Early Installment Weirdness / Pokémon: The Series

Yes, those are real-world fish.

The early episodes of the anime feature a lot of Early-Installment Weirdness due to Earth Drift and varying directorial opinions on what the anime should be like.

---

• The anime was quite bizarre in the beginning. Episodes were noticeably more violent, surreal and atmospheric, with darker colours and a greater emphasis on crazy action adventure capers and fairy tale myths than later episodes. One episode was even banned outside Japan for the prominent appearance and occasional use of handguns, and another was banned for prominently showing inflatable breasts.
  • Many earlier episodes involved Ash, Brock and Misty coming across some strange new location or settlement that had some kind of unusual and/or menacing twist to the usually more harmless Pokémon locations seen in the games. An example is "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak" which featured a talking Gastly with absurd supernatural abilities. Another was the Sabrina arc, where Ash and Pikachu briefly become ghosts thanks to Haunter ("The Tower of Terror") and Brock and Misty are turned into dolls by Sabrina's psychic powers ("Haunter vs Kadabra"). In "The Ancient Puzzle of Pokémopolis" the gang come across an ancient site which features a giant Gengar, Alakazam, and Jigglypuff with ancient markings, and in "Pikachu Re-Volts" Ash and his friends' Pokémon, and those belonging to the Team Rocket Trio (including Meowth) become mentally corrupted by dark psychic energy and turn against their own trainers^note Though unlike most examples, this was more mundane: Butch and Cassidy, the Knight of Cerebus foils to Jessie, James, and Meowth, were revealed to be responsible for this with the help of their Drowzee. Episode plots as bizarre as these became significantly rarer later on, while magical, mythical and violent elements were usually reserved for the Pokémon movies, which are typically far more "epic" and fantasy-themed. They still happen occasionally though— for example, the never-explained mischievous Togepi in "Where No Togepi Has Gone Before", May time-traveling in "Time-Warp Heals All Wounds", and the evil Malamar that appeared twice in Kalos.
  • The show also featured New Rules as the Plot Demands that reached memetic levels. Sometimes if Ash needed to win an important battle, or the characters needed to escape a dangerous hazard, they'd just make something up on the fly and it would work. Emphasis on Rule of Funny also led to some bizarre situations; visual puns were emphasized and often the show would break its own logic in order to satirize the video games it was derived from. Later episodes stick far more closely to the rules of the games.
• The second episode has a throw-away line which has fueled more than a few conspiracy theories - Delia (Ash's mom) mentions his father. Delia mentions that Ash's father is on a journey. Since then, Ash's father hasn't been mentioned again. Flashbacks and photos of Ash as a small child always depict Delia as Ash's sole parent ^note  There is one possible exception: a flashback in "Strategy Begins At Home", which showed a younger Ash accompanied by his mother and an unnamed man, whose face is blurred . According to Pocket Monsters: The Animation, Ash's father was likely meant to be a deadbeat trainer who ran off, but that was never included in the anime and has long since been dubbed non-canon. Ash's father would not be properly mentioned until Pokémon: Secrets of the Jungle and a TV special for Journeys, but even then those were set in an Alternate Universe.
• There was also the Pokédex (named Dexter in the original series), which is usually just a little computer spouting off information about Pokémon. In the first episode, it seemed to have a personality as a Deadpan Snarker, mocking Ash for leaving his backpack unattended while a wild Rattata stole from it. In later episodes, Dexter appears to have lost his artificial intelligence, and later editions of the Pokédex lacked artificial intelligence as well. However, the Sun and Moon series brought the concept of a living Pokédex back and expanded on it, when Ash received a Rotom Dex that is indeed alive (as it is a literal, living Rotom).
• A similar example is Pikachu, who was a bit of a Jerkass in the first episode (largely since he is shy, non-trusting of his brash new owner, and bitter about being unexpectedly evicted from the comfort of Professor Oak's laboratory) but mellows down considerably when Ash earns his respect. Pikachu's early behaviour is seldom mentioned again. Pikachu was still feisty and occasionally irritable throughout Kanto (electrocuting Ash whenever he feels improperly treated, trying to kill Meowth at least once, etc), however future flashbacks and I Choose You use Backported Development to pretend that he became a complete Nice Guy after the first episode, though a mean or mischievous streak would occasionally reappear in Alola and Journeys. Also, in the first few seasons, he was a lot more chubby, but slimmed down like Garfield or Mario, which was brought back as Pikachu's Gigantamax form.
• The original series had plenty of characters who were completely and utterly arrogant and mean towards Ash, making the setting a borderline World of Jerkass. Characters of the Day would be very antagonistic (especially those in the early episodes, such as Samurai, Giselle or AJ) while Gym Leaders were rude and sometimes downright unprofessional (such as Lt. Surge insulting Ash and Pikachu while his Raichu was so brutal the Pokémon it defeated had to be hospitalized, Erika's staff banning Ash from entering her gym just because he badmouthed her perfume, and Sabrina being a downright horror movie villain who either shrunk people or turned them into dolls with her psychic powers). Not even the main characters escaped this, as Misty and Brock were far more likely to demean Ash for his problems than helping or even sympathizing with him. In later episodes, Ash is treated with far more respect by the countless strangers he meets and anyone who dislikes him usually evolves into a recurring rival and/or villain later on (Paul, for example), and Gym Leaders are much nicer and behave in a more professional manner.
• The tone and humour of the early episodes was generally far more mean-spirited, presenting the Pokémon world as overrun with crooks, thugs and even terrorists. The main characters were generally put in grave, cartoonishly exaggerated danger far more often in early episodes, with the rest of the world largely cold and apathetic to their struggles.
