Side-Stories

In my last post I mentioned how the Pokémon anime should branch out and have other protagonists, in a way they did.

In Japan there was a show called Weekly Pokémon Broadcasting Station. The show aired every Tuesday from October 2002 to September 2004. The episodes were split into three different categories; variety shows, encore and side stories. The category Side Stories was translated into English, while the others were not. The series came to Canada in the fall 2005, and to the US the following year. They called it Pokémon Chronicles.

I don’t know Japanese, so I will be focusing on the dubbed version of the show. Pokémon Chronicles was interesting. The first few episodes were about Jimmy and Marina, who were two trainers from Johto region. However the series only focused on them for three episodes while they defended Raikou (the legendary beast of thunder) from Team Rocket. The rest of the episodes featured a wide variety of characters from the past for example Misty, Brock, Ritchi and Team Rocket.

The show wasn’t perfect, the intro song was the chorus from the gold and silver PokeRap, and some episodes were boring or unneeded. It would be interesting to see more of Jimmy and Marina since they seemed like a good team. Some of the stories were interesting, I learned that Misty gets her badges from a badge maker, that Brock’s family is crazy and that Ritchie is definitely Ash’s clone. It was just too bad that other than the Raikou special the adventures only lasted one episode. There were no new developments, and all they did was tie up loose ends.

They are now trying, it again in 2013 with a new special called Pokémon Origins. The trailer shows off the stunning graphics and bringing interest for old fans of Red's adventures.

Many fans were excited, myself included, about the idea of Red being the main character of his own adventure. For those that don’t know Red was the protagonist that you got to play as in the original Pokémon video games Red, Blue and Green (Japan only). The show first aired in Japan on October 2nd 2013. The English dubbed version of the special came out November 15th 2013. They took many similar aspects from the games themselves, for example the health bar during the gym battles, as well as the white hand in Lavender town. The special was split into four parts, only showing noteworthy events and skimming over the others.

For more infomation you can look at Pokémon TV, Pokémon Chronicles, and Serebii

Sabrina is a quiet and introverted person. She likes to read and write, watch anime and play video games. She recently moved to Ottawa, and now lives with two roommates and her cat Izzy. One of her favourite anime is Pokémon.  

Sites I use a lot: Serebii, Official Pokémon Website (US), The JWittz