (other than Butterfree, but at least there's a decent explanation for that).
  • You forgot Primeape...
  • And his hat…And his boxes upon boxes of Pokémon. You'd think Oak would ask if he could give some of them away as starter Pokémon…
  • It can generally be assumed that he does all that off-screen. He's probably met up with Pidgeot in the interim between D/P and B/W. The reason they're never actually shown is because the show is meant for a constantly changing audience (5-10 year olds) and the producers don't want to keep bringing up old things that new viewers may not be familiar with.
    • I think there was a Pokémon Chronicles episode concerning that last part…
    • Actually, it's done off screen. And yes old plot points are brought back. In Unova Ash obtains Charizard again, who wasn't around since Johto.
    • Charizard made a couple of appearances, at the end of Advanced Battle and Battle Frontier, for his first challenge (against Noland's Articuno) and last battle (against Brandon in the third Battle Pyramid challenge). Both times after the battle Charizard returned to the Charicific Valley (where it chose to stay during Johto).
• I was watching this guy make fun of Pokemon, and he brought up an interesting point. Was Ho-Oh thought up the whole time, or did the game people have to make it up simply because the anime people put in a Pokemon that simply doesn't exist?
  • EP001 aired in April 1997 in Japan, and a press release including some details about Ho-Oh was available at roughly the same time for Pocket Monsters 2, with an intended late 1997 release date. While they were later delayed and renamed, it looks like at least the character design would have been available and originated with the game side. The games get a lot of influence from the anime, card games, or manga (see: surfing Pikachu, all of Yellow), but sometimes they do plan ahead.
• Think about that first episode. Ash overslept. He got to Oak's place late and found that all the starters had been given out. Thus, Pikachu. We all know the story. But doesn't this seem wrong somehow? Oak was expecting Ash to come; he had to have known about all four Pallet children. And yet he still had only three starters available? Even if Ash had arrived at the same time as everyone else, someone would have been short changed anyway!
  • If Ash had been given any Pokemon other than Pikachu, the timeline would have been mucked. In the movie Pokemon 4 Ever Ash meets a young version of Prof. Oak, so Oak knows that he's got to hold onto Pikachu and let Ash get him to maintain the timeline.
    • Hmm. Annoying, but acceptable. I suppose Oak could have special ordered that Pikachu just to make sure that Ash got it, giving the other three to the other three trainers. That said, why did he even go through the whole "Pick one—Ha! You don't get it because you overslept!" bit? Stealth Mentoring?
    • My theory is the other two kids don't exist. It would explain why we never see them.
    • That would explain Blue/Leaf/Red's Female Counterpart's absence.
    • Nope, they do. Oak's Bulbasaur was already confirmed to be owned by a boy named Gilbert. The Charmander, on the other hand, is a mystery.
    • Different Bulbasaur, different kid.
    • Maybe Oak gave the Charmander to that kid who abandoned the Charmander that Ash adopted? I seem to recall him abandoning it because it was "weak", it wouldn't be unreasonable to guess that he might have come to such a conclusion after Charmander got beat down by both the Pewter and Cerulean Gyms.
    • Probably just the Cerulean Gym. Brock would've recognized Damien.
    • I distinctly recall Ash, Gary, and Prof. Oak talking about them a couple episodes after Ash bagged the Earth Badge, while he was training for the Indigo League Tournament. Oak says they started out fairly well but "just didn't have the skill." Gary puts it more bluntly: "They just wimped out."
• Pikachu has been with him since the very start and super strong then. After beating uncountable wild Pokémon trainer Pokemon and at least 24 gym leaders it should be well over level 100, it should be able to cut a bloody swath through the first four gyms in any new country with barely a sweat, and if these starting gym leaders are so untouchable how the hell is anyone suppose to earn a gym badge with starter Pokemon, flying Pokemon, Rattata replacement, and bug Pokemon?
  • To the first: The anime doesn't have levels in the same way the game does (except "School of Hard Knocks", but that was early Season 1) so the concept of "Level 100" doesn't exist. To the second: Pikachu and the Ash's Charizard Vs Falkner's Pidgeot battle aside, Ash does tend to use a lot of new Pokemon, so the Gym leaders aren't that tough. Notice how Roark wasn't worth the time of Paul's Torterra…
  • It's level scaling. The gym leaders probably use a different party for experienced trainers, or else badges wouldn't mean anything after the first 8. In fact, it just occurred to me that the gym leaders' Pokemon would rack up experience quickly; they must be constantly replacing their main party to be fair to the younger trainers.
    • This fits right in with G/S/C, since the Kanto leaders there use higher-level 'mons than they did in the first gen games.
    • I always assumed this, if you have under a certain number of badges, you shouldn't have to fight a level 30 anything. (Sequence Breaking aside.)
    • How does Maylene fit into this idea? Paul defeated her Pokemon and mocked her afterward, and she looked about ready to abandon her position. Buizel fought her lifelong companion Lucario, and it was epic enough to cause major property damage, and it ended in a draw, and viewers complained about Ash getting another "unearned badge". So are trainers expected to win gym battles or not?
    • In the games, yes. In the anime, you're just supposed to prove you deserve the badge.
    • That's a different question from the one I was asking. Paul and Maylene treated Paul's victory as if he was "ending the dojo" (why don't we have a trope for that?), and massive property damage resulted from a draw battle. Yet, from everything I know about the anime's Pokémon League, dozens of trainers are expected to defeat each gym leader each year. Otherwise they couldn't even have a tournament. The "more than eight" gyms bit below is a partial explanation, but you'd think a gym that is too weak or too strong would lose its certification.
    • No wonder Ash never faced the Elite Four or the champion!
    • And now we have Volkner, complete with his reputation of never losing a gym battle for years before he finally got bored of it. Those must have been some very empty league tournaments…
    • Remember how Gary earned ten Kanto badges (before even reaching the Viridian Gym?), and how Barry also had badges unobtainable in the games? There are more than eight gyms in each region. Probably some are considered less prestigious than others, though.
  • Brock does occasionally mention Pokemon being "trained to a high level," though, and in the episode where James impersonated Professor Oak one of the questions he was asked had to do with what attack a Pokemon learned at a specific level.
    • To the former, "level" was used in the metaphorical sense, as a notion of scale (meaning that the Pokemon is very well trained). To the latter…inconsistent writing.
  • And as a note on the power of Ash's Pikachu, he doesn't use him/her (its him as of the third generation) unless he really needs to. After all, it's powerful enough at this point to shatter the type rules and defeat Ground-Type Pokémon with Electric attacks, and it's been shown a number of times that his particular Pikachu's Volt Tackle has power on par with a hydrogen bomb.
    • A hydrogen bomb that a wild Starly can withstand, apparently.
    • And anything else that the plot requires to have withstand/avoid it and OHKO Pikachu to show how weak/overconfident/dumb Ash is at that moment.
    • We all have good days and bad days. Sometimes Pikachu is "in the zone" and sometimes he's not.
  • Also, if Pikachu's been trained for as long as he has…… How in the blue hell did he lose to that Snivy in the first episode of the Black and White season? Even if he didn't have access to his electric attacks, that first Quick Attack should have been an instant K.O.
    • Pikachu wasn't exactly in perfect health at the time, its likely that in addition to losing its Electric-Type moves, its stats were also considerably lower then what they'd normally be.
    • Yeah, no, that's no excuse. I may have listened to the Japanese version (so I don't know what they said in the dub) but they, they being two pokemon professors who examined said Pikachu, said he couldn't use electric attacks. Not, he is sick and weak and can't use those moves. Not to mention they lost to a trainer, who just got his first pokemon. I know Ash is supposed to be a occasionally be a wimp due to the fickle hand of bad writing, but it took him a while before he got the hang of being a trainer, yet this new kid, literally is handed a pokemon for the first time, then a minute later, beats someone who is a veteran trainer (despite not having aged in the last 10 seasons).
    • "No excuse?" That's exactly the reason. Pikachu and Ash were terrified that Electric attacks weren't working despite what Juniper and Oak had said earlier. Ash was too freaked out to give decent commands, and Pikachu got exhausted just running a few yards trying to use Volt Tackle. That's why Snivy won.
    • No, there's no excuse. They were fine until Pikachu tried to use Thunderbolt. I do understand that they were terrified that Pikachu couldn't use Electric attacks, however, what I don't understand is why they were using Electric type attacks in the first place. Those aren't very effective against Grass. So Ash wasn't too freaked out to give decent commands, he is simply unable to give one.
    • Because he's Ash!
  • Thunderbolt and Volt Tackle are still good moves, even if they aren't very effective. They're Pikachu's more powerful moves, so they would still do a lot of damage.
  • Also, to the above, if Ash followed that logic, he would never use Thunderbolt or Volt Tackle (although Volt Tackle seems to work more like a powered-up Quick Attack in the anime) on a Ground type, something he does repeatedly with varying effectiveness. Similar case with Iron Tail on Ground types that aren't part Rock. And also, in the anime, Electric type attacks have occasionally set plants or Grass types o fire.
• Why doesn't Ash name any of his pokemon? Not even his pikachu? You'd think that a guy who's all about having a close bond with his pokemon would call them something other than the name of their species.
  • You can still have a close bond without naming your Pokemon. A nickname doesn't show that you love them more than you do other Pokemon. It just shows that you like to nickname them.
  • Obviously the kids would get confused if Ash had called out a pokemon's nickname when he let them out. That's why Ritchie—who nicknamed his pokemon—had almost the exact same pokemon that Ash had. Also because it'd be much easier for kids to remember all the pokemon names if they don't get nicknames—promoting the merchandise and all that.
• Why does Ash never think to return his Pokemon to their Poke Balls when Team Rocket puts them in some new cage or net? I know Pikachu hates them, but Team Rocket's most standard method of snatching seems to be "giant hand on spring", which doesn't block all of Pikachu's body. He did this when Pikachu was in Onix's Bind, it just didn't work since he couldn't aim. Same with Metapod. A glaring moment was when Pikachu and Phanpy were over the rapids, Brock even said they were still in danger. Ash could have called each of them into their Balls and been on his merry way.
  • It could be because Team Rocket has Poke Ball-proof cages. It could also be because he's Ash.....
• In "Mystery at the Lighthouse", Ash has six Pokémon: Pikachu, Butterfree, Pidgeotto, Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle. In this episode, he catches Krabby, which is sent to Professor Oak's laboratory because it is his seventh Pokémon and Pokémon trainers can only carry six Pokémon at a time. In "Bye Bye, Butterfree", Butterfree is released, opening a spot which is filled a few episodes later by the capture of Primeape. However, Primeape only lasts a few episodes before he too is Put on a Bus. Thus, Ash has five Pokémon with him. In the following episode, "Sparks Fly for Magnemite", Ash catches a Muk. He sends it to Oak's lab. But wait a minute, Ash only has five Pokémon with him. The empty slot is never filled for the rest of the Kanto saga. Even the Tauros he catches in the Safari Zone get sent straight to the lab. Even if Ash didn't want to use Muk because of its stench, he should have at least kept Tauros with him, or perhaps caught another Pokémon to complete his team. Did the writers just forget that slot was there or something?
  • Ash was stupid in the first season. He didn't have the foresight to train his other Pokemon so long as the ones he had got the job done. That's why he neglects Krabby up until he's told using multiple water types would be an advantage, he had Squirtle so Krabby was pointless to him. Muk was a defensive capture he didn't really want so he ignored it until Krabby showed him how useful using his other Pokemon could be. Tauros was likely ignored because they were a group so he thought of them as a group. He SHOULD have been using them but he lacked the experience to understand that.
• How many battles worth of experience does Ash have by this point? Because he's on his fifth continent now and still making mistakes he should have ironed out a long, long time ago. Now, pretty much all I know about the Unova season is based on his fight with the electric gym leader, but even if he's better later, he screws up enough in that one fight for the whole season. First off, he does enough planning before getting to the gym to require busting out paper and pencil, but his entire plan boils down to "Use Palpitoad". Now, this isn't a terrible plan, but Palpitoad is the only pokemon he brings to the gym. Now despite the fact that it takes Ash waaay too long to make it use a ground type move, (instead opting for the time-tested "let it hit you in the face a bunch of times" maneuver), Palpitoad wins. The gym leader's next monster is one that is so obviously both electric and flying type that it was the first time I've seen it and I knew right away. It beats Palpitoad by dazing it with Attract and smacking it around. Ash's next pokemon is Snivy, which seemed like he was actually starting to use strategy by countering Attract by sending out a female. But these hopes are dashed instantly when he tries to use Attract too, and is surprised when it doesn't work. Next, the flying type curbstomps the grass type, obviously. Ash only wins the match because he brings out Pikachu, who wanted to fight so badly that he was about to shit his tiny pants if he didn't get tagged in. The worst part about this is that the moral this episode seems to push is that planning is a bad thing. Ash and Cilan are pretty close to saying just that outright. Just because you suck at it Ash, doesn't make it bad.
• I know that Ash has evolved a good number of his Pokemon since Hoenn, but how come some of his Pokemon seem to evolve at a much slower rate than others? This is understandable if they evolve by item, but not by level. For example, he's had his Snivy since the early episodes of Best Wishes, and it never evolved once in the entirety of the season(s), while Trip's managed to evolve into its next stage by the next few episodes and into its final form in episode 90. From what I've seen there isn't really any advantages in holding back evolution in the anime (unless you own, say, a Shroomish...) and it just doesn't make sense to prevent the pokemon from getting stronger (unless they explicitly said no, like Pikachu did).
  • With the exception of stone or item based evolutions, evolution is completely in the hands of the respective Pokémon. It's up to them whether to evolve or not and they can simply decide they don't feel like it and it won't happen. We've seen this in Bulbasaur and Pikachu, both have expressed a desire not to evolve and we've seen other Pokémon who were eager to evolve (Caterpie for example). Ash just tends to catch Pokémon who aren't in a hurry to evolve.
  • Why hasn't the topic of breeding some of Ash's Pokemon come up yet? (Let's assume that they can't breed unless they're deposited at a Nursery or a Day Care. So, someone would have to bring it up to Ash for him to send them to either of the services).
• How many times has Pikachu's Pokeball been shown in the anime? I know it rarely appears because Pikachu does not like going in his Pokeball.
  • According to Bulbapedia, five times—"Pokémon - I Choose You!", "Showdown in Pewter City", "A Corphish Out of Water!", "Breaking Titles at the Chateau!", and "A Frenzied Factory Fiasco!".
• HOW exactly did Ash and Ash-Greninja lose the Kalos League (besides Status Quo Is God and the show would end)? How could Alain's Mega Charizard X overpower Greninja and its giant Water Shrunken with a fire attack despite the type disadvantage when Ash-Greninja could take and overpower with a weaker giant Water Shrunken grass attacks from Mega Sceptile which had a type advantage? (On that, why did Mega Charizard X use a fire attack as opposed to its Thunder Punch, which would have made much more sense given the type advantage?) Lysandre tries to use Ash-Greninja's Bond Phenomenon as a power source believing it stronger than Mega Evolution. Than why did it lose to Mega Charizard X and why is he not using that since it apparently proved stronger?
  • Greninja and Sceptile had only recently evolved and even more recently gained their Super Modes while Charizard had that at the start of the series. The anime has shown sheer training is able to trump anything, even a stronger phenomenon.
  • More powerful doesn't translate into more endurance. Bond Phenomenon requires Synchronization the trainer which which would take a toll on both, especially since they take each others pain and damage (which they did take in that battle). Maybe the toll of it meant they weakened and/or unfocused enough for their attack to be overpowered and it defeated them because it KO'd Ash while a normal Mega wouldn't have have this drawback.
  • Thunder Punch would require contact with the attacker, risking damage. And Greninja was small and agile enough to be hard to hit with such while while frail enough that type disadvantage of fire attacks were inconsequential.
• Why exactly were Squirtle and the Squirtle Squad at Oak's lab when Ash was there?
• Is there a reason why Ash doesn't wear fingerless gloves in Sun and Moon?
  • The way he's dressed in the Sun and Moon series is based on the default male player character from Pokémon Sun and Moon. The only difference is his hat, which is red instead of black. Not to mention that a majority of the player characters also do not wear fingerless gloves (I think only Brendan in Ruby and Sapphire).
• I’ve been watching Diamond & Pearl & I’ve always wondered: how come Ash tried to be friendly towards Paul when Paul shows many times that he doesn’t like Ash nor his friends??
  • Well, first reason: Ash is an All-Loving Hero, and it wouldn't be the first time he befriended someone who didn't like him at first. And second, he wants Paul to change his ways, and since he is no longer as immature as he was in Kanto, he knows trying a friendly approach at first is a better solution.

