YMMV / Pokémon: The Original Series

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • In "Challenge of the Samurai," Ash and Samurai pit their two Metapods against each other and eventually they just start copying each other's moves, in an attempt at one-upping each other. Their commands to their Pokémon sound very... suggestive to adult ears.
    Samurai: Metapod, harden like his!
    Ash: Maximum hardness, Metapod!
  • In "Ditto's Mysterious Mansion," Team Rocket take Duplica's Ditto and say that they'll "have some fun [with it] before we hand it over to the boss!" Ditto is notorious for being able to breed with any Pokémon that can lay eggs. Then again, this episode was released before breeding became a mechanic.
  • In "It's Mr. Mimie Time," there's a scene where Brock grabs Ash, asks him to "help" him, and then caps it off with Ash screaming when the screen cuts away.
  • In The Johto Journeys episode "Forest Grumps," it's revealed near the end that the reason Ursaring have been aggressively attacking the characters is that it is their mating season and are trying to scare off anyone who gets in the way. Cue a pan up to the forest, where Ursaring are shooting Hyper Beams into the sky. Note that Hyper Beam from these Ursaring are massive beams of white shooting into the sky.
• Angst? What Angst?: At the end of "Battle Aboard the St. Anne", Ash, Misty, Brock, and Team Rocket are trapped aboard the ship as it sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and at the start of "Pokémon Shipwreck", all six of them are legally declared dead with a funeral held in their honor. Despite this, nobody seems to be that surprised to see them alive later in the series, especially not Delia, Ash's mom, a mere two episodes later in "Beauty and the Beach".
• Applicability:
  • "Go West, Young Meowth" can be interpreted as teen angst (appropriate given the target demographic). Meowth , trying to impress someone he is infatuated with, defies the expectations of his species by learning how to walk and talk like a human being, only to be shunned and rejected again by the one he was trying to impress, implying that it doesn't matter what he does, he has no chance. In the end, one of the reasons he sticks with Team Rocket even though they're not only criminals, but loser criminals, is because they actually accept him for who he is.
  • Bulbasaur's situation in "Bulbasaur's Mysterious Garden" is surprisingly applicable for a lot of real-life people. The conflict (Bulbasaur not wanting to evolve) can be seen as a parallel with meeting social or familial expectations (think going into the family business, or the pressure of your peers), and Bulbasaur's resistance (and success) runs parallel with becoming your own person.
• Arc Fatigue: Johto is rather infamous for its length and frequent filler. Unlike later series, there is no secondary plot thread to keep the show's momentum going, just Ash's badge quest. This not helped by the fact that the potentially meaty GS Ball subplot ends up being unceremoniously halted with no resolution. This leads to the 160 episode era of the show feeling poorly paced and incredibly dragged out as important events are sprinkled within the sea of filler.
• Base-Breaking Character: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Bizarro Episode: The Johto episode "Hocus Pokémon." The gang helped a magician, Lily, find ingredients in order to help her complete a spell that would allow her to understand Pokémon speech. Ash volunteered to be the guinea pig, but the spell ended up turning him into a Pikachu instead. The spell carried over into the beginning of the next episode "As Clear as Crystal," but wore off after a few seconds.
• Broken Base: See here.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Poor, poor Porygon. The only reason it and its evolutions have been banned (aside from a cameo here and there in the movies) from the show altogether is because they were the Pokémon of the week in the infamous seizure episode, when it was actually Pikachu's Thunderbolt zapping the anti-virus missiles that caused the flashing red-and-blue images. What really rubs the salt into the wounds is that Pikachu has been featured in almost every episode since, though obviously it's pretty hard to unceremoniously dump the mascot of the entire franchise just like that.
