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I remember that shipwreck episode as one of the most scary episodes in Pokemon. At 5 or 6 years old, watching gigantic Gyarados destroying a ship was horrifying for me.

Looking forward to the next list!

It's hard to really list episodes I like in this day after having watched all the series to date, given the original was the worst one. Even excusing dated animation, most of the Gym Battles were just plain awful until Johto, and there was rampant filler everywhere due to poor pacing and uncertainty of the franchise's future. I guess I would have to specifically say the ones that flesh out the characters. Kojiro, Musashi, and Nyarth's backstory episodes would probably be my choices, and the only real characters with depth until later series. Kasumi was more or less fanservice and Pokegirls wouldn't be actual characters until Haruka, and Takeshi wouldn't really get any focus or development until Advanced Generation and Diamond and Pearl.

-Stuart Smith

Jacob after watching all these episodes did you memorize the Pokerap.

Last edited by rizuchan on Wed Feb 08, 2017 12:59 pm; edited 1 time in total

chito895 wrote:

I remember that shipwreck episode as one of the most scary episodes in Pokemon. At 5 or 6 years old, watching gigantic Gyarados destroying a ship was horrifying for me.

The previous episode was my nightmare episode. See, I didn't realize Pokemon was on cable, so I only watched the VHS tapes for a long while. And that particular tape ends with everyone passed out on the sinking ship. And then, when I finally discovered WB Kids, I'd somehow miss that episode every. single. time. Obviously I knew they didn't die, but it was so frustrating thinking, "How could they *possibly* get out of this!?"

You know, for Pokemon's anniversary, ANN should do classic streaming reviews for the first season. Okay, that'll never happen, but it would be fun to discuss all of the memorable moments in these early episodes.

Oh and Stuart, I'm really surprised anyone would think of season 1 as the "worst", especially in the filler department - I (and Jacob, and many others I believe) stopped around Master Quest because that seemed to be the epitome of long periods of bad filler. I agree the pacing is bad in the first season, but I'm curious why you think all of that improved in later seasons?

I have to agree that if season 1 has anything going for it, it's the fact that it was season one of a show that didn't exactly know what it was doing yet and plenty of weird wonderful/special accidents happened along the way. While I'm on the camp that prefers the old 4kids dub to the current one, that's a lot less of it being well acted and more that the stupidly goofy tone fit pretty well with the show. I'm not sure if I can call it a favorite season, as even with that goofy charm there's a lot wrong with that season (and the show as a whole frankly, I only recently decided to acknowledge it's existence again.) but while it's only competition in my book is XY and the current Sun and Moon, S1 is so fundamentally different that it makes ranking them very weird to say the least, especially considering it's like trying to compare a bunch of rocks together as apposed to anything anybody would actually want.

That said these are some good episode picks! The second I was reminded that Pikachu zapped a stack of dynamite the memories of that scene came flooding back and I had a good laugh. and I don't think I'm going to forget the shipwrecked or Giant Pokemon episodes for as along as I live. Other than that I mostly remember small scenes or incidental things from the first season so I'm not sure if I have any "favorite episodes" that weren't already listed off the top of my head, but it was nice to be reminded of how much I used to enjoy that season at one point (anime or not I still love the crap out of Pokemon though!)

Diamond & Pearl is where the franchise really took off. After Shudou Takeshi left the series construction role after Pocket Monster Episode #157 there was nobody officially filling that role until Diamond & Pearl Episode #1, where Tomioka Atsuhiro finally stepped up. Tomioka, Series Director Sutou Norihiko and long-time regular series director Asada Yuuji really stepped up and reformed the franchise. Tomioka transformed his Shingo character from the one-off Episode #140 into a new long-running rival for Satoshi, Shinji. Shinji completely clashed with Satoshi's personality, capturing and releasing Pokemon that didn't know good moves or had good stats right off the bat. Shinji's battle tactics were also unlike anything seen in previous episodes. Tomioka personally scripted sixty-two episodes of the 191 episode series, most of which were story arcs or stretches of two-to-five important episodes in a row. The scripts of the other writers also improved, which might have been as a result of tighter leadership from both Sutou and Tomioka.