Ash's Friends

• How is Brock able to see if his eyes are always closed?
  • Maybe they're not completely closed. Just enough so that we see them as closed.
  • And besides, there is ONE scene where his eyes are open. But it's not pretty and I'd rather not show a link.
    • I would.◊
    • An anime character who always seem to have their eyes closed is more common than you would think.
• Why were Misty and Brock kept as Ash's companions for Johto, instead of going with a new female companion/new set of traveling buddies?
  • Didn't you see the outcry when they did replace them?
  • Maybe they didn’t have a good reason to yet at that time. The Advanced Generation and Diamond & Pearl series (based on RSE and DPPt respectively) did have changes because the games had the new concept called Pokémon Contest, and thus they now had a reason to give a new female companion/new set of traveling buddies. That is unless they want Ash to start partaking in Contests regularly, or worse, ignore the Contests altogether.
  • Remember what happened when Tracey followed Ash and Misty around? I didn't even find him and his art fetish that annoying and people still hated him. (And I felt Brock falling in love with every single Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny ever mass-produced got old fast.)
  • Because having Misty and Brock suddenly abandon Ash without a good reason would be completely out of character? Also, why mess with an established and successful formula?
  • The original show runners never planned on replacing anyone. They only dumped Brock when Pokemon became a worldwide thing and there were fears Western audiences would find him offensive or weird looking. This is also around the time they started cutting down the Japaneseness the early season had. Tracey was supposed to replace him permanently but enough people complained in both Japan and overseas that they realized it wasn't an issue and promptly brought him back for Johto. Again, this was supposed to be the permanent cast and in fact the original show runners planned on ending the show after a few years anyway and didn't plan on letting it run indefinitely. Midway through Johto the original show runners left and as ratings were down, for the next season they decided to try something new and cut Misty and replace her with the next generation games heroine (note this wasn't an option at the start of Johto anyway because a female player character wasn't put in until Crystal, well after the season had started) as a secondary hero to Ash. They kept Misty in a place where they could easily recall her if May didn't work out (the Gym) but May was well liked so it wasn't a problem. After Hoenn they decided to try it again, with Dawn and again audiences took to the new girl well, causing them to adapt the new girl every season rule. Presumably if the new girls stop working out (this almost happened with Iris but Serena won everyone back again) they'll bring back an old girl and keep them until ratings go down again.
  • Is this why Ash's entourage always has an AWOL gym leader in it (Brock, Cilan, Iris, Clement)?
• Just what did Ivy do to make Brock have a breakdown whenever her name is said within earshot? Her turning down his advances is out, because he's been turned down over 9000 times before.
  • I'd assumed he'd tried a more forward approach to courting her (nothing illegal, just forward), and that prompted her to kick his ass to the curb.
  • Perhaps he realized her relationship with her assistants was more than just teacher/student.
    • And what exactly makes you think that Brock would have a problem with this?
  • Or maybe she was a trap.
  • One fanfic has her using Vileplume pollen to make a dust that makes a person listen to commands perfectly and act like a voodoo zombie of sorts, which she developed by testing it on Brock. The dust was going to be used to stop wars by enslaving man kind. It isn't canon, but hey, you never know. Brock could have easily caught her doing some fairly illegal things (those entries about Raticate whiskers have to come from somewhere…).
  • I think it's just a combination of Rule of Funny and "obligatory over the top anime reaction". She probably just rejected him politely.
    • Or maybe she became so annoyed with his constant and increasingly more desperate flirting that they argued, ruining their partnership. I can imagine Ivy finally snapping and telling Brock that he's a terrible assistant, and then Brock criticizing her in response, and so on, leading to Brock storming out and later feeling ashamed of himself.
  • Maybe she raped him.
    • Or perhaps it was consensual, but there was some trouble in the bedroom.
    • It would seem in character for Brock to ask for some time in the bed. Either he did so and she refused and kicked him out, or he succeeded but he got carried away.
  • A more logical and intelligent reason for both reaction and why the show won't explain it like with the Pikari incident: Ivy isn't straight.
  • It's probably funnier if we don't find out, allowing our imaginations to run wild.
• We all know that it is a Running Gag for Brock to instantly fall in love with girls around his age or older. The exceptions to that rule are if they are aligned with an evil group like Team Rocket, moms, those taken, or really old). How come he did not easily fall for some of the following: A few of the Nurse Joys, a few of the Officer Jennies, Lillian, Lucy's sisters, Rhonda, and Candice?
• Why didn't Misty leave Togepi with Prof. Oak, or her sisters at least? Didn't she get tired of carrying her togepi around?
  • Metronome makes Togepi a portable Deus ex Machina. Would you leave it with someone else?
  • Misty was a motherly figure to Togepi and it probably wouldn't be happy with anybody else. She also cares for it deeply. Their relationship is similar to Ash and his Pikachu. Also, Misty wouldn't leave it with Prof. Oak, as I don't think she's affiliated with him anyway. He's the Prof. in Pallet Town, Ash's town. Misty is just a former gym leader and has no affiliations with Pallet Town.
• In "Bye Bye Psyduck" if Misty's Psyduck wasn't going to evolve then why was its tail glowing in the first place?
  • It had a sunburn on it's tail because it had been sunbathing facedown.
  • Or maybe it got bit on the tail, like in "The Evolution Solution".
• Whatever happened to Brock's Heavy Ball? Or Ash and Misty's Fast Balls?
  • The creator's figured we'd forget about them, like the GS Ball.
  • Second response struck because the answer referred to the respective trainers' other balls. (Brock's Fast and Ash and Misty's Lure.)
• Why did Lyra keep calling Dawn "Dane"? Everyone else was clearly calling her by her correct name. And for that matter, why didn't anyone try to correct Lyra? I kept waiting for Dawn to snap and shout "IT'S DAWN, NOT DANE!!"
  • I think the point was to make her come off as a girly airhead in contrast to Dawn. It's just a harmless quirk. Don't think about it too hard.
  • When Marilyn called Dawn "Dawny", it came off as annoying because of Marilyn's attitude. And there was a backstory to Dawn's Dee-Dee/Pikari nickname that brought up bad memories for her, so it would be obvious she'd get upset about that. Getting called Dane was just Lyra being Lyra, and because Lyra hadn't done anything to piss Dawn off, Dawn had no reason to get upset at her.
  • Blame translation problems. Kotone calls Hikari "Hikarin"; girls in Japan often attack "-rin" to the end of their female friends names as a cute nickname.
• Kind of a stupid little thing, but where are Cilan/Dent's(?) sclera? Every time I see him, it kind of freaks me out.
  • He was drawn like that in the games, so they simply carried it over. As for why he doesn't have them in said games, my guess would be that Sugimori was experimenting with Skintone Sclerae this generation (Note that Aloe/Lenora's husband also lacks eye whites).
• In the AG episode where Max told Harley about May's incident with the tentacool from when she was young and Harley broadcast it, why didn't the judges do something? If I remember the episode correctly, they said nothing about it and just continued the contest like normal. Since Harvey is blatantly distracting May and making her lose focus, wouldn't that be a form of cheating and shouldn't he be disqualified (and May given another chance)?
  • There's also the fact he hijacked the speaker system for a personal, inappropriate and illegal cause. Harley has since developed a history of cheating and deceit where May is concerned, like giving May bad advice (that's more her idiot ball and she should have known better), feeding her false information to sabotage her entry into the first Kanto competition (again, May's idiot ball for not double checking the validity of his information), working with Team Rocket to sabotage May's last chance at the Kanto Grand Festival (May's innocent here, what Harley was doing was obviously illegal) and crossdressing to unnerve May is what was a questionable performance decision. A couple of mis-interpreted and non-malicious comments are not a good defense for lying and cheating to bring down someone in an obsessive manner. Ironically it was the one time he didn't do anything against her that he won. It seems that even in the Pokemon world, unless the plot demands otherwise, adults are useless (a group of kids are better at stopping criminals than the police are!).
• How exactly did Iris develop her fear of Ice-type Pokémon? Was she attacked by one as a child?
  • Iris’ dream is to become a Dragon Master and she used to live in a village where Dragon Pokémon are abundant, so she’s brought herself up to be like one, too.
• How old is Cilan? In the games he seemed to be an adult to me, but in the games he seems to be short. Bianca is still her game age, but what's with Cilan? Too weird for an adult to walk around with some prepubescent kids?
  • It’s likely he was supposed to be Brock's age when he started with Ash in the original series (about 15), though he does look and act older than that though. Then again, Pokemon isn't known for its phenomenal handling of ages *coughMaycough*.
  • This Troper assumed he was an adult before other characters started referring to him as a kid. Since then I just imagine that he's around 15-17, and that he only seems older due to being a Gym Leader, co-owner of a restaurant and Pokémon Sommelier making him act older than his age.
• Think about it for a second: Brock has nine siblings all significantly younger than Ash (the tallest one barely reaches Ash's chin). Do they all seriously have the same mother? Because that'd be an amazing feat of multiple birthing.
• This concerns one of May's Pokemon, Glaceon. The first time it appears right before the Wallace Cup episodes, Ice Beam and Iron Tail are revealed to be two of its attacks. During the competition, its actual moveset is shown to be Shadow Ball, Secret Power, Ice Shard and Mirror Coat. Unless it spontaneously learned two new attacks in time for its next on-screen appearance, there's just something off about this.
  • May is a Coordinator. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine that she would want her Glaceon to learn lots of new moves to use in Contests.
  • I assume this is a question on how it now has four moves, none of which are the two shown before, to which I say: welcome to the anime. The anime doesn't stick to the "pokemon can only have four moves" rule for a number of reasons (the battles would get boring, what's the difference between the move Fly and a pokemon flying, same thing with Dive and diving) so it's just something we have to accept. Besides, the four moves only rule is just to keep the game competitive anyway.
• What was stopping Misty from just getting rid of Psyduck? He's stuck in a ball. She could just leave him somewhere.
  • An Orange Islands episode provides a strong reason: she wants a Golduck very much. This is also why Psyduck was the one immediately subjected to the first breeding center she came across.
  • Like with Ash, it would be very out of character for Misty to abandon a Pokemon. Check out her concern for Psyduck in "The Breeding Center Secret."
  • Misty doesn't hate Psyduck, she loves him, he just has a habit of annoying her when he pops out against her will. If she really gets to annoyed with him, she could just send him back to her sisters to look after like she did with her other pokemon.
• If Clemont wants to become a great electric type Pokemon Trainer (or somewhere along those lines), why did he take Chespin with him? Bunnelby at least makes some sense since it was presumably captured after Clembot usurped the gym from him and he needed a new Pokemon to battle against his old Pokemon so he couldn't afford to be picky (and Bunnelby's ground attacks and its evolution being part ground) helped him. Chespin however was introduced AFTER the Clembot situation had been resolved, so Clemont didn't need anymore Pokemon and could focus on catching more electric Pokemon to further his goal.
  • Because Chespin likes Clemont and Clemont had made a bond with him. Just because he wants to specialize in Electric-types doesn't he can't make few exceptions. Just look at Brock and Iris (and to an extend, Misty).
• Misty is afraid of Bug Pokemon and Ghost Pokemon, but doesn't shed a single fear the one time Shedinja (Bug/Ghost-type) appears in the same episode she returns in.
  • She may have gotten over it between the time she left Ash and the time they reunited. There was also a lot going on so she may have put her fears aside to focus on the problem. She never really got all that close to it, either.
• How did Bianca meet up with Ash, Cilan, and Iris in Episode BW 024: Emolga the Irresistible? She did not appear at all in the previous episode (BW 023) and the beginning of BW 024 already shows her tagging along with the trio without accidentally bumping into Ash into a body of water every time.
  • It's a remnant of the Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma! episodes being banned. Originally, Bianca was supposed to join the group at the end of A Fishing Connoisseur in a Fishy Competition! and she would stick around through Emolga the Irresistible! and Emolga and the New Volt Switch! and then leave at the end of the next episode. The bannings of the Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma! episodes meant that Bianca just popped up with no explanation and leaving at the end of the second Emolga episode and the fishing episode being redone to have her leave the gang instead of temporarily joining them.
• Why does Bonnie want Clemont to get a girlfriend so badly? Sure, he's cute, but why would a 7-year-old girl care if her brother of as old as 14 had a girlfriend?
  • Bonnie had her explanation long established: she thinks that Clemont needs to be looked after and she will embark on her journey very soon. Instead of leaving Clemont unattended or dragging her unathletic brother along, by marrying her brother off she can start her journey with no load.
• In A Shroomish Skirmish, how did Torchic evolve into Combusken—not by using an evolution stone, but by friendship, or anything else?
  • It's a level-up evolve.
• If May didn't like Pokémon at first, why become a trainer?
  • She mentions in her premiere that she really just wanted an excuse to leave home and travel. Pokemon training was the perfect excuse.
• Why did Sophocles tell Ash that his Togedemaru was female in "A Shocking Grocery Run"? It looked a bit out of context to me.
  • Probably to explain why she keeps hugging randomly hugging Pikachu.
• Why didn't Lana catch the Dewpider that had a crush on her? I ask because it's evolved form is a Pokémon she has in the games and the other Trial Captain Classmates have their signature Pokémon from the games (Mallow with Tsareena, Kiawe with Alolan Marowak, and Sophocles with Togedemaru). So... why not catch it?
• How come Ash and his friends never disipline their Pokemon for getting into heated personal fights with each other outside of battling (The only time it was implied was in an episode when Dawn’s Piplup & her Cyndaquil got into a fight and Dawn threatened to deprive them of supper. Also, her Piplup and Ash's Oshawott are the worst offenders, because they start almost every petty squabble they get into, and it's usually by stealing food from other Pokemon)?
• Why didn't Iris' Dragonite just abandon her since he didn’t respect her as a trainer? He had no problem joining her in her journey and disobeying her, but still stuck around, why?
  • It was strongly implied that Dragonite was just using Iris to get to strong opponents. However, Iris was also the first person to come to his defense when he was suspected of attacking a power plant, so maybe he did have a tiny bit of respect for her. This was even pointed out by Cynthia in one episode; Dragonite’s past experiences made him distrustful of humans. It was only after Iris tried to protect him from an attack form Thundurus that he started obeying her.
• Is Kiawe black? I do know Lenora is confirmed to be black, but Kiawe does have sort of an accent to a black person.
  • Unlikely given he's native to Alola, most likely he is meant to be Samoan and his darkened skin tone may be a result of the constant exposure to volcanic ash.
• Why doesn't Clemont build himself a portable treadmill or something so that he can exercise and not get tired from running anymore? At least May had the excuse that she couldn't make something like that, but for all the wacky and unnecessary inventions Clemont is always making, you'd think he would invent something to overcome his weak points.
  • Clemont's inventions tend to lean towards being solutions to highly specific and unlikely problems. It's entirely possible that the idea of making something to solve a problem as mundane and general as his own lack of athleticism never occurred to him.
• Grace tells Serena to keep up her Rhyhorn racing lessons when she sets out on her Pokemon journey. How is she expected to do that when she knows Rhyhorn stayed home and not with Serena?
  • Rhyhorn racing appears to be an established sport in Kalos, as two major cities are shown to have racetracks nearby. Grace likely expected that Serena would stop by racing facilities for lessons with whatever Rhyhorn were available as she traveled around Kalos.

