Pokemon

Pokémon are peculiar creatures with a vast array of different abilities and appearances; many people, known as Pokémon trainers, capture and train them, often with the intent of battling others. Young Satoshi has not only dreamed of becoming a Pokémon trainer but also a "Pokémon Master," and on the arrival of his 10th birthday, he finally has a chance to make that dream a reality. Unfortunately for him, all three Pokémon available to beginning trainers have already been claimed and only Pikachu, a rebellious Electric-type Pokémon, remains. However, this chance encounter would mark the start of a lifelong friendship and an epic adventure!

Setting off on a journey to become the very best, Satoshi and Pikachu travel across beautiful, sprawling regions with their friends Kasumi, a Water-type trainer, and Takeshi, a Rock-type trainer. But danger lurks around every corner. The infamous Team Rocket is always nearby, seeking to steal powerful Pokémon through nefarious schemes. It'll be up to Satoshi and his friends to thwart their efforts as he also strives to earn the eight Pokémon Gym Badges he'll need to challenge the Pokémon League, and eventually claim the title of Pokémon Master.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Satoshi Main

Matsumoto, Rica Japanese

Pikachu Main

Ootani, Ikue Japanese

Takeshi Main

Ueda, Yuuji Japanese

Kasumi Main

Iizuka, Mayumi Japanese

Togepi Main

Koorogi, Satomi Japanese

Kenji Main

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Kojirou Supporting

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

Mewtwo Supporting

Musashi Supporting

Hayashibara, Megumi Japanese

Nyarth Supporting

Inuyama, Inuko Japanese

Haigney, Michael Producer, Script, ADR Director

Mori, Takemoto Producer

Yuyama, Kunihiko Director, Storyboard

Hidaka, Masamitsu Director

Reviews

Oct 26, 2008

iamjoe

Recommended

It's pretty unfabulous to have to review something you love when you know it's not very good.

Pokemon works with a re-use formula, the story is long, it is repetitive, it doesn't progress in any way because development doesn't really happen.

Art and sound is mediocre as it is a mass-produced anime. Production costs would have been sky-high if they spent any more money on it, and it shows.

The characters are pretty two-dimensional. They aren't deep, you don't go into their heads, and they're all about 11-15 years old but all act the same.

But why do I love this anime so much?? I ... was obsessed with it as a child, and it still has a warm place in my heart. I think it's a perfect anime for children because it teaches them some good lessons: try to be the best, do the right thing, and your friends and family are the most important people in your life.

Only unfabulously mean people hate on Pokemon. You know they all watched it and liked it as a child, but my, how uppity we have all become. If you're feeling nostalgic and want to go back to when anime was about adventure and friendship and silliness, then Pokemon is for you. It's also a harmless, fun anime for your kids, too. So I totally recommend it. Fabulous, it is.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jan 27, 2009

TheLlama

Mixed Feelings

Pokemon! We've all heard of the show, and most of us have watched and (probably) loved it as kids. So this means it's great, no? I mean, why else would kids all over the world love it? Well... kids often preceive things differently than the older demographic, and they find great what others think of as garbage. So... what about Pokemon? Is this the same? Let's see...

It starts out with a tiny step, like most other journeys. Our hero, Ash Ketchum, has high dreams of becoming the ultimate Pokemon trainer (I'll refrain from explaining that to you), and he starts out by sleeping in too ... late! before logn however, he's gotten his first (reluctant) Pokemon, everyone's favorite mouse Pikachu, and they're off on their epic journey!

The shows brings out an epic adventure of friendship, harsh battles and whatnot; everything you'd expect from a shonen that's aimed at the younger kids. It isn't that great however, as it gets very repetitive after a while; a Pokemon/person of the day formula with some kind of problem that always ends well. And that's what most of the episodes contain, with a small bit of getting further on their journey every now and then.

Animation-wise, the show doesn't feature anything boastable, with flat character designs, okay backgrounds and no spectacular special effects at all. Was it because of budget restrictions (it is a pretty long anime, after all), or was it because the producers knew the kids they were aiming the show at didn't care anyway? Well, whatever it was, the animation isn't anything to brag about.

The soundtrack is what you'd expect of such a show; adventurous opening themes, background music that's supposed to get you into the fighting/comedic mood, and a variety of sound effects to use for all the moves and whatnot you'll see. The voice acting is decent, but honestly - my unability to cope with dubs in anime pretty much wins over my nostalgia here, and that is the main reason I stopped watching the show some time ago.

