Let me tell you a story, from Galar to Kanto.
Pokémon Evolutions is an 8-episode web animated series based on the Pokémon series of games, which premiered on September 9, 2021 to celebrate 25th anniversary of the franchise. Much like Pokémon Generations before it, Evolutions is a Truer to the Text adaptation of key events from each region's game, each connected by a couple of Pikachu travelling across the Pokémon world.
The episodes featured are:
- "The Champion"
: Premiered on September 9, based on Pokémon Sword and Shield - "The Eclipse": Premiered on September 23, based on Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon
- "The Visionary": Premiered on October 7, based on Pokémon X and Y
- "The Plan": Premiered on October 21, based on Pokémon Black and White
- "The Rival": Premiered on December 2, based on Pokémon Diamond and Pearl
- "The Wish": Premiered on December 9, based on Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire
- "The Show": Premiered on December 16, based on Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver
- "The Discovery": Premiered on December 23, based on Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!
The reveal trailer can be seen here.
Pokémon Evolutions provides examples of:
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The overview shot of Wyndon in "The Champion" shows us a 3D modeled Wyndon with 2D animated characters and Pokémon.
- Adaptational Badass: A lot of characters go through with this upgrade, an example is Lillie commanding Nebby to fight Necrozma, with Nebby putting up much more a fight than in the games.
- Adaptational Personality Change: In "The Rival," Barry isn't the hyperactive trainer he is known to be and gains a fixation to fight his dad, when he never did mention his dad before arriving at the Battle Tower.
- Adaptational Jerkass: The rival of the Let’s Go games engages in some taunting of his rival. In the games, he's a Friendly Rival who never antagonizes the player character aside from battling against them. Then again, he's only shown taunting Green but not Elaine, the player character and his actual rival from the games, so it's highly likely that he reserves his friendliness for Elaine/the player character but doesn't always extend it to other rivals and/or trainers he meets.
- Age Lift: Hop, Victor, Marnie, and Bede all look like they should be in their late teens compared to their more youthful appearance in the games.
- Alas, Poor Villain: The latter part of The Visionary is dedicated to the feeling of this towards Lysandre, whose fall from grace and sanity is treated somberly by those who knew him.
- Alternate Continuity: Evolutions once again opts to adapt Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire over the original Ruby and Sapphire, indicated by the presence of Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre and May's ORAS design in the trailer. Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are also given precedence over Pokémon Sun and Moon with the greater role of Necrozma and Lusamine's altered motivation.
- Ambiguous Situation: While previous episodes had details confirming which version of the game they were adapting (in order, Sword, Ultra Moon, X, Black and Diamond), "The Wish" never confirms if it's adapting Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire—Groudon and Kyogre appear in Zinnia's lore dump but we never learn which one May confronted and we never see which villain team, Aqua or Magma, that Zinnia infiltrated. However, May is seen riding on Latios in the beginning, making Omega Ruby more likely.
- Anachronic Order: The episodes were first aired in the opposite order in which the region they take place in debuted, with Galar, first seen in 2019, being featured in the first episode, and Kanto, which debuted in 1996, in the final. Also, only Pokémon which debuted with the respective region, or before, are featured in each one. At first glance, this seems to invoke the Back to Front trope, but the order becomes jumbled when you consider the games the episode's plots were inspired by. This is the case in the Hoenn episode, which is inspired by the Delta episode featured in Generation 6, and the Kanto episodes, which centers on characters introduced in Generation 7.
- Bait-and-Switch: In "The Discovery," after Green and Trace race to get to Mewtwo, a shadow that resembles Mewtwo shows up from behind Green, who doesn't notice it. Later on, it turns out the shadow was from Elaine carrying Pikachu on her head.
- The Bus Came Back: In The Show, Kadabra makes its first appearance in a Pokémon animation in fifteen years!
- The Cameo: There's plenty of them throughout the episodes from major characters, like Marnie and Bede in The Champion, as well as Red and Blue in The Discovery. Ethan, the protagonist of Johto, basically counts as this as well, only appearing in one scene in his entire episode.