• Episode 9, "The School of Hard Knocks", has two ideas that were dropped right afterwards:
  • It was one of only two episodes to reference numbered Character Levels (as in the RPG game mechanics). As an example, one of the characters mentions that Pidgeotto should learn Whirlwind at level 21. Later episodes don't talk about numbered levels at all except as vague terms (such as "high level", "low level" and "level up") and moves can be learned either spontaneously or when given explicit instruction from others. The only exception where a specific level number is stated after Episode 9 is in Episode 245, "Will The Real Oak Please Stand Up?" where it's stated that Slowbro learns Amnesia at level 46. After that, level numbers are never stated again. This is just as well, as learnsets are revised in the games from generation to generation. Pidgeotto, for example, has learned Whirlwind at level 17 since Generation V.
  • It also showed Ash having a crush, making this episode the only one where Ash showed any capacity for romantic attraction. This is also one of the rare moments where Brock has shown attraction to a girl around Ash's age. Typically he shows attraction to women or girls in their later teens, and he's officially 15. The other was the girl Ash had a crush on, of all characters, who in the Japanese version said she'd be fun in eight years. Both were in original series episodes.
• Snarky comments in general (both deserved and undeserved) were a staple of the anime's comedy back in its early days, but slowly faded out until the end of the Diamond and Pearl arc, where they were almost completely gone with a few notable exceptions. This can be observed the closest with Ash, who was a petulant and sometimes arrogant kid when he first started out in Kanto, but eventually grew out of it from Hoenn onwards. Alola onwards brings back a little of the self-aware comedy and sarcasm, though it remains a lot more idealistic than in the early days.
• The anime was originally supposed to take place on a futuristic Earth. According to two supplementary books made by Takeshi Shudō, the original plot for the third film would have been based around how the Pokémon drove the original animals out. "The School of Hard Knocks" mentions Misty always wanting to visit France. Other real places mentioned in the anime include England, Guyana (where Mew was hidden), and Hollywood (though apparently not America's Hollywood since it's in Kanto). Jessie's Missing Mom Miyamoto was last seen looking for Mew in the Andes mountains according to The Birth of Mewtwo radio drama. But France and Hollywood at least have since been replaced by brand new places that are based on them, such as Kalos and Pokéstar Studios. Holiday episodes are also rarer now (with a later statement that the series is set in an eternal early summer limiting holidays outside this time period), and when they do appear they use counterpart holidays instead of the actual holidays (compare the infamous Kanto Christmas Episode to the Kalos one^note which aired in Japan a month after Christmas).
  • Although it's very likely not canon due to Woolseyism, it should be noted that the Latin American dub mentions real life cities and places all the way to the Unova seasons (mostly by James, who will replace the line "To extend our reach to the stars above" to a random place). Places mentioned include Venezuela, Argentina, Perú, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia and several cities from various Latin American countries (and Spain).
• The Kanto League saga took roughly 80 episodes to complete. Compare this with later game-based League sagas, which take anywhere between 130 and 190 episodes to complete.
• Reoccurring characters outside of game-based characters^note Team Rocket (the recurring trio, as the organization itself and their boss Giovanni were game characters), Gary (though he is technically The Rival from the games, only renamed from Blue to Gary), and Jenny and Joy were completely non-existent in the Kanto seasons. Even when it seemed like a character would be bumped into again later down the road, they haven't been seen since. It wasn't until Johto did reoccurring characters outside of those based directly on game characters started to become more common.
• The way rivals were handled in Kanto was radically different compared to how later rivals would be handled. Later seasons would often give Ash multiple rivals at a time, usually one serious and not so serious one, and despite being hyped up to a ridiculous degree and being one step ahead of Ash the entire season, Gary and Ash didn't get their first battle until the end of the Orange Islands arc when Ash had just returned to Kanto. Additionally, in many ways, Gary for all his bluster was never outright portrayed as being an antagonistic force so much as he was just being a gadfly towards Ash throughout Kanto, at worse teasing him and flexing on him by going out of his way to get more badges. Ash additionally didn't have any other deep reason for wanting to beat him other than to just shut his mouth up. He ultimately doesn't even face Ash in the Kanto League, falling out before Ash does. Later rivals such as Trip, Gladion, and especially Paul would often be taken far more seriously, often giving Ash some personal reason for wanting to beat them rather than just to shut them up and there would always be a climactic showdown at the League between them and Ash (with the exception of Trip, who gets eliminated by Ash easily early in the Unova League).
• The Kanto and Johto episodes of the anime were a lot more Japanese than you see in Hoenn or Sinnoh. This was a specific change on request from Nintendo and the sponsors, who noting that Pokémon now had worldwide fame, wanted it more "culturally neutral" to appeal to children all over the world, so most of the specific Japanese cultural themes stopped being used. This attitude extended to Best Wishes, XY, Sun and Moon, and to a lesser extent Journeys, which were set in regions based heavily on New York, France, Hawaii, and occasional visits to the England-esque Galar, respectively.
• In the earlier seasons, characters, especially Gym Leaders, barely resembled their game counterparts in terms of personality. Kanto even changed their designs^note though Misty and Brock's changes were somewhat justifiable, while other seasons kept them a lot truer. At least one of the personality changes - Misty being tsundere - was added to the games (albeit downplayed). When Jasmine reappeared in Sinnoh she still kept her more aggressive anime personality and, to make it weirder, in her first episode she was closer to her Shrinking Violet game portrayal (though this can be chalked up to her more vulnerable side coming out due to Amphy the Ampharos' sickness in said episode).
• And speaking of Gyms and battles:
  • In the first series, the Pokémon League is treated as an enormous event akin to the Summer Olympics, being hyped up for multiple episodes as a once-in-a-lifetime challenge for trainers everywhere. In subsequent series, it's more akin to an annual sports tournament; still obviously a big championship event (especially for the trainers who compete in it), but one that happens often enough that it isn't particularly special. Ash is always able to qualify for it, and it isn't hyped as much in later episodes, instead considered a routine part of his regional journey.