  • The anime version of Erika was disliked for her perceived unprofessional ban towards Ash challenging her Gym just because he didn't like perfumes. However, in the episode proper, at no point is it said that Erika approved of the ban: while she did approve having Ash rather aggressively kicked out from the perfume shop, this was in response of him insulting her shop and merchandise (which his friends made no objection of either). It was her staff that denied him permission into the gym over his earlier slight, and when Ash does manage to sneak into the Gym, Erika never mentions the ban at all and agrees to battle (even flat out saying that as a Gym Leader she's required to accept any challenge right before facing Ash), which all point out to her not having been involved in what happened. At worst Erika can be blamed for being a Clueless Boss who doesn't keep check on her overeager employees.^note Compare to Frontier Brain Lucy, who has a similar Hot-Blooded assistant that aggresses Ash, but promptly tells her to knock it off.
    • Should be noted that in the original Japanese version, the perfume shop actually did contact the Gym and tell them to deny him entry due to his remarks about perfume. The bit about Erika needing to accept a challenge due to her job is also only in the English dub, as no such statement is ever said in the sub.
    • On the same note, people often think that Ash being banned from the gym was due to him being a boy, mostly due to the fact that he cross-dresses in order to get in. However, his gender is never said to be a problem, and the cross-dressing was just how he disguised himself (or rather, how Team Rocket disguised him).
  • Fans who hate the way Ash lost the Indigo League often foist their anger on Ritchie. Opinion on Ritchie himself is certainly up for debate, but in this circumstance, the blame should be pointed at just about everyone else: the judge for ruling "fell asleep" as "knocked out", Charizard for disobeying, Team Rocket for capturing Ash, and Ash himself for not requesting a chance to let his Pokémon rest from said capture (most fans agree that having been kidnapped should be considered a circumstance worthy of delaying the battle, and his Pokémon being worn out is definitely a big reason he lost), and not having a full team of Pokémon to use (had Ash had six Pokémon on him, he'd have had another choice besides Bulbasaur^*not really an option because of the type disadvantage against Zippo and Charizard). Heck, all Ritchie actually did was happen to be Ash's opponent and not go down easy. These fans also forget that it was Ritchie who convinced the referee not to award him the match by forfeit.
  • Fans tend to think of Season 1 covering the entirety of Kanto, Season 2 covering the Orange Islands, Season 3 only being early Johto, and Season 5 ending when Ash sets off for Hoenn. However, 4Kids always designated seasons in strict batches of 52 episodes. As such, Season 1 ends in "The Breeding Center Secret" while Season 2 ends with "Charizard Chills." Season 3 includes the last 12 episodes of the Orange Islands, while "Master Quest" takes up the first 12 episodes of Season 6. Eventually, TPCI would reclassify Kanto as Season 1, Orange Islands as Season 2, etc., but they keep the episode codes the same (i.e. "Don't Touch That Dile," the first episode of Johto, is still considered the 12th episode of Season 3).
• Designated Monkey:
  • Ash himself can verge on this at points when it comes to how often he gets brow beaten in this series. There are times he definitely deserves it due to his own actions, but there are times when the show goes out of its way to try and bring him down for stuff that isn't his fault, or outright fabricated, such as infamously the Samurai from Challenge of the Samurai blaming him for stuff that was the Samurai's fault, or Misty down talking him by claiming all his Pokémon joined him willingly and he got his badges out of pity in Mystery of the Lighthouse.^note Ash captured Caterpie and Pigeotto under his own power, and had to earn Pikachu's respect and beat Bulbasaur in a battle before they would listen to him, respectively. He was on the verge of beating both Brock and Misty in his Gym battles before circumstances got in the way. (Ash surrendered to Brock because he didn't want to cheat his first badge due to accidentally setting off the sprinkler system, and Team Rocket interfered with his Gym battle against Misty.)
  • The constant abuse to Psyduck and Wobbuffet is written to be comically exaggerated, but can come across as excessively mean when their trainers are meant to be redeemable people who care about their Pokémon, yet insist on treating one of them like dirt despite their refusal to train or even just get rid of them. Unlike Ash, who gets constantly called out and addressed for his struggles to raise his Pokémon, Misty and Jessie are never forced to reflect on their own behavior simply for the sake of maintaining a gag.