- Continuity Cavalcade: Similar to Generations, every episode is based on a certain key moment in the series.
- Crazy-Prepared: When May sends out Swampert to fight Rayquaza, it already is Mega Evolved instead of Mega Evolving during the battle. Mind you, she had it ready before arriving at the Sky Pillar. Additionally, she sent out an Aggron and Altaria, two Pokémon that have type advantages against Rayquaza in some manner.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- In The Visionary, Xerneas defeats Lysandre's Mega Gyarados with a single super-effective Moonblast. Mega Gyarados doesn't even get a chance to do anything before being taken out.
- Completely averted in The Plan in regards to the battle between Alder's Volcarona and N's Zekrom.
- Green's battle against the Nugget Bridge trainers is so one-sided, the other trainers and their Pokémon are all piled up on each other as steam rises from them.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Unlike Generations, which either Adapted Out most of the protagonists or obscured them from sight, in Evolutions a chosen protagonist of each game prominently appears onscreen, including Victor (Galar), Selene (Alola), Calem (Kalos), Hilda (Unova), Lucas (Sinnoh), May (Hoenn), Ethan (Johto), and Elaine (Kanto).
- Demoted to Extra: In "The Show," Ethan only appears in one scene at the festival stalls before promptly disappearing from the short altogether.
- Designated Girl Fight: Downplayed. While most of the major battles featuring the female protagonists are against female opponents (May vs. Zinnia and Elaine vs. Green), the series also features them fighting, or about to fight, male or genderless opponents (Hilda vs. N, Selene vs. Necrozma, May vs. Rayquaza). Other major female characters have similar fights, with Lunala fighting Necrozma, Mars and Jupiter fighting Lucas and Barry, and Green fighting Trace.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: When N was young, he had several wild Pokémon for friends. These Pokémon started growling the moment they first saw Ghetsis, correctly pegging him as bad news.
- The Faceless: The protagonists' faces are usually either obscured or seen from a distance.
- Victor never gets a single shot with a closeup of his face, though his skin color can be seen from afar.
- Selene gets a similar situation—in the final scene, we do see her in full, but her eyes are obscured by her hat.
- Calem's eyes are obscured every time there is a clear shot with his face in front.
- Averted with Serena, due to the fact she isn't controlled by the player character by being Calem's rival.
- Zigzagged with Hilda, whose face can be seen clearly near the start of her episode (albeit from the side) until later on when her eyes are obscured.
- Lucas's face never gets a shot of his eyes, even from afar. Subverted with Palmer, whose face remains cloaked in shadows until the end of the episode.
- Averted with May, who gets several shots of her entire face and avoids being The Voiceless (except she only makes noises).
- And played straight again with Ethan, who's only seen from behind and indeed, only appears once.
- Averted with Elaine, who is clearly shown and even speaks a few times.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: While the trailer mainly shows scenes from Sword and Shield, Sun and Moon, and X and Y, there's a part where it quickly flips through scenes from the other episodes, including a Kimono Girl dancing on-stage with Lugia in the background, Barry holding his injured Prinplup, May watching Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre duel, and Alder and Volcarona facing down Zekrom.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: The player characters form a somewhat meta one—unlike Generations, where all the player characters were male (with the exception of Sinnoh, where both of them were Adapted Out), this series alternates between male and female protagonists with each installment, resulting in four male ones (Victor, Calem, Lucas and Ethan) and four female ones (Selene, Hilda, May and Elaine).
- Late-Arrival Spoiler:
- Much of the focus of "The Champion" is placed on the climactic final battle against Eternatus in Sword and Shield, which occurs practically at the end of the game's main campaign.
- The trailer also has a Freeze-Frame Bonus of Dawn Wings Necrozma.
- Mood Whiplash: The first 7 episodes are fairly serious and provide little to no comic relief. The last one? The humor takes most of the episode due to Green being the protagonist for it.
