Pokemon: The Origin

Story and characters: 4/10

The OVA promised to follow the story of the original Pokemon Red and besides adding a mega-evolution for Charizard at the end, it pretty much did exactly that. Our hero is named Red instead of Ash and he actually captures all the Pokemon. He doesn't randomly release his best fighters, he actually wins his gym battles without cheating, the Pokemon actually use real moves and not bullshit like "dodge", and he actually dismantles the Team Rocket Organization. So this is WAY better than the original Pokemon anime right?....right? The problem is that Pokemon wasn't a game that sold so well because of ... the amazing plot and characters. Games like the Final Fantasy games, Metal Gear series, Mass Effect, all sold copies primarily based on their interesting stories and characters. Pokemon sold games based on excellent gameplay, game mechanics, and addictive/competitive nature. Red says his goal is to "complete the Pokedex" rather than being the strongest trainer like Ash wanted. However, we never see any strong motive for Red's desire. He isn't a scientist trying to collect all the Pokemon to study them. The Pokemon seem to be literally stored as data in the PC rather than living on Oak's ranch, so he certainly isn't making friends. In fact that seems pretty damn cruel when you think about it. Red doesn't really have any character traits that make him interesting or give him depth. Green is just as bland. He doesn't have a squad of cheerleaders like Gary and while still a dick, isn't the same epic caliber douche that we all love to hate. The Gym Leaders aren't nearly as memorable and I actually started to miss the goofy Team Rocket trio because this Team Rocket was so boring. Pokemon Red's plot worked fine as a game, but had ZERO business being adapted into an anime.

Art: 6/10

The art was actually pretty good. I guess if there was a single thing that justified this anime's existence, it would be the art and getting to see pokemon battles with vastly superior animation to the original series. Of course, I haven't watched the main Pokemon anime since about 2001, so maybe the animation for the main series is just as good at this point.

Music: 5/10

The music is actually the music from the original game. That was a nice touch, but the original Pokemon anime had a soundtrack that I actually thought surpassed the game's soundtrack.

Overall: 4/10

"Pokemon: The Origin" is in the running for the most needless and pointless anime ever made. I've only seen a few other anime like "Eva: Death and Rebirth" that filled me with such a strong desire to scream: "why was this shit even made?!" I know it was made for the quick and easy money, but surely there must be a better way to both make money and please the massive Pokemon fanbase than this!

Ah, Pokemon: The Origin. The highest-rated Pokemon-related anime in MAL's database. It is an interesting case for sure, and I will attempt to explain why in my first (and probably last) review.

For contextual purposes, I think it is extremely important to understand the basic history of the Pokemon franchise before trying to make sense of Pokemon: The Origin, so I will start with a brief historical summary. Also, from here on out, I will be referring to the original anime series and its sequels as simply "Pokemon" (as it is listed in MAL's database), and Pokemon: The Origin as "PTO".

In 1996, the ... low-budget Pokemon Green and Red were hesitantly released in Japan. The unexpected success of the games led to the demand for the original anime series loosely inspired by the games to start airing in Japan barely a year later. Within a few years, the Pokemon franchise was a worldwide phenomenon, featuring massive commercial success across three mediums: anime series, video games (released outside of Japan as Blue and Red), and trading cards.

One aspect of the Pokemon anime that has bugged certain fans of the video games, such as myself, for over a decade, is that it makes no attempt to take anything but the surface elements out of the game and transpose them onto the framework of a Saturday morning cartoon. I say this not as a criticism of the Pokemon anime as it should be judged on its own merits, but rather to give context as to why there would be a demand for a "faithful adaptation" of the video games - one where we get to see the protagonist go through the same basic journey that we went through as video game players, only with new life brought to it through 3-dimensional graphics, human interactions, and various other nuances that couldn't be programmed into the low-budget video games.

PTO makes it clear in its presentation and promotional material that it should be viewed as an adaptation of the video games. Production IG provides great visuals that fit the setting perfectly, bringing new life to a two dimensional world. However, the plot basically goes like this (#7 may be a bit of a spoiler):

1. Introduce the main characters, similar to the main characters in the video games.
2. Spend a painful amount of time beating it into the head of the viewer that a kid leaving home for the first time has life lessons to learn.
3. Big battle, replacing any sense of video game mechanics with willpower and friendship power-ups, while showing HP bars to remind the viewer that apparently they are actually watching an adaptation of the video game
4. Skip over a big chunk of the video game plot in seconds, while making it seem the character has matured and learned.
5. Show a new filler scene that never happened in the video game. Progress through the filler slowly.
6. Repeat some combinations of steps 3-5 for the (almost) remainder of the show, while making sure to show that the protagonist somehow manages to simultaneously:
a) be a great natural talent who matures and learns quickly
b) actually not learn anything about Pokemon battling (using Normal instead of Fighting moves against Rock Pokemon for example)
7. At the very end of the series, in the midst of the final big event (where the protagonist still knows as little as ever despite being simutaneously talented and experienced), reveal that PTO is actually just a promotion for the new video games with a shameless asspull featuring game mechanics that weren't introduced until 2013.