• Evil Is Cool: Team Rocket are at their very height here as characters, and are almost treated as much main stars as Ash and the other twerps. So many of their most memorable gags and moments of Character Development are from the first series. One of the main reasons the show's creator, Takeshi Shudo, left the show before Ruby and Sapphire in fact was because Johto's push into the Strictly Formula route was waning the trio into more generic bumbling villains with only sporadic development.
• Fanon: Due to having an image of Mewtwo on his door (a Pokémon that shouldn't exist or be public knowledge at this point), many fans believe that Bill is secretly evil and working with Team Rocket.
• First Installment Wins: Older fans tend to defend the first saga (and occasionally the Orange Islands/Johto seasons that are a part of the same series) as legitimately good or at least an enjoyable Guilty Pleasure compared to the later seasons, due to them not having as strict of an adherence to the formula. The formula is still there, just not as blatant as later on in the show's lifetime.
• Hype Backlash: The Kanto saga is by far the most iconic part of the anime, and gets a lot of praise for its comedy and banter making it feel fresher than the seasons after. However, this praise is met with occasional backlash against those who use it to deride all the later seasons as nothing but a repetitive, saccharine kids' show, ignoring Kanto's many flaws and weaknesses that the later arcs vastly improved upon. While Kanto is near-undisputed as the most unique season, it's not rare for newer fans to question it being held as the gold standard for dialogue and interactions, feeling its cynical plot and humor have aged poorly and are carried more by nostalgia than genuine quality.
• Informed Wrongness: Although some of it may stem from the anime still trying to find its niche, the first season had a habit of calling Ash out for things that either don't make sense or simply aren't issues in the first place by the show's established logic.
  • One of the most notable examples is Misty criticizing Ash for catching all his Pokémon befriending them rather than battling, which was not only false for half of them at the time, but became the default style of obtaining Pokémon in every other season. If anything, Ash's ability to bond with Pokémon before he obtains them is arguably his greatest strength in later arcs.
  • Ash is repeatedly blamed for his failure to train Charizard during its disobedient phase, but this only applies so far when most of Charizard's horrible behavior is a conscious choice. Although they can't talk, Pokémon in the anime are consistently shown to be sentient beings with thoughts and feelings, yet all of the blame is put on Ash for being a poor trainer as if his Pokémon have no autonomy of their own.
  • Most infamously, he's blamed exclusively for his humiliating Indigo League loss, even though said loss was a result of Team Rocket spending the entire episode exhausting his team, forcing him to rely on Charizard under unfair circumstances. Even if there was something to be said about Ash's own shortcomings, it all goes out the window when he's forced into a situation this unwinnable, especially when up to that point he'd been coasting along just fine without Charizard.
• Magnificent Bastard: "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak": A talking Gastly masquerades as the ghost of a legendary maiden for the annual Summer Festival at Maiden's Peak. Gastly uses his wits and the maiden's form to lure in Brock and James and drain them of their vitality, having done the same to many men at past festivals. Along the way, Gastly also turns into an old lady to "warn" the travelers and scam them with cheap ofuda. When the protagonists expose him, Gastly uses illusions to exploit each of the Pokémon's natural weaknesses. Though the morning sun dispels him, Gastly ends up thanked by the maiden's actual ghost for keeping her legend alive.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Misty's poor Starmie has been deemed by fans as her weakest Pokémon (even weaker than Goldeen) due to being the frequent subject of The Worf Effect and being overshadowed by its pre-evolution, Staryu. Jokes about it being a One-Hit-Point Wonder or never winning any battles are common, a stark-contrast to Starmie in the games, which is a real Wake-Up Call Boss for first-time trainers. To make things worse, after Starmie gets Put on a Bus in late Kanto, it basically ceases to exist, rarely, if ever, getting used by Misty again. The Gyarados she befriends in one of the Hoenn sidestories ends up becoming her signature attacking Pokémon instead.