Team Rocket

• Giovanni's suit. Why is it bright orange? He's a serious yakuza boss and his suit is orange, and bright at that.
  • The man is the leader of a major criminal organization and in control of a vast amount of powerful mons. He can get away with wearing an orange suit. No one in-universe is gonna call him out on his questionable fashion sense (although that would be pretty hilarious).
  • After all, nobody would suspect a dude in an orange suit to be a gangster. Compared to his underlings' ridiculous disguises, that's actually fairly logical…
  • I can think of another criminal in an orange suit. It just works.
    • For that matter, there are TWO criminals in that series with orange suits in that series, both of which have some similarities to Giovanni. Again, it just works.
    • Poor comparison. These are two rather different characters. Gant is supposed to look intentionally goofy, given his fun personality. Giovanni isn't; he's a serious character with a serious personality.
  • He wears a dark green suit in Best Wishes.
  • Thank you for finally asking this question, I thought I was the only one who had noticed. I've been debating over this for years, trying to come up with an explanation (it's...sort of a Running Gag to tease him over it in my fanfics), and I've finally come to the conclusion that he's colorblind and his Rockets aren't going to tell him he's wearing an orange suit out of fear.
• Related to the previous point, what on Earth was the behind the scenes reason behind Giovanni's orange suit in the anime? In the games and manga adaptations, he wears a far more sensible black suit.
  • Its probably to make him appear less intimidating as he's mostly wearing the orange suit in Meowth's fantasies, which were generally super silly.
    • Actually, he has worn that orange suit since his very first appearance in the Kanto arc.
• Why are Jessie, James and Meowth still trying to catch Pikachu when Team Rocket doesn't exist anymore?
  • Team Rocket (the organization) doesn't exist any more? That's news to both me and Bulbapedia, as of 10/10/2011.
• What the heck is Team Rocket's motto supposed to mean anyway?
  • A declaration of their status as Knights Templar and of their omnipresence (blast off at the speed of light)?
  • Wasn't their original motto a bastardization of the correct one that we've seen Cassidy and Bach use? That version makes it clear that they're villains out for their own good, and later mottos have matched that mentality rather than the Knight Templar perspective.
    • The name is Butch!
    • Cassidy and Butch stole Jessie and James' motto and altered it. Jessie and James stole it from someone else. Mentioned in Pikachu Revolts.
  • In the Japanese, Rocket Gang's motto is hard to translate (two attempts are halfway down this page). But one way to read it is "When people ask us what we're doing, we play on society's sympathy. We say we're preventing the world's destruction, and bringing about world peace. We tell lies about truth and love. We're the lovely and charming villains, Musashi and Kojiro."
• Why do most of Jessie's Contest appeals involve her Pokemon attacking her?! Is she a freaking masochist or something?!
  • Remember when they didn't attack her and she didn't make it past the appeals round? Or maybe she is a masochist, and that's why she's still on Team Rocket.
  • Also, Meowth said that they'd been zapped so much by Pikachu's attacks that they're practically immune to Electric-type attacks. Maybe she's developed a tolerance to pain in general?
• It just occurred to me that Meowth's never been "captured". He joined Team Rocket on his own, without any Poke Balls being used. So what would happen if Ash beat up Team Rocket as usual, and then threw a Poke Ball at Meowth?
  • If he was sufficiently weakened, he would be "captured." However, while that might officially make him Ash's Pokémon, I am sure it is a technicality he would promptly dismiss and he would return to Team Rocket at the first opportunity. About the only thing that would change would be that Ash would have a ball which could be used to "recall" Meowth if he is in line of sight.
  Meowth: Wait, you mean I actually belong to da head twoip now? Dis is a nightmare! (to Ash) Look, ya gotta let me go. Ya knows I'd always be tryin' ta steal Pikachu.
  • Meowth mentioned having a master when they were lost on the island of giant Pokemon back in the first season. It's likely his master is Giovanni.
  • I thought in the/a flashback episode, his mum (a Persian) put him in a Pokeball at a Pokemart to keep him safe from… something. Maybe starvation, or some sort of local disaster, I don't recall. Therefore, he's got a pokeball floating around somewhere, but not necessarily a (current, human) master. That may have been in one of the manga that followed an Ash/Satoshi continuity, though (I definitely seem to recall it animated, with the sort of Limited Animation that animated flashbacks sometimes have), or a different Meowth.
    • I don't recall that at all... The only Persians that have appeared in Meowth flashbacks were Giovanni's and the leader of a gang. On the topic of Meowth's Poké Ball, though, well... A recent episode preview in Japan has Iris trying to catch him, and he does get sucked in (though the preview ends before he either breaks out or is caught), so obviously he's never had one before.
• Why don't Team Rocket just make money by selling their robots? And don't say it's because they're crazy or evil because if you remember the episode "The Problem With Paras" they were perfectly willing to do legitimate work as long as it gave them a good amount of money (at least in that episode, it was justified because Cassandra didn't want to work with them). And don't say it's because they're stupid either, because if they're so stupid, HOW CAN THEY EVEN MAKE GIANT ROBOTS WITH RELATIVELY FEW RESOURCES?!
  • Because if they did that, they wouldn't be in the show anymore.
    • And that's bad, because?
  • How many buyers for giant robots would they be able to find? Then again, they could always sell the parts, which would probably be easier, provided they're not recognized as members of a criminal group.
  • In the episode where Ash gets Noctowl, James said that they had bought that particular robot. Maybe it's because there is already a large company selling them and they wouldn't be able to compete.
  • Well, like the article Just Eat Gilligan says, there's no guarantee any plan like that would work, but it's worth a shot at least! Also in the episode "Tanks for the Memories" they went to open up a milk place, while there was another milk place nearby that they couldn't compete with (They stole from them too). One thinks that they could at least try to do the same thing with their robots. Also, even if there was a competing company, wouldn't they have better recognition already seeing as how their business would have few workers and easy to manufacture (again, with relatively few resources)?
    • They own a malasada franchise in Alola.
  • Perhaps giant robots are illegal or something.
  • They're obsessed with catching Pikachu to the point of never being able to stick with any other job.
  • Because they get the robots straight from Team Rocket as a whole's arsenal. Team Rocket can't tell it's them because the robots always blow up immediately.
• If Team Rocket (James, Jessie, and Meowth) frequently comment on how they don't have any money for food, then where do they receive the funds to build their giant Mechas?
  • Since they STILL think Pikachu is stronger than the ordinary Pikachu (it isn't at all, watch the second episode carefully), I wouldn't be surprised they think they're so poor either.
  • Racking up HUGE debts with Team Rocket (honestly—the only way they were able to repay it was to establish a business that was so profitable they could afford to build a multi-story skyscraper store within the few weeks of the Pokemon League).
  • They are frequently seen doing random jobs. Then they spend all the money from that on giant Mechas.
    • They own a malasada franchise in Alola.
• Why is that Team Rocket when doing bad things are pretty damn incompetent, but when they're on the side of good, they're pretty damn effective?
  • Because of Redemption Promotion. It's even lampshaded on the page quote there.
    • True, but is there an off screen reason, like, do the writers hate Team Rocket being evil or is this a lesson to kids or something that being evil will always fail or something of that sort?
    • The latter.
  • When Team Rocket is doing something good instead of bad they aren't pit against the nigh invincible main characters. Jessie and James are very good Pokémon trainers and can flatten anyone when it isn't necessary to the plot for them to be beaten. Having them fight for good just removes the only real obstacles holding them back.
    • It's not even when they're just being good. It's when they aren't actively being villains. In Sun and Moon they were trying to catch Pokemon legitimately until Ash showed up and they won against him. It's only when Mimkyu tries to finish Pikachu off that Bewear pops up. Likewise, when they went back for their pokemon after a Totem Raticate attacked them, they ended up winning and getting a Z-Crystal for it.
• If Jessie and James are starving all the time, why don't they just use their Paper-Thin Disguise and stock up on food at Pokémon Centers?
  • You think that's bad? Try and think back to the first two episodes okay? Pikachu back then was so powerful his Thunder SHOCK was more powerful than its Thunderbolt is today. Has his battery been draining or something when we haven't been looking?
    • Jessie, James and Meowth, as well as the rest of their Pokemon, have built up a resistance to electric attacks from being hit with them so much so Pikachu's attacks just seemed stronger early on.
    • Thunder, meanwhile, was seemingly ditched in favor of Volt Tackle. This may not have helped either.
    • In all fairness to Ash, Thunder misses a lot.
    • It's been a while, but in Team Rocket's introductory episode (as well as the episode with the Pewter Gym), wasn't Pikachu supercharged by a generator or something? I don't think it's as much as Pikachu's attacks getting weaker as Team Rocket getting easier to 'blast off again' after over 600 episodes.
    • The first time this happened it was because of rain, I assume (against the Spearow) The 2nd time was because it reacted with Koffing's gas.
• If Team Rocket wants Ash's Pikachu, then how come they also attempted taking Dawn's Piplup?
  • Their boss wants powerful Pokemon. Ash's Pikachu was originally their goal, but it was expanded to cover any Pokemon they deem strong (or any Pokemon, since any Pokemon is stronger than them.)
    • But Piplup could barely fight without Pikachu's help when TR first met Dawn
    • Agreed. But what's ironic, they hardly ever try and take Brock's Pokemon. He is a Gym Leader after all.
    • Well, his "Gym" Pokémon are left behind at the Gym, at least as of the Advanced Generation and Diamond and Pearl series.
• Why does Team Rocket think Ash's Pikachu is so special?
  • In the second episode, they saw it let off a ThunderShock that wrecked, no— obliterated the Pokemon Center in one hit. Granted, it was powered up by the Center's electric machine thingy and mixed with Koffing's Smog attack, but still, a Pikachu that powerful would be insanely rare if not impossible to find a second of.
  • In Pika & Goliath, when Pikachu is in the emergency room, Team Rocket are peeping through the window. James talks about it being one-of-a-kind and Jessie explicitly hopes he doesn't die. Later in the episode they steal Ash's Thunderstone so Pikachu won't evolve into Raichu (they acknowledge that the resulting Raichu would be insanely strong, but also say it doesn't seem right, Meowth in particular). In all honesty, putting aside from Pikachu's well-established battle capability, I think they really are genuinely fond of the little guy, it just manifests itself in...rather odd ways, given Team Rocket's role in the anime.
• When the heck did James catch a Weepinbell?
  • Pretty sure this was an off-screen capture. In The Breeding Center Secret he goes to pick up his Weepinbell and finds it evolved into a Victreebel, and that was the first anyone heard of it.
  • The Johto episode where he leaves his Victreebel shows in a flashback when he caught Weepinbell.
• Alright, this just bugs the HELL out of me: why on earth does Team Rocket always refer to Ash & Co. as "twerps"? Every freakin' time! Come on, TP, is that the only insult you know?
  • I read in this article that perhaps that's what all of Team Rocket customarily call any and all of their enemies who are young.
  • It's become more of a title than an insult, to this troper at least. Calling them any other name would lessen the meaning of "twerp", assuming it still has the same meaning as before. And calling them by their actual name would afford them more respect than a villain (no matter how derpy) should afford a protagonist. Even Gary still calls Ash "Ashy boy". Whenever they do end up referring to a main character by their actual name (usually because they're in disguise etc) I always remember it as jarring and weird. And I like Ash being the One True Twerp anyway.
• Why is it that every time Team Rocket meet up with the Magikarp salesman, they do business with him? Why don't they just steal from him? They are thieves after all!
  • James is just too nice of a guy.
  • They keep their Pokemon in Idiot Balls.
  • His salesman charisma is too powerful for them to overcome.
    • Steal his Magikarp? What?
• Why don't Team Rocket just hold Ash at gunpoint and demand Pikachu like they did with the game warden in "The Legend Of Dratini"?
  • And when did "Legend of Dratini" last air on US TV? Loaded guns on Pokemon, probably not going to happen again. Ever.
    • That episode was never aired outside Japan for that very reason. Anyway, Team Rocket ended up using a tickle machine on the warden! Even if they could get their hands on another gun, they aren't really the types to use it.
  • For an in character reason: any thug can hold someone at gunpoint, real villains use style!
• Why don't Jesse and James (not Team Rocket as a whole) stop to think about how to best use their Pokemon? I mean, in the second episode starring Duplica, they have an almost perfect sponge in Wobbuffet (which counterattacks everything that comes its way, be it physical or special) until it got confused with the whole Counter/Mirror Coat issue. Damn game mechanics...
  • They're Team Rocket. Enough said.
    • The Hoenn episode "Do I Hear a Ralts?" polished the fail right off TR and had them be surprisingly good at battling, so much so that in order to save the Pokemon of the day, Max (who was charged with protecting it while the other characters battled) had to RUN AWAY from Team Rocket. It's primarily for this reason that that episode was widely well received by the Pokemon fandom, with the fan who runs the English/Japanese comparison site calling it the "Best.Episode.Ever".
    • http://dogasu.bulbagarden.net/comparisons/houen/ep110.html
• Why don't Team Rocket use Wobbuffet in every battle? Since its Counter/Mirror Coat seems to deflect any attack, even Pikachu's, why don't they use it to fight Ash and co.?
  • Because it's got Team Rocket Incompetence Disease.
    • Actually, it's even more competent than they give it credit for, since it knows when to use Counter/Mirror Coat for physical or special attacks even when Jessie (and the writers) gets them mixed up.
    • Summarizing: Just because Team Rocket themselves have "Team Rocket Incompetence Disease".
    • Because Wobbuffet is by nature a passive Pokemon, and Jessie is an active and impulse-driven person…she wants to charge in, full-speed-ahead, and actively kick butt, not wait around for someone ELSE to attack first. If James were its trainer, we'd probably see a lot more of the Wobbster in (counter)action.
    • I remember an episode where they tried that. Guess what? It didn't work.
    • IIRC it was because Jesse couldn't decide between Mirror Coat and Counter, which raises another question. I believe Mirror Coat counters special attacks and Counter counters physical attacks. So normally when you use Wobbuffet you have to predict what your opponent is going to do. And Wobbuffet is still one of the most powerful Pokémon apparently. Now, consider the fact that in the show, "Use agility to dodge!" etc is a valid command. Wouldn't that make Wobbuffet essentially unbeatable (i.e. player 1: (waits), player 2: "Use Brave Bird!", player 1: "That's physical, use counter!")? I mean granted, he would still take damage, but given that he has the best durability (HP) of all the Pokémon IIRC, you could really just have a team of 6 Wobbuffets who would just outlast the opponent.
    • A team of six Wobbuffets would be absolutely terrible. Your opponent would easily status you or stat-up with Swords Dance or something up to 400% damage to the point where he could kill every one of them in one hit. The point of bis to absorb damage dealers and Encore the rest so that your other Pokemon have time to switch in and stat-up.
    • Such a strategy would fall apart at higher levels of competition, given how fast some mons can move. in the seconds-long delay between Wobbuffet's trainer processing the name of an attack, correctly ascertaining whether it's physical or special, relaying the command to Wobbuffet, and then Wobbuffet processing the command and acting on it, it's probably already eaten that Brave Bird (shame we don't have Full Synchro. It also wouldn't be viable against wild Pokemon, and Trainers could speak in code or foreign languages.
    • Encore helps.
    • Unless your opponent has prepared for this and has a team with the best status-inducers (a Haunter with Confuse Ray and Toxic, for instance) and uses self-status inducers just to make sure you don't Counter/Mirror Coat it. Okay, it means your opponent can just Safeguard the next Wobbuffet but you're still one up.
  • Funny thing is: it has been done. There was actually an episode where they had Wobuffet use Counter over and over and over again. Then he ran out of power points. Yeah that's right, they averted Screw the Rules, I Have Plot! for once just to make Team Rocket lose as usual.
    • Don't forget, the Heroes have to defeat them EVERY episode.
• Why don't Team Rocket try using Poke Balls to catch wild Pokemon? They've done it with Seviper, Dustox, Victrebeel, and a few others and no one objected.
  • Jesse caught her Yanma this way, this time with the kids watching. Since the Yanma was currently in the process of being caught by the character of the day, they did object…but get over it and decide to look for another Yanma.
  • Because Pokémon need to be weakened to stay in their Pokéballs. When they are trying to catch a single powerful Pokémon, this is hard to do. When they are trying to do it to a bunch of lower level wild Pokémon, it would take too long. And when they are trying to capture other peoples' Pokémon... well, is that even possible?
    • Jessie, James, and Meowth are quite powerful trainers, though, so only very strong wild Pokemon should be a problem for them. And it does seem to be possible to catch a trained Pokemon (at least in the Manga. In the games, it seems you need to alter the ball, so it could have some sort of fail safe that could be done away with by someone with enough knowledge). Heck, they are wanted by the police at one point, and appear to have been Elite Rockets before meeting Ash. Ash's Pikachu, during the first meeting, had to be by dozens of Pikachu and a bicycle, to the point that it BLEW UP A BUILDING, to stop Team Rocket.
    • Actually, that limitation of Pokéballs only applies in the console games. Otherwise there'd be no point in the trainers hitting the Pokéball away. Also, think about it: how do you, a hollow sphere with an OS, know if a Pokémon has a trainer or not?
    • A Koffing and an Ekans (Meowth never fights in battles). Sounds ''really'' powerful and Elite to me. Hell, in their second appearance, didn't Caterpie defeat them? Villain Decay at its finest, but still. They have wanted posters because they're local criminals and part of a well known organization (at least in the games Team Rocket is). Doesn't mean they're that competent (though in the early episodes it was partially bad luck).
    • The members of Team Rocket are supplied with one pokemon per team, Jessie and James got Meowth. Ekans and Koffing are their own pokemon, acquired on their own just like every other pokemon they ever train and it's not an indication of their rank or competence. In fact, there's more evidence to suggest Jessie and James to be great trainers than otherwise. Yes, they lose to Ash and his friends, but Ash and his pokemon are also extremely powerful and the element of surprise and intimidation is long gone. When they encounter other pokemon and trainers Jessie and James come off as quite formidable. Remember princess vs Princess? Jessie made her way to first place in her division, playing by the rules and using only Arbok and Weezing for almost the whole way through. She even came close to beating Misty. Basically, Team Rocket loses so easily because they've come to expect it, when they regain their confidence or want something bad enough their game improves considerably.
• In the episode Once There Were Green Fields, Gardenia offers to train James's Cacnea, right? James first tries to improve Cacnea on his own and Team Rocket plan to trick Ash and Co. into helping them train it. Only it's not necessary because Ash offers to help. Are you freaking kidding me? I know Ash isn't the smartest trainer, but what could possibly possess him to want to make his enemies more powerful? And no, his "It's our job to help Pokémon" excuse does not cut it.
  • Maybe he was hoping that if he made Team Rocket powerful enough, they'd realize that they don't need Pikachu.
  • HE'S ASH!
  • Or that since he's beaten them so many times, one new move wouldn't make much of a difference.
  • Oh, come on. Team Rocket have helped them out on a few occasions (i.e. the second movie). I thought that was cute.
  • It was less than twenty episodes into the series when Ash's Pokemon accepted that Ekans and Koffing were perfectly decent Pokemon who merely belonged to vile trainers.
  • Besides, it works just as well the other way. One trainer had reason to appreciate that Team Rocket helped Paras evolve. And Paul's Torterra had an episode…
    • There was also Cheryl's Burmy, too, though it was for malicious purposes and it's probably too much of a plot recycle to count.
• Why does James give away one of his only two battle capable Pokemon (Cacnea) just so that it can learn Drain Punch? It quite clearly loves him a great deal (witness its constant hugs). He's telling it to go with a near-total stranger just to get stronger. In effect, he's deserting it. And couldn't the same rationale (giving his grass-type Pokemon to a grass-type gym leader to get stronger) just as easily apply to his Carnivine?
  • Out-Universe explanation: They wanted to get rid of Cacnea so James would only have Gen 4 Pokemon with him. In-Universe: He doesn't leave it only so it learns Drain Punch, he wanted it to have a better future and actually become a good fighter, and it's not a total stranger, it's a Gym leader! That's a very important person and not just some random stranger, besides it wasn't his idea, it was Gardenia's.
    • That, or the fact that no one wants a being covered in spikes constantly hugging you.
    • Speaking of the same episode, am I the only one bugged by Gardenia's attitude? I know she's an expert on Grass types, but she's essentially saying to James: "I think you should give me your Pokémon because I can raise it better than you." And that may be true but still.
    • You should generally try to see the best interpretation of what people say, and not the worst.
• Okay, is Kojiro/James gay or not? I know of one website that staunchly and firmly believes so (I am NOT linking to them), but they're just bunch of really popular fans in New Zealand, and have no bearing on the show. I do know that for all his cross-dressing (and squealing in the dub), he has never once even glanced at another guy. But he's only looked at a girl, well, twice (and once was under a spell). He, as much as shippers like me would love to believe he does love Musashi/Jessie, has not glanced at her either. So is he asexual or something? If only I could interview the creators and get some closure on this issue.
  • He's straight, but (at most) effeminate, I believe. I think we have a trope for that somewhere 'round here. Harley, on the other hand, is as flaming as a Chimchar's backside.
  • There is a trope for it - Camp Straight.
  • Yeah, that's what I think too. But I just wish someone official would make it clear, just so those people at that certain website would be proven wrong.
  • Oh please, don't hate on Pokémopolis just because you disagree with them. As far as I can tell, Kojiro is straight. James on the other hand, is very gay. They really flame him up in the dub. Regardless - this is Pokemon. It's not about romance. The most we'll ever see in the franchise is Pokemon breeding and May/Drew's mutual but subtle crush. Hell, Ash has been the main character for 10 years and has never really expressed interest in anything.
  • You're forgetting The Episode titled, 'School of Hard Knocks', where Ash clearly shows interest in Giselle when shown a picture of her. However, this is the only time he's shown interest in a girl.
  • Well, he's expressed interest in one thing. Clearly, Ash is a Pokésexual.
  • I think it was during the Orange League arc after James escaped an arranged marriage, but I can't be sure. However, at the end of the episode, he and Jessie exchanged a long, meaningful look, but it never went anywhere.
  • In the first manga, they get married. Or at least, Jessie is VERY pregnant.
  • An early DP episode had James shriek after Carnivine eats him: "I'm not a fruit, no matter what anyone says!!!" This troper was in both shock and hysterics.
  • And in the watermelon episode Meowth does a sour grapes take, mentioning "the fruit we've already got."
  • In one episode Jesse begins rhapsodizing about being saved by a romantic knight riding a Rapidash in terms that would be very offensive to James if he were her boyfriend. He has absolutely zero reaction.
  • There's also the "Flaming Moltres" incident, where James seems very enthusiastic about wearing said costume. Meowth comments that he must have gotten it out of his closet. Unwitting Double Entendre or meaningful insinuation?
  • That was Jessie saying he got it out of his closet, but yes, it seems like at least Jessie and Meowth both think James is into dudes.
  • Or they're ragging on a comrade in the way that friends do, without taking it seriously.
  • The subject of James cross-dressing is also an interesting one, completely apart from his sexuality (many straight men crossdress). Why does he do it? It's pretty clear that Jessibelle traumatized him from an early age, so he might identify strength and confidence with dressing like a woman.
  • This Troper firmly believes James is an Executive Transvestite.
  • Or an Action Transvestite. Though sadly he's been cross-dressing less and less....
  • The "fruit" stuff is dub only. There is a Japanese CD that has a canonical (I think) song "Lucky Lucky" in which James talks about liking a girl. Also, he liked a girl in one of the Pokemon Chronicles specials. So he's straight. Case closed.
  • Plus, it was shown that he really DID originally like Jessibelle, and was in fact the one who proposed. He just stopped liking her when she became a total bitch.
    • Jessibelle may explain why he's so girly..
  • Yessss....
  • This Troper believes that James is straight, but just hasn't shown any interest in anybody in the show. At the most, he's bisexual. Being around Jessie can do that to ya.
  • Those two have been around so much, they probably can't think of each other as anything other than friends. Dating would only complicate the relationship.
  • Liking Jessie in man's clothes doesn't prove someone's bisexual. It just proves they're not dead.
  • The perfect blend of In-Universe, Real Life and Rule of Funny right here: He's not gay, he's just British.
• Wait a minute, if Butch & Cassidy are trying to one-up Jessie & James, then how come they have a Raticate, something that cats like Meowth normally prey on? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to have a Growlithe?
  • They were given Raticate when they first became a team in "Training Daze". Meowth was assigned to Jessie and James. Luck of the draw.
• In the Fighting Dojo episode, I remember Jessie stealing a Hitmonlee to compete in the tournament. It is never seen again. Team Rocket actually stole a Pokemon successfully, and it is never seen again. Wut.
  • You could also apply the same logic to Croagunk, but here's a good explanation for Hitmonlee: They didn't steal the Poke Ball, and they were blown sky-high by their own bomb before they were even caught, without Hitmonlee in tow.
• Why does James never take Growlie with him? Growlie's his best friend and a powerful battler, Team Rocket themselves are competent when Ash and co. aren't around, he could steal a Fire Stone and evolve it, thus having a powerful Arcanine on his hands.
  • He said he wants Growlie to protect his parents. Plus, I'd imagine we would want to keep his oldest friend out of the dangers they face every episode.
• While it is understandable Team Rocket isn't well known in places like Hoenn and Sinnoh, why were James and Jessie wearing their uniforms while in Kanto in the original series and Battle Frontier? Unlike the other areas, Team Rocket is known and has influence in Kanto, so why would they wear them there in broad daylight given they ran the risk of being arrested on sight?
  • Why bother hiding their identities after their disguises are blown? And if they actually do successfully steal the twerps' Pokemon, they'd likely want them to know that they were the ones who stole it. That, and the police in this show aren't exactly the most competent.
• According to the japanese version of the second movie, Jesse and James are siblings. This a few questions. One, was Jesse adopted, given how James' parents don't appear to acknowledge her as their daughter, despite both Jesse and James having come from a wealthy background. Second, if they did recognize her, wouldn't they think twice before setting James up with someone who looked EXACTLY LIKE HIS SISTER/THEIR DAUGHTER?!?!
  • Considering we have first season episodes establishing that James's family is extremely rich and Jessie was brought up in poverty, and we've seen both mothers, it's fairly obvious that they're not brother and sister at all.
  • Are you sure that wasn't just a mistranslation? I've never seen that anywhere.
• Why does Victreebel always attack James when called out (other than for comedic purposes)? Bulbapedia says Victreebel does it out of affection, but, I don't see it.
• One thing about Jessie's Wobbuffet has always stumped me. Why doesn't it ever tell Ash and his friends that it used to be Benny's Wobbuffet (Wobbuffet did meet them before it was accidentally traded it to Jessie) instead of going along with their evil schemes?
  • Pokemon don't speak English. And people don't speak Pokemon.
    • The team's Meowth (and quite a few Legendary Pokemon) would like to disagree.
  • Wobbuffet is so passive that it just doesn't worry about something like that, and Ash, Misty and Brock had no reason to explicitly think that Benny trading Wobbuffet for a Lickitung at the same time as Team Rocket underwent such a switch was anything more than a weird coincidence.
• In Pokemon 2000, Meowth is able to translate the electric communications between Pikachu and Zapdos. Why then, is he unable to translate the communications between Pikachu and Dedenne in XY?
  • Dedenne perhaps speaks with an undecipherable Kalos accent.
• After 16 years of the anime, how can Team Rocket still be not recognized by Ash and his friends when they disguise? Jessie still has her easily recognizable exposed hair in some disguises and James sometimes too, ahd there's Meowth with them.
  • Well, in this world, with all its Jennies and Joys, there are simply a lot of Inexplicably Identical Individuals. Jessie, who you brought up, we KNOW has a doppelganger in the form of Jessibelle. Ash and friends have probably decided that it's better to be tricked by Team Rocket (and beat them later anyway) than to assume that these obviously-Team-Rocket-people are Team Rocket and risk the animosity of people whose only crime was looking like Jessie and James.
• So James ran away from home because he didn't want to marry some girl. He befriends Jesse years later. Here's the headscratcher...why would he hang around with a girl who looks JUST like his fiance? Would you befriend a girl/guy who bears a striking resemblance to the person you were supposed to marry?
  • He ran away as a very young child. He and Jessie met as adults (according to "Training Daze") or at the most as teens (in the bike gang or the training school) at which point Jessie would have looked very different from a young Jessebelle.
  • This is a world where exact doppelgangers (like the Joys and Jennies) are not that uncommon, so perhaps people just don't notice. This would also explain why nobody ever sees through Team Rocket's disguises...
• In Sun and Moon, the Bewear that took them in is fond of Combee honey. There's one problem: Combee are not native to Alola. Alola does have the Cutiefly/Ribombee line, but Meowth says himself that what they are being fed is Combee honey. How does Bewear get it? Does it have something to do with its Scarily Competent Tracker skills? Or is it just that Meowth simply doesn't know, and can't really tell the difference in varieties of honey?
• In Sun and Moon Team Rocket manages to beat a Totem Raticate (Mimikyu has type advantage and Play Rough), but why didn't they catch it since they need a Dark-Type to use the Z-Crystal. I mean, that's what they were going for, right?
  • Because, as in the games, not even Team Rocket would be able to catch a Totem Pokemon. Plus, Mimikyu can learn moves such as Feint Attack and Dark Pulse so, at some point, it may learn one of those moves and Jessie will be able to use the Z-Crystal then (granted if the Trio could get their hands on a Z-Ring).
• I can understand why Team Rocket didn't bring their Sinnoh Pokémon to Unova, and why they didn't bring their Unova Pokémon to Kalos, but is there any reason why they left their Kalos Pokémon when going to Alola? Going with Gourgeist and Inkay would have been a lot better than going with just Meowth and Wobbufett. In fact, why don't they pick up any of their old Pokémon? James would certainly love to have Mime Jr. again.
  • If I remember correctly Team Rocket handed their Unova Pokémon to Giovanni in the final Best Wishes episode, and were too scared to ask them back. As for why they leave Gourgeist, Inkay and Mime Jr. behind, that's just because the writers want them to have Pokémon of the newest generations.
• In "The Fortune Hunters", why exactly would Butch and Cassidy have gone to all the effort of creating a fake Pokémon Fortune Telling book when there was a real one they could have used as it was?
• Why didn't the writers ever have James' Koffing use Explosion? The thing is shaped like a freaking mine, yet it never uses the move it looks like it was designed for?
  • Because that move is a one-trick pony that not only leave Koffing out of the game after use, it also leaves its trainer defenseless if it misses its targets. Also, it would require a pokemon center to recover from the blast and Team Rocket can't exactly walk in for a recovery with wanted posters spread out in Kanto, prompting for their arrest on sight, which no doubt, would be reported to the police by the nurses if the trio actually did show up with a badly hurt koffing for the necessary treatment it would require. Also, it's shaped as a corrupt version of a oxygen molecule, not a landmine (only), so it can make due without explosion.
• Cassidy and Butch quit Team Rocket. Wouldn't the higher ups be worried that they could give information about the organization to the authorities? And what's to stop the police from questioning them?
• So, the episode where Jessie trades Pumpkaboo, she has a memory when Pumpkaboo is the only friend who remembered her birthday. James, Meowth and Wobbuffet forgot her birthday?