- Mundane Utility:
- Inteleon is able to glide around using the membrane on its back. Victor's Inteleon uses this to pick Victor up and glide him forward several feet just to help him pick up the Poké Ball that captured Eternatus when he could have just walked.
- In "The Show", various Pokémon are used to provide special effects for a performance relating the story of the firestorm that destroyed Ecruteak City's Brass Tower, what is now known as the Burned Tower.
- Mythology Gag:
- Although the events of "The Wish" are based on Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, there's a scene of May narrowly avoiding falling as the cracked floor of Sky Pillar crumbles under her weight, alluding to the infamous cracked tiles mechanic that was present in the GBA versions.
- The Kimono Girls are distinguishable from each other just like the anime. More importantly, like Sakura in the anime, the Espeon user, here using the name Naoko as in the Johto remakesnote is implied to be the youngest and initially least confident of her sisters.
- The trainers Green battles on Nugget Bridge use the evolved forms of the Pokémon they used in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!.
- A scene is shown of Clefable dancing in the night around a huge Moon Stone surrounded by normal-sized ones. This is a scene taken from the anime episode "Clefairy and the Moon Stone".
- No Name Given: The credits for The Discovery call Elaine "Player".
- No-Sell: Nebby hits Necrozma with Moongeist Beam, its most powerful attack and a move which should be super-effective against a Psychic-type like Necrozma. Necrozma doesn't even flinch.
- Non-Standard Character Design:
- In "The Champion," while the human characters have far sharper features than seen in the anime from the same animation studio, the majority of other Pokémon retain the simplistic looks (except for Leon's Charizard). It can be rather strange when the rest of the Pokémon look cartoonish next to the more realistic humans.
- "The Discovery" has an odd example with Mewtwo. In battle, it looks just as menacing as any other animated incarnation it's gotten. After battle? It competes against Dragonite in the cute department.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Much like Pokémon: Twilight Wings, characters from Galar speak with American accents even though the region is clearly based on England.
- Race Lift: In "The Champion," Victor is brown-skinned instead of white-skinned, perhaps as a nod to OLM's other work with another brown-skinned protagonist. Perhaps as a Book Ends, in "The Discovery," Elaine is portrayed as a brown-skinned girl as well.
- Recurring Element:
- Evolutions follows the trend of "Animated Adaption targeted at older fans, that came out during a main-series game's pre-release season" like Generations did, this time for both Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl and Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
- All of the episodes are once again named "The [insert descriptive word here]", just like in Pokémon Origins and Generations.
- Each episode includes a brief shot of a pair of male and female Pikachu wearing the hats of that generation's protagonists.
- Series Continuity Error: In "The Rival," both Lucas and Barry have the Pokétch right when they're attacked by Starly at the lake, much earlier than getting them from Jubilife City.
- Stepping Stones in the Sky: After Eternamax Eternatus attacks by smashing the ground, Zacian retaliates by jumping into the air and using the debris kicked up by the attack to ascend higher and get into position to use Behemoth Blade.
- Took a Shortcut: In "The Discovery," Elaine showed up last before Green and Trace started racing to find Mewtwo. She somehow manages to beat them both at finding and catching Mewtwo farther ahead of the two, much to Green's chagrin.
- Uncertain Doom: Like in the games, Lysandre's fate in The Visionary is left ambiguous.
- Villain Episode: The Visionary and The Plan are focused on Lysandre and Ghetsis, respectively. The former gives Lysandre a sympathetic POV and explores the emotions and motivations behind his villainous actions. The latter has Ghetsis spend the whole episode narrating his titular Evil Plan to the audience.
- Villainous Breakdown: In The Visionary, Lysandre goes into meltdown once Xerneas defeats his Mega Gyarados. He screams in frustration, throws his visor on the floor, and sinks to his knees while despairing at the failure of his plans.
- The Voiceless:
- Selene doesn't get any dialogue throughout The Eclipse.
- Similarly, May doesn't speak in The Wish, though she does let out quite a few grunts and the occasional scream.