  • Four out of Ash's first five Gym Leaders gave Ash their badges for helping them out in different ways, even though he didn't officially defeat them^note Lt. Surge, whom Ash fought third, is the exception to this set: the Cerulean and Celadon Gym Battles were interrupted by Team Rocket and a fire (though Team Rocket caused that one too) respectively, the Pewter Gym battle had sprinklers that gave Ash's Pikachu an advantage over Brock's Onix (though while Brock allows this tactic, Ash forfeits when he feels guilty about it and Brock's many siblings interrupt the battle to save Onix), and the Haunter that Ash led back to the Saffron Gym snapped Sabrina out of her Emotionless Girl/Creepy Child persona. Starting with Koga, whose battle was also interrupted by Team Rocket, no other leaders have made exceptions like these, except for Pryce (who forfeited, literally throwing in the towel, because he didn't want the Piloswine he just reunited with to be hurt) and possibly Maylene in Sinnoh (which ended in a draw; Maylene decided Ash deserved the badge a day later), Whitney in Johto (Ash lost the first match, then defeated Miltank in a three-on-one unofficial rematch), and Wattson in Hoenn (unbeknownst to Ash, Pikachu was supercharged and defeated all of Wattson's Pokémon effortlessly; Ash went to confess but Wattson asked him to keep it anyway). This was lampshaded at the Cinnabar Gym, when Ash expects to receive his badge, but Blaine only intended to let him re-challenge him for it. Ash was thrilled for a proper rematch anyway.
    • The battle with Brock was also the only time in the series Ash felt regret over an improvised Outside-the-Box Tactic in battle. Later episodes have him not react in a guilty manner when he uses these in later battles, and (albeit with seawater instead of sprinklers) he even brings back that strategy in Alola when battling Hapu's Mudsdale.
  • Playing into the cold, cynical tone of the show, several of the Kanto Gym Leaders were shown to be not just powerful, but flat-out dangerous and even borderline insane. Lt. Surge hospitalizes Pikachu with zero remorse, Sabrina was a supernatural Creepy Child that transformed Ash's friends into dolls, and Blaine was willing to outright murder Pikachu just to win their battle, threatening to throw it into the lava if Ash didn't forfeit. Needless to say, future Gym Leaders never reached anywhere near these levels of nastiness, portrayed as positive and helpful leader figures in every later saga.
  • Also, during the Kanto saga, Gym Leaders were shown on a few occasions (such as Erika and Blaine) to be allowed to substitute their Pokémon. The concept of a Gym Leader or Champion not being allowed to substitute Pokémon was first introduced during Ash's Orange League Championship match and has been the standard rule for Gyms in mainstream leagues ever since Johto (the Nacrene Gym in Unova being an exception, due to Lenora's Lillipup / Herdier having Roar to switch her target's Pokémon as well).
  • A more minor example is that in the earlier days of the show, several Gym Leaders were one-shot characters. Ash would simply show up at the gym and meet the Gym Leader, get his badge, and then leave, all in the same episode. The last Gym Leader where this happened was Wattson at the Mauville Gym, the third gym in the Hoenn League, though this was ultimately subverted in the episode where Ash and co. returned to Mauville City and met up with him again. Aside from that, the last Gym Leader to get this treatment was Chuck, the Cianwood Gym Leader, the fifth one in Johto^note Though much later on in Journeys, Chuck finally made a reappearance. Nowadays, Ash never gets a gym badge in the same episode where the Gym Leader debuts. He will either spend their debut episode with them on a non-gym-related plot and have his gym battle in the next episode, or he will have a gym battle with them but lose and re-challenge the gym in a later episode. Another possibility is that he will challenge them to a gym battle in their debut episode, and the same battle will continue into the next episode where he will win it^note Sootopolis, Striaton, and Virbank, with the Striaton one being notable for being 3 1-on-1s over the course of 2 episodes (Ash facing off against Chili's Pansear, Cress's Panpour, and Cilan's Pansage using Tepig, Pikachu, and Oshawott); the other 2 also had some non-standard conditions. Sootopolis started as a double battle, but once Ash had to use three Pokémon (Pikachu, Snorunt, and Corphish) to eliminate the first two Pokémon on Juan's side (Sealeo and Seaking), it switched to a single battle format to eliminate his remaining Pokémon (defeating Luvdisc, Whiscash, and Milotic using Grovyle, Corphish, Swellow, and Pikachu). Meanwhile, Virbank was a 3-on-6 battle, the only time Ash was allowed to use more Pokémon than his opponent (Roxie using Koffing, Scolipede, and Garbodor while Ash had Boldore, Unfezant, Leavanny, Pignite, Palpitoad, and Pikachu). The only other single-episode Gym Leaders are ones that Ash doesn’t battle in an official capacity like Agatha^note Actually an Elite Four member, but she was the acting Viridian gym leader in her only appearance. and Cheren, or at all, like Drayden and Marlon (because by then, Ash already had his eight badges).
  • Early episodes of the English dub refer to Gym Leaders as "Gym Trainers".
  • The Kanto Saga had a rule that made Pokémon which fall asleep lose the battle. This is most notably shown during the League Battle against Ritchie, where Squirtle and Charizard were disqualified because they were either put asleep (Squirtle hit by Happy the Butterfree's Sleep Powder) or fell asleep on their own (Charizard sleeping off against Ritchie's Pikachu named Sparky).^note Charizard also does this during the battle against Blaine, but it flies off to a nearby ledge to do this so it more obviously resembles disobedient forfeiting. This rule, originally one of the reasons for Ash losing the Kanto League, would never come up again, especially demonstrated in later League Battles where several of Ash's Pokémon fell asleep, but eventually woke up and won the battle for him (mostly anyway). The most notable examples of those contradicting moments were Snorlax during the Johto League Battle against Harrison, where it started out asleep, which gave Harrison's Hypno a free shot of attacking (though eventually being beaten); Heracross during the Sinnoh League Battles against Nando and Tobias where Ash's ordered Heracross to use Sleep Talk to counteract the expected sleep status tactics used by Kricketune's Sing and Darkrai's Dark Void (this allowed Ash to win against Nando, but Darkrai was an Olympus Mons with access to Dream Eater, securing it a victory over Heracross); and Rowlet during the Alola League Battle against Hau where Rowlet was initially declared to be unable to battle, but that judgement was then immediately overruled because as it turned out, Rowlet didn't faint, it just fell asleep comically, thus the battle continued and ended with Ash winning the match against Hau's Decidueye.
