[COLUMN] The Pokemon Anime Is a Joy to Rewatch | by Marty Sliva (Patreon)

I don’t know how it happened. I blinked, and suddenly I’m 80 episodes into a rewatch of the Pokemon anime. Ash started out as a naive kid who didn’t know a thing about monsters, battling, or the world at large, to now…well, the exact same thing, but now he’s participating in the Indigo League Championships.

I started watching an occasional episode or two of the late-’90s animated series on my Twitch stream as a kind of palate cleanser between games or at the end of a night. That tradition ended up cascading, and suddenly we found ourselves traveling alongside Ash, Brock, and Misty across the entirety of Kanto, wrangling up 8 gym badges mostly through sheer dumb luck.

I remembered snippets of each adventure through the first 60 episodes or so from when they first aired. I was completely obsessed with all things Pokemon when it first hit the US in 1998. That included the game (I probably put over 500 hours into Pokemon Blue on my Game Boy Pocket), the collectable card game, and the anime. In fact, the animated series was my entry point into the series, so being able to eventually play through the scenarios I saw Ash get into on TV felt somehow magical.

This love affair quickly fizzled out sometime after the release of the first movie and the second generation of games. At that point, my gaming taste started drifting towards the Sega Dreamcast, and my anime taste moved closer to the likes of Dragon Ball Z, Gundam Wing, and whatever else Toonami had lined up for me each afternoon.

But flash forward nearly 30 years, and I’m once again super charmed by this silly animated series. Sure, there’s a clear sense that the whole thing is part of a corporate synergy onslaught that clearly succeeded in making Pokemon one of the biggest media brands on the planet. But past that layer, the series isn’t afraid to be genuinely weird in some really fantastic ways. Extended sidequests, strange homages to unexpected movies, deep dives into Japanese culture, scenarios never found in the games, and a constant focus on the beautiful insanity of Team Rocket all work together to make sure that there aren’t ever really any duds along the rewatch. 

I also love the sense of adventure the series has, especially if you’re already familiar with the major beats from the game. Seeing Ash grow his roster as he stretches out further and further into Kanto, overcoming the different challenges that each gym leader and new city throws at him, is something that nicely mirrors our playing experience. And of course, I’ll always have a soft spot for the bright colors, hype music, and bombastic spectacle of a fight scene against a new type of creature.

The best part is that you can head on over to the official Pokemon TV YouTube channel and watch each season for free. Having the entirety of your back catalogue available for free and easy viewing seems like a great way to reward your long-time fans and ingratiate yourself to new ones. That said, there are a few forbidden episodes of the series that aren’t on the official channel. If phrases like “Porygon seizures,” “racially insensitive Jynx,” and “oh my god he pointed a gun at those children” mean anything to you, then you might have to do a bit of online digging to find those gems of lost media. But I assure you – they’re out there, and they’re every bit as wild as you can imagine.

As we continue to rewatch the series, I can’t help but think about Pokemon celebrating its 30th anniversary next month on February 27th, 2026. The Pokemon Company holds a big Pokemon Presents showcase every February, and I have to imagine that this year’s will be especially beefy, given the occasion. It feels like making the classic Game Boy games playable on Nintendo Switch Online is an easy win, but perhaps they go back to the Kanto well once again. Maybe it’s in another remake of the Generation that started it all. Or maybe it’s something more ambitious.

For the past few years, my dream Pokemon game has been a prequel to Red and Blue that focuses on a young Professor Oak and Agatha, and how their unique outlooks on the world of Pokemon causes them to drift apart. Pull heavily from the style of Ken Sugimori’s original water color drawings, and you got yourself a stew going, as is evident right here.

So if you’re looking for something to have on in the background while you do chores around the house, or something to second screen while plugging away at work, then look no further. Head on over to the Pokemon TV YouTube channel, fire up a few episodes of the original animated series, and feel a bit better knowing that you’re almost certainly better at your job than Ash Ketchum is at being a Pokemon trainer.