I also forgot to mention some of the other not-so-subtle intermittent reminders that PTO was a video game adaptation, such as having characters repeat rote phrases from the game like "Your Pokemon are fighting fit!", and showing a save screen at the end of each episode, as well as the aforementioned HP bars in the middle of battles decided by willpower and friendship. All of these are done awkwardly, but I guess they serve the purpose of reminding the viewer that they actually are watching a video-game adaptation, because with about half of the 90-minute series being anime-original content that couldn't happen in the video games, the reminders may very well be necessary.

If you are a fan of Pokemon Red and Blue and want to get trolled by an "adaptation", Pokemon: The Origin is the anime for you.

Rating: 2/10 as an adaptation, 5/10 as an anime-original. Since it can be somewhat enjoyed if you keep telling yourself that it's not a video game adaptation, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and give it a 4.

This review contains heavy spoilers given Pokemon Origins is only an hour and a half length movie split up over 4 episodes. It attempts to cover the entirety of the events of the original Pokemon games and constantly references things that would make no sense if you hadn't played the games, even doing many word for word quotes of generic NPC dialogue. If you have not played said games, this special is absolutely not going to convince you otherwise, as it is pure fanservice, and I can't imagine anybody watching this special without already being a Pokemon fan. Given that almost anybody who ever turns ... on this special is in it for the fanservice, this special fails for doing a rather poor job at it.

The main thing that made that made me decide to randomly watch this is just simply that the terrible main character of the main anime, Ash, is replaced with Red, but Red's competence is largely shown off-camera as he magically captures all Pokemon and the legendary birds as a cliffnote. The character of Blue is outright worse than the main anime's version of Gary, regularly being a coward and/or useless, and his final battle with Red is very, very short with no real effort to explain why a Charizard beats a Blastoise other than Blue sitting and doing nothing as he loses. While the anime largely invented a character for Mewtwo, in this series he is a screaming beast that sounds awkward to say the least, and he casually loses to Red's Mega Charizard. This special's actual purpose was to advertise Mega Pokemon to people who only like the first generation, essentially, by appealing to them through the arbitrary mascot of that fandom, Charizard. I would argue Mewtwo is the secondary mascot of that portion of the fanbase, and humiliating him in such a fashion is rather undesirable.

The fight scenes are so bad and generic to the point they actually made me appreciate the main anime's fight scenes, which at least have some effort. Giovanni's fight is the one given the most focus in the series, and he decimates 5/6 of Red's Pokemon with a Rhyhorn, an unevolved Pokemon. Red is using fully evolved Pokemon that have type advantages against the Rhyhorn (which he hasn't used before and casually ditches after the fight), yet Rhyhorn defeats all of them in one hit. Giovanni claims his Pokemon is much higher in level, which shouldn't be possible when his is unevolved, unless you're going to pretend that the boss of Team Rocket wouldn't evolve his Pokemon as soon as possible. The attacks he uses are very unfitting such as Thunderbolt, even using it against a Jolteon that should be outright immune to it rather than any actual Ground attacks which would believably defeat it in one hit, which is supposed to be Giovanni's signature type anyway.

After this Rhyhorn with the full power of the writers behind it is finally defeated, Giovanni sends out a evolved Rhyhorn, Rhydon, against the only thing with more bias from the writers, Red's Charizard. Rhydon has a quadruple type advantage against Charizard, but despite the Rhyhorn casually defeating everything else, Charizard of course defeats Rhydon. It's almost as if the writers are going out of their way to ensure things with type advantages always lose. Within the original anime, Giovanni's Rhydon losing despite type advantage was one of the most infamous moments, and even when the writing favors Rhyhorn, poor Rhydon just can't seem to catch a break, being a rather pitiful mistake to be repeated countless years later. Giovanni generically gets very hyped up for this non-sensical battle, and disbands Team Rocket over it upon losing as a mediocre attempt to develop the character and justify Giovanni abandoning Team Rocket at the end of the games.

If it wasn't obvious, this series requires you to like Charizard a lot. The only particularly worthwhile moments fans would want to see redone are Blue, Mewtwo, and Giovanni, and the first two are casually glossed over and more generic than their anime counterparts while Giovanni's section is especially terrible.