  • Brock's Onix doesn't fare much better as it racks up quite a few losses over the course of the series, and gets very few opportunities to shine to make up for those rough showings. Two of the roughest moments being its gym loss to Ash just because of the gym sprinklers going off, and Team Rocket's Meowth beating Onix with a pair of water buckets during the fight for the Togepi egg. At the very least, it's treated a hell of a lot better once it's evolved into Steelix.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The episode "Electric Soldier Porygon," which has the notorious status of "that Pokémon episode that caused hundreds of kids in Japan to have seizures" rather than "the first (and only) time Porygon appeared in the anime."
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Kay, a One-Shot Character from the Orange Island episode "Stage Fight" was voiced by Jessica Calvello in one of her earliest roles before she voiced roles such as Excel, Aika, and Hange Zoe.
  • J. David Brimmer makes his voice acting debut in the Indigo League episode "A Chansey Operation" as Doctor Proctor. He would later go on to voice the likes of Odion/Rishid Ishtar, Crocodile, and even come back to Pokémon after the original series as Crasher Wake and Wulfric.
  • Mike Pollock made his debut voice acting for 4Kids Entertainment as Denjirō in the Johto League episode "Carrying On". He would later go onto be the voice of Dr. Eggman among many other roles. These are in addition to his role as the narrator for the vast majority of Advanced Generation up until 4Kids lost the dubbing license for the series alongside other Pokémon roles such as Raoul Contesta, Charon and Drayden.
• Seasonal Rot: Johto, particularly the mid-segment of Johto League Champions, is generally considered a step-down from the Kanto and Orange Islands episodes and one of the anime's overall weakest stretches, due to the abundance of filler.
• Squick: In "Wake Up Snorlax!", there's a fantasy scene of the Team Rocket Trio's Arbok and Weezing making kissy lips after the Trio propose using their Pokémon to kiss Snorlax in an attempt to wake it up; needless to say, both the audience and the characters find the idea disgusting. Likewise, Snorlax reacts negatively to being kissed by Meowth, with Misty stating that it looks like it's been poisoned.
• Tear Dryer:
  • In "Pikachu's Goodbye", Ash thinks that Pikachu would be happier being free, so he attempts to set him free. He runs off in tears, having flashbacks of all the good times they've had together. Ash then sees Pikachu on the horizon with the wild Pikachu, who cheer for them both. Pikachu runs over to Ash and jumps into his arms, proving that he chooses to be with Ash, and Ash weeps Tears of Joy.
  • In "The Kangaskhan Kid", Tommy's parents fly their helicopter into Team Rocket's Kangaskhan robot to save their son, which appears to kill them in the process. Tommy wails in grief until he hears his mother's muffled humming, then his parents emerge from the wreckage. Tommy is so relieved that he rushes over and hugs them, and they say that they've decided to live with him in the wild.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: See here.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: See here.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Despite taking place in an ambiguous period on a fantasy Earth, remnants of The '90s can still be spotted even outside of the dub. A lot of the fashion sense is very 90s, with the characters (Ash in particular) either sporting baggy clothing and/or bright primary colors. The dub also makes a few real world references that later series would try to avoid, such as Ash infamously referencing the Macarena and in a later episode calling bottlecaps pogs.
• Vindicated by History: Contrasting the Johto games themselves, the Johto section of the original series has been getting a bit of a resurface regarding how it handled its region compared to the original games, mostly that despite relying a lot on Filler content, actually managed to expand and utilize the Pokémon introduced in Johto far more effectively than the actual games did, considering how often it downplayed its own native mons, compared to how later generations managed it. The Johto series also had one of the best Pokemon League arcs in the series, something that became a Tough Act to Follow for Hoenn's seasons.

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