Understanding "Seasons" of the Pokémon TV Show (2024)

A new TV network or a video service announces that they'regoing to start showing Pokémonepisodes. "Season One is now available!", the ads might say. But whenfans goto check it out, however, they're dismayed to see that they only airthe first 52 episodes. But wait, isn't Season One more like 80episodes? Where's the rest of it!?

Unfortunately, Pokémonfans all over the English-speaking world do not seem to know what inthe hell the word "season" actually means. So here, let's put this torest once and for all.

What is a "Season"?

Sincethe beginning of television in the West, shows have been dividedinto what are called "seasons." Anywhere from 13 to 26 episodes will beordered at a time (though that number can certainly fluctuate) to beaired during a specific time period, usually between August and Aprilor so. If a show does well, it'll get picked up for another season. Ifit doesn't, it won't get renewed.

Japanese TV does things a little different. While it's no stranger tothe idea of seasons, especially in more recent years, most shows in theLand of the Rising Sun aren'treally broken up in nice little packets. Instead, Japanese TV is oftenfilled withdramas that are scheduled to start and finish within the span of a fewepisodes (so basically what we'd call a "mini-series" in the West) andshows based on manga or video games that just run straight throughwithout anybreaks whatsoever. In the latter case, a new episode may run every weekfor years (or decades, even!)without ever takingmore than a two or three week break. The show just ends whenever itends.

Pocket Monsters, inJapan, is a case of a show that just runs straight through without anybreaks. The show isn't broken up into "seasons" in Japan (the existenceof Best Wishes! Season 2notwithstanding); it just airs every week with practically no breaks.

This, obviously, clashes with the Western model of TV. So when the showisbrought over to the U.S. it has to be broken up into "seasons" in orderto fit the model of the country it's been brought into.

Anew opening does not equal a new season

Inthe West, opening themes tend to only change whenever a TV seriesentersa new season. I've been racking my brain trying to think of an AmericanTV show, either live action or animation, that breaks this trend andactually has changed itsopening theme mid-season but I'm drawing a blank. Maybe you can thinkof some?

Accordingly, many fansof the Western Pokémonadaptation apply this same logic to the English dub. For them, "SeasonOne" is Episodes 1 - 80because those episodes all use the "Pokémon Theme" opening."Season Two" is Episodes 81-116 because they use "PokémonWorld." "Season Three" is the 41 episodes that use "PokémonJohto" as their opening. And so on and so on.

It's a perfectly understandable, perfectly logical way to look atthings.

It also happens to be not the way things actually are.

Sowhat are the "actual" seasons then?

For the episodes that 4Kids dubbed,Kids' WB! bought the show in 52-episode packages. The breakup of theseasons didn'tcare if a new arc (or, in the case of the shift from Pocket Monsters to Pocket Monsters Advanced Generation,a brand new series) started mid-season; the season was 52 episodes nomatter what.

Season Nine onwards vary in length and actually doconform to the fan-made new opening = new season line of thinking. Butthe 4Kids stuff? Every one of them is 52 episodes long.

The official episode numbering is a three to four digit code thatconsists ofthe season number and episode number. So "Pokémon I Choose You!"would be Episode 101, "Pokémon Emergency!" would be Episode 102,”Ash Catches a Pokémon!" is Episode 103, "Princess vs. Princess"is Episode 201, "Pasta La Vista" is Episode 852, etc.

SeasonOne

Season One isa little different from the others but, when all is said and done,still ended up being composed of 52 episodes. Every episode in the seasonuses "PokémonTheme" as itsopening.

Theseason debuted as a first-run syndicated program on September 8th, 1998with "PokémonI Choose You!" and continued premiering new episodes that way until "The Marchof the ExeggutorSquad." What this means is that the show didn't really haveany set network or timeslot; in some markets, the show aired on thelocal UPN network at 6:00am weekdays. In other areas, Pokémon aired at 2:00pmweekdays on the local Fox network. The show did well enough toget noticed by Kids' WB! and was picked up by the network in February1999. Pokémon's newhome wouldair the remaining twelve episodes of the season on Saturday morningswhile also goingback and rerunning the old syndication episodes. The season concludedon May 1st,1999 with "The Breeding Center Secret."

The extra music videos tacked to the end of Season One episodes is thefive part"Pokérap," a music video created tohelp kids remember the names of 150 Pokémon that were publiclyacknowledged at the time. If you rewatch the music video you'll noticethat thereis zero footage in it from Episode 53 onwards; that's because 4Kidssimply didn't have anything past "The Breeding Center Secret." Theyonly had Season One footage to work with.