Diamond & Pearl is also where Asada Yuuji (a regular storyboard artist and episode director since Episode #3 of the first series) and Iwane Masa'aki (a regular animator since Episode #3, who eventually began doing regular solo key animation episodes starting with Episode #59) both kicked their games up a notch. Thanks to Pocket Monster being in production five-plus months before an episode has to air and Iwane being both a fast and good animator this duo was able to handle many of the important episodes of the series, nearly all of which were scripted by Tomioka. If Tomioka was writing, Asada was storyboarding, and Iwane was the animation supervisor, you could guarantee that it was going to be a kick-ass episode. While at this time Iwane was still working on-and-off as an animation supervisor for episodes where other key animators would help him, he was for the most part handling all of the important cuts. For Episodes #171-191 Asada Yuuji was promoted to series director alongside Sutou Norihiko and Chief Series Director Yuyama Kunihiko, likely because he personally storyboarded and directed five of the last twenty episodes of the series (#172, #177, #187, #188. and #191). Those five episode were entirely key animated by Iwane Masa'aki himself, too. Not only did Asada spent Diamond & Pearl increasing his skill at making dialogue scenes and action choreography, he also really improved his understanding of how to use BANK animation. By maximizing how to reuse attack animation (or sideline cheering) Asada was able to turn the usual 3,000 drawings allowed per episode into something that Iwane could use to make higher-quality action cuts. This is important, considering how much hype had been built up for Satoshi's final climatic battle with Shinji. In fact, this battle was so built up that it was the franchise's first three-episode-long battle, spanning from Episodes #186-188, all personally written by Tomioka Atsuhiro and with #187-188 storyboarded and directed by Asada Yuuji and solo key animated by Iwane Masa'aki, who had worked on their previous battles. If that isn't dedication to a story and set of characters, I don't know what is.

Best Wishes has far less involvement from the golden trio and less scheduling genius, but it's attempts at doing new things was still a lot of fun. All of the new side characters and rivals were fun. It was especially nice to see comedic episodes not centered around the Rocket Gang for once, too. The overall storyline and battles felt less planned out than before, though, so that aspect sticks out. Beginning with Best Wishes Episode #56 Iwane his current streak of only acting as animation supervisor when he does all of the key animation for an episode alone. In other words, Iwane has done nothing by solo key animation episodes since 2011. Nevertheless, he still provides key animation for Natsume Kunihiko's episodes, too, usually expressive battle scenes or comedy scenes. Tomioka didn't write for the Isshu League, probably because it was decided that Satoshi would lose in the Best Eight after making it to the Best Four in the previous series.

XY is where Tomioka returned his full attention to the franchise. While he didn't write much early on, he would at least write important episodes. The other writers' battle episodes also improved after a lull for Best Wishes, too. The four Mega Evolution specials about Alan and Manon were handled by the Tomioka, Asada and Iwane trio, too. Tomioka also personally wrote the entirety of the five-episode-long Flare Gang arc himself. XY would be his last series in the role of series composition, so it makes sense he would tackle the big Flare Gang storyline he and Series Director Yajima Tetsuo were trying to build up after Tomioka has so successfully pulled off the Ginga Gang arc in Diamond & Pearl. As a result, Tomioka didn't write for the Kalos League, but Fujita Shinzou's scripts were serviceable.

XY also saw big evolution in the staff: the main staff were able to recruit skilled freelance animators to join the series. For the longest time Iwane Masa'aki and his mentor Tamagawa Akihiro were the only good animators to regularly work on the franchise. After a while Tamagawa became less-and-less frequent (and lately he's been suffering from illness and has stopped working entirely), so all of the good animators were limited to Iwane. Iwane is versatile (hand-to-hand, beams, mecha, Kanada-style, comedy) and always open to new ideas. But still, with XY now being allowed 20-30% more drawings than the first four series and Iwane wishing to do solo key animation episodes the series was going to need more than one good animator. This is where young guns like Oohashi Aito, Fujii Shingo, and Nishiya Yasushi came in. XY & Z Episode #35, #37 and #38 were Oohashi, Iwane and Nishiya's babies. These are the episodes that blew up and brought the cartoon back to the eyes of the 'mainstream anime fandom'.

Now Sun & Moon has even more good animators involved, like Nanba Isao, and has a greater focus on character animation. Series Director Tomiyasu Daiki and Series Composer Matsui Aya (returning from the early days of the franchise) have also given the series a healing, slice-of-life feeling, so each episode leaves you feeling at peace with the cute girl characters and now the cute, moe-boy Satoshi. It's been a wonderful eleven years for the Pokemon anime.

Well, unless you're the movies. Yuyama always fucks those up...

I stopped watching Pokemon sometime during the Orange Island episodes (thanks to getting obsessed with the Digimon anime) but I still remember a few episodes I'll never forget.

A biggie is the episode where Ash finds charmander. As a kid, seeing that poor little charmander dying in the rain was heartbreaking, and the hospital parts were legit intense. Little kid me played "I'm an epic doctor watch me save things" for a while after that one.

I also clearly remember the ponyta race episode. It was fun and goofy but also had some epic moments - with an awesome evolution at the end to top it off. I had that episode in comic form too but I lost it Sad

There was an episode too about eeveelutions right? That one I remember more because I still have the comic version, and the art in it is really good. But I'm pretty sure it mostly followed the plot of an anime episode too, right? I remember it being cute.

