During my childhood, I used to watch the Pokémon Anime. It was enjoyable seeing Ash/Satoshi use his Pikachu to defeat an Onix. Eventually, I lost interest in the show since it has a lot of filler episodes and for the fact that it’s loosely based off the games, especially when Ash/Satoshi’s Pikachu lost to a freaking Surskit in a recent episode!
On the other hand, Gamefreak decided to make short Anime special based off the original games titled Pokémon The Origin staring Red and Blue (named Green in this Anime). With this new take on the Pokémon Games, will it live up to its name? Perhaps. (Image Source)
The story involves a young trainer named Red who decides to go on a journey to complete the Pokédex and become Pokémon champion. Oak’s son, Green becomes his rival and meets him at Oak’s lab. Red chooses Charmander and Green picks Squirtle. With that, they start their adventure collecting badges, filling up the Pokédex and of course, and beating Team Rocket.
Compared with the main series, the story was very good and even had some drama such as Cubone’s mother being killed by Team Rocket. Still, the story feels very nostalgic, especially for me because I played all the games since the first generation. At the same time, I felt the story was rushed for the fact that it’s only four episodes long and we only got to see Red challenge Brock, Giovanni and Green in these four episodes. Even so, at least the battles look good and felt more like the games.
On the other hand, the production values for this four-episode special looked great. The animation and the music were excellent. This is surprising since the Pokémon anime in the past had very mediocre animation, especially when they started relying more on Computer Animation. Considering that this is short special and that they are doing it for the fans, it’s not all that surprising.
Overall, while I felt that this show should have received a 12 episode series so the characters would get developed even further, I still think they did a pretty good job with the four episodes they had. Still, the second half of the fourth episode felt like an advertisement for Pokémon X and Y as Mewtwo is in the show and Red Mega Evolves his Charizard into Charizard X to beat the crap out of him and catch it. When I saw that, I knew that the Genwunner’s brains are going to explode because they hate every generation besides the first. Hopefully from this, perhaps Game Freak will implement some of these changes in the main anime someday.
Overall Rating: 8.2/10, Good, B-
I don’t think i’ll ever quite escape the sound of Charmander’s screams >.>
I didn’t notice that until you mentioned it. I think it’s odd that they decided to use the original cries since they were in place due to the limitations of the hardware. Of course, the Pokemon Black and White 2 trailer had the Pokemon making regular animal noises opposed to the cries from the games, which makes me wonder why Gamefreak decided to do this.
I like Pokemon but I’m not avid enough to notice or care about all the details…though having someone actually catch Mewtwo fair and square is pushing it. Mewtwo isn’t supposed to get caught in anime adaptations as far as I’m concerned.
I only watch Pokemon when it airs on TV. No point watching it online. Animeniacs watch an anime online because they aren’t airing it on TV, original language and because they have a job to do talking about them in their blogs…if they have one.
I watched Pokemon mostly on the TV back in the day, but of course I don’t watch it anymore … but hopefully I will look back at some of the first season episodes in one of these nostalgia posts someday.
If you ever get around to that, you should really try a hand at watching the original Japanese version of the Kanto series + the Mewtwo saga and first three movies. Good example of classic 90s anime goodness,. It’s very saddening too because while watching it again recently, I realized that the Pokemon anime once had a lively cast of characters, and Satoshi actually had a personality (they… really dulled his character to unbearable propotions). I wonder what happened to the Pokemon anime’s quality… (oh yeah, marketing and Takeshi Shudo leaving the writing team mid-Jouto…). Not surprisingly, it was originally intended to run for a year and a half, hence the decline in quality over the years because the writers know they’re never gonna end it. Honestly, I think Satoshi’s journey should have ended in Jouto at the very least. His game avatar (Red) ended his journey after he defeated his rival (Green), Satoshi should have done the same (Shigeru). But I digress.
As for The Origin, I posted my own review of that over at my own anime blog. I wasn’t entirely satsified, but yes, I agree that it’s better than what the main anime has become. It was also nice to see some other animation companies besides OLM do some of their own visual work for the Pokemon franchise.
By the way, do you have a 3DS friend code? XY calls. 😀
I probably revisit the original episodes when I have the time and I think someone should have that around…. But I felt that after Johto, everything kind of went downhill, especially when 4Kids started to do their shenanigans by censoring rice balls with sandwiches. (I actually at a rice ball and they are pretty good).
but still, while this short special looked alot better, like in my review, it was rushed. Expected since it’s given a few episodes.
As for my friendcode, I have it in the Pokemon page in the menu bar. Here it is if you want to register me:
just reply back with yours
Here it is!
4656-6263-1690
Added… Sorry for the slight delay. :p