Anotherinteresting quirk about Season One is that it's the only seasonin which the word "Pokémon" is rendered with the franchise's logo on the episode'stitle screen whenever it contains the title of the show.

There are a few asterixes to include with Season One that are worthpointing out. Season One does not, obviously, count the three bannedepisodes "Beauty and the Beach" (which was still a banned episodeat the time), "The Legend of Miniryu," and"Cyber Soldier Porygon." It also doesn't count "Princess vs. Princess"or "The Purr-fect Hero" because even though those should have aired during Season Onethey got delayed to Season Two for reasons I'll get into later.

SeasonTwo

SeasonTwo originally debuted on Kids' WB! on September 4th, 1999 with"Princess vs.Princess" andconcluded on September 2nd, 2000 with "Charizard Chills." The season used to consist of 52 episodes, waslater cut down to 49 due to The Pokémon Company Internationalretroactively banning the three episodes that featureblackfaceJynx, and was then later expanded to 60 episodes to include the Season3 episodes.The Kanto portions of the season use "Pokémon Theme" as itsopening while the Orange Islands portion use "Pokémon World."

Theextra music video tacked to the end of Season Two episodes is the"Pikachu's Jukebox," a collection of AMVs set to songs from 4Kids' "2BAMaster" CD. The overwhelming majority of these songs use footage fromthis second batch of 52 episodes though Season One footage manages tosneak its way in to some of them. These videos also featurefootage from the Orange Islands episodes and so they would have spoileda fewthings while the Kanto portion of the season was still premiering onKids' WB!

In thepressrelease announcing the upcoming 1999-2000 fall schedule, WarnerBros. announced the start date for Season Two of Pokémon as being September4th, 1999. That's the premiere date of "Princess vs. Princess." Andhere'sa Kids' WB! commercial from 1999 advertising the episode as the "seasonpremiere" of Pokémon.

4Kids was usually pretty good about dubbing the episodes in order butfor "Princess vs. Princess" and "The Purr-fect Hero" they skipped overthem during Season One and didn't dub them until Season Two. Why wouldthey do that? The best theory I've heard is that 4Kids didn't haveenough money left over in their budget for Season One to dub"Princess vs. Princess," due to all thedigital paint they wanted touse, and so they had to wait until Season Two started to be able toafford to do so.

The episode "Beauty and the Beach" premiered during this season (June24th, 2000) but wasdubbed as a stand-alone special and therefore does not count as part ofthe season's package. This is the reason it hasn't been included in anyDVDrelease, ever; Vizor whoever else would want to include it on a DVD set would have topurchase itseparately.

SeasonThree

Season Three debuted on Kids' WB! on August 26th, 2000 with "ThePokémonWater War" and concluded on May 19th, 2001 with "The Fortune Hunters."It is 52 episodes long.

SeasonThree marked the first time 4Kids gave the season a unique subtitle toset it apart from other seasons, though "The Johto Journeys" title,unsurprisingly, is not applied to the eleven Orange Islands episodesthatmake up the first part of the season.

Here's a pressrelease made by Kids' WB! at the time told us that Season Three"will follow the adventures of Ash, Pikachu, Misty and Tracey as theytravel through the Orange Islands in their continued search for thefinal badges of the Orange League." And, well, the first elevenepisodes of the season do just that!

While Pokemon.com is retroactively trying to say that the first elevenepisodes of the season actually belong to Season 2, theirpage for Season 3 still lists "Don't Touch that 'Dile" as Episode312, not 301.

Unlike Seasons One and Two, Season Three had two different sets ofpost-episode music videos. The first was the "Pikachu's Jukebox" videosthat had been used throughout Season Two. These were used for thoseelevenOrange Islands episodes. The second was "Pokémon Karaokemon," aset of new music videos using mostly Johto Journeys footage set tosongs from 4Kids' "Totally Pok

SeasonFour

SeasonFour debuted on August 18th, 2001 with "A Goldenrod Opportunity" andconcluded on September 7th, 2002 with "Machoke, Machoke Man!."It is 52 episodes long.

SeasonFour is the first season to actually follow the fan-made opening =season rule, though that's probably more by accident than design.

SeasonFive

SeasonFive debuted on September 14th, 2002 with "Around the Whirlpool"and concluded on September 6th, 2003 with "You're A Star, Larvitar."It is 52 episodes long.

Even though there are 64 episodes that use the "Master Quest" opening,only the first 52 are part of Season Five; the remaining 12 episodesmake up the first part of Season Six.