Rivals and other Antagonists

• What happened to Gary? He was my favorite character!
  • He quit training to become a researcher, I believe after the Johto arc.
    • Which is, in itself, Fridge Logic that seriously bugs this troper. If he's supposedly the same age as Ash, therefore supposedly ten… How the hell did he become a freakin' scientist!? But… We are Gary fans, so that whole "researcher" thing never happened.
    • He could simply have gone back to school to study science and stuff towards that goal, that and/or work as Professor Oak's assistant.
    • Don't get started on the age debacle. It won't end well.
    • Tell me truthfully... What's wrong with being a researcher in a world where people of the same age become, essentially, foster parents to the Pokémon they capture?
  • He shows up again in Sinnoh, trying to protect Azelf at Lake Acuity… and loses to the Team Galactic trio. Anyone know why he only has two Pokemon on his team?
    • The rest are at his grandpa's, perhaps?
    • Who says they're the only two he has on his team? He mightn't have had time to send them out, or something - remember how in the next episode, for instance, Cynthia was pragmatic enough to have her Garchomp put its claws to Jupiter's throat to prevent her calling out another Pokémon? Or maybe they were at the Pokémon Centre (an earlier episode of DP showed he still has Blastoise with him, after all).
• There's no section for the Pokemon anime, but I figure I may as well put this here. I suspect Gameplay and Story Segregation, but bear with me. In the anime, Gary comes up to the Viridian Gym and states that he has ten badges. Unless I'm mistaken, in the Kanto Pokemon League, aren't there only eight official gyms? Where the frak did Gary get those extra three badges?
  • Nope, in the animé there are way more official gyms than the 8 in the games, it's just that Ash follows the same route as the games instead of going to other cities.
    • Which raises the further question of why Ash didn't look for another gym instead of going back to Sabrina's. Or Brock's, Surge's and Blaine's for that matter.
    • Blaine's justified by how the whole volcanic problem occurred shortly after Ash's loss, and the rematch was offered to him immediately after that was resolved. Ash's refusal to give up didn't have a chance to show itself.
    • Don't forget that Ash has his pride. He doesn't seem to be the type to give up on beating someone just because he lost once, he'd keep on fighting until he managed to pull out a victory.
  • Hand Wave as to why Gary can be beaten but still get into the league, same with Sabrina being unbeatable (come on - Ash wins by making her laugh, which understandably she hasn't done ever or for a long time). One point a trainer is explaining how Marowak and they beat the gym leaders and it shows them getting the Marsh Badge from a Fighting gym, not the Psychic gym. It wasn't intended to have more than 8 badges (look at the poster in the Viridian City episode and listen to the dialogue) but when the gym battles started becoming more and more "Oh look Ash pulled another one in his increasingly crowded rear" they needed an out.
    • For the record, the Psychic-Types running Saffron's Fighting-Types out of business and claiming the gym is established canon, even in the games.
  • Gary might have still been able to get into the League not just because of the badges he'd already had. He might have gone back and beaten whoever was in charge of the Viridian Gym after Giovanni lost Mewtwo and Team Rocket got beaten by Ash.
    • You know that said person, installed by the Pokemon League as a temporary gym leader, is Agatha? If Gary actually returned to challenge the replacement leader, he got either curbstomped or hospitalized due the heart attack.
  • The Yas and Kas Gym, long with the Fighting Dojo? It could be that the Fighting Dojo remains a gym because Sabrina remains unbeatable, and Gary visited the Yas and Kas Gyms once they were made official.
    • Could it be that those non-game gyms ^note (Fighting Dojo and any extra two gyms which may (not) be the Yas/Kas Gyms) are made as a provisional Option B by the League Headquarters, due to them deciding Option A ^note gym battle against Sabrina being (too) difficult at that time? This boils down to 1 difficult gym battle(s) vs 3 easier ones, just to even thing a bit, and maybe Gary took the easier option. This could be one possible reason (out of others) that Gary lost at an earlier battle before Ash did in the Indigo Conference; he probably didn't take the extra trouble/training involved to defeat Sabrina.
    • Nah man, that's just over complicating it. It's clear that in the Indigo League you need eight badges to qualify and that those badges can come from any of the many gyms found in Kanto.
• Why hasn't Paul's Pokemon turned on him at any point? There have been numerous examples in the animé of Pokemon ignoring, refusing to battle for or even flat-out assaulting their trainers if they feel mistreated, or just for the hell of it (Ash's Charizard comes to mind in all three cases). Considering Paul's heartless mentality (no doubt they've seen many of their fellows go the way of those Starly, Azumarill and Chimchar), tendency to let Pokemon go if they screw up even once (must be rather stressful, yes?) and the way he treats his creatures like tools of war, there's little to keep Ursaring, Weavile and the like from turning him into a chew-toy, or at the very least flat out refusing to fight for him. What say you, fellow Tropers?
  • It's possible that he does treat his Pokemon well if they live up to his standards. I recall him hiring "gardeners" to groom Torterra, among other things. The end result: very few Pokemon, but they deserve every drop of respect they get.
    • Granted, being his (presumed) starter and his strongest Pokemon, Torterra could get a bit of a 'pass' for certain behaviors (like how he takes it upon himself to help Ash's Grotle cope with its reduced speed). But my thing is that countless trainers have had their creatures turn on them for only a tenth of the things Paul's gotten away with without punishment or a fraction of the harsh treatment his Pokemon have endured. Yet he's never gotten so much as an angry glare.
    • I don't understand this argument. 100% of the Pokemon that Paul released have been seen getting new trainers who cared for them more. 100% of the Pokemon that Paul physically abused went on to get better and defeat him in the big tournament. Things have gotten better for the Pokemon who suffered due to his thoughtlessness, and thoughtlessness tends to be punished less harshly than outright malice, which he has fortunately never displayed.
    • Technically, 100% of the Pokemon he's released were released back into the wild (two Starly and a Stantler) because Paul thought their lack of advanced or powerful techniques made them inferior — "young and inexperienced" is not something Paul concerns himself with. He foisted his Azumarill onto another Trainer because, after it was knocked out by Roark's Geodude and anime battle silliness, he decided it had no potential and wasn't worth his time.
  • I assumed that Paul usually lets the Pokémon that he thinks won't live up to his standards go.
  • It's possible the Pokemon he ends up keeping more or less agree with his style of training.
    • When Paul was defeated in the Sinnoh League his Pokemon were visibly upset, showing that really do care.
    • They also seemed really excited to hear that he was coming home. And, in general, at least his Electivire has shown itself to be just as much of a Jerkass as its trainer, shocking Pikachu for no reason and then laughing about it (back as an Elekid), or demanding that Infernape get up and finish the fight when Infernape collapsed in the league battle. His Ursaring is equally vicious and terrifying.
    • Agreed with the above poster in Electivire's personality. To some extent they must find Paul's treatment of them acceptable. He isn't particularly barbaric towards the Pokémon he finds useful, and Chimchar got it the worst becuase Paul wanted to reactivate Chimchar's unnatural power when Blaze is activated. As for having each of his pokemon beat the living crap out of it in order to achieve this? I can't defend ya there, Paul.
    • He explicitly states in Glory Blaze that Chimchar is the only one of his Pokémon he treats so harshly. The others, he's not so tough on.
    • Disagreed with the bit about Electivire in the league. It wasn't demanding Infernape get up once it had collapsed…it stopped the referee from calling the match, knowing Infernape wasn't through yet. It could have easily won the match right there, but there was much more riding on that battle, and it seemed to know that. Goading Infernape to get up and continue was the kindest thing it ever did.
  • Not to mention saying Paul is heartless is a little harsh. He has pretty much proven that he's not going to baby any of his Pokemon, and when they earn their spot in his ranks, they receive his respect as well. To say he totally neglects their accomplishments is incorrect. After losing to Infernape, Paul physically steps onto the battlefield to congratulate Electivire, something he's never done before, showing he has changed from his first appearance, which just makes him a more well-rounded character.
  • And not only that, but once Paul released Chimchar, he was nowhere near as much of a jerk as before. He saw massive potential in Chimchar, but could never duplicate the power he saw, which made him push harder and harder. But when it became apparent him and Chimchar couldn't go any further, he got rid of it. After that, he lightened up a bit, making it seem as if Chimchar was the reason for much of the brutality he showed before.
  • Consider that when Ash was possessed by an evil king, Sceptile was barely hesitant to act on his harsh commanders. Combine that with what Ekans and Koffing think about Pokemon with bad trainers, and you realise that Pokemon are insanely loyal. That may explain why Hunter J's Pokemon fight for her.
  • Most bad Pokemon have at some point been mistreated by a human. Mewtwo. The Tyrogue who attacked people's homes, and so on. But the Evil Togepi that continuously screwed with Ash and his friends, seemingly for no other reason than sadistic pleasure proves that not all Pokemon are good.
• How did Paul get past the Hearthome City Tag Battle Tourney without getting ANY level of punishment? Overlooking the fact that he put Chimchar through a rather brutal four-on-one "sparring match" and would have continued the session had Nurse Joy not explicitly told him to do otherwise, he immediately USES the severely weakened Chimchar in their match the next day against a Zangoose, knowing that Chimchar had a morbid fear of them. Then when Chimchar freezes up in terror (as most would do when their greatest fear's staring 'em in the face) against said Zangoose, Paul literally turns his back on both his partner and his Pokemon, leaving Ash to win the match solo. Keep in mind that this all took place in a large stadium filled to the tits with other trainers, doubtlessly being seen elsewhere. So in the span of 24 hours, he demonstrates callous disregard for his Pokemon's wellbeing, a ruthless disregard for his partner's Pokemon (Paul commands Chimchar to use a Flame Wheel while knowing full well it'd hit Ash's Turtwig), poor sportmanship and a willingness to allow both him AND Ash to be eliminated from the tournament when he stops participating. Yet when referenced later, Barry only remembers that PAUL—not even Paul and Ash—won. Yet no one calls him out on ANY of this. Even for a Karma Houdini, this is a wee bit excessive.
  • I think Barry just idolizes Paul. But about the rest, you got me there.
    • One possible theory is that the ragequit incident mentioned above happened during the quarterfinal match. Paul proceeded to make much better showings in the semifinals and finals, though not actually being more careful around Ash's Pokémon. And considering his Elekid got the "evolve during the final part of the final match" treatment that Ash has been known to enjoy occasionally, it basically stole the show in the eyes of the casual fan.
    • In his first appearance, Barry was quite clearly ignoring anything Ash and Co. aid that would compromise Paul's awesomeness (he flat-out refused to believe that Paul abandoned Chimchar), so he's definitely both a Fan Boy and an idiot.
• Why wouldn't Paul use Torterra in his battle with Brandon? Yeah, I know Brandon could just use Regice, but it makes more sense to use your starter than a Lairon, even with the type advantage…
  • At the time, Paul had constructed his team to deal with Candice, an expert of Ice-types. He didn't know he was going to encounter Brandon beforehand (as he just flew in with his Battle Pyramid), and he didn't have any time to go and change his team beforehand.
• Paul comes from Veilstone City. Why would he travel to and compete in three other regions before going for a single badge in his own, especially at such a young age?
  • Probably the same reason Ash travels to many different regions...he wants to become one of the best trainers. He was upset when his older brother Reggie retired from training and he didn’t want to follow in his footsteps.
    • Except Ash is from Kanto. Even with his interest in visiting and competing in other regions, he still explored Kanto and collected its badges first, mirroring the progress of pretty much every game protagonist. Paul is still an outlier in that aspect.
  • One possibility comes to mind. Perhaps pre-trainer Paul was traveling with Reggie in Hoenn (much in the same way Max accompanied May) when he challenged Brandon, and Reggie's post-loss retirement motivated him to start his journey immediately. Starting in Hoenn, which was where he was at the time.
• What the heck is up with Nando's Kricketot? It can do 3 things normal Kricketot shouldn't be able to do: 1) fly, 2) use Sing, and 3) survive Perish Song without fainting (all of that during its only appearance in Nando's Grand Festival appeal). If you want to see the appeal, it's here (skip to about 1:05).
  • Contests change the effects of Pokemon moves.
    • In the games, yes. It's harder to say that about anime contests, considering the Coordinators try out things outside of the contest that work the same way in them. Not to mention Ursula's ridiculously unbalanced use of Encore that works exactly the same way as it does in battle.
• So wait...Nando made it to the semi-finals in the Grand Festival, where he put up a very good fight against Zoey and was a great coordinator overall, yet he went down like a punk in the first round of the Sinnoh League against Ash? Is it just Plot Armor at work, or was Zoey right all along in that Nando ought to have only stuck to just doing contests, seeing as he succeeded in one area only to fail in another, possibly because he attempted both?
  • Zoey Told Him So...
  • They considered Zoey more significant and more important because she was Dawn's mentor figure, while Nando barely interacted with Dawn at all. *grumble*
• In the anime, did Cyrus die?
  • I have no idea and I think the characters are equally in the dark about it. I tend to think he survived, simply because if someone, even a primary villian, died in front of the preteen/teen main characters and his own followers, their reactions wouldn't have been so casual. But when you get down to it, his survival would be a Fate Worse than Death.
  • He got wiped from existence along with the new world he was trying to create. Thus he's either dead, deader than dead, or stuck in dimensional limbo for eternity.
• Back in the first season, Gary had a girl who seemed a bit older than his cheerleading squad who drove him around. Who exactly was she?
  • Probably a bodyguard, Gary is Professor Oak's grandson after all.
  • She's the anime's version of Daisy Oak, Gary's older sister.
• In the first episode Ash opens the starter Pokemon's empty Pokeballs so Oak can remind him over and over that he's came late. Um, why didn't the Pokeballs go with Ash's rivals? Even if Pikachu never goes in his ball anymore, Ash still has it to prove that Pikachu is his and to use in emergencies such as that time he was trapped in a snow cave. Furthermore, we know that Gary still has the Pokeball from the Squirtle he got. Did Oak really plant three random empty Pokeballs on the stand just to troll Ash?

