While most anime fans might be familiar with the adventures of Ash Ketchum in the anime adaptation of Pokemon, following him on his decades long journey to become a Pokemon champion across every new region that gets introduced to the franchise, his adventure isn’t the only story to be animated. For Pokemon fans yearning for an animated adaptation that’s more faithful to the lore from the game, 2016’s Pokemon Generations offered just that, even if it was a short-form anthology collection. Produced by OLM, the same animation studio that handles the animation for Ash’s Pokemon adventures as well as heavy-hitting season anime like The Apothecary Diaries and Komi Can’t Communicate, Pokemon Generations was an 18-episode series released on YouTube that adapted key moments from the games.
Pokemon Generations was an incredibly unique spin on the Pokemon anime’s format, with its first episode starting just like one would expect — with a young, aloof Pokemon trainer catching a Pikachu in the wild and embarking on their very own journey throughout Kanto, taking them all the way to Kalos. Subsequent episodes look at vignettes that capture other key characters and moments throughout the franchise, like Detective Looker investigating the Viridian City Gym only to discover that the gym leader, Giovanni, has fled following a recent battle.
Pokemon succeeded in its timeless characterization of Ash Ketchum, creating a protagonist that was capable of journeying to every region throughout the Pokemon franchise and taking on its most iconic trainers. However, for many longtime fans, the series’s climactic final battles, which would pit Ash against the region’s champion only to lose or tie the match in some way became something of a running joke. In Pokemon Generations, though, fans of the franchise get more of an “outside looking in” perspective, capturing small moments from each region that have major impact on the canon lore of the video game franchise as opposed to reimagining story beats from the games to fit with Ash’s journey.
Many of the shorts in Pokemon Generations are from the perspective of Detective Looker, an NPC introduced to the franchise in 2008’s Pokemon Platinum, a revamped fourth generation Pokemon game that introduced a “definitive” story line, improving upon the story from Diamond and Pearl. Looker becomes a recurring character in the franchise after, appearing in Pokemon X and Y, Sun and Moon, as well as Black and White. However, there are plenty of vignettes that hint at the main player character stepping in to save the day as well, with Episode 15 of the series showing a heated battle between Ghetsis and N from Pokemon Black and White, just as the main player character to swoop in as the episode ends to save the day. The format was remarkably enchanting, hitting all the right nostalgia notes for longtime fans of the series while scratching the itch many Pokemon fans have to see more accurate animated adaptations.
Pokemon Generations released on The Pokemon Company’s YouTube channel in 2016, and while there hasn’t been a direct sequel to the collection, Pokemon has released another, similar series of shorts: Pokemon Evolutions, an 8-episode mini series designed to celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary in 2021. The episodes featured in Evolutions had runtimes being anywhere between six to ten minutes in length, which was comparable to Generations, plus, Evolutions‘s episodes each focus on events happening in individual regions representing each generation of Pokemon, spotlighting different fan favorite characters and expanding on already established lore.
Poketoons has also bee running since 2021, though, the collection of shorts are more focused on showcasing different animator’s adapting small adventures unrelated to the games. Aside from Pokemon Evolutions, nothing has quite captured the anthological magic Pokemon Generations gave to fans of the series, but that doesn’t mean the community doesn’t want more. Pokemon Generations was incredibly well received by fans despite its brief narrative pacing due to episode length. However, despite episodes of the series raking in millions of views on YouTube, as of writing, The Pokemon Company and Studio OLM haven’t announced an official continuation or sequel to the series.
Do you want to see a new era of Pokémon Generations? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments!
