The original Pokémon anime has always followed the video games when it comes to new regions, new rivals, and of course new Pokémon, but Ash Ketchum's adventure definitely has its own profile. When we talk about the “canon” of each game, and the plots that took their main characters from novice trainers to regional champions, only manga works have managed to reproduce that with some fidelity. Now, things are about to change with Pokémon Generations, a new series that will begin next Friday.
19 years on air, 19 seasons (or twenty, depending on how you count), 936 episodes and counting. Everything seemed ready. There was no other option. It had to happen. And still, Ash Ketchum from Pallet Town lost his sixth Pokémon League in a row. After reaching the final of the Lumiose Conference, also known as the Kalos League, fans cried out, and the feeling is that Nintendo and The Pokémon Company wasted a perfect opportunity to expand the influence of the Pokémon franchise among young and adult alike. Now that the Pokémon GO craze has cooled considerably, and we know Ash will keep chasing his personal MacGuffin (that is, becoming the best Pokémon master while losing one league at a time), something new appears on the radar: Pokémon Generations.
What Is Pokémon Generations?
What exactly is Pokémon Generations? According to official information, we are looking at a new miniseries whose distribution will be free through YouTube, and it will give us a much closer look at the stories of the original games. Starting with the classic rivalry between Red and Blue up to the events of Pokémon X and Y, the episodes of Pokémon Generations will be eighteen in total, and will last between three and five minutes each, so it would be much more precise to call them “webisodes”. The concept behind Pokémon Generations is not unique. As I mentioned in the introduction, some manga works, and especially “Pokémon Adventures”, have done a solid job respecting the games' canon to a certain extent; however, there is also the movie Pokémon Origins, whose story focuses entirely on Red's journey that takes him from Pallet Town with Charmander as his partner, to his epic battle with Mewtwo.
Schedule and Release
Pokémon Generations will begin next Friday, and there will be a new episode each week until December 23. It is necessary to remember that between November 18 and 23 we will see the arrival of Pokémon Sun and Moon on shelves, celebrating twenty years of the franchise (technically it was completed last February). Personally, I believe it is worth adding this to our list. In essence, Pokémon Generations will be a 90-minute movie divided into 18 weeks, and it will not have the continuity pressure that we find in the main series.