SeasonSix

SeasonSix debuted on September 13th, 2003 with "Address Unown!"and concluded on September 13th, 2004 with "Watt's With Wattson."It is 52 episodes long.

Thefirst 12 episodes conclude Ash's journey in the Johto Region andthe remaining 40 begin his journey through Hoenn.

SeasonsSeven and Eight

SeasonSeven debuted on September 11th, 2004 with "What You Seed is What YouGet"and concluded on September 10th, 2005 with "Judgment Day!."It is 52 episodes long.

SeasonEight debuted on September 17th, 2005 with "Clamperl of Wisdom"and concluded on July 8th, 2006 with "Pasta La Vista."It is 52 episodes long.

Advanced Battle is the only one ofthese transitional seasons to not change the opening theme to go alongwith the change in regions (this time, from Hoenn to the Kanto BattleFrontier) even though it would have made perfect sense to do so.

SeasonNine onwards

Once 4Kids lost the dubbing rights to Pokémonand the show started being handled in-house by The PokémonCompany International, the show started to actually follow the newopening = new season pattern that fans had been latching onto foryears. The show's move to cable TV is probably to thank for this ascable TV is much more flexible with season lengths than a broadcaststation like Kids' WB! would have been.

But what about the Viz DVDs?

What about them?

The number oneargument thatfans use to prove that new opening = new season (other than "thisis the way I've always thought of it and I ain't changin' for nobody")thingisreally real is that the DVDs released by Viz Media in the U.S., whichare officiallylicensed products, list thesecond half of the Indigo League as being a part of Season One. Thephoto above, provided by EverChanger, shows a clear"Season 1" stamp onthe bottom left-hand corner of the boxset that includes Episodes 53-79.Case closed, right?

Well, no. The fact that VIz is an official sourcedoesn't make it correct, and when you look at the rest of the releasethere are other careless errors throughout. Half of the screenshotsthey use for the back cover of their 2014re-release of their firstIndigo League set are from episodes ("The Punchy Pokémon" and"The Battling Eevee Brothers") that aren't even on the set. TheDVD Menu for the fourth Indigo League disc ("Pokémon FashionFlash" to "Ditto's Mysterious Mansion") bafflingly uses a pictures ofAsh in his Hoenn clothes instead of his original series outfit. Theclosed captions on the DVDs consistently misspell Jessie's name as"Jessy."

In that context it's super easy to see how some poor intern couldmistakenly copy / paste the "Season 1" logo from the DVD cover templateand just call it a day.

The counter-argument to that, of course, is that if we can disregardViz even though it's an official source then we can just as easilydisregard all those official sources that go with the 52 episode rule.But look at that sentence again; official sources. Plural. Throughout the Englishdub's two decade history we've seen multiple press releases, TVcommercials, official website listings, and non-American DVD releasesthat all go by the official, 52 episode seasons. Hell, even Viz's other Season One releases avoidlabeling the various sagas as "seasons": the 2014 re-release of the secondand thirdIndigo sets do not have the word "Season" on them anywhere. Neitherdoes TheComplete Collection. And neither the 2009nor the 2015release of the Orange Islands sets have "Season 2" anywhere on them atall. The JohtoJourneys set doesn't have "Season 3" on it anywhere.

It is literally this single DVD box set from 2008 vs. an entiremountain of evidence.

Saying that the Viz DVD (singular) proves that new opening = new seasonis in any way official is like claiming that the one Trainer's Choice where Ash says thatArbok evolves into Seviper isproof that Ekans can evolve twice.

Whydoes any of this matter, anyway?

Getting the seasons"right" isn't just a matter of fans being overly pedantic overunimportant details or trying to show off that you're better thananyone. It's about not being caught off guard whenever ThePokémon Company International re-releases these old seasons in,well, the official way.

Just look at what happens whenever Season One is re-released, either onhome video or on some streaming service. There is always, always, always a group who get upsetbecause whatever they're looking at "cuts off after only 52 episodes.""Where's the rest of the season?" they ask. "Viz / Amazon / Netflix /whoever really needs to fix this ASAP."

But there's nothing here to fix. The show's first eight seasons areofficially 52 episodes apiece, end of story. Is the new opening = newseason idea easier for fans to remember? Sure. Does it make sense?Absolutely. But that's not how the show is bought and packaged by thepowers that be. Refusing to understand that does not change this fact.

So spread the word! Let people know that this numbering system, whichis not going anywhere anytime soon, by the way, is just the way thingsare. And who knows? Maybe one day the number of people who aregenuinely frustrated when the DVD they just bought isn't "complete"will go down to zero.