• The Kanto Gym Leaders tend to have different designs (mostly in clothing choice)^note Brock would have his shirt and vest, Misty her croptop, suspenders and short shorts, Erika wore a department store-like outfit, Sabrina gains a full body red dress and let's not talk about Blaine (whose design was the original planned design for the character). compared to their game counterparts, while game characters from the second generation forward retain their game designs. Applies to the anime characters based on player/rival characters as well: Ash and Gary themselves had slightly different clothing from their game counterparts Red and Blue. From then on, characters based on playable characters only have very minor differences, with the largest difference being Serena, before and after her outfit swap. Although Ash continues to have large design differences from his counterpart Red due to being a continuing main character with frequent outfit swaps. Uniquely, his outfits often borrow from the male protagonists of the regions he travels, starting with Lucas in Sinnoh.
• Team Rocket:
  • The very first episode is the only episode, until "Rematch at the Nacrene Gym" (#673, in the Best Wishes arc), in which Team Rocket does not appear.
  • Their first appearance made them seem genuinely threatening and powerful. While they quickly became a comic nuisance to Ash and friends, they retained their villainous demeanor for some time - the episode "Holy Matrimony", which reveals James' back story, was probably the point where their motives started to slide. The trio suddenly became much more villainous and competent for most of Best Wishes, but reverted to the bumbling idiots from earlier seasons during the subsequent filler arc^note Part of this was because while the personality change to serious was well received in America, it was not as positively received in the anime's native Japan, forcing the writing team to strike a balance and please everyone. In the following X&Y and Sun & Moon shows, they seem to have gotten back to mid-Kanto levels of threat and comedy.
  • Early episodes make Meowth the trio's leader (though this was actually due to a translation error); later on, they became theoretically equal, though Jessie easily bullied the other two and occasionally treats herself as leader.
  • Jessie and James were Disguised in Drag frequently in Original Series episodes but completely stopped afterwards, aside from one or two times with James (one of which he only dressed as Jessie to fill in for her at a contest because she was sick). This does return in at least one episode of Sun and Moon although it's done for fun/as part of a performance rather than as a disguise.
  • In Japan, Meowth sounds like a cat and has a "nya" Verbal Tic. They tried to emulate the verbal tic in early English dub episodes by having him say "meow" and "Meowth" sometimes, but quickly dropped it.
  • James and Meowth's voices were done by Ted Lewis and Matthew Sussman (aka Nathan Price) for the first 8 and 30 episodes instead of Eric Stuart and Maddie Blaustein, respectively, and it shows. It was done both in tandem with Ted Lewis taking a break to do theater and Matthew Sussman semi-retiring, but they decided not to bring the old VAs (apart from occasional guest and recurring parts as different characters, Ted Lewis most notably voicing Giovanni and Tracey Sketchit) back after it became evident that they were going to be more comical from then on and that they fit the comical roles better. Even Eric Stuart's James sounds a bit different than it did early Season 1: it sounded more like an imitation of Ted Lewis' "serious" performance at first but gradually (d)evolved into what we hear by Season 8.
  • In early episodes Meowth's eyes looked more cat-like, he had a more feline stance, and he seemed fine with moving on all fours.
  • The episode "Bad To The Bone" has Jessie try to catch Otoshi's Doduo with a Poké Ball despite the fact he already owns it. In later episodes, when a character tries to catch a Pokémon under the ownership of someone else already, the Ball refuses to work, so Jessie should've known she's wasting her time. But the ball was knocked away by Marowak's bone club, so we don't know what would've happened. Interestingly, this is averted in the Japanese The Birth of Mewtwo CD drama, in which Sakaki/Giovanni steals a defeated Trainer's Magmar.
  • It was originally shown that Jessie and James were Japanese Delinquents who met in a biker gang as teens. Though they still have a Multiple-Choice Past, it's pretty concrete in all flashbacks that they didn't meet until adulthood.
  • In the Kanto season, Team Rocket would show up to interrupt Ash's Gym Matches, but later on, they rarely do that again. They still often infiltrate the gyms themselves while the battles go on, but are often caught and disposed of by other factors, such as gym Pokémon. Rarely, Ash's friends (such as during Ash's battle with Korrina) or their Pokémon (such as Team Rocket being defeated by Brock's Croagunk during Ash's battle with Maylene) do encounter them while the gym battle goes on.
  • Similarly, Team Rocket's appearance in the Indigo League, specifically the one where Ash had his match with Ritchie, was very crucial and caused Ash to lose his match. In every subsequent league, that would never happen again and Team Rocket are usually selling food/merchandise (Orange League to Sinnoh) or filming the matches (Kalos) in the background or do not even show up (Unova) instead.
  • Jessie's Missing Mom Miyamoto is a character in the radio drama Pokémon: The Birth of Mewtwo. It's shown that she got lost in the Andes mountains and has not been seen in 20 years. Aside from the drama itself, Miyamoto has never been referenced again. Considering the Earth Drift, it's unlikely she will be without some changes.
  • Team Rocket acts unusually violent in episode 12. They commit armed robbery and throw bombs at children. Later episodes downplay their hands-on violence.
  • Team Rocket seemed dead-set on killing Ash a couple times via burning him alive. Once during the torch ceremony of the Indigo League, and later during a firefighting competition in Johto. They're never this violent against Ash and his friends again until Unova where even then it's far more downplayed.
  • In the initial stages of the Pokémon anime, the iconic Team Rocket trio—Jessie, James, and Meowth—had yet to be accompanied by a distinctive member who would eventually become an indispensable part of their crew: Wobbuffet. This quirky Psychic-type Pokémon, characterized by its blue hue and bobble-headed appearance, made its debut in an episode titled "Tricks of the Trade" (Episode 146 in the original Japanese release, and Episode 143 in the English adaptation) during the Johto Journeys saga, accidentally joining the team when her Lickitung was traded for it. As Wobbuffet's presence grew, it rapidly garnered popularity for its uncanny ability to enliven Team Rocket's comedic escapades. Often emerging from its Poké Ball at the most inopportune moments, Wobbuffet's unpredictable nature consistently contributed to the trio's numerous defeats and misadventures.
