Pokemon: Indigo League (1997/1998) TV Series Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? Happy Friday! Today I'm going to take you back to 1998 to talk about Pokemon: Indigo League which is the first iteration of the Anime that I watched when I was a kid. I bought the first two episodes on iTunes a while back so I watched both of them for this review. Before we start though, I would like to point out that I'll only be talking about the English dub. It's what I grew up with and it's what I know best. Also, aside from these first two episodes, I haven't watched Pokemon since late 2000 or early 2001 when The Johto Journeys was on, so I don't have any knowledge of later incarnations of the series as I did not continue watching the Anime once I was in high school, college or adulthood. Also, I will be reviewing Pokemon the First Movie tomorrow, and only that movie as I haven't seen any of the subsequent films. With that out of the way, let's get into it.

Pokemon was one of the shows that my siblings and I watched all the time when we were kids. It aired on YTV at 4 pm on weekdays (according to the Pokemon Wiki), and we loved it. As I mentioned before, I only watched it up to the third season of the Anime, The Johto Journeys and even then, I didn't actually watch very much of seasons 2 and 3 when they were on. By that point I was in middle school, and was spending alot more time up in my bedroom. Though I would still come down and watch the occasional episode of both season 2, Adventures in the Orange Islands, and season 3, The Johto Journeys, with my brother and sister. Plus, by 1999 I was more interested in Digimon than I was in Pokemon.

The big reason that I was more interested in Digimon is because, Pokemon had become repetitive by that point. It works fine as a video game, because, for the most part, the games are standalone with new characters and new Pokemon every single game, with enough having changed when you return to previous regions for it to stay interesting. With the Anime however, Ash is still the protagonist, and while his traveling companions are switched up from time to time, with Brock being the only really consistent one, Ash and Pikachu have been the central characters of the series since 1997 in Japan, and 1998 here in North America. And unfortunately, Ash doesn't grow and change as a character, neither does Pikachu. Whereas in Digimon the characters all have development and arcs throughout each version of the show (of the four that I watched anyway). Plus the story always progresses in Digimon.

And it's not that Pokemon is a slow burn either. It is in some ways, because it's not like Ash meets Brock or gets his core team of Pokemon right away. No, it takes several episodes for that to happen. But, because it's based on a video game, where character progression isn't always supposed to happen (especially on the Game Boy, and early Nintendo consoles), the writers don't have a whole lot of leeway in the adaptation process. Not to mention for the localization process, several things had to be removed due to broadcast standards for children's television being different here in North America than they are in Japan.

Despite these problems, rewatching these first two episodes, "Pokemon! I Choose You!" and "Pokemon Emergency!" is nostalgic for me. Simply because, like I said, watching Pokemon was something my siblings I did alot together. Especially during the initial 1998/1999 run of the series. That's Pokemon to us, in terms of the Anime anyway. We did have Gold and Silver in our Game Boy collection.

The voice cast is pretty cool and iconic. Though what I didn't realize is that Ash's mom is voiced by Veronica Taylor in this incarnation of the series. Veronica Taylor voiced Ash for the first eight seasons of the show. So that's bizarre, but honestly, not that surprising since animated series tend to use the same voice performer for multiple characters, which goes all the way back to the early Disney short cartoons from the '30s and '40s. 

What also surprised me was that Jessie and James weren't after Pikachu in episode 2, figuring he was just another Pikachu, which aren't rare or valuable. Which is cool. But then, the thing that makes them decide to capture him is because...he defeated them by using Thunder Shock which was boosted from electricity Ash was somehow generating through Misty's burnt up bicycle? Huh? That doesn't make any sense to me at all. Especially since, the bike wasn't connected to any power source. So unless Pikachu was powering the bike, and I completely missed it, there is no reason Team Rocket should be impressed enough to classify Pikachu as a rare and valuable Pokemon all of a sudden. 

I looked this up on Wikipedia, because I didn't know what came first in North America, but apparently the Anime debuted only ten days before Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue were released over here. "Pokemon! I Choose You!" first aired on September 8th, and the two games were released on September 18th. I always thought that the games came out here first, and THEN the Anime debuted with a year in between. But, nope, that is not the case at all. 

So one of the most nostalgic things about watching these first two episodes is that both retained the Poke Rap at the end and episode 2 has the "Who's That Pokemon?" segment during what would've been the show's first or second commercial break. Now, I have never seen this show on home video formats before, so I don't know if either retained these sections. What I have seen online are VHSrips of episodes from their original North American broadcasts on the Internet Archive and elsewhere, so because they were taken from the TV, those segments were included. So I thought it was cool to see the digital releases on iTunes keep them.

It was fun going back and rewatching these first two episodes after so many years. The animation holds up pretty well, seeing the Poke Rap again was cool, and it's just as cheesy a show as I remember it being, watching it on the TV from the floor of the family room with my siblings. Especially since all of the show's elements that I remember, including Team Rocket's introductory speech, which they give in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE, are presented in both episodes. 

That's going to be it for me for today. I'm going to be watching Pokemon the First Movie on VHS tonight, so look for my review on that one some time tomorrow. In the meantime have a wonderful afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care.