Movies

• Why did Ash refuse to take his backpack off during all of his time on New Island? Especially considering it was soaking wet after the storm. The party was a trap, but, he doesn't know that.
  • He was so astounded by everything he was seeing and that was happening to him that he forgot to take it off. You'd forget, too, if almost the first thing that happened to you upon entering a creepy castle with self-opening doors was being confronted by an ultra-powerful Pokémon planning to take over the world.
• On the main page, it's said that the original trailer for the first movie featured Misty, Voyager, and a "suspiciously familiar-looking child." Um, who does this child supposedly look like? I don't recognize her at all.
  • If anyone, the kid looks like a young Nurse Joy.
• In the movie 'Rise of Darkrai', as space itself is disappearing around them, they need to climb to the top of the World's Largest Musical Instrument building to play a peaceful song. How did the pieces of the building stayed intact despite the space disappearing around it (and even effecting the stairs on said building/musical instrument).
  • Luck. If this troper remembers correctly, bits of the inside were already disappearing.
    • Yes, the inside of the tower was beginning to disappear as they were climbing up and Buneary and Piplup had to make a chunk of the stairs out of ice so they could keep going.
    • This troper always wondered HOW Ice and other attacks stopped the corrosion of space.
    • It doesn't, it just replaces what was lost, but the stairs would eventually (once again) disappear.
    • That still doesn't make sense. Space is corroding. Not the matter that occupies the space, but the space itself. If a hole in space replaces part of a staircase, then not only does the staircase no longer exist there, but neither can anything else. Because nothing exists there. They probably should have built an alternate route.
    • If "space" were corroding, there would be NO gap, 'cause there'd be...no space between them. Obviously it is the matter, not the "space," that vanished. Perhaps the physical matter of the stairs was not "corroded," but merely got folded out of the current dimension. Imagine a (line-shaped) bridge in a 2D universe - suppose one section of it suddenly was bent into the third dimension. To the 2D beings present, it looks like suddenly some of the line just isn't there, and now there's a gap in the middle...which could easily be bridged by a 2D object.
• Why were there baby NIDOQUEEN in Mewtwo Returns? Is it because the Nidoqueen is a clone? (Despite that Nidoqueen can't even breed).
  • Mewtwo did say these were SUPER-clones. So he probably fixed that no-breeding thing.
• Why, in the anime, does NO-ONE EVER beat Mewtwo in a battle? Sure, he's "the most powerful Pokemon", but he's pure Psychic-type, and most of his moves are Psychic too. Surely at least one of the trainers Giovanni had him pwning would have had a Dark-type, and surely it would have occurred to Giovanni to bring a couple along when he went to recapture him.
  • By the time Dark-type Pokemon started appearing in the Kanto region and were known to Giovanni, Mewtwo had already mindwiped him. Even if he had been given the opportunity, Mewtwo's strength is due to more than just Psychic being overpowered in the first generation, and he has quite a few moves that will work on Dark types. A modern max-level Mewtwo can even know Aura Sphere, which with him is like telling Dark types to lose. Failing that, Miracle Eye is an option. Basically, you're not going to win with just any Dark Pokemon. You're going to need something that can go toe-to-toe with legendaries and win. (Send for Darkrai?)
    • Does raise the question of why no one tried any Ghost or Bug types though. I mean, true, all 3 Ghost types that were available in Gen I were weak to psychic, but it does make one wonder why no one didn't try, oh say, Scyther or Butterfree.
    • Gen 1 also had a sum total of two offensive Bug-type moves, Leech Life and Pin Missile — neither of which are anywhere near powerful enough to be useful against the likes of Mewtwo.
    • We don't know that they didn't, and Mewtwo is once again probably too strong to be brought down by common ones, especially given that the two types were not known for high-damage moves except for Shadow Ball and Twineedle. And, much like the above example, there were no known legendary bugs or ghosts back then. (It's worth noting that the moment a legendary bug came into existence, it got a movie about being able to stand up to Mewtwo.)
• In Pokemon: The First Movie, why weren't Pidgeotto, Charizard (at first), Staryu, Goldeen, Geodude, Onix & Zubat released to join the party?
  • Because No one cares about Misty or Brock's Pokemon, or Pidgeotto. Psyduck was there for comic relief, and Vulpix is pretty.
    • They still should have been stolen by Mewtwo's balls. If they can steal Bulbasaur & Squirtle in their Pokeballs, wouldn't they do the same for Pidgeotto, Staryu, Goldeen, Geodude, Onix & Zubat's Pokeball?
    • Plot trickery. If they were captured, they would have to escape to do battle with their clones. In slow motion. In great agony. Geodude and Onix are too rocky to make their fight truly look devastating. Staryu can't emote. When you put flying Pokemon in slow motion to battle each other, it looks awesome and takes away from the visible pointlessness of the fighting. And Goldeen and Goldeen splashing away would be too comedic for the scene.
    • As as shown further up in this list, in the case of Pidgeotto, the writers just hate Ash's bird Pokémon.
    • Speaking of Mewtwo's PokéBalls. How was Misty able to hide Togepi in her bag without it getting caught if normal PokéBalls failed to save the others?
    • Mewtwo saw Togepi and thought the same thing Giovanni did: "Oh, shoot, that's just a baby Pokémon, what use is it going to be?"
• Why did Zero want to protect the Reverse World by blowing up the normal one? There's only one inhabitant there, its not like there is anyone to harm in there (besides Giratina, who was being killed by his Mecha-Giratina).
  • He wants to protect it from being polluted by the real world, which is kind of the Reverse World's JOB in order to maintain the space/time continuum by sorting imbalances which creates the pollution. Zero seems to realize this too but just doesn't seem to care.
  • In a nutshell, why does everyone seem to forget about him, they're all too busy focusing on Shaymin to notice the minor things like the Megarig just crashed and he's hiding in a lake or that they FROZE HIM IN A GLACIER!!!
    • He was eventually gotten out of that…and imprisoned for his crimes.
  • He's clearly insane. He probably think protecting the Reverse World=protecting lots of people, because he's coo-coo for Coco Puffs.
• In the Lucario movie, Lucario is strong, so why was he not able to just smoke the Regis? They're Ice, Rock, and Steel types, all of which are weak to Fighting, and Aura Sphere is all Lucario does against them. It's his best Fighting Type move. By all rights, Lucario should have trashed them, but instead they're all the Implacable Man.
  • Because in the anime, type advantages only exist when a plot can be made out of them, even if they've gotten more aware than there were way back at the beginning.
  • Also, the anime treats Legendary Pokemon as actually Legendary, rather than just particularly hard bosses.
    • Which is why Charizard and Pikachu can beat them on the right day?
    • You mean Godchu and the badass dragon? Exactly. Though there also seems to be more than one of some Legendaries (confirmed with the baby Lugia), they may have fought lower-levelled versions.
    • Charizard is the only "normal" Pokemon to have ever defeated a Legendary Pokemon in a one-on-one duel, and even considering the type advantage he had against Articuno, it was a very close fight. He almost won against Dream Entei until Molly began powering him up to ridiculous levels. Lucario, badass that he is, just didn't have a chance against three Legendary Pokemon who are composed of the elements of the earth itself.
• In Mewtwo Returns Giovanni threatens to use Mewtwo's clones in experiments (which are implied to kill them in the process) unless Mewtwo gives up. Mewtwo then says, "stand aside, I must submit to him". Ummm... Mewtwo? You're the most powerful being there. Your alternative choices include but are not limited to: psychically remove Giovanni's internal organs, teleport Giovanni into a volcano or other deadly environment, psychically lobotomize Giovanni, smash the two holding machines into Giovanni's helicopter, mass teleport Team Rocket and wipe their memories, as he does in the end, kill Giovanni and every TR member there by, say, cutting off the blood to their brains, etc.
  • We don't know if he can do most of those things. The ones we do know he can do, however…well, you got me.
  • With the more violent options, at least, it makes sense that Mewtwo's sworn off brutality after the events of the first movie.
    • And this is a KID'S movie, geez. Violent stuff happens, but they wouldn't get away with what you're suggesting.
    • They would completely get away with "teleporting them away and wiping their memories". He did that already.
    • They would and have gotten away with Mewtwo killing people. He killed an entire laboratory full of people in his first appearance.
    • One, he was evil then; two, they didn't explicitly say it. And it was rather tame compared to removing someone's internal organs.
  • It's possible that Mewtwo simply cannot think under pressure. He's only a few years old at most, and never had a single serious challenge because of his power. If he's sworn off killing, his original go-to solution, maybe he just froze.
    • This...actually makes a ton of sense. I always thought that Mewtwo had probably said he would never use violence again after what happened in the first movie; notice that the only time he uses violence at all is when he comes to rescue the Pikachus and Meowths from Giovanni - he ends up hurling a Shadow Ball at him, and I took that as a sign that he was severely ticked off. And then, too, consider the fact that when Mewtwo says he "must submit" some of his clones are missing and he has no idea where they are. All he knows is that Giovanni's captured them; maybe they're halfway to another city by now. So, saying to himself that he didn't want to hurt anyone, not even Giovanni, not knowing where what amounts to his children are, surrounded, and panicking, he decides his only option is to do what Giovanni wants. Wow, now he's even more of a Woobie...
• At the end of Pokemon 2000, there were all of those land based pokemon who, as stated earlier, couldn't swim out on the ice. Then the ice melted and we see all the flying and swimming pokemon heading back to the main land. Did the ones that couldn't swim just sink? Or take refuge on the Orange Isles?
  • If you look closely, you can see that a lot of the water type Pokémon carrying other Pokémon on their backs. Clearly, the water types made sure all the Pokémon who couldn't swim got home safely.
• Isn't it unusual to make a number of these movies function on Poor Communication Kills without properly explaining how the poor communication came about in the first place? Pokemon are shown to understand each other in conversation, even if humans cannot, and episodes have shown many situations where the trainers' Pokemon understand the Pokemon of the day even when the trainers don't. ("Dig Those Diglett" comes to mind.) Perhaps there are some exceptions, but with this in mind, it raises the question of why Deoxys was unable to explain to Rayquaza why it showed up, or why Giratina didn't directly ask Shaymin for help in escaping its situation. There might be a reason, especially given Deoxys, but it isn't even raised. Perhaps even odder is the inversion in The Rise Of Darkrai; if Darkrai was trying to warn Dialga and Palkia away from the town, why did it do so using humanlike speech, thus convincing every human in the immediate area that it was talking to them?
  • You've got me on the Darkrai and Rayquaza parts, I can however give two plausible explanations for Deoxys and Rayquaza's fight
    • 1) Deoxys wasn't born on their planet and doesn't use the same 'Pokemon speak' as the others.
    • 2) Deoxys dropped a fucking meteor on the planet and Rayquaza isn't in the mood to listen to excuses.
• Regarding the Zoroark movie: When Zorua started talking about his "Meema", did Ash, Dawn and Brock seriously not realize he was talking about his mother?
• In Pokemon 2000, Ash has to retrieve three artifacts from the surrounding islands to save the world. After getting the first two, Lugia awakens and is trying to stop the Legendary Bird Trio from fighting, and tells Ash to go get the last artifact. After Ash gets said artifact, Lugia carries him back to the shrine to place it with the others with very little trouble. So... why didn't Lugia carry him TO THE ARTIFACT?!
  • This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself?
• In Pokémon 2000, why didn't Ash give Prof. Oak the GS Ball? If he gave the professor the ball when he met up with him, then he could explore the Orange League at his leisure, and not have to worry about losing the ball.
  • The animators were saving that for the Celebi arc before that got aborted.
    • That doesn't make much sense considering after giving it to Prof. Oak, they then had to take it to Kurt in Azalea Town.
  • At the time it was intended to be the center of a future arc about Celebi (who wound up in the fourth film, 4Ever), so it's likely that the writers didn't want to involve the films in that arc. The Celebi arc would likely have involved the Ilex Forest shrine, just outside of where Kurt was based, and where the Heart Gold/Soul Silver notched-ear Pichu event took place in-game.
• In Pokémon: Kyurem vs. The Sword of Justice, if Terrakion is such a destructive Pokémon in competitive gameplay, why isn't he the leader of the Swords of Justice?
  • The Five-Man Band formula specifically demands that The Leader be someone other than The Big Guy.
• In Pokémon Heroes, why did Latios have to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to become the new Soul Dew? Sure, the other one was blackened/tainted and dangerous for humans to use, but was there really anything preventing Latios and Latias from flying the thing back to the garden and dropping it back in? Alternatively, if it was too late to save, since both are capable of using Ice Beam, why didn't they just freeze the oncoming tide before it reached the city so that they wouldn't even need the Soul Dew at all?
  • Ice will eventually melt and that still leaves the city without any water which is part of their culture for a long time maybe?
• Why did 4kids see it fit to remove the anti-racism message from the first movie and replace it with an anti-fighting message? Did they think that parents would say "I don't want my kids being taught to get along with those who are different! I'm not letting them see this movie"?
  • It's possible that 4kids thought that the idea was a little too high-concept for a broader theme. There's a difference between real-world prejudice(which many kids in the targeted age range may not even understand or have experienced) and the concept that because a Pokémon is a clone they are better/worse than the real thing. That's a deep philosophical question that would go right over most kids' heads, so imparting it as a moral to children would be hard. Pokémon the Movie was designed to have deeper messages to appeal to a broader audience, but 4kids doesn't have those same desires; Pokémon, to them, is a franchise designed to make money, and the more kid-oriented the better, as opposed to the passion of the original creators. Note they don't actually REMOVE the original moral (remember Meowth's speech?), either, they just include it beside one that will be more understandable for children: "don't fight with such brutality for no reason, don't hurt others for no reason" so they wouldn't get completely lost.
  • 4kids was trying appease the Moral Guardians who complained that Pokémon promotes violence. Of course, it backfired — it prompted critics to complain about the hypocrisy of a series in which people make creatures fight each other for sport trying to deliver an anti-fighting message, and made Meowth's anti-racism message seem out of nowhere.
• In the first movie, why didn't Mewtwo try to capture Mew? Considering how powerful his Pokeballs were (even able to catch Pokémon that are in other Pokeballs), it seems like they might've been a good way to deal with it. Granted, we don't know for sure that it really would remove it from the picture, but he could've at least tried.
  • He wanted to defeat Mew in a battle in order to prove he was superior.
• In the fourth movie, how exactly did Celebi almost die after it was returned to normal from it's brainwashing? Was it because it attacked the forest, or did the Dark Balls effects somehow take their toll on it's health?
  • Given its shriveled state and the amount of power it was throwing around, it might have overworked itself. Dried itself up, so to speak.
• In Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction, why did Ash try stop Argus and Millis from catching Diancie at the beginning of the movie? They weren't doing anything that could be considered wrong in the context of the setting. She's a Pokémon, and catching Pokémon is what people —Ash included— do in the Pokémon universe. Their methods weren't even particularly evil or abusive, they were just battling her.
  • Ash’s initial issue is that they seemed to be ganging up on it, which has always been poor sport at best. Immediately after that the two admit to being thieves and legitimacy kind of goes out the window at that point.
• In the Zoroark movie, how do alternate, shiny versions of the Legendary Beasts exist? The original Suicune, Raikou and Entei are supposed to be one-a-kind beings created by Ho-Oh.
  • Maybe they bred with wild Dittos? In all seriousness, nothing in the anime suggested they were completely unique, just that they were first seen leaving the Burnt Tower. At which point they could easily have multiplied in whatever way Pokemon actually do it.