• Ash's name even counts. It's glaringly obvious he's one of the few characters who uses his last name. In Japan his name is just "Satoshi", with no given surname. However, "Ash" was too short to match the lips. It's likely that if the series was dubbed a few years later, they would have been able to work around it.
• While the games make it clear Pokémon hunt each other, the anime usually avoids implications of Pokémon eating other Pokémon. It's thus very noticeable when Ash's Pidgeotto tried to eat his Caterpie when they met and Meowth implied he wanted to eat Pikachu early on.
• The Buizel from Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea acts differently from other Buizel seen later in the series. It acts like a dog, despite being a weasel, and generally seems less anthropomorphic than usual.
• In the Japanese version of "Battle Aboard the St. Anne" Ash refers to the man he traded with as a "Gentleman". Aside from that Trainer Classes are ignored in the anime. Characters modeled after Trainer Class designs do appear at times, with one^note Hoenn Schoolkid (male) becoming a companion.^note Albeit underage.
• In Kanto and Johto, Ash's personality was noticeably different from his personality in future seasons. He was much more hot-headed and stubborn. He has since calmed down into a sweeter Stock Shōnen Hero. While originally presented as Character Development, his brattier original behavior rarely ever gets referenced and flashbacks to him prior to the series use the newer Friend to All Living Things characterization.
• One early episode had Pikachu unable to speak to a Wartortle and needing Squirtle to translate. Future episodes make it clear that all Pokémon understand each other, with the occasional exception of certain mechanical or especially alien Pokémon, such as Magneton.
• Pokémon that speak human languages is something of an unclear subject. Early ideas for the anime involved more Pokémon with the ability to talk like people, but this idea was axed early on by Satoshi Tajiri himself. Nowadays there are very few relics of this idea, the most prominent being Team Rocket's Meowth. Pokémon that are the stars of movies often get a pass on this, mostly to increase their mystical nature, and most of these examples use Telepathy (even when they aren't Psychic-types).
• Early seasons featured Japanese and some English text. 4kids would remove the text and either replace it with English text, leave it blank, or use a random gibberish language. Eventually, even in Japan they began using the made up language in order to make the series more "international friendly" and fit the Earth Drift. The games also featured Japanese text until the fifth generation, where they embraced the anime's Wingdinglish. English and Japanese still appear sometimes, but most text consists of made-up text.
• In the Japanese version of a Sinnoh episode, Musashi (Jessie) mentions that she should study English. This shows that the anime's universe has multiple languages, which was later confirmed again when Rotomdex mentioned having various language settings. The line was written when all the regions were based on Japan. When Pokémon Black and White introduced non-Japanese regions, the anime avoided the topic of language barriers all together. Ash can communicate with Unova (American), Kalos (French), and Alola (American/Hawaiian) characters without any problem. In the games it's been shown that the regions speak different languages instead of one universal tongue. In Gens V & VI, this isn't a problem because the protags of Unova are from the region and the protag of X & Y was from a nearby region, making it a similar scenario to Gen III^note moving from Johto to Hoenn. The protag of Gen VII, however, moved to Alola from Kanto^note much like Ash in the anime version of that arc so they don't have that out (unless they took time to learn the language before they moved).
• According to Pocket Monsters: The Animation, ten-year-olds are considered legal adults. The anime doesn't go with this interpretation of the universe, however elements of this still snuck into Kanto episodes and made their mark.^note One Officer Jenny in Kanto arrested Ash, Misty, and Brock as part of a sting operation where she wore a Chansey hat in a zone where it was illegal to catch Pokémon to bait would-be poachers. Another Jenny in Kalos detained Ash, Serena, and Bonnie while they were being impersonated by Team Rocket.
• In the episode "Island of the Giant Pokémon", Jessie's Ekans claims that all Pokémon are Always Lawful Good; that is, they are never bad or evil of their own accord, but only when their trainer is. While this held true for a while, the appearance of a Teddiursa who steals food and frames Ash's Pokémon for doing so (using its cute appearance and fake crying to get away with it until it is finally defeated by Ash and co. and evolves into Ursaring), a Spiritomb that Team Rocket tricks into believing Ash is descended from the one that sealed it away, an unusually mean Togepi that infiltrates Team Rocket's building, a gang of Litwick (who showed too much glee draining Ash, his friends and Team Rocket's life energy) and a Lampent that worked with said Litwick, a group of Malamar out to Take Over the World, and Jessie's Mimikyu (who joined Team Rocket purely out of hatred for Pikachu) disproves Ekans' point.
• The early episodes frequently used still frames during battles. In later episodes, "attack lines" (a blank background with gradient color with flowing, moving lines) are often used as background whenever a Pokémon is about to attack. As animation abilities evolved, these traits were dropped.
• Before Berries were given different varieties in the third generation games, real-life fruits such as apples were commonly seen in the anime. They're still used but less commonly (and the English dub usually refers to them as berries). Unlike the real-life animals, real fruit does occasionally show up, even when they have a Pokémon berry equivalent.^note apples, oranges, bananas, pineapples and watermelons exist even though Leppa, Oran, Nanab, Pinap and Watmel berries also exist. This can lead to situations where real fruits get called Pokémon berry names, or Pokémon Berries are referred to as real fruits. It also doesn't help that the anime also has fruit that don't appear in the games at all.
• The English version of the series, especially the soundtracks, seem to hint that Misty secretly had feelings for Ash and hid it behind her Tsundere persona and her excuse of getting payment for her bike. The original Japanese version itself had a few moments of this (in particular note, Misty's arc in the second movie). It was highly likely that the entire angle was dropped once the series proved to be highly popular and Ash was given rotating companions, seeing as it wouldn't be until X & Y until an actual plot involving female protagonists (in this case Serena) having an obvious crush on Ash was used.