That said, my favorite bit of the Pokemon anime is the Pokemon 2000 movie. Yes, the "chosen one" plotline is completely 100% stupid and I hate that part....but I love watching the legendary birds beat the crap out of each other, and I love watching Team Rocket try really hard and save the day. That's satisfying.

Man, I totally had some of those very VHSs as a kid! Don't know what happened to them now because 1) I moved 2) I don't even have a VHS player anymore, and 3) I bought the whole Indigo League on DVD recently for $25 anyway. I also bought the movies, I saw at least the first two in theaters (maybe the third? I forget).

But I kind of forget most of the episodes, except I remember some of the ones better because I must've had them on VHS (for example, the biking over the bridge episode, I'm sure I saw that one a number of times, I only had maybe 5 VHSs back then anyway). Of course, one episode I don't remember is the Safari Zone episode, because they cut that one out of the English dub. But I definitely remember more of the show being pointless silliness and I barely remember the gym battles. I also remember the badass Sandshrew that trained in water and pools and stuff and how Ash thought it was cruel, but the Sandshrew likes its owner anyway.

I also remember bits and pieces of Orange Islands, I stopped watching in early Johto though. But now we have Sun and Moon, so that's sort of like Orange Islands, which is awesome. I may buy Orange Islands too, if I find it cheap enough. I mostly remember that we had Tracy, not Brock, and I think Todd Snap was floating around, reminding us of what was the best Pokemon game on N64 (that's right, I'm for Snap > Puzzle League).

The one episode that got at my heart was about Charmander and how he was abandoned in the rain by its original Trainer. I was frozen by the thought of one's life being dependent on an energy source of some sort and the frightening possibility of being left for dead when help was just so close... I was relieved by the episode's good ending spoiler[in which Charmander gave its old Trainer its just desserts].

Precious memories! Rusty and faltering in my case, but precious nonetheless!

Wingbeats wrote:

I stopped watching Pokemon sometime during the Orange Island episodes (thanks to getting obsessed with the Digimon anime) but I still remember a few episodes I'll never forget.

At least you had the freedom of choice betwixt the twain, Wingbeats! Once Digimon was acquired for broadcasting by our commercial television station, it replaced Pokémon's slot owing to its similarities in content. How hefty a shock this came to an innocent soul in his nonage!
(My bewilderment was temporary. I recall that Pokémon did eventually return to our screens prior to the Johto episodes.)

Thanks for this nostalgia bomb! Fun fact, the Jigglypuff episode was the first episode I ever watched. A bunch of kids from school were always talking about Pokemon so one Saturday I decided to turn on Kids WB (yeah, that doesn't date me at all) to see what the fuss was about. The rest is history.
Anyway, now I can't stop thinking about all of the episodes on this list. The Charizard-Magmar battle is still one of the best battles in series. I still remember the fossil episode as the one where they find Togepi's egg and Gary finds a fossilized turd. I still get sad when I think about Bye-Bye Buterfree and it's one of the few times I remember an episode's name.
I had forgotten how much I used to love this show. To quote some gardeners:
Diglett-dig Diglett-dig TRIO TRIO TRIO!

Let's see if the next 10 episodes includes Johto ones, since they still are part of the original series.

The original series might be the most nostalgic one, but it's also the most overrated series and had a lot of problems in terms of plot and cast, especially the Kanto Saga. Since the anime was planned only to last for a single year, the Badge quest was rushed, but the Gym Battles were the worst. Most of them were interrupted by Team Rocket, resulting in some half-assed battles, or sometimes we didn't get proper battles whatsoever.

Even though catching all Pokémon is the franchise's motto, it doesn't work well in the anime, since the anime tends to give the Pokémon more characterization, making them feel more real to the viewers. The more Pokémon you get, the more it's difficult to give them screentime. However, the only ones that get this pleasure are mostly Satoshi's, most notably those he has on hand, and even then, it's mostly only Pikachu and his Starter trio. The Pokémon in his lab were the neglected, and Pidgeotto was mostly ignored and then after its evolution it left the series unceremoniously and there was a serious lack of emotion in its departure.

However, the original series barely characterized any of Kasumi's, Takeshi's or Team Rocket's Pokémon (not counting Meowth). Most of them were just there, and Arbok and Weezing are basically the same character twice.

The series made it clear not to make Satoshi's team too strong. After his fully evolved Primeape finally started to obey him, it left his party for training and has been never seen outside of OP/ED cameos. Muk was left at the lab because it stunk. Tauros, a strong Pokémon was left in the lab because he caught 30 of them (they could've just made him waste 29 SafariBalls on a single Tauros instead), Charmeleon/Charizard became disobediant, Kingler was pretty much forgotten, and the loyal Pidgeot was released. On the Orange Island, Satoshi gained two other "powerful" Pokémon, but with two serious flaws. Lapras was still a newborn and thus not as strong as a normal Lapras, while Snorlax had the quirk to sleep all the time, making that strong weapon useless for the most part of the journey.

