Shibuya, Tokyo

Happy 30th Anniversary Pokémon We celebrate Pokémon's 30th anniversary with tributes from fans and fansites

Vol. 4, issue 2 of Johto Times is now available!

This week, we celebrate Pokémon's 30th anniversary with tributes from fans and fansites. Plus, we recap all the latest Pokémon news, and announcements from the latest Pokémon Presents.

Happy Pokémon Day!

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If it wasn't for the Pokémon Shock incident, this episode would have very likely aired during the actual Girls' Day holiday back in 1998.

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Happy Girls' Day! The hinamatsuri episode of the original Pocket Monsters (1997) series is, if I'm not mistaken, the only time in the series that an actual date (March 3rd) is said aloud within the show.

Kojirou didn't even bother to put on a wig! He just plopped a hat on top of his boy hair and called it a day.

"It took the show over 150 episodes before we got to see one of Satoshi's traveling companions' Pokémon evolve on-screen" sounds like one of those fake statistics people like to make up for clout, but apparently it's actually true...!?

It's so nice of the writers to let Satoshi bring up his Orange League victory here, especially considering how they haven't always thought it important enough to bring up in the past.

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When Satoshi's celebrating his victory against Hitodeman he can be heard singing the "ze~ yeah~ yeah~" part of Mezase Pokémon Master.

I literally LOLed during this whole Togepy vs. Pikachu battle.

This is seriously one of the most entertaining battles of the series.

I really do love this episode, but I also recognize that it has a super effed up premise. A group of children hold a series of cockfights to determine who gets to keep the living creature they just yanked out of its natural habitat...? 😬 But, it gets away with it because hey, it's Pokémon!

Breaking the fourth wa...I mean, split screen thing.

The show continues to restrict itself to using only the Johto Pokémon who've gotten their own episodes up to this point in the series, meaning the overwhelming majority of these are still Kanto Pokémon.

The debut of Kasumi's special lure, the "Kasumi Special Version 3!"

Satoshi also makes a comment about how the existence of a "Version 3" means there must've been a Version 1 and 2 at some point, which is pretty much the same joke the Rocket trio makes with its giant robots every now and then.

I love the little detail here of the humans using actual fishing rods while Egg and Mouse over there are just using sticks with strings tied to them.

Episode 151 "Who Gets to Keep Waninoko!? Satoshi vs. Kasumi!"

This episode was absolutely phenomenal. I genuinely had so much trouble picking just four screenshots for this post because there are just so, so many great moments in this one. Probably one of my new favorites.

#DogasuWatchesJohto

Umeda Station (Osaka)

Yeah, my phone's autocorrect messed that up

Yup!

ICYMI: Here’s a translation I did a few years ago of an interview conducted with Pocket Monsters’ author, Kousaku Anakubo, about the very start of the series.

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New chapters of the series continue to be posted on the CoroCoro Online website every month.

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Today marks the 30th anniversary of Kousaku Anakubo's Pocket Monsters manga! The series got its start in the April 1February 28th, 1996 issue of CoroCoro Special under the title "The Mysterious Pokémon Pippi." A few chapters later the series will change its name to simply "Pocket Monsters."

My first impression guesses at their name origins

Haburou
“Happy” (leaf) + “fukurou” (owl)?

Pomken
“Pomeranian” + “ken” (dog, canine)?

Miory
“Mizu” (water) + "yamori” (gecko)?

#pokemon

Yeah, based on that blog entry it seems like this was made just for the staff to share with each other. The back of the DVD cover also says “Not for Sale” at the bottom.

I’ve actually been on the lookout for that for a while but so far haven’t seen the show use anything other than red crosses 🤷

No, the show got rid of all Japanese text at the start of the Orange Islands. With *very* few exceptions, pretty much any English language text you see in the show throughout Johto was also there in the Japanese original.

Nope, but they also don't really do milestone celebrations like that on the Japan side.

(Also, there're different ways of counting the original series based on whether you consider "Rougela's Christmas" and "Iwark the Bivouac" to be regular series episodes or not, so that does complicate things)

Content
1. "Creating a legend"
2. "Toward a new dimension"
3. "Designing new life"
4. "The men who dig up the underground"
5. "Connecting the world"
6. "Comment from the president"

Runtime: 45 minutes, Extras: 15 minutes