The characters are, well, what you'd expect from a shonen. The rash, headstrong main character and his oh-so-arrogant rival, and the people he travels with; the older, more reasonable (mostly) fellow, and of course, the tomboyish girl with whome he argues a lot. Yup, that's shonen for ya. The main comedic relief of the series, the Team Rocket trio, is actually a pretty entertaining one. Despite constantly neglecting to look over their mistakes and realise that every one of their contraptions fail against Ash and company, they keep on trying, knowing thinking that their boss will reward them greatly of they bring him the Pikachu. I like their stupid enthusiasm a lot, and their scenes are often among amogn the better ones in the series.

So... Pokemon is basically a cliche-ridden shonen with no real thing to make it stand out. Wait... that can't be right? What about all the kids that love it? And what of all the others that love it? One of the things, I believe, is the adventurous feel of the series; who wouldn't want to experience such an epic adventure for themselves? (I know I want to, at least!) Not to mention, the great values of friendship, loyalty and trust which are presented to the viewers. That is one thing that makes Pokemon so great, and I'd try to get any kid into the show becasue of that reason alone. And that's what there is to say about Pokemon, actually.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Aug 19, 2007

VK11

Not Recommended

Ok, so for the sake of creating the ultimate database for MAL on anime reviews, I have decided to create a review on an anime show that almost everyone in this community is familiar with - Pokemon. Have YOU caught them all?

As many people probably already know, Pokemon is the story of our young hero Ash (Satoshi) Ketchum and his dream of one day becoming a Pokemon Master. Of course, if that is your dream, one must defeat gym leaders, participate in the regional Pokemon tournaments and of course, must catch them all, as per the famous catch-phrase of the show. On ... Ash's journey, he meets up with many different friends who all have different dreams as well, but coincide with Ash's dream of being a Pokemon Master. While the story nowadays seems pretty cliche and straightforward, keep in mind that this show debuted in 1997, so let's give it that much.

The animation for Pokemon is something that gets better as the show goes on. In the first many episodes, the animation is not the greatest thing in the world, and many of the frames are repeated several times throughout the entire anime. But because of the huge improvement, I will give credit to the animators in keeping up with the times.

The one thing I really like about this show when I first watched it was the music. I totally fell in love with many of the scores used whenever Ash participated in a big battle against gym leaders or tough rivals. Many of these scores can be seen in the many games that have been created for it as well. Besides that however, a lot of the other music heard sounds kind of boring, which ironically, fits well with the pace of the story, which I'm sure we all are familiar with.

I feel that the characters in Pokemon are simply too perfect. I suppose that since this show was geared towards the younger age group, that may be the reason why, but each main characters we are presented with have either one or two obvious faults that the show always seems to dwell upon whenever there is a problem. Whether it be Ash's rash and stubborn nature or Brock's obvious love of Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny, it just becomes waaay too repetitive for it to be enjoyable anymore. Team Rocket anyone?

Which leads to the category of enjoyment. If Pokemon simply aired the important episodes (i.e. gym battles, Ash catching Pokemon, etc.), the show would be scores more enjoyable than what we are presented it. The insane amount of pointless episodes are so utterly boring, that calling them fillers would be an insult to the word "fillers." Whenever I turn on the television and find Pokemon airing, I would stay on that channel for however long it took me to deduce whether or not a gym battle was occurring. If not, the channel was flipped instantly.

Pokemon has tried to keep things fresh with introducing a whole new set of pocket monsters, but at this point, there are so many that its hard to keep track of them all.

Pokemon is the anime show which introduced many of us to the world of japanese animation. I believe that a lot of us grew up watching this show at some point in our lives and will always hold it in a special place in our hearts. However, now that we have become older and can compare this to other anime out there, we can see how Pokemon horribly fails as being an enjoyable show to watch. The fact that Ash almost never wins a regional tournament and relinquishes all of his Pokemon that he has worked so hard to evolve and train (cough* Pidgeot* cough) also gets on the nerves of many people as well. For argument's sake, I rated it a 4 (decent) because of the "used-to be" interesting gym battles. Even now, whenever I see Ash competing at the Orange Island final battle, its something I'll gladly stay tuned and watch again.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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