• A few OS episodes imply that Pokémon don't really like battling. Expanding on that, Takeshi Shudo even had an idea to end the anime with Pokémon revolting against their Trainers (which was subtly foreshadowed in early episodes), with Ash's Pikachu as the leader. Future seasons show that Pokémon enjoy battling and aren't forced into it.
• Ash used to hide his tears in Kanto and Johto. He's since stopped doing that.
• The switch away from 4Kids caused this in the long-run. For the first few seasons everyone had different English voices^note Barring a few cases, Jimmy Zoppi as Gary Oak, by then a guest character as his rivalry with Ash had ended, and Kayzie Rogers as Wobbuffet, were some of them. This also reinstated the original narrator Rodger Parsons after he had left early in Hoenn, and Ted Lewis eventually returned as Giovanni late in Sinnoh, and many, many more that are too numerous in number to list here, though including returns by Jason Griffith, Tara Sands, and guest appearances by Rachael Lillis and Maddie Blaustein and the anime was less true to the Japanese version. 4kids produced a lot of original music, including several soundtracks (such as Pokémon Christmas Bash) and the famous Pokéraps, which have mostly stopped since the dubbers changed. By contrast, the first couple of seasons used far more of the original Japanese music (which consists of arrangements of the games music), compared to most later episodes of the dub which usually have a completely new soundtrack outside a handful of the original edit's most signature tunes.
• Meowth's very backstory has been hit with this. The anime makes such a big deal about him being the only Meowth who can walk on their hindlegs. Early episodes portray all Meowth as quadrupedal, however the games always showed them bipedally and eventually the anime followed afterwards. Tyson's Meowth is bipedal but it's never commented upon. Meowth has an entire episode with a bipedal Alolan Meowth with no special attention given to it, likely because Alolan Meowth are depicted as being bipedal more often than they are walking on all fours.
• While the anime has never been remarkably violent, over the years it's been toned down. The way battling is portrayed is overall less graphic than in early episodes. Humans also don't get injured nearly as much by Pokémon as they did in the Original Series (though slapstick Amusing Injuries vary depending on the tone, especially in the Sun and Moon series).
• Kanto and Johto stand out as they had their own original plots compared to the games. Future arcs at least try to adapt the villainous team to some degree, but the Original Series preferred to focus on the main Team Rocket trio of Jessie, James and Meowth instead of the team at large. Even in later episodes that do utilize more of the Team Rocket organization, they tend to consist of original characters such as Butch and Cassidy and Matori instead of adapt any of noteworthy members from the games (with all of the Executives from the Johto games being Adapted Out, though many of their missions such as the Lake of Rage incident with the Red Gyarados were retained). The anime missed most of the major plot points of the first two generations and the Johto rival isn't even in the anime (aside from a cameo in the Japanese intro for The Legend of Thunder^note Paul in Sinnoh may be an Expy of said rival, having a similar appearance and personality). This eventually led to trouble adapting elements of future games, which reference Team Rocket being split up during Red and Blue/FireRed and LeafGreen, as well as Team Rainbow Rocket from Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon not forming.
• One Kanto episode clearly shows Slowpoke being bitten by an unknown Pokémon that looks like whatever is on Slowbro's tail. Future episodes insist this was a Shellder, despite it looking nothing like one. Gold and Silver originally planned to introduce the shell Pokémon as a new Pokémon.
• In Kanto there was a Running Gag of women, one of whom was the final Orange Islands gym leader, mistaking Ash for their son. This gag only lasted a few episodes before being dropped.
• Ash's Chaste Hero status didn't show up much in the Indigo League saga — for example he himself gets a crush in the episode "School of Hard Knocks" and is convinced to take the role of a Mr. Mime at a circus because the pretty girls that worked there begged him to, and he understands Butterfree's mating season in "Bye Bye Butterfree".
• When it came time to prepare for the Indigo Plateau, Ash looked for every excuse under the sun to avoid training. He'd even use Pokémon that he'd never used in a battle before like Krabby and Muk. This is a far cry from the more recent seasons, where both he and his Pokémon have a passion for training and coming up with new strategies. Then again, this could be a case of Ash actually retaining An Aesop. While he was able to scrape by through the first four rounds of the Indigo League, this attitude contributed to to his elimination in the fifth round when luck turned against him due to Team Rocket's kidnapping of him. On the other hand, his allies ignore Team Rocket's role while calling him out for everything else related to his laziness.
• Ash doesn't change his clothes during his journeys in the Orange Islands and Johto. The first time he did this is in Hoenn, and his costume bears no resemblance at all to the game protagonist that he is supposed to be replacing (Brendan in this case). Later seasons would start basing off his outfits from the game protagonists, which also has an effect of giving them similar color schemes.
• At least two commercials produced before the anime aired have Pikachu voiced by Rachael Lillis, who was originally supposed to be the voice of the character in the English dub before they chose to keep Ikue Otani's voice. This also happens at one point in the first episode as well. Throughout the early episodes they would only use Rachael Lillis' voice if another character spoke over Pikachu, but later into the Kanto series, they seem to have abandoned this entirely.
• There are a few references to Christianity and the Bible: Brock mentions Noah's Ark, the fake coffins of James' parents have crosses on them, and Misty tries to ward away a talking Gastly with a cross. Keep in mind, this was before Arceus existed (and even then, few in-universe know of Arceus). Since then, the anime has avoided religion outside of mythology involving Pokémon.
• There are lots of variants seen before Shiny Pokémon became a canon mechanic in Johto (when Ash caught one, a Noctowl). Even then, the term "Shiny" itself isn't canon until Unova.
• The first three episodes of the Orange Islands arc used the original theme for the English dub. Starting with "The Lost Lapras", each episode opened with "Pokémon World" until the arc's conclusion.