While the end of the Orange League made it clear that Satoshi isn't a newcomer anymore, there was one big issue when he started his Johto journey: he started out with too many Pokémon. With Pikachu and his Starter Trio, he had 4/6 of party filled, and soon at the beginning of the journey, he caught Heracross. Since Johto is an entirely new region, it has to be properly promoted, thus the main character needs more Johto native Pokémon, resulting in Charizard and Squirtle leaving the party to be replaced by Cyndaquil and Totodile, and Bulbasaur being just there for over half of the entire journey, maybe even 2/3. The decision to start every new region with only one Pokémon was a huge benefit of the franchise, thus the mistakes made in the original series would not be repeated again.

Nonetheless, the Johto Saga improved some of the Kanto Saga's flaws, namely the Gym Matches (the Gym Leaders in general) and Satoshi's rivalry with Shigeru.

Starting from Advance Generation, all of Satoshi's friends Pokémon and Team Rocket`s Pokémon received proper characterization, and the female companion is given a goal to make her a proper deuteragonist.

However, the biggest flaw of AG was the lack of a proper rival for Satoshi. This issue was dealt in Diamond & Pearl, where Satoshi was given a rival who clashed better with him than Shigeru ever could. Satoshi is shown to be in his peak for the first time hear, and finally has most of his newly caught Pokémon fully evolved.

While Best Wishes is rather disappointing, it's kind of underrated, and Satoshi is at least more competent than his Kanto self. However, the mistake of catching too many Pokémon was repeated again, but it was handled better, thanks to the rotating system. Dent and Iris are kind of too similar to Takeshi and Kasumi, especially the girls, but they seem to be more involved than those two back in Kanto/Johto. In my opinion, making Team Rocket too serious was a mistake. While it's nice to see them not in every episode, they became too generic as villains, and their Pokémon had no personalities whatsover, even after Team Rocket returned to their silly selves. On the other hand, Sakaki/Giovanni became a much bigger threat and he actually did something (aside from all his Mewtwo shenanigans).

XY managed to improve the series on new different levels, without re-setting Pikachu's strength, making all of Satoshi's new Pokémon evolve into their final stages, better battles, etc. His new companions are also very well handled for the most part. While Citron is a Gym Leader like Takeshi and Dent, unlike them, he is not an early Gym Leader, thus their was a big hype for his Gym Battle with Satoshi, and it was executed very well. Serena being an actual love interest made shipping funnier, especially since she's much nicer than all the previous female companions. She struggled to have an actual goal, but I like the concepts of Performances, especially since they are without any battles. Although, I do wish that she had captured more Pokémon. Eureka is better and cuter version of Masato, and her relationship with Puni-chan was very good, giving us actual good reasons to like Zygarde.

XY also manages to make Team Rocket, both funny and occassionally competent and dangerous, and they got two lovely Pokémon to care about.

While most of the Pokémon anime series don't follow the game's plot, Sun & Moon takes it even further and has changed most of the game's concept and it broke some traditions. There are apparently no Trial Captains, most of the game's Trial Captains are Satoshi's classmate (except Ilima for ironic reasons), and he doesn't travel for once. He just goes to school every day, but still has new daily adventures. Lillie and the four Trial Captains received massive changes, such as Lillie living in a mansion, she has no Cosmog, and her fear of touching Pokémon. The normal Trials are also different from their game counterparts. Those changes make the story unpredictable. There is also the implication that you can use more than one Z-Move in a single match if you and your Pokémon have enough stamina.

Team Rocket also got some lovely Pokémon, such as the creepy Mimikyu, the lovey-dovey Mareanie, or the cuddle bug of a Bewear who appears out of nowhere everytime when Team Rocket would blast off or would win.

Sun & Moon is some kind of fresh air in comparison to the older series.

I don't believe that I've ever seen 19 or 12, I only ever saw them on TV, so it was hard to watch them in order. The only time I ever owned any on VHS was one I got with Mewtwo Returns.

I definitely would say the weirder episodes from that first season were my favorites, mostly because they are the ones I still remember, despite not watching the show in years. Some that really stick out were any of the ones with the ghost pokemon. I think that was my most overplayed VHS tape from back then. The shipwreck episode and the racing one I remember. Poor Squirtle trying to carry Pikachu next to actually fast pokemon cracked me up as a kid. How did they even enter the race?

I would also say Misty Mermaid, but mostly because I was obsessed with mermaids at that age. I didn't care that it was fake.

Oh man, right in the childhood. Back when it was actually humanly possible to know every single Pokemon, too!

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