Pokemon The Origin is an OVA based on Pokemon Red/Green/Blue games of the 1996/1998. For the fans of the games this anime would be like a god-send for nostalgic hype!

But this anime feels like it was made by fanboys rather than a respectable company that care for their loyal fans.

First and foremost there are many inaccuracies, and some battles are completely stupid. Like how a Jolteon, an electric pokemon got OHKO by 1 electric attack, or Blastoise and how it was overwhelmed by fire attacks despite Fire attacks do half damage to water pokemon.

This is purely a Charizard circlejerk product, and it's really awful ... if you keep thinking about it.

To put this to short, the whole 4 episodes are there to showcase Charizard and how it wins battles with stupid direction and scripting.
The battles sometimes turn type-effectiveness on and off inconsistently, and it's most of the time to make Charizard shine more.

Yeah Charizard can take all attacks at type-disadvantage and win, but at other pokemon, this feature is completely off.

For a company or a studio that aimed this work for the fanbase as a celebration for all of its years, dissing 2 groups of fans and focusing on 1 is just a lowly way to work.

And let's not forget that the whole Mega Evolution thing, i know it was a promotion of Pokemon X and Y, but promoting only 1 pokemon and making Mewtwo (a well developed pokemon) like a crazed psycho that was defeated easily just to make Charizard looks more hyped and badass, it was just disgusting.

Blastoise was made like a total joke and Bulbasaur never made a single appearance. Basically the team behind the anime said "f*ck those two's fans, we only love Charizard, let's make people see more Charizard"

An anime that was made by fanboys for more fanboys is a terrible show that has no respect for the fans.


In the positive points, the sounds and visuals are good. But still don't make this product any less-disgusting.

If you are a Charizard fan you will love this, but if you don't, too bad the company middle-fingered you with this. And as a non-fanboy, i hate how this was formed, really never seen any worse than this company-to-fans letter.

Pokemon The origin is an absolutely unbelievable production. To this day I am unable to comprehend how something could be strung together as badly as this is. First off I was forced to experience this excuse for an anime on youtube as this anime was nowhere to be found online elsewhere, it was more scarce than a surplus in a benefit household. Pokemon The origin is a butchered retelling of one of the pokemon games but which , i have no idea as this ''plot'' seems to twist and turn often . The anime frequently veers off in whatever direction it desires , leaving the ... viewer confused , irritated but most importantly ...dissapointed. The ''story'' follows Red and Blue and some extremely poorly drawn verison of Brock which is frankly quite scary. I was extremely distraught to see that the team rocket uniform was the black version and that there was an absence of team rocket pokeballs.
Overall the anime was rushed beyond belief as what usually would take place over 2 or 3 seasons takes place in a couple of minutes in pokemon the origin. Everything about this anime makes me more suicidal then I have ever been in the past and I can truly say it is the blight of the franchise and that it should be removed from dispersal or else corrected as a full 120 episode season with a new artist.
I entered pokemon Origins with very high hopes as I love the pokemon franchise from the bottom of my heart, However I left the series feeling frightened , violated , dissapointed and quite sick. I had the urge to vomit as I turned off my computer.
I really expected more from the name of such a classic franchise , but as my grandfather once said ... Beggars cant be choosers.

spoilers brehs! (though I'm just trying to convince you to not waste your time)
Pokemon, a multi-billion dollar media franchise (the highest grossing one ever in fact), apparently couldn't afford to give their fans a proper adaptation of their most iconic game. Instead, they settled with this 4 episode mess whose entire purpose is to answer the question: "What if mega evolution was a thing in gen 1 lol?". This would've been better answered in a quick cute drawing posted on twitter or a short animation on Youtube. However, this is what we got, so this is what I'm talking about.
Even if you haven't played the ... first Pokemon game (or its 2 remakes), you'll probably realize what's going on during the start of the second episode, where the MC has to narrate a bunch of things he did off-screen (about a fifth of the game). Yes, this adaptation fast forwards through most of its source material. Even worse, these fast forwards aren't interesting at all and can be summarized as "I went to gym X, beat gym leader Y and got gym badge Z". No effort put in, not even a joke about some of the game's dumber moments, no references to appeal to fans, nothing. The conversations that get shown are at a glacial pace, not allowing the few fights that are shown to have any breathing room.
They even dare to let the more important fights of the game happen off-screen. I shit you not, they skip the entire Elite Four and show only one sixth of the fight with the champion. After which we are delighted with our protagonist finishing his pokedex by catching Mewtwo thanks to his starter mega evolving. It has a somewhat serviceable art style, even the soundtrack is somewhat interesting at times, that's it though. It doesn't make everything else salvageable.