• There were many instances of non-Pokémon animals, one of the most infamous examples being the mongoose Gastly turns into in "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak" and fish in an aquarium in the Cerulean Gym in episodes 7 and 61. While some animals (usually smaller ones such as butterflies and starfish) still occasionally appear in the anime, they're much, much rarer and have largely been replaced by Pokémon. The large majority of the later appearances of real world animals are often of fish ... as food.
• Early episodes make it clear that humans eat Pokémon. "So Near, Yet So Farfetch'd" outright features a Pokédex entry that states Farfetch'd are near extinction because they're tasty when eaten with leek. Since Johto, the anime has been more ambiguous on where the meat comes from.
• Mewtwo was hyped up in the anime in a way other legendaries haven't. It prominently appears in several Kanto episodes. This was because the first movie was intended to be the only movie. It was originally a series finale, but the series ended up continuing past Kanto.
• The Kanto arc was really fond of reminding the viewer that there are only 151 Pokémon (though from the beginning, this was not true, as second-generation 'mon Ho-Oh appears in the very first episode). When the second generation arrived, the number was updated to 251, with the excuse that those new 100 Pokémon had been "recently discovered", despite the fact that the anime many times would show those Pokémon being already known for decades or even centuries. From the third generation onwards this was dropped entirely, since it became obvious that new games would keep coming and the number of Pokémon was going to keep growing every 3-4 years, and the justification for the new Pokémon was simply that they lived in regions Ash had yet to visit. That said, in "Mystery at the Lighthouse", Bill does say that there may be no limit to the number of Pokémon out there.
• Throughout the sixth episode, Clefairy holds a Moon Stone yet doesn't evolve. In "Electric Shock Showdown", Pikachu slaps away a Thunder Stone with his tail to a similar lack of effect. Later episodes have it so that simply touching an evolutionary stone induces evolution, though unlike Clefairy, Pikachu's situation was subtly addressed with the reveal that Pikachu has the Gigantamax Factor (which prevents Pikachu from evolving into Raichu, though this is not stated outright in the anime).
• Charmander's debut revolves around Charmander dying if the fire on its tail dies. This was later retconned away as Charmander aren't harmed when their tails get wet. (This could be explained as the causal relationship actually being the opposite of what people originally thought: Putting the fire out doesn't kill Charmander, but rather Charmander's death would cause its fire to go out.)
• Very early on, characters could presumably keep as many Pokémon as they could carry. In Episode 11, "Charmander - The Stray Pokémon" Charmander's original owner Damien is shown carrying around a large pile of Poké Balls that presumably all contain Pokémon. It was revealed just two episodes later that trainers can only carry six at a time, the main rule in the games. This is later contradicted in Episode 43, "The March of the Exeggutor Squad" where Melvin, the Character of the Day, uses his Exeggcute to hypnotize Ash into catching multiple Exeggutor for him, and he manages to keep them all on-hand throughout the episode.
  • In early Pokémon episodes, when Pokémon are released, they are simply let out of their Poké Ball (or are able to leave when already out of it if the trainer no longer desires them, or wishes to set them free). However, later episodes show that when a Pokémon is released, they are ejected from their Poké Ball within a blue beam of light to indicate that they are no longer marked as owned and can be re-captured by another trainer. Since Damien didn't do this with his Charmander (it simply refused to go back to him), Ash shouldn't have been able to capture Charmander; his Poké Ball should have rejected the capture, but in early episodes this restriction wasn't established. Another later-added method of officially releasing a Pokémon is to destroy its Poké Ball; Jessie used this method to release her Dustox, as simply telling it to leave her didn't work.
• A few early episodes like "Beauty and the Beach", "Electric Shock Showdown", and "Hypno's Naptime" make reference to ten-year-old characters being found cute by teens and adults. This is a remnant from Pocket Monsters: The Animation having ten-year-olds as legal adults. Later episodes remove these jokes.
• In the first episode, Professor Oak mentions that Pikachu sometimes have electric personalities, which explains Pikachu's attitude. This was quickly done away as no other Pikachu displays these traits. Spiky personalities are now associated with Raichu in the anime.
• When Misty battles Ash in the Cerulean Gym, her Staryu is shown first jumping into the water to fill up before using Water Gun. Especially odd because in Staryu's first appearance ("Clefairy and the Moon Stone") it used Water Gun as it normally does for the rest of the series.
• Gyarados's Ultimate Attack Dragon Rage is used in "Pokémon Shipwreck" when a whole group of them send the protagonists through a violent whirlpool. Dragon Rage was later Retconned to being a Breath Weapon, while the whirlpool concept was reused for Twister. Though both Arcanine and Dragonair have also used the whirlpool variant (though in Dragonair's case, it's because it tried to fire Dragon Rage while Charizard was using Seismic Toss on it, so it superficially resembled a whirlpool while Charizard was flying in a circle).
• "Tentacool & Tentacruel" has the giant Tentacruel able to possess Meowth and speak through its voice. No Tentacruel since has ever demonstrated this ability. Possibly handwaved as a side effect of the chemicals that caused it to evolve from Tentacool and become a giant in the first place.
• In the early episodes Weedle and Caterpie's evolutions bore more resemblance to real world insect metamorphosis. Ash's Caterpie evolved into a Metapod by covering itself in silk. In the next episode both Metapod and Kakuna evolved into Butterfree and Beedrill, respectively, by exiting their pupa shells. Future episodes show the bug Pokémon evolving the more typical way, glowing and changing shape. Butterfree and Me! shows Metapod evolving the normal way but the animation shows it as exiting their pupa shells.