Anime World

• Why the hell is Erika allowed to get away with her flagrantly irresponsible abuse of power banning Ash from the gym for having stupid opinions about perfume that basically any 10 year old boy ever would have? Is that seriously a thing gym leaders are allowed to do? Refuse entry to anybody who has a personal belief they disagree with? What about political beliefs? Are they allowed to discriminate on the basis of "lifestyle choice" too? He wasn't even disrespectful on the premises of the gym, he was being a stupid brat in a store that Erika happened to run (which to be fair was stupid and wrong of him), so she got revenge on him by going to her other job and abusing her power to act out a petty grudge? There's no way that would be allowed and not result in a lawsuit that the gym leader would totally lose.
  • Except it wasn't Erika herself that banned him. It was the two girls at the front desk. When Erika heard Ash wanted a challenge, she explicitly states "as a gym leader, I must accept all challenges". It was those two girls that overstepped their bounds, and Ash was just too naive at the time to realize the issue.
• Anyone else notice how Elekid doesn't say it's name? As a Pokémon, it should say it's name. Instead, it goes "Bee bee bee!" which is dumb because there is nothing in Elekid's name which sounds even remotely like "Bee" so just... why?
  • Lots of Pokemon don't say their own names. For example, Starmie's cry sounds more like "HEEYAAAAH!" rather than it saying "Starmie!". Likewise, Charizard's roar actually sounds like "LIZARDON!" (Its Japanese name) rather than roaring "Charizard!". Then, we have roars coming from Onix and Steelix. And who knows what else?
    • We have Lucario merely grunting and making battle cries. Electabuzz roaring and grunting. Only when it's an Electivire does it to Pokémon Speak like the rest.
  • Yeah, but Starmie is WEIRD, so it has an excuse, and Charizard's roar is a believable noise for something that looks like that to make. But Elekid? "Bee?" Seriously? ...It just bugs me.
    • I always assumed it was supposed to represent buzzing. like "bzzt!", it sounds somewhat similar to buzzing when Elekid says "bee" back to back at least.
    • Offhand, I'd say it would be a result of biological design. Looking back at Starmie, it's based on a starfish, which I don't think makes any noise, and that body structure probably doesn't allow for the production of a wide array of sound. Charizard also makes sense, because its long throat probably not only has the equivalent of a trachea and esophagus, but probably has to make room for a third pipe through which to project fire. So that may effect Charizard's vocal capacity. So I would say Elekid's vocal chords and voice box must be very strange, and there's some unknown biological factors behind why it physically can't pronounce its name.
• Multiple amounts of times, there is odd runes of some sort throughout the animé. Still, nobody has said anything or commented about it.
  • I think that's the producers' way of not showing one particular language (you see signs, especially in the newer seasons, that have those weird runes on them), such as Japanese, English, etc., to make localization better (I guess?).
  • It's already decoded: Anime Language. It's simply English or Japanese Romanization. Sample.
• This YouTube video touches on alot of the show's Fridge Logic, and some of is pretty frightening when you think about it.
  • I'm more bothered that he covered stuff we've already been talking about for more than a decade. Nothing new or innovative.
    • I'm most bothered by just how annoying that guy is.
• Team Rocket vs Ash Battle 2. Established that using multiple Pokemon against one Pokemon is against the rules. Cut to Team Rocket vs Ash Battle Fiftybajillion "Go Pikachu, Go Bulbasaur, Go Squirtle"
  • Ten seconds later in Team Rocket vs Ash Battle 2, Misty pointed out that if he simply followed the rules, Team Rocket would steal all his Pokemon, because they didn't follow them. And in Team Rocket vs Ash Gym Battle, Ash decided that if Team Rocket used more than one Pokemon at a time, then so could he. Legally.
• Why does Wobbuffet always appear with the ball release noise even when he was standing just offscreen prior to his arrival?
  • Comic effect?
• If a simple Meowth can learn to speak, that must mean ANY Pokemon can do the same. Why haven't we seen more Pokemon that can do this?
  • Gastly, Slowking, Lugia, Lapras, and who knows who else want to have a word with you. On the other hand, few Pokemon had the determination and motivation to learn something like that, Meowth only did it for Meowzie, you know.
    • Lapras? When was there ever a talking Lapras?
    • Santa Claus's Lapras of course.
    • Excluding a few cases, it's implied that any other Pokémon shown communicating with humans in an understandable, non-Pokémon Speak manner (and oftentimes outright stated) is doing so via telepathy. Santa's Lapras, Mewtwo, the second movie's Lugia, Jirachi, Movie 8's Lucario, Movie 10's Darkrai, Arceus, and Movie 13's Zorua all did so in that manner (though in a few cases it was left unstated). The few examples otherwise are when the Pokémon are clearly said or shown to speak human languages (Meowth, that one Gastly, Movie 2's Slowking, one Chatot in the anime, and very briefly Manaphy, and in that last case only three words that it was deliberately taught) or speak through another Pokémon (aside from translating, Meowth actually has been possessed on occasion and used as a mouthpiece for a Kaiju-sized Tentacruel and a Deoxys). The games, meanwhile, also gave us a talking Murkrow.
  • After Meowth learned how to talk and walk on his hind legs he wasn't able to learn any attacks.
    • A shame he couldn't wait until AFTER he learned Pay Day to turn all human. It'd have been the perfect answer to some of those money questions that keep popping up above.
    • Why does everyone assume he can't learn attacks? Has anybody noticed how pompous he is, and how he pretty much sees himself as too important to risk in a battle unless required? Hell, the only time this troper has ever seen him attack is if he is pissed (this includes when he throws himself into battle due to seeing his team mates as too incompetant) or cornered. And all of those times he seems to lose. So it is a little unfair to assume that he can't learn attacks when he probably hasn't even levelled up since the show began.
    • He says himself that the reason he can't learn Pay Day was that he spent all of his energy learning to talk. Doesn't really make sense, but that's his excuse.
    • I think there are more talking Pokémon, although it's more on via telepathy than actual oral speech.
• I don't understand how the likes of Ash & Team Rocket aren't dead. The latter have been exploded and electrocuted hundreds of times, and Ash has been burned like crazy by Charizard.
  • Besides the fact that it's a kids show, the show would be over if Ash died. As for Team Rocket, they're popular, can you imagine the outcry if they did die?
  • Team Rocket are Gag Characters. Gag characters can survive anything. As for Ash, I'm running under the WMG that he isn't quite human.
    • This article implied that all humans in the Pokémon world are like this, not just Ash and Team Rocket.
    • Alder can jump off a cliff and a Rocket Grunt was hit by a Hyper Beam, only for it to push him to the side. All humans in the Pokemon world are like this.
  • I just watched a Hoenn episode in which Ash was stuck in Team Rocket's balloon and Brock said at one point that they were flying so high that Ash wouldn't be able to survive the fall. Combined with how people reacted to Ash jumping off the Prism Tower as a big deal, and how many scenes involve a character about to fall but being saved by psychic power/vine whips/etc., it seems that humans aren't completely immune to falling. And then there's a Johto episode where Ash and Team Rocket are standing on a rock that falls off a mountain, and they ride it unharmed, and it ends up balanced on a precarious pillar, and then the episode starts treating it like they could die if it falls... and after Ash is saved, it falls from a similar situation with Team Rocket on it, and they wind up okay, so... an extreme case of Rule of Drama vs. Rule of Funny?
    • Similarly, there are a number of episodes where Team Rocket catches a Pokemon of the day, and Pikachu moves in to shock them, and they point out that if he shocks them, he also shocks their captive, so he backs off. Kinda unusual considering we've seen basically every character in the entire show survive Pikachu's shocks with only minor injuries...
• Why didn't Professor Ivy just send the GS Ball by mail, or have some Pokemon fly it over to Oak?
  • Well, it was a very valuable artifact, presumably mail or a lone flying Pokemon could be intercepted. A trustworthy trainer could more effectively protect the ball should anyone want to steal it. My question is (having not seen the episode in years), did they ever say they couldn't just teleport the darn thing over?
    • It was said that for some reason the machines didn't work on it. Of course, thanks to Executive Meddling and the constant desire to sell more merchandise, we'll probably never know any of the thing's mysteries.
    • Well, we do know... The ball was originally going to contain Celebi, who was to travel around with Ash. However, this plot was shoved into the fourth movie, leaving the Johto saga with a gaping hole, which was subsequently filled with filler episodes.
    • Every time they tried teleporting it, it failed. They sent it with Ash because he was trusted and it was only a day's journey (by blimp). Its not Oak and Ivy's fault he decided to piss around for a whole season with it.
    • It's hard to call it Ash's fault either. When he took a blimp to the Orange Islands, Team Rocket took him and his friends captive and the conflict ended with a catastrophic crash. After he got the GS Ball, he took a blimp back... and Team Rocket took him and his friends captive and the conflict ended with a catastrophic crash. If I was Ash, I'd never want to board a blimp again.
• Who were the other 2 Trainers who left Pallet with Charmander and Bulbasaur?
  • I don't believe it's ever been specifically said. Somewhere further up on the page it mentions a kid named Gilbert who got a Bulbasaur, but that is not the same one from Ash and Gary's generation, it's another Bulbasaur. It's assumed that Charmander and the "original" Bulbasaur's trainers gave up on their journeys or something.
  • When Ash returns to Pallet just before the Indigo League Oak mentions the other two gave up on trying to be Pokemon Masters. Other than that… * shrug*
  • They're just plot devices to make sure Ash got Pikachu. It's possible that they don't actually exist and Professor Oak made the whole thing up.
  • I assumed that Damian (the guy who originally had Ash's Charizard) was one of the two trainers. It fits with the timeframe.
  • As for Bulbasaur, it was probably picked by Blue/Leaf◊ (the female protagonist who was bumped in favor of Misty.
• When Lugia is first introduced in the anime, he's the leader/watcher of the Legendary Birds, the mythical Beast of the Sea with incredible powers and intelligence. When we next see a Lugia, it's the mother and son in the special three-parter with Richie, Butch and Cassidy. And the mother Lugia is portrayed as a roaring, vengeful, not considerably intelligent animal. A powerful animal, but an animal nonetheless. So, why the huge difference between the two Lugias? And are they the mate and son of Movie Lugia?
  • Who says that in order for a Pokemon to be legendary there has to be only one? Legendary just implies that they are very rarely ever seen by humans. That's why Team Rocket wanted to get their hands on it, because it was so rare and therefore very powerful.
    • I think the Lugia in the animé was unusual. We've seen other Pokémon in the series with an unexplained ability to talk (like the Slowking who appeared in the same movie).
    • Slowking was obviously not only psychic, but also quite wise and maybe ancient. The only other Pokémon who had the ability to talk (and stuck around) was Meowth. That Gastly... I guess the less said, the better.
• Why does Jigglypuff get angry at people for falling asleep when she sings? Doesn't she realise that's what her power is?
  • Perhaps a mental version of Does Not Know Her Own Strength, with a healthy dose of Poor Communication Kills? In Jigglypuff's mind, people simply find her song boring…
  • Misty explained it in Jigglypuff's first epiodes. If someone falls asleep while you're trying to perform for them you'd get mad too. Jigglypuff isn't trying to put people to sleep, it's trying to perform, it's song is just too powerful for anyone to resist so it never gets to finish.
    • Too bad she's gone now, but that's unrelated.
• How much time has really passed since Ash began his journey? Assuming every episode is another day or so, perhaps a year or two? Despite battling Pokémon almost every day, does the brevity of his experience allow for the fact that each Gym Leader is a real challenge for him? Hes been using Pikachu in so many of his fights, yet he and his Pokémon are continuously the punching bag, learning nothing from previous battles. Am I to believe that the battles are in fact more intense? because they don't look that way, and if Ash beats someone who beat him badly before, he doesn't seem to have gained tactical knowledge. There aren't THAT many strategies, regardless of the ever-increasing poke-roster. If he were to get his old old old poke-team back, wouldn't he be the very best, like no one ever was?
  • Canonically, a year has passed as of BW (though, Ash is still 10).
  • And why is that? Did they HAVE to reiterate that fact?
  • Ash has appeared in literally hundreds of episodes by now and many of those episodes show a clear transition from day to night meaning that logically at least a few years have passed from hundreds of days of travel. Ash even makes references to years having passed since he started his journey. Even if we are to assume that canonically only a year really has passed then Ash should at least be 11 as his journey started AFTER his 10th birthday. Regardless of what Ash's age is he should have become a Pokemon Master by now or at least have the skill to be one, he has challenged hundreds of different trainers to battles, captured dozens of Pokemon, beaten 32 gym leades from 4 regions, and saved the world from the wrath of legendary Pokemon on at least a dozen occassions. He should be a tactical genuis in battling from all of his experiences even if his new Pokemon aren't as strong as his old ones. (something I wish he would stop doing but that is another issue entirely)
  • It is pointless to try and make sense of Ash’s aging and skill level. All the way back in Pikachu & Pichu, the animated short that came before Spell of the Unown, Ash celebrates the one year anniversary of the day he met Pikachu. This was all the way back in early Johto. If only a year passed as of BW, then more than half of Johto, all of the Advanced Generation and all of Diamond & Pearl would have to take place in one day. Ash’s age is impossible, thinking about won’t do any good. Hs strength is the same. He managed to defeat the Battle Frontier, who are all as strong as the Elite Four and was even offered a chance to be a Frontier Brain, but then loses to ammeters shortly after. Ash is a hero living on Comic-Book Time who is as strong as he needs to be.
    • Agreed. Also, are we also ignoring the fact that a supposed 10-year old is about as physically mature as a 16-year old? Again, MST3K Mantra, but I say that the given ages for humans in this series are completely unreliable, otherwise we'd have a cast composed entirely of Rule of Cute, either with he main characters looking similar to the (somewhat) more realistic 10-year olds in Negima! Magister Negi Magi, or again, everyone is injected with several prescriptions of Rule of Cute, like in Yggdra Union. My opinion? Ignore the given ages, believe Ash, the rivals and the girls are all 15, and that Brock, Tracy and Cilan are all in their early 20s.
• The unexplained sameness of the Officer Jennies gets really creepy sometimes. Just for one example, a Jenny in one city mentions that her sister-in-law is a Jenny in another. Yes, sister-in-law. Her brother married a woman who looked exactly like her.
  • Don't pay attention to it. The writers probably wanted to put a shorter version of "third cousin twice removed" in there, so they picked "in-law" as their phrasing.
• In the Pokemon world, it seems that every animal has simply been replaced with a corresponding Pokemon. Milktanks for cows and Pidgeys for birds, etc. So when the anime characters are shown to be eating meat...?
  • Yes, they're eating Miltank burgers and fried Torchic.
    • Actually, I think they only eat the Normal-(and some Water)-Type Pokemon(Eating a good Fire type seems like a waste), and Miltanks are too good for milk to eat. So that would be Tauros burgers and fried Farfetch'd.
    • On the other hand, you can never accidentally burn your Torchic. They're immune to it.
    • I would think that normal animals exist alongside Pokemon in that universe… of course, I have no proof of that handy. Their ecosystem would definitely be quite messed up with such a meager variety in wildlife.
    • Well in one episode of the first season involving a talking Gastly protecting a lighthouse, Jessie sets her Ekans on it and it illusion-shape-shifts into a Mongoose.
    • That might be, but the most recent games confirm that people do eat Pokemon (and are instructed on the proper way to handle their bones afterward).
    • I remember an episode of the original series which showed Team Rocket cooking some sort of mundane fish. They were only using it to get a Smokescreen, but it was definitely not a Pokémon (although, either later in that episode or in the next one, all the main characters were stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean. They considered eating James' new Magikarp, but couldn't. Then it evolved into Gyarados…)
    • I would guess that they are trying to move away from having normal animals in the Pokemon universe, hence their acknowledgement of people eating Pokemon in D/P.
    • But notice how they call Pokémon "a mouse" or "cow Pokémon" and such — normally that had mean that, yes, there are creatures as such which is why you can actually compare in the first place. But then it turns around because we only have Moo Moo milk. OH MAGICAL CREATURES WORLD.
    • Since our character doesn't frigging eat, we have no proof that there is no cow milk. It's just that Moomoo Milk tastes better and has healing powers, so people go for that.
    • An early episode made mention of Farfetch'd being extremely tasty, and that's why they are so rare, because people ate them onto the endangered species list.
    • The DP games actually claim that people eat Pokemon. Or at least, used to.
  • Episode 1 of the Anime shows a Spearow plucking a worm from the ground. And when they get to Cerulean City, the Gym has a tank full of mundane fish. So they're around, but not as commonly seen as Pokémon.
    • Its worth noting that any appearances of real animals in Pokémon seem to be exclusive to the anime, and in particular to the Kanto saga. This is the same saga where Team Rocket falling from a not-so-great height resulted in falling through concrete Wile E. Coyote style, and then there's the Gastly whose powers could easily overshadow a legendary Pokémon since it was able to create, and subsequently fuse, a Venusaur and Blastoise. As for classifying them as 'mouse' Pokémon and what not, it could be just that. A classification. Or animals existed at one point prior to Pokémon showing up, since animals most certainly couldn't survive alongside/compete with Pokémon. Of course, that's a discussion for the WMG page. Or not. The Space Shuttle Columbia was an ancient relic. YAY! POKEMON ARE IN TEH FUTUREZ!
    • The old man in the museum says he bought a color TV to watch it. I don't think he was ancient.
    • To be fair, everything that that particular Gastly created was an illusion.
    • But another weird thing: IIRC, since Generation II, baby chicks have been used in the swirling animation for the confusion status. But then again, they could also be rubber duckies. But that still makes no sense!
    • Rubber Psyduckies would make sense.
    • Word of God is that the animals shown in the early episodes were inserted by the animators without the head writer's consent and are non-canon.
  • As a vegetarian, Troper is more concerned by Grass-type Pokémon and their sweet produce. Tropius grows bananas, can I eat those? Could a vegan eat Tropius bananas? Could you theoretically make Bellossom honey? What about Chansey omelets? I'm sorry, this is not a debate to start before dinner…
    • Tropius fruit, you could eat. They're allegedly delicious, according to HGSS. Vegans… I'm not sure, I doubt it. Chansey eggs are Lucky Egg battle items, I doubt you would want to eat them, and they're probably either fertile or rotten, which you definitely do not want to eat. Bellosom honey, I do not know. It might be possible, but I don't know how a Bellossom would react to a swarm of Beedrill sucking on holes around it's waist…
    • Actually, Chansey eggs are delicious and extremely nutritious according to it's Pokedex. Blissey's eggs are said to be filled with happiness and cause all who eat them to become unfailingly caring and pleasant.
    • A recent episode included several scenes of people eating berries from a friendly Snover, followed by Pokemon feeding on Grotle's nuts. It looked commensal at worst.
    • Did they love his nuts?
    • Pikachu did. Ash didn't.
    • You know what I find disturbing? The fact that they were eating a Grotle's nuts.
    • Get your minds out of the gutter!
    • There was also a dog in one episode. Just a generic Animé dog.
    • That was Kanto; they changed since.
    • Solution; the part about them being intelligent: They only eat ones that blow all their money on lottery tickets.
• Why is it that, with few exceptions, no Pokéballs exist in the show other than the basic red one?
  • They're expensive. Remember, the games don't include minor technicalities like buying food…
• How wild Skarmory are portrayed in the anime. All they do is swoop down and carry unsuspecting Pokemon and people, most notably May at the beginning of "Grass Hysteria". Why would a wild Skarmory do these things? Other Skarmory that have trainers never do bad things like that, well, except for those used by random villains, but even they don't swoop down and carry innocent bystanders.
• Why almost no one names their Pokémon in the series? It's the real world equivalent of naming your dog "Dog"!
  • Maybe that's why Ritchie beat Ash! How could Pikachu and Charizard stand up against Sparky and Zippo's Nominal Importance?
    • No, Ritchie beat Ash because Charizard couldn't be bothered to fight Sparky (though he had a crack at Zippo, a fellow fire-type).
    • That was just the end of it. Squirtle did no better than Happy, and Pikachu was thoroughly Zipped. Ash never had a lead.
    • Because Team Rocket tired out his Pokemon before he got to the stadium…
  • Because Viewers Are Morons: If the trainers didn't call their Pokémon's names out often, people might never know that that Pokémon is a Pikachu! This is probably the same reason why they made every Pokémon scream their names instead of roaring and such… Which brings us to…
    • So kids would easily remember all the pokemon's names. The anime was Merchandise-Driven, after all.
  • To what, damn it?!
  • It's not just the anime. You never find a single trainer in any game (other than yourself, of course) who nicknames their Pokemon.
    • Traded pokemon tend to have nicknames (DUX, anyone?). Also several NPCs over the games nickname their pokemon (Strawberry the pidgey, Gesundheit the pikachu), though you don't battle them. Also as of Gen VI, trainer-owned pokemon are referred to as "The foe's [pokemon name]", so it's possible that they're actually nicknamed, they just don't let you know about it.
  • Because unlike "Dog", Pokémon names tend to sound awesome by it's own right. Even the Pokémon Adventures had to reference the species' name like Pika and Saur.
• How does Ash survive all those attacks he gets? I mean he's gotta be half Pokemon or something! Also, has crazy strength, can drown underwater and yet, miraculously wake up and swim back up. (See Manaphy movie).
  • Not to mention he once survived a Flamethrower from Paul's Chimcar and immediately got up like nothing happened; even if Chimcar's flame was "weak", shouldn't his clothes/skin have gotten burned, at least a little?
    • Ash has been burned multiple times by his Charizard. He's obviously built up a tolerance to it. That, or since because his Charizard is much stronger than Chimchar was at that point, Chimchar's Flamethrower was much weaker than Charizard's usually is. Since Ash is so used to Charizard's much stronger Flamethrower, Chimchar's much weaker one had little to no effect.
  • Ash is the main Kid Hero of the anime. He must be stronger than anyone else and isn't allowed to die.
  • Status Quo Is Arceus?
    • There is a WMG on this that states that all humans (not jut Ash) in the Pokémon world can survive stuff we real life humans couldn't. Just look at this article on humans in the Pokémon world.
  • In Heart Gold Soul Silver a Rocket Grunt endures a Hyper Beam. Clearly people are Made of Iron in Pokemon.
• In the anime, what do characters do for money? This wouldn't bother, except it's sometimes addressed. Sometimes they mourn their lack of money, and their hunger for delicious food. Other times they're doing just fine and dandy. Team Rocket I would assume for steals it at some point offscreen. But how does Ash and his friends get money? In the game, you lost money if you lost a match, and conversely won money by winning a match. However, we've seen tons of matches, and none that I can remember involved any trade at all, gym badges notwithstanding. Just a matter of pride.
  • Trust fund from the parents. Or it's not shown onscreen as that would be gambling.
• Sabrina and her father were shown to to have powerful psychic powers that rival those of psychic Pokemon. Are psionic powers in Pokeverse Humans "semi-common" (ALA X-Men) or are Sabrina and her father one of a kind? Also, teleporting someone into a dollhouse if they lose to you sounds like a really asshole move. How the hell did Sabrina keep her certification if she does that to all the losers? Finally, if there are Humans in the Pokéverse who are essentially psychic type Pokemon, are there Pokéverse Humans out there capable of throwing lightning, fire, ice and various other elemental attacks?
  • If the battler sprites are any indication, they're semi-common. Still, the "teleport into a dollhouse" bit is animé-only, and, even worse, first season. The same season where normal fish existed, and one Ghastly had powers on par with legendaries. I hardly think that counts as canon.
  • A useful quote from Sabrina in FireRed/LeafGreen: "Psychic power isn't something that only a few people have. Everyone has psychic power. People just don't realize it."
  • Even if human-psychic abilities aren't common in the later parts of the show, I think it's safe to say they exist, though they may not be common. After all, the show has magic, from Ash turning into a Pikachu to magical Pokemon controlling basic forces like land and sea. People in real life that believe in psychic abilities believe they are acquired either genetically, through severe physical/mental trauma, or through practice, though they also say practice doesn't produce anything as strong as the first two. This rather fits with Sabrina's quote above. This would also explain why Sabrina's psychic abilities are so frighteningly strong, and why her father, while impressive, can't stop her. She was born with her powers and manifested them as a child, while he had to work to develop them. As for Sabrina's certification, it may be that she chooses not to show off her abilities to such extents for inspectors, and everybody may be too scared of her wrath to say a thing.
  • Would YOU take a Gym Certification away from someone who could trap you in a dollhouse? Even worse if someone tried...
    • No, I would go to the police. Or, if the police can't handle Sabrina, seek a bunch of Psychic and Ghost trainers to neutralize her.
• This is pretty random/inconsequential, but it's been bugging me since the episode came out in America a couple years ago… Steven wears 4 identical rings on his index and ring fingers on both hands. So then, is he married, or is it purely aesthetic? Most fanart of him that I've found leaves the left ring finger ring off, but it's there in the anime and his Sugimori artwork. Thoughts?
  • Probably not. Since he has four identical rings, they're probably just there to be aesthetically symmetric.
• Why does the curator of the Nacrene museum say that the Dragonite skeleton was modeled after the largest recorded Dragonite? I can buy that Lighthouse!Dragonite may not have been recorded but going from game data and anime appearances, Dragonites are far larger than the skeleton on display… and that's an average sized Dragonite, definitely not the largest.
  • Maybe it's the largest recorded Dragonite they've found in Unova? It is far away from the other regions, it could be that Dragonite who live there are naturally smaller than the ones in Kanto/Johto/etc.
  • Also the game graphics are not very good at showing actual size. For all we know the Statue is bigger than it looks.
• This pertains to the first season only, where Professor Oak would routinely claim that there were exactly 150 known Pokémon before this all got quietly retconned out the way. What were these 150 Pokémon? Mew wasn't one of them as it was believed to not exist. Neither was Togepi as I distincly remember him saying in one episode "we used to think that there were only 150 Pokémon until Togepi was discovered" or words to that affect. No-one believed Ash's claims of Ho-Oh existing so it wasn't one of them. It has to be the 150 available in the games at that time, but that means that somehow Oak knows of Mewtwo.
  • My theory is that "150" was referring to the number of Pokemon families or evolutionary chains. This would roughly cover the populations of Kanto and Johto, and maybe some of the starters and Com Mons elsewhere. It works better if you don't include certain Legendaries and Extinct Pokemon.
    • The "150" is annoying, because a) Mew wasn't discovered yet and Mewtwo wasn't created yet and b) everyone takes 150 as totally true, until they mention Johto, where there's about 100 new monsters that always existed.
  • Maybe Oak was just LYING to him to give him an easier answer. Imagine if he told Ash there were 600+ Pokémon in Season 1. Yikes!
  • Oak said there were 150 known species of pokemon but he never specified which species he was talking about. Bill put up a big chart but Oak wasn't there for that.
• Why do Pokémon Connoisseurs and Connoisseuces talk about Pokémon as if they were food?
  • It's an unfortunate side effect of having a refined sense of taste. Focus hard enough on a single subject, and everything else begins to resemble it. That said, if Cilan ever tries to taste Ash…
    • Don't give them ideas.
• Celebi and Joy is set in.. Kanto? But the episode doesn't seem very early 20th century Japan.
• What is the scope of the Pokémon League tournaments? They're clearly open to people who win eight badges in a region, it sounds like an annual event, and they make a big deal about the winner. Yet almost everyone we see competing is roughly close to Ash's age, to the point that another common complaint about Tobias is how he's beating trainers who are younger than him. So is this specifically a youth league? Are there other significant events for Pokémon-training adults, or are average people expected to make their marks in prepubescence or not at all? (Or, worse, is this an extension of the belief that the show and/or games aren't for adults?)
  • If it was a youth league, why were Tobias (and Nando) competing in the first place?
  • Perhaps many adult trainers are jaded. They went into the world with dreams of being the champion when they were roughly ten years old and it didn't work out. After a while they gave up and went about creating a career for themselves in another manner?
• Another question on the Pokemon League. It's been shown that badges are a trainer's to keep as trophies. So, could Ash if he wanted to, re-enter the Indigo Laue since he already owns 8 badges from Kanto? Or would he need to challenge some of the never see gyms? The latter sounds a bit...pointless though.
  • There's probably some sort of registry. I remember an episode where Jessie stole Ash's badges and planned on using them to enter the league herself, and Ash was told that if he reported his badges stolen, they could be reissued in time for the tournament. So, there must be some way to keep track of this or else people could just report badges as lost or stolen and get whatever badges they want for free.
• What exactly happens when a Pokemon is captured? With the exception of ones that come along willingly, prior to capture all wild Pokemon run, or are willing to fight and even possibly kill to avoid capture, and yet even immediately after capture they are completely obedient, practically like slaves. Does a Pokeball brainwash a Pokemon when it catches them or something?
  • The Pokemon test the trainers to see if they're worthy of training them. You KO the Pokemon you've proven yourself so it listens to you until you do something to make them disrespect you. Some Pokemon also just like their trainers a whole lot right from the beginning and in mmany cases being caught would be a huge increase in their quality of life so it's a good thing.
  • It really depends on the Pokemon. In the anime, at least, there's absolutely nothing a Pokeball can do to make a Pokemon like their trainer, be obedient, or even stick around. It's always their choice, even if their reasons aren't clear.
• How can trainers tell which of their Pokemon is in which Pokeball? Most of the 'balls look exactly the same.
  • I always had the theory that trainers always put their Pokeball in the same order, so they could memorize who was in which.
• I still can get over the fact that in a world where trans-dimensional spheres and teleportation are mundane, their video monitors are still analogue. What I am referring to? Their pokédex, generic tablets and mobile phones(!!), and the pokémon centre skype booths all display properties of analogue video (think old-school over-the-air TV) and CRT monitors (static, ghosting, channel interference). Even in Unova/Isshu, the most advanced world yet.
• Given that the Ampharos who rides a moped with his trainer in the X and Y season has a custom helmet shape for his/her ears, are there helmets for other Pokemon? Are there shops that specialize in Pokemon helmets, or did the Ampharos's trainer have to get an expensive custom made one?
  • This is a world where Pokemon are an integral part of society, and plenty of buisnesses for special pet goods exist IRL. There's probably some place that sells helmets for Pokemon. And if it was a custom, Ampharos' trainer is probably well-off or has a lot of influence, given that he moonlights as a masked vigilante and his son is a Gym Leader.
• Do insurance companies actually exist?
  • If they ever existed at all Ash and Team Rocket have likely put them out of business by now.
• How do you care for a Pokemon that you cannot touch? I.E. cleaning it and petting it and such things. Take Nidoran or Slugma as a example.
  • Maybe the Pokemon clean themselves like a dog or cat licking dirt off themselves or Nurse Joy handles that sort of thing since she would have special training and equipment. Or maybe Pokeballs remove dirt and grime whenever a Pokemon is recalled. As for petting them, Ash doesn’t seem to mind getting fried by Charizard or electrocuted by Pikachu. Maybe trainers just get used to the pain after a while or less tough/stupid trainers avoid touching Pokemon that are poisonous/spikey/on fire/etc.
  • In addition, there's always the possibility that these Pokémon are like the Ponyta established in The Flame Pokémon-athon; even if a Slugma's body is hotter than the sun, it won't burn anyone it trusts.
• How are secret places (ex. Pinkan Island) kept as a secret? Wouldn't they be easily findable if a plane flies over them, or if a ship sails close to them, or by GPS or by something similar to Google Earth?
  • The answer is simple: Just don't tell anyone about them. Don't put them in a GPS database, don't mark their name on a map. "Hey, what's that island we're flying over?" "I dunno. There's no name." "Should we go look?" "Nah, look at those cliffs. Not worth it."
  • The Ninja Village in Kalos is treated interestingly in this regard. It is treated as particularly hidden and it has a secret entrance for Sanpei to use when bringing Ash and friends. Team Rocket, meanwhile, notices the village simply by flying overhead in a balloon.
• There seems to be a Double Standard in the case of abandonment: If a trainer releases a Pokemon for being too weak, they will always seen in the wrong. But if a Pokemon runs away from a "weak" trainer, it's appaerently ok. Ash himself got two Pokemon this way, and instead of commenting on it (or counting his lucky stars it didn't happen to him in Kanto, when he was a pretty bad trainer himself) his reaction was basically: "Well, sucks to be them! MINE!".
  • It does seem unfair that Pokemon basically get free (unfair) passes when they abandon their trainers. Nobody really makes any bad comments about trainers that are abandoned by their Pokemon unless the trainers were openly abusive to them. When Pokemon are seen as "weak" by their former trainers, it will give others the impression that the trainers were just only using their Pokemon for selfish goals and seeing them as tools of power than sentient beings with feelings. As for the Pokemon abandoning their trainers? It's stated in the show that some Pokemon will not always be suited for certain training styles that each individual trainers have (just like how Chimchar was more fitted with Ash's style than Paul's and how Ash's Snivy abandoned its former trainer because she didn't like their training style), which may be the "general" reason as to why Pokemon leave their trainers (they just take this reason and run with it). This is akin to comparing a child abandoning his/her parents for being abusive, to adults abandoning their child for superficial reasons (they never wanted a child/they hate their child for not meeting their expectations). Take a good guess at which side is more sympathetic.
  • The comparision is totally wrong: Snivy and Froakie's trainers were not abusive: it's directly stated that Snivy found her owner weak, and she even tried to convince a group of other Pokemon to leave their trainers. It's not fair that only one part of the relationship is supposed to try to make said relationship works, while the other can simply shrug and go away.
    • The Pokémon world makes it clear as spring water that whenever Pokemon start acting badly, it is the trainer’s complete responsibility to tame it. This takes all the blame off of the Pokémon and placing it on the trainer, which as stated earlier, is completely unfair and absurd but it’s how it is. The only good thing is that the trainers aren’t in the wrong for not wanting to deal with or use disobedient Pokémon in battles.
• Why are almost all the Gyms built with rows and rows of seats if almost nobody ever goes to watch the matches?
  • Simple. There are times when lots of people do show up to gyms to watch matches. This can happen with popular gym leaders. The "Ash vs. Roxie" match and his match with Skyla are good examples of this.
• Something regarding Prfessor Cerise's characterization in JN011. In JN017, he reveals he knew that his laboratory is haunted by a Gengar and was fine with it because he thought it was fun to have poltergeist activity...but in JN011, he's terrified of Gengar when Chloe and Yamper are there. Wouldn't it be nice for Cerise to, I don't know, tell everyone beforehand that Gengar is not (at that point) malicious?
  • His daughter was being attacked by a Ghost-type and as such he was more worried about her safety than telling everyone about Gengar not being malicious yet.
• If Chloe isn't interested in Pokémon, why doesn't she just tell her school peers that she doesn’t want a career involving them? She's clearly bothered by them pressuring her to follow in her father's footsteps, yet she does nothing to get them to back off. Why?
  • It’s possible that either she did try to tell them in the past and they wouldn’t listen, or maybe she’s afraid of being labeled as a Pokémon hater if she does speak up. If her peers were to learn that the daughter of a Pokemon professor doesn't like Pokemon, they'd be pretty quick to assume the worst.
  • Episode 49 gives more insight into this. It's not a matter of whether or not she likes Pokemon. It's that whatever she decides she wants to do, she wants to make that decision herself without any pressure from her peers.
• How did Goh become friends with Chloe if he didn't want to make friends anymore after his incident with Horace? Was he already friends with her before meeting the latter?
  • Yes. Just by using simple math shows that Goh already knew Chloe before Horace. Goh and Chloe already knew each other when they were six. Goh is 10 like Ash and the Horace episode takes place three years prior, making them 7 in said episode. So Goh had known Chloe for a year by then.
• Erika and Sabrina aside, why Blaine blames Ash for endangering Pikachu, when he was ordering Magmar to do Fire Blast? Not to mention that the gym is in active volcano and he even blames Ash when Magmar tries to drown Charizard into lava. Just WTF is wrong with this guy?
  • It is part of a gym leader's job to test the trainer's behavior as well as their battling ability. Ash is the one who chose which pokemon to use in abttle inside a volcano and if they can't handle it that's Ash's fault and Blaine was right to call him out on it. Battling is dangerous and if the trainer doesn't prepare their pokemon to deal with the dangers they're facing or have a strategy for dealing with a strong opponent they that's the trainers mistake abd it's an irresponsable one to make.
• How do trainers with fish Pokemon deal with non-water battlefields? Can the Pokemon survive and battle on land unlike real fish?
  • We saw what happens in the second episode of the very first season. If the pokemon can't walk or fly then it just flops around helplessly and is unable to battle. They don't seem to die if removed from water for long periods but they're basically helpless.
• In Pokemon Journeys, why is it every time Ash and Goh face any type of villain, they mostly rely on Pikachu, Riolu/Lucario, Scorbunny/Raboot/Cinderace? A lot of moments would make Ash and Goh seem more of a threat if they used Pokemon like Dragonite, Gengar, Raichu, Aerodactyl, Flygon, etc. But they rarely ever do.
  • In-universe, Pikachu and Cinderace can be explained by their being their trainer's starters, and thus Ash and Goh understand how they battle best of all. Lucario is because it has that aura bond with Ash and is close with him that way. Out-of-universe, it's becuase those three are popular Pokemon and therefore need a certain amount of screentime.
• Okay, I haven't seen a lot of the more recent anime and this might be a pretty minor thing, but it still bothers and confuses me: in a world with smartphones, computers, and all sorts of other advanced tech, some of which is more advanced than what we have now, why are the only airliners we see '20s-'30s-style prop planes (and for flights between what are essentially Tokyo and New York and Tokyo and Paris to boot)?
• How come that the anime ignored the "Koffing and Magnemite's evolutions are the result of multiple members of their species merging" rule from the games' Pokédex, yet it kept the "Slowpoke evolves when a Shellder bites its tail" thing?
  • Probably because a Shellder and Slowpoke are nearly always seen together but Koffing, Magnemite and Beldum tend not to be near other members of their species and Clemont's Magneton was shown splitting into three separate Magnemite to dodge an attack in "Clemont's Got A Secret!" so there is that.
• Is it just me or does Alola seem bizarrely accepting of strange things happening? For instance, Ash has two one-of-a-kind Pokémon — Dusk Form Lycanroc and Melmetal — but no one says anything other than Nanu. Likewise, in one episode, Meltan and Mallow's Shaymin get separated from Ash and his friends and though there's a search party, no one ever comments on Mallow having a rare Pokémon.