• In his first regional transition - from Kanto to Johto - Ash didn't dump his entire team (sans Pikachu) to start completely fresh, as became traditional from Hoenn on^note This mostly took the form of having Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charizard, and Squirtle, however, as Ash released Pidgeot shortly before he began heading for the Orange Islands, and when he got back to Kanto a while after he released Lapras in the Orange Islands, he let Snorlax stay with Professor Oak and put Tauros back as well. As a result of holding onto more Pokémon in Johto, he had to phase Charizard and Squirtle out early in his journey, eventually also putting Bulbasaur with Professor Oak later into it.. Also, Ash didn't change his hat or clothes and the female companion wasn't replaced (however, the original male companion, Brock came back for the Johto saga after his absence during the Orange Islands). For this reason, Kanto and Johto are often (especially on This Very Wiki, as well as Bulbapedia) grouped together as "The Original Series", while every region from Hoenn on (except Journeys in Japan) gets its own unique season/series name. The only time he broke from the later established tradition was when the Aipom that joined his Battle Frontier team stowed away with him to Sinnoh.
  • The anime itself seems to agree with this perspective, as Kanto (and/or the Orange Islands) is also the only region where its final episode doesn't replace the standard "To Be Continued" screen with "Next Time... A New Beginning!"
• Tons upon tons of Pokémon fall into Uniqueness Decay as the franchise goes on, starting off as mysterious uncatchable entities to regular occurrences often seen with trainers:
  • Dragonite is a standout case, starting off as an unknown beast in its first appearance and described as "one of a kind" (although this may be due to its unnaturally large size compared to the other Dragonite that later appear), then fully unveiled and owned by a trainer, but still clearly of elite sort in the Orange Island league, to being owned by Iris in Black and White but still a dangerously powerful and hard to control Pokémon, to being one of the first caught of Ash's Journeys team and fairly comical (albeit strong enough to beat several formidable opponents).
  • Several mythical or legendary Pokémon are introduced in the movies as otherworldly and often possess more sapient abilities like being able to talk human language, only to reappear in the show itself as standard if rare Pokémon. Compare the talking Shaymin of Giratina and the Sky Warrior to Mallow's in the Sun and Moon series, which acts no differently from the other baby-like Pokémon of the main group.
• When it comes to cross-canon counterparts, nameable game characters had different names. Red and Blue's anime counterparts went with their secondary names from Pokémon Red, Ash/Satoshi and Gary/Shigeru. Ethan and Kris' counterparts went with names that weren't even options at all, going by Jimmy/Kenta and Marina. Ever since May/Haruka made her anime debut, any namable character's anime counterpart would be their default/canon name.
• In Episode #2, "Pokemon Emergency!", Pikachu's injuries from battling the Spearow flock are treated as life-threatening, and there is real worry on Ash's part (and even Nurse Joy's) that Pikachu might not make it. The franchise would soon phase out any suggestion that Pokémon could be hurt that seriously by fighting other Pokémon; moreover, while battles still do sometimes result in Pokémon needing relatively extensive medical treatment (up to and including hospitalization), the worst that usually happens to them later is dizziness and/or fatigue.
  • In the same episode, Misty sends out her Goldeen against Team Rocket (despite it being a fish and therefore incapable of battling on land) to confuse and distract them, implying that deliberately sending out the wrong Pokémon to mislead your opponent is considered a valid and effective strategy in a Pokémon battle. It would soon after be frequently reinforced that sending out the wrong Pokémon for the job is usually a serious blunder that can bring harm to the incompatible Pokémon and result in a quick and humiliating defeat for the trainer.
• The episode "Island of the Giant Pokémon" has subtitles on the screen to translate what the Pokémon are saying (since the episode revolves around them trying to get back to their trainers), something that's never happened in any other episode as even in "Pikachu's Exciting Adventure!", the narrator translates what the Pokémon are saying.
• While Sabrina having Psychic Powers is not this, as many human psychics have shown up in later seasons, the way her powers are portrayed is: Sabrina can downright shrink people or turn them into dolls, making her a downright Reality Warper rather than a psychic (and that's before getting into how her powers gave her a Literal Split Personality). Future human psychics have more grounded powers such as telepathy, precognition, and, in some rarer cases, telekinesis and teleportation.
• The first four Pokemon films all lacked a "World of Pokemon" intro at the very beginning of the movie^note At least outside Japan. When Mewtwo Strikes Back got its updated re-release in Japan, a five-minute recap introducing the audience to said world and the beginning of Ash's journey was added. Pokémon 4Ever originally didn't have an intro, but the American dub had Brock narrate a condensed version of the first movie's intro instead of the usual narrator. This same intro was recycled for the American version of the fifth movie for some reason.. It wasn't until the Japanese cut of Pokémon Heroes that each new Pokemon film would begin with a unique "World of Pokemon" intro.
• Some episodes of the first season would explicitly note the passage of time and the time of year. For example, Ash says he's been traveling for two months in "The School of Hard Knocks", while "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak" takes place at the end of the summer. Later seasons would usually be much more vague about how much time has passed, and the anime would eventually settle into taking place in a kind of perpetual early summer (confirmed by Word of God to be an ideal world for children).
• Sandstorm was inexplicably used as a damaging attack in Johto and Hoenn, like a Gust of a different type. From Sinnoh onwards, it was changed to a weather effect just like in the games, though James' Cacnea would still use it in a version of the original way (as a sandy version of Smokescreen and Haze, moves that Team Rocket's Pokemon use when needing to escape with their targets) for the remaining episodes he had it before giving it away.
• Dawn originally wore a pink nightgown to bed during her debut appearance, however later episodes showing her sleeping portrayed her wearing pink two-piece pajamas to bed instead. The nightgown briefly returned in the final episode of the Diamond and Pearl series, and her first appearance in Journeys also had her still sleep wearing her two-piece pajamas, implying that Dawn only sleeps wearing a gown at home and in two-piece pajamas when she is sleeping outside. ^note For some reason, only the top half of Dawn's nightgown was shown onscreen due to the camera facing her looking out her bedroom window from outside her house, although the bottom half of the gown was glimpsed during a Freeze-Frame Bonus during the first Diamond and Pearl Japanese ending theme, where Dawn poses in her gown in a way so that the gown billows up from below the screen, revealing part of a white ruffle on the hem, and the nightgown was only seen completely in a rare piece of concept art.
  • Similarly, Serena's pajamas when we first see her wake up in her debut episode looked completely different from the one she would later wear to bed in later episodes.