Plotlines

• I hear conflicting answers to this question. Does Satoshi Tajiri actually write the show? Or does he executive produce or what?
  • I was under the impression that Satoshi Tajiri does the video games and the anime is handled by another part of the company entirely.
  • According to the Internet Movie Database, he has done some writing, (if perhaps only as a guest writer), and the IMDB never lies, as said before on this site.
    • IMDB does lie sometimes, as it's user-submitted. They've had fake cast listings for plenty of things in the past (50 Cent as Epona, anybody?) It's not always 100% accurate.
• In the episode after the St Anne had sunk, Officer Jenny held a memorial for the assumed dead Ash, Misty, Brock, Jessie, and James. The question is, why didn't anyone ever question their alive status after this episode when they saw them? To make things more complicated, the episode directly after they got out of St Anne and the Giant Robot Pokemon island (which was a few days of getting out of both situations), Delia (Ash's mom) had appeared and doesn't show any signs of relief that Ash is alive. Surely the police would've told Delia about his "death"?
  • My guess was that Delia was notified of Ash and friends' "death". Then they return to the mainland an episode or so later, and Ash and friends assure their relatives that they're not really dead. We just didn't see any of this happen.
  • Maybe she never got the message? In the unaltered storyline, Ash and Co. ended up on the same beach they met Oak and Delia. If they had already left Pallet Town when the message arrived, then they could have warned the, "Hey, you might get a message saying I died. ....I didn't."
• Although I would like to know why no one appeared in the theme park until the very end of the episode. Was everyone just hiding out in one isolated corner?
  • This troper recently watched a YouTube Poop of Episode 16, Pokémon Shipwreck. At about one minute into the video, the creator of the video, avojaifnot, throws in a weight gag, listing down the weights of all the Pokémon used by Ash, Brock and Team Rocket in their attempt at a Pokémon battle. For those who have not watched this episode, sending out all those Pokémon caused the ship they were on, the S.S. Anne, to rock precariously on the stalagmite it was on. The ship righted itself only when all those Pokémon were recalled. Now, a short while later, Brock sends out his Onix to make a staircase. Nothing happens to the ship. In the process of recalling the details of the actual episode while watching the poop, this question hit me hard: the Pokémon that Ash, Brock and Team Rocket sent out during their battle attempt had a combined total weight of 115.2 lbs. The weight of Onix alone is 463 lbs. How is it that the whole ship can be rocked around by 115.2 lbs, when a rock snake weighing four times that has no effect whatsoever on it?
  • If they were closer to the center of the ship when Onix was used solo, then it wouldn't be a problem. Weight won't matter if it doesn't upset the balance.
  • On that subject, why was Koffing effecting the weight of the ship? It weighs 2 lbs and floats.
  • Also on the subject of the S.S. Anne, what happened to the guy with the top hat? After he trades back Ash's Butterfree the ball rolls away. Ash chases the ball and, a few moments later, the ship goes over, trapping the trio and Team Rocket in the sinking ship. If he escaped, how? And if not, does that mean he died trying to escape and now there's a well-dressed corpse in the bowels of the ship (especially since they cut a hole in the hull to escape, flooding the ship)?
  • I'm sure there were life vests and boats on the ship. They were only in the harbor. Ash and his friends got stuck on the ship because the plot demanded it.
• What happened to Jimmy? Did they change his name? Retcon him out of existence? Or did they make an Identical Stranger for no reason despite them undeniably being based off the same character and him reappearing would cause no continuity problems? Can Red appear as his own character now, or is he too tightly connected to Ash to exist?
  • Who says they're not the same character? Yes, art gallery blah blah blah, but it's not stated in the movie and they may well have just retconned his name if it was official. And Ash is essentially Red's replacement in the anime. There is no Red, there's just Ash (though having Red appear would be nice since people would stop claiming they're the same person).
• So Juniper just let Oshawott leave the lab and follow Ash, or was she just irresponsible enough not to call it back and watch it?
• The evil Togepi contradicts what Ekans said in "Island of the Giant Pokémon" about how bad Pokémon aren't naturally bad.
  • Ekans is naïve.
  • And I think it merely meant that just because a Trainer is good or evil doesn't mean that their Pokémon have the same character alignment as they do.
  • The notion that Pokemon mimic their trainers is certainly not always true, case in point, Paul, who's Torterra simply seems to mind it's own business and is nowhere near as brutal as it's teammate Ursaring, or a borderline bully like Electivire used to be.
  • Plus Togepi seem to be an exception to this rule, take a look at how badly Misty got flanderized after she got hers.
• Why was the evil Togepi trying to go to space?
  • For the Evulz?
  • Because it's cool. Wouldn't you want to?
• According to the They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot page, the writers stopped doing long term plots after the GS Ball fiasco, apparently because of Celebi's appearance in the movie. Why didn't they just NOT use Celebi for the movie?
  • There's another solution available, and they've used it a few times: episodes and movies. For example, there was an episode with Articuno that wasn't "The Power Of One". And there was a family of Lugias in another. Most recently, they released an episode in Japan about the Cresselia/Darkrai feud, which was a great relief. If "The Rise Of Darkrai" had been his sole appearance, Cresselia would have been denied what is essentially her only purpose.
  • Simple, they originally didn't plan to use Celebi for the movie. The original plan was to have one movie featuring each of the Legendary Dog trio, and use Celebi in the story arc. Executive Meddling demanded that Celebi be used for a movie instead, so the original plan was scrapped.
  • Not only that, Celebi was supposed to travel with the group for a while. Having two Celebis would be redundant, and there were supposed to be even more story arcs to be touched upon (such as Meowth's backstory), which were coldly quashed when they sacked Takeshi Shudo. Let's face it - even the early series could get messy at times, and the sudden need to expand it into a Cash-Cow Franchise weakened the story arcs for at least a few years.
• Okay, so when the gang gets to Sunyshore it's revealed that Volkner has gotten tired of battling and has started just giving gym badges away. Um, why had the League not done anything about that?
  • And the writers even went so far to make Paul's opinion on the gym (a couple of episodes back) actually right. Not to mention Barry considering it as his best gym "challenge" yet. What.
    • Barry's reaction is easily explained. He's confident that he will win and his personality is on the Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! side. "In, badge, out." is perfect for him. As for Paul, he has always believed that respect has to be earned through accomplishment.
    • Barry already "won" at the Sunyshore Gym. The problem is, he and Empoleon were gushing about how it's the best gym that they've ever faced. So, Barry was gushing about how Volkner was handing out gym badges for free?
  • As for why the League isn't doing anything about it, maybe someone already is trying to: Flint. Which is also probably why Flint bonded so well with Ash, since Flint was grateful to Ash for helping return Volkner's love for battle.
• So classic episode formula is that Ash is walking around, sees something interesting, then gets assaulted by paranoid, overzealous locals who accuse him of attempted theft, trespassing, poaching, what-have-you. Now, sure Ash is known for getting sidetracked and lost on a regular basis, but he's not exactly bushwhacking here. So the question is this: why are all these private properties and nature preserves located directly on major travel routes and obvious footpaths, with nothing so much as a fence or a few signposts to mark them?
  • In a World… where monsters with scythes for hands roam, wouldn't it be likely that a bunch of Pokemon destroyed the signs? As for why it happens all the time, my guess is that they're either trying to trap and molest Ash, or they're cheap as hell.
    • I think the monsters with scythes response does have merit.. Just that you'd expect the ones protecting that property to have some strongly trained Mon of their own to prevent say a sign or fence from being trashed.
• The last major battle of the Generation IV episodes was between Pikachu (a Gen I Pokemon) and a Latios (a Gen III Pokemon). *scratches head*
  • The league, in essence, was the part that showed us how the Gen IVs meshed with the previous Gens. Narrowing it down to the final two is unfair; Ash's opponent had at least a III and a IV (and the IV got all the buildup), while Ash's team contained at least one Pokemon from each of the four generations up to that point, though with a blatant III focus (only Pikachu for I, Heracross for II and Gible for IV). Though on that note, I don't think Ash used any Gen I Pokemon aside from Pikachu in the tournament itself. Not even the expected Char cameo...
    • Snorlax showed up briefly. Ash used it to win a battle at the start of an episode.
• Okay...so in BW035, Ash and company (plus two characters of the day and an Officer Jenny) had to watch three Audino to make sure they didn't disappear. When all three become hypnotized and walk away, at one point Ash and co. lose the third one. Only two Audino are shown coming to Team Rocket where the other Audinos are being held. Where did the third one go?!?
• Remember the anime's version of Sabrina? You know, that utterly nightmarish woman speaking through a Creepy Child and turned Brock, Misty, and her own mother into dolls? Why the hell didn't the League do something about it?
  • Go on right ahead, then! Go tell Sabrina to cut it out with the whole turn-whoever-she-wants-into-dolls thing and report back to the League post-haste!
    • I wouldn't mind being her doll. Anyways, perhaps the league is afraid of her power (they are great trainers; Doesn't mean that they know how to handle a human turning people into dolls), or perhaps the idea of someone turning people into dolls seemed a little ridiculous to them?
    • You're right, no one in the league could possibly stand up to Sabrina. Why they would probably need an Elite 4 member dedicated to Ghost types. Oh wait.
    • You're talking about the same League that let a mafia don run a crime syndicate out of his gym. Sabrina stocking her dollhouse is the least of their worries.
  • League just didn’t know about it. I doubt anyone make it out to share this information, if she turned every trainer who lost to her into a doll. There were probably rumors like “You know, this Gym Leader Sabrina is pretty creepy, they say she can read your mind” ect. And her sole reputation kept curious types away. Even if someone came to investigate missing trainers, she has freaking psychic powers! She could just hypnotize him or her to think everything was ok. If Ligue knew… well, they need a bunch of ten year olds to deal with crime syndicate for them, so I doubt there was anyone competent enough to handle this problem.
    • I've heard a theory claiming that Sabrina might have only recently gained control of the gym. Depending on HOW recent, there wouldn't have been time for that many challengers and/or a league inspector to look into it. A Nd after Ash and company helped out, anything bad would have been written off as a mere rumor.
• Why did the lake trio choose the heroes for their Power of Friendship? Most characters that aren't villains already care a lot about Pokemon, some even more so than Ash and co. A better reason would be their experience and having been part of large events (such as Dialga and Palkia's rampage throughout a city, Giratina going beserk and stopping Arceus from wiping out humanity), but because they simply were kind to Pokemon? Lake trio, there are plenty of people who share those qualities.
  • Because they had seen the trio previously, they'd fought Galactic plenty of times already, and they were available and willing. They worked, they were right there, Bob's your uncle.
  • Ash has already been involved in a lot of high-profile prophecies and events, and his qualities tend to rub off on his traveling companions. When the Olympus Mons are looking for an ace, one can only imagine they see our friendly neighborhood Idiot Hero walk past and think "JACKPOT".
• They finally gave Ash fully colored eyes, like all of the game characters post-gen 2. But are they going to give everyone else colored eyes? I'd love to see Gary with green eyes. Also…What exactly happened to his irises? I always thought if they colored his eyes they'd do it like anime!May and leave it 50-50.
• Similarly, the game's design implies that:
  • A: You beat the Elite Four, then Team Plasma attacks. When has Ash ever even placed in the top four in the tournaments?
  • B: Your character catches the cover legendary, and N catches the over legendary (as in, the game just restarts the battle until you succeed in catching said legendary). Problem is, when has a villain ever really caught and got to keep a legendary Pokemon in a movie or episode?
  • C: That one set of events happens. Problem is, this now means completely new areas in each game, as well as different plot happenings and a different eighth gym leader. Which would appear, White Forest or Black City? Who would be the gym leader, Iris or Shaga? Or when the gym leaders have to stop the sages of Team Plasma?
  • On the bright side, that likely means you'll end up seeing N a heck of a lot in this series, because he's the only Team Plasma 'executive' type figure and such.
    • A: If I'm correct, Ash place in the top 4 in the Sinnoh tournament. B: They never got to keep them in any of the games that the previous seasons were based on. C: Just because only one of those areas appears in the games doesn't mean that they won't both appear. And to answer your question about the Gym Leader, it's probably going to be Drayden. Extra Note: Goetsis counts as an executive figure, doesn't he?
    • Alternate interpret: A: A good way of keeping Ash from winning a Tournament. B: Mini-series seem to end with restored balances anyway. C: Why not both locations? After all, this show is the former Trope Namer for Third-Option Adaptation.
    • The "extra areas" that open up after the Elite Four will probably be used for filler. Also, once Grey version comes out, they'll probably use that as a guide for deciding what to keep from which version, if they don't decide to use everything from both like the above poster suggested.

• Has Ash and the gang learned learned absolutely nothing from all of these years battling Team Rocket??!! Why don't the Officer Jennies work harder to arrest them?! You'd think every police officer in the region would have a price on their capture! Of course, if they did go to jail, well...
  • Because then they wouldn't have a set of antagonists and part-time protagonists and the anime would have to start using team galactic/whatever the antagonist group for the region is. And you are aware that whenever there's a change in cast, a civil war brakes out, the new character is immediately declared the Antichrist and is burned at the stake.
  • Considering how easy they are to defeat, they are probably not a real enough threat to warrant the law's attention.
  • Alternatively, the law enforcement in the Pokemon world is lazy and corrupt (it IS run by a single family!), preferring to let 10-year old vigilantes do all their work for them.
  • There is (or was) a price on their heads. Their first appearance has them complaining about how their newest wanted poster doesn't capture their "good side". What with them growing steadily more incompetent, and focusing on just the one Pikachu, the law (especially in other Regions) probably forgot about them.
  • At least once (in "Caterpie Big and Tall") Officer Jenny had Team Rocket cornered and was about to arrest them. They made a token attempt to resist, and Ash's Expy for the episode used Whirlwind to blow them away — assuring their escape. Officer Jenny didn't object and Ash treated this as a victory.
    • A Sinnoh episode counterpoints this, with a "wild" Jenny who is not only specifically out to arrest Team Rocket, but recognizes their blasting off as a failure on her part.
  • And besides, even if Team Rocket were to be arrested and jailed, it wouldn't do any good since they can pull shovels out of their asses and escape anyway.
  • Also, they make good practice for the good guys' Pokémon for experience.
  • In the episode Viva Las Lapras, Team Rocket actually is arrested along with the pirates. They are out again chasing Ash in the next episode.
• Why is evolution portrayed as a negative thing at times in the anime? Sure, when a Pokémon does evolve, everyone is happy, but when Bulbasaur refused to for example, suddenly there's this big lesson about how Ash needs to respect Bulbasaur's decision. Only problem? Evolution is a natural process! Particularly evolution by experience. I guess I can see how Pikachu might be reluctant to evolve by stone, but when it's by level,a Pokémon who doesn't want to evolve seems kind of like a child who doesn't want to grow up. And trainers who actively keep their Pokémon from evolving, isn't that kind of like castrating choir boys so their voices don't deepen with age? It all just seems unnatural to me.
  • Keep in mind that all the other Bulbasaur and Ivysaur who were going to evolve were pressuring Bulbasaur into evolving with them because the humans who lived in that area assumed that Ash's Bulbasaur would want to evolve too. When Bulbasaur backed down, all the other pokemon looked pretty mad. In fact, the leading venasaur looked like it was going to beat up bulbasaur until As intervened. Bulbasaur just didn't want to evolve, and combine that with peer pressure from the other pokemon, and it didn't want anything to do with evolution.
  • The way I see it, it was not portrayed as negative, but, as you've pointed out, a lesson about respecting one's decisions. The evolution process, as discrete as it is, resembles more the kind of metamorphosis of an axolotl than, say, a caterpillar. Besides, there are at least a few clear advantages on not evolving, the better know of which is that moves are learned faster. One could even note that, in the games, sometimes you find people battling with Pokémon that should have evolved long ago(heck, who wants a Bidoof on level 35?!), so the anime is not the only guilty one here.
    • In the case of Piplup's non-evolution, the cause lies with the show's staff; apparently, one of the head writers finds Prinplup and Empoleon "ugly". In-story, though, I believe it's ostensibly because Piplup is afraid evolving it to become a totally different "person" (so to speak), something that Brock mentioned in an earlier season episode.
    • That's in the original Japanese version. In the English dub, Piplup wanted to stay as he is in order to preserve the memories of the day he met Dawn.
    • That just makes no sense. No, not the in-universe reasons; I already accept Bulbasaur the way he is. But why would the developers find Empoleon ugly in comparison to Piplup's successor, the Ugly Cute Oshawott?
    • Easy. Oshawott was Ash's, Piplup was Dawn's. Cute mons are mainly Dawn's gimmick, not Ash's. Plus, Empoleon is uglier than Oshawott and its evolutions.
  • Resisting evolution has more than a few advantages, though. For example, as of the most recent games Bulbasaur naturally learns Seed Bomb—a pretty good move—at level 37, where a Venusaur or Ivysaur has to be specifically bred for that or use a move tutor. In Gen I, it'd learn Solar Beam seventeen levels before a Venusaur would. As of gen four, Pikachu has 13 moves on its natural movelist, while Raichu only has four. And evolution-as-sexual-maturity doesn't really map for most evolutions; most Pokemon are able to breed in their first evolution. That's only a good metaphor for baby pokemon, nearly all of which don't share the advantages for being kept from evolving.
  • For a child to keep from growing up would involve invasive surgery and drastic biochemical alterations. Bulbasaur scrunching his eyes and willing himself not to evolve doesn't really compare. Plus, he gets a chance to change his mind every time he levels up until he reaches 100.
  • Plus there are some times when not wanting to evolve might come off as pretty legit - say, changing shape? Take Glalie, for example: utter badass and wicked appearance, but when it evolves from Snorunt it loses its hands and feet (in fact, Snorunt is the sole Pokemon on Ash's team for which evolving didn't quite make sense to me personally - it didn't quite fit it's nature.) What about Dewott losing its hands when it becomes Samurott? Or if one fears the personality changes, which happen to a greater or lesser degree within the series, as with Piplup (in-story). Or perhaps they just like the way they are, and it has been shown that Pokemon still grow bigger and/or older over time (Ash's Lapras for the former, & the Treecko elder from Treecko's capture episode for the latter). While some cases - which might just be the early ones, such as Caterpie - treat it as growth and maturity, others treat it as the potential to literally transform yourself. And people should have a choice regarding whether they want to fundamentally change who they are.
    • The Japanese have a thing for cute little critters, and um...they think Oshawott's cute enough?
• Related to above, why does evolving change a Pokemon in the anime?
  • Think of it as growing up. As you change and get older, you may mature. That's why some Pokemon change the way they act, and others don't.
    • The problem is it doesn't. Examples of a Pokemon's personality changing usually ONLY involve changes that come with having more power (the wimpy magikarp that got kicked around became a strong garydose able to kick back). However we've also seen a magikarp evolve and stay just as sweet to it's friends as it did as a regular fish. Chikorita evolves and remains just as affectionate, only larger. Really, personality changing is just an excuse brought up to try to justify keeping cute pokemon around when evolving them is more natural and makes more sense.
    • I disagree with your point when Ash's charmander evolved into a charmeleon he stopped listening to Ash, Pokemon can go through serious psychological and physical changes when they evolve. The possibility they may not want to change seems totally reasonable.
• Shouldn't Iris and Dragonite have been expelled from the Junior Cup? It doesn't seem very fair to the other contestants to have a Pokemon that doesn't listen at all and just does whatever it wants, even if it does win. This bothers me because when Ash's Charizard did the same thing, it almost always lost, and it seriously reflected negatively on Ash that he couldn't control it. If Dragonite lost, or obeyed Iris and still lost, it would make for a whole lot more character development than what is going on now.
  • While the part about disqualifying them (or at least forcing Iris to use a different Pokemon next round) is true, the character development part is still likely, for two reasons. First, they did end up losing eventually. Second, a large part of the issue is Dragonite's arrogance, and it would have far less reason to be arrogant if it wasn't up to the task of "carrying the team" most of the time. (Charizard worked a different way, being so confident that it simply refused to fight opponents that didn't interest it. And speaking of trying to handle this somewhat differently than Charizard, Dragonite appears to be actively defying the possibility of directly copying "Charizard Chills" by proving itself unusually resistant to ice attacks. Not that they probably won't "chill" in another way later.)
  • And after every match, Dragonite and Iris do develop - Dragonite at least does pay Iris some lip service at the start of her match with Dawn, and it does listen to her when they go up against Ash and Krokorok.
• Dawn of a Royal Day: Princess Salvia switches places with Dawn to compete in the Arrowroot Town Contest, and absolutely no one noticed that "Dawn" was suddenly talking with, oh, I don't know, a really thick European accent??
  • Why would they think anything about it? She's still a kid, so it would be perfectly logical for her to make believe she's a princess from a foreign land, which would fit with the delicateness of Contests. People probably dismissed it as her just being weird.
• In the Orange Islands episode, Ash, Tracy, and Jessie are bed ridden after a Vileplume stun spores them. But, in the episode with James' fiancee, all the main characters except James were stun spored, and a Black & White episode showed Dawn getting stun spored by a Foongus. In both cases, none of the characters needed tea brewed with salvayo weed like the Orange Island episode.
  • Those earlier incidents were about plot. The others are just comic relief, like how we can have harmless electrocution.
  • The stun spore used in an attack is likely weaker than if you inhale it straight from the flower itself. Jessie, Ash and Tracey were all actually INSIDE the Vileplume's head when they inhaled, huge amount, straight from the source.
• If Giovanni (during his gym leader days) used Mewtwo as his strongest Pokemon to curbstomp Pokemon trainers, how did any of them make it to the Indigo League (unless of course they purposely stayed far away from the Viridian City Gym)?
  • There are other gyms in the Kanto League we haven't seen, like the ones Gary got his extra badges from. They probably went there.
  • It's also unlikely Giovanni used Mewtwo against every challenger.
• At the end of Challenge of the Samurai, we have a whole bunch of unconscious wild Beedrill laying around, paralyzed by Butterfree's Stun Spore. We know that just one of them can pack a real punch and is enough to send Team Rocket running...so unless the Samurai called dibs on them, why doesn't Ash try catching any of them in Pokeballs? They couldn't have been in that much of a hurry.
  • I could think of three reasons. One, Ash probably didn't have enough Pokeballs on him at the time. Two, he was sorta in a hurry to get to Pewter City for his first Gym Badge. And three, they're freaking Beedrill! I know Beedrill is decent Pokémon but remember there were tons of them. Even if Ash had that many Pokeballs on him, most of the others would've woken up most likely in time and attacked him again. Especially since Ash spent the majority of the episode fleeing in fear of them. It was definitely the wisest thing to get the hell out of there once the coast is clear.
  • He didn't need to catch all the Beedrill. Just one would've been enough. Just throw a Pokeball at one, see if it works, collect the ball, and then run like hell.
  • Still, Ash was more worried about getting his Metapod out there safely since he recently lost it. And after it evolved into Butterfree, I guess Ash didn't see the need to catch a Beedrill.
• When Ash and Whitney had a rematch, why was Ash declared victorious upon defeating her first Pokémon when he had used three, and Goldenrod Gym battles are supposed to involve three mons? And even if it wasn't an official gym battle, three vs one is the very opposite of a fair match.
  • You clearly are unaware of the horror that is Whitney's Miltank... 3 vs 1 is completely fair.
• When catching Krabby, why didn't Ash use his Pokémon to weaken it? Also, how did attacking it with a stick weaken it enough to get caught? Ash didn't even get to hit him with it; when he tried, Krabby effortlessly sliced it.
  • That was because earlier in the episode, Ash gloated about his latest accomplishments with his Pokémon and Misty called him out saying that all of his Pokémon "followed" him instead of legitimately catching them. Of course, given this is the original series' Ash, takes offense to this and decides to catch a Pokémon own his own. Also, I doubt the stick had anything to do with it. It's just a Krabby which is a Pokémon that can easily be caught in a Pokeball without weakening it.
• When traveling to Kanto, Rotom Dex goes off on its own to catalog the entire Kanto Pokédex. The only one he misses is Mew. How did he find Mewtwo?
  • Or, for that matter, how did he find Porygon?
  • He likely didn't. The in-universe 150 of the Kanto region has never really matched up to the game version (given five members are extinct and Mewtwo is a secret and unique) so it likely just found all the known Pokemon.
  • The Kanto 150 are definitely the same as in the games, as many anime sources (most blatantly the Pokérap) attest to.
• Why in episode Charmander The Stray Pokemon Ash didn't use Butterfree, or mainly its Sleep Powder, against Charmander? While Charmander is a fire type, he was too tired to battle.
  • Well, he could've but remember that he and Brock agreed that the Charmander belonged to someone else and assumed its trainer would've returned shortly for it thus not finding it necessary to weaken it/put it to sleep.
• This one kinda bugged me a bit but this involves Gladion, his Silvally, and their battles in general. Whenever Gladion battles against someone using his Silvally, he always switches out Silvally's drives mid battle to a type that will give him an advantage over an opponent. Isn't this considered cheating on his part especially during the Alola League where you're only allowed one held item at the time and that Gladion was physically getting involved in the battle? I mean during Ash's trail battle with Nanu, Tapu Bulu came by to give a berry to Lycanroc so it can heal and even Ash asked Nanu if it was okay to use it since he was getting outside help. But here, Gladion blatantly gives his Silvally drives to give him an advantage over others. I don't mind Gladion in the anime as he is a strong trainer and the second of Ash's opponents to actually own a Legendary Pokemon but I feel this makes his battles too unfair. Why doesn't anyone ever call him out on this?
• This has been one that has bugged me for a while as an adult and it dates all the way back to the first season, which I barely remember well, but in the episode where Ash challenges Erika, her gym trainers refuse to let him enter because he insulted Erika's fragrance earlier.
  • The problem is that Erika even says herself that a Gym Leader cannot refuse a gym challenge, so why are her trainers getting off scott free for deliberately infringing their idols main duty as Gym Leader just to protect the pride of the woman who had a perfume she made reviled by a 10 year old who clearly didn't know any better? To be quite honest that comes off as disrespectful and a little selfish if you ask me.
• Legend of Dratini was banned in America for depictions of guns while in Here Comes The Squirtle Squad Ash walks into a shop for medicine and has several guns pointed at him which isn't edited out. Ash also obtains new Pokemon in bother episodes, his Squirtle in the latter and his herd of Tauros in the former, which caused many dub watchers to think he caught them offscreen like Brock's Zubat. Why was the former banned but not the latter?
  • I guess this is a case of Early Installment Weakness on the creators part. I'm not sure why they didn't edited it out but I guess since it only happened for one shot, it was okay to keep it in thinking the younger viewers may not notice it. However, in "Legend of Dratini," it was pretty much a Running Gag that Ash was getting threatened by guns (even Team Rocket at one point pointed a gun point blank at the Pokemon Safari ranger's head).
    • More frequent gun use is a factor, but there is some context which is odd to say about this particular decision besides them mostly having less common guns:
    • Here Comes the Squirtle Squad: People were just held up and thought Ash was involved. Then Officer Jenny shows up to save him.
    • The Kangaskhan Kid: While the Officer Jenny here was threatening to fire at the trio, it was for concern of poaching. And once the misunderstanding was cleared, she ceased further action.
    • The Case of the K-9 Caper: Common looking gun, but used solely in police training and could even be argued to be fake.
    • In contrast, let's look at this episode:
    • Kaiser is meant to be a good guy and all with him being trigger happy just a gag, but at the end of the day, he still threatens Ash and company twice for the less sound reasons:
    • Singing while on lawn so to speak.
    • Asking about Dratini which is on him cause he keeps up a sign which is the only reason Misty asks about it.
    • If Kaiser went through with it, no one would be wiser. And when they speak to Oak about it? No word about him packing heating and threatening him.
• Why didn't they make a Ho-Oh movie during the Johto saga? It would have made perfect sense since a) they had been setting up for his appearance since the very fist episode, b) Ho-Oh is a Gen II Pokémon, the mascot of Pokémon Gold, and is closely associated with Johto's legendary trio and Ecruteak City, making the Johto saga the best time for a Ho-Oh movie, and c) the second movie had already focused on Ho-Oh's counterpart Lugia; Ho-Oh would have been the next logical step. Instead we got a movie featuring a fake Entei and some Unowns (which aren't even legendaries), and a movie about Celebi (who was already slated to appear in the anime) that forced the writers to unceremoniously drop the GS Ball story arc. Even worse, Ho-Oh's plotline was eventually dropped and forgotten. It has been decades since then and we still haven't gotten an in-continuity Ho-Oh movie, or an episode that had Ash meet him at last.
  • I've got nothing for Johto but Ho-Oh has reappeared numerous times in the anime and Pokémon: I Choose You! has Ash getting one of Ho-Oh's feathers after the Rainbow Pokémon dropped it and Ash's journey in this film is to meet Ho-Oh again.
• Why does the anime ignore the legendaries' stories and lore from the games half the time, especially when it comes to third version mascots? Case in point, Rayquaza appearance in the anime was as nothing more than a mindless beast that would constantly attack Deoxys in the seventh movie. It was nowhere to be seen in the clash between Kyogre and Groudon. Similarly, Kyurem was in Keldeo's movie as just an opponent for him to fight. His connection to Zekrom and Reshiram was ignored. Giratina was also excluded from the story arc with Team Galactic, Dialga and Palkia. Lugia also lost his backstory and connection to Ecruteak City. When Ash and co got there, both towers were attributed to Ho-Oh. Then when Lugia appeared in the anime (outside of the second movie), it was "demoted" from a one-of-a-kind genderless Pokémon to just another species, with a baby Lugia and a semi-mindless mother Lugia
  • The same reason it ignores type match ups and turn based battles. The anime and games are different continuities and as such their Legendaries are different.
    • How does that answer the question of why the anime "demoted" many of the legendaries and replaced their lore with nothing?
• If Layla wasn't upset about Vullaby attacking the Nursery Pokemon with Punishment, why did she tell the baby vulture she may have gone overboard with it?
• How did Korrina have a book with the footprints of the Pokémon belonging to the trainers she defeated in the last 98 battles? Were all those 98 trainers really such good sport after losing that they would agree to it? Not a single one of them was a sore loser?
  • Even if it was one in ten sore losers, it wouldn’t be that big a deal. Korrina could just try again with the next trainer. .
• Why did the anime devolve Erika's Vileplume and Victreebel?
  • Anime logic aside, they both were a bit too bulky at that time, Ash only had a few Pokemon that would stand against them.
• Why is the anime so insistent that there must always be a referee in Pokémon Battles, even casual battles on the side of the road? Trainers don't need a referee to tell them that their Pokémon just fainted, or that their opponent switched their Pokémon.
  • Having someone else pay attention to and call out the current status of Pokemon allows the trainers to focus solely on what their Pokemon are doing. The referee also doesn't have stakes in the battle's outcome, so they're more likely to be impartial in their judgement of what's happening. A referee giving a play-by play in more structured battles is also useful for the audience; even if the trainers can clearly see a Pokemon has fainted, someone sitting in the upper section of the gym's seating might not.
• Journeys has Ash and Goh living in the Cerise Laboratory when not traveling, but Professor Cerise and his assistants are shown with their own places. Do they seriously leave two boys and their Pokemon without much supervision or protection from intruders? There's also the issue with Gengar before its Heel–Face Turn.
  • If the old source novel still stands, Pokemon trainers are legal adults after getting their training license so supervision wouldn’t be much to worry about. (Yes, that brings up several more weird questions but that’s the worldbuilding we currently have.)
• What was Togepi's egg doing in a fossil excavation site?
  • A Togetic might have dropped it during a migration period without it noticing.
• Anyone ever wonder what happened with the whole Meteonite thing? Obviously the cancelled two-part episodes no longer apply and Ash and Team Plasma no longer have had anything to do with it since it was retconned. What actually happened with Professor Juniper, Team Rocket and the Meteonite then?
• If Mirror Team Rocket are "heroes of justice", why aren't the Mirror world versions of Ash and his friends evil? Yeah, their personalities are the opposite, but how and why are different Mirror world counterparts altered in completely different ways?
  • It may be a completely different take on a Mirror Universe. Instead of the whole "alignments are reversed" it seems to be "personalities are reversed" because they did the exact same thing in "The Arceus Chronicles".

Miscellaneous

• Beautifly's favorite roost in the anime is May's head, despite weighing 62.6 pounds according to the game Pokédex.
  • Another similar example is Cilan's Dwebble, which is able to sit on his shoulder comfortably, despite weighing 32 pounds.
  • Munchlax is said to be 231 pounds.◊
  • For reference, the average combat load of a soldier is around 65 lbs.
• About Brandon, he has a reputation of being an impossible challenge, with both Paul and his older brother having lost to him, and it's deserved, having managed to befriend three legendaries. However, while he uses the all three of them against Paul and his brother, with them just having a single battle with him, against Ash (even while possessed by the evil king) he never used more than one of them, and he also gave him three different tries... Does this special treatment bother only me?
  • First he didn't have Regice until his last fight with Ash, and I think Registeel was the same way. Only Regirock was shown fighting Reggie. As to Paul, it was a 6 on 6 battle: Ash fought 3 regular Pokemon and a Regice on a 4 on 4 battle. Completely different calls.
• Paul abandoning Chimchar. It was still daylight when he left the Tag Battle, ahead of Ash. When he actually released Chimchar, it's full dark and Ash & Co are just steps away. And there's a brief reaction shot of his face when Ash adopts Chimchar. Did he wait that long deliberately?
• Regarding the Black and White anime episode "Beheeyem, Duosion, and the Dream Thief!": how could Leon steal Ash's, Iris's, and Cilan's Pokemon for real within both one and two layers of dreams?
• In the Pokemon Best Wishes Season 2, Ash and company run into the Sinnoh Champion Cynthia, and then go on to stay at her villa for about five episodes to prepare for the Pokemon World Tournament Junior Cup. Question is, what were they going to do if they had never run into Cynthia, and were stuck doing nothing for three months? Just mooch off some other person or camp in the wild till the time came?
  • They didn't even know about the tournament until they met Cynthia, before that the plan was to go to the Unova League. It'd probably take a good three months to get there from Virbank.
• In JN004, the Rotom Phones are initially unable to detect Scorbunny because it is covered in dirt. But its form was completely unobscured.
  • Maybe the Rotom Phones have finicky sensors?
• The very first episode of the original anime is infamous for its "don't be late" message... but apparently Professor Oak only prepared three starters. And clearly Ash was at least the fourth kid to show up. So even if he'd been on time and had simply wound up fourth in line, it wouldn't have done him any good.
  • There is always a risk, which is probably why Oak kept Pikachu as a backup in case one of the kids showed up late. Or, alternatively, that day Ash became old enough to start his journey, there might have just been one of those rare days that Oak had more than one kid turning ten and had to do a "first come, first serve" deal. Or he had other starters coming, but those one wouldn't arrive until later and he couldn't afford to send the late runner out without a Pokémon.
• Ash's hat is an Official Pokémon Leage Expo hat, which is established to be very hard to come by; only 100 were made and Ash had to send "about a million" postcards to get his. So how exactly did Duplica get her hands on one?
  • She sent in another million and got one of the other 99 made. Or it's a bootleg she made by herself, it's hardly a complcated design.

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