Watching Pokémon on DVD!

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Last week was a pretty busy week, so I took the week off from the blog. Today though I'm here to talk about Pokémon. Specifically the original anime series, Indigo League, which originally began airing on September 8th, 1998 here in North America. I'm in the middle of watching the original series on DVD and I'm having a blast watching the show all the way through for the first time in 27 years. I'm not finished yet, in fact, I'm not even finished the first 26 episodes, but I still wanted to come on here and talk about it. So, let's get into it!

By now I don't think you need me to explain what Pokémon is to you, but for those three or four of you who don't know, Pokémon is a multi-media franchise that was created in Japan in the mid to late '90s that is based on the concept of traveling around the world, catching creatures called Pokémon, to then train and use in tournaments to win badges, and to study the Pokémon out in the wild, their natural habitat in this world. The franchise began as two video games created by Nintendo for the Game Boy, but expanded to include trading cards, the anime, tons of movies, spin-off games for various consoles, and toys among many other things.

 Pokémon aired on YTV here in Canada from 1998 to 2014, on Teletoon (known as Cartoon Network Canada since 2023) from 2014 to 2024, and then back on YTV as of 2025 (this year). Growing up though my siblings and I watched the show every day, Monday to Friday, on YTV. It never failed. We were always sitting in front of that TV ready for Pokémon, including "Who's that Pokémon?" and the Pokérap, which aired at the end of every episode. While I dropped off of Pokémon, the anime around the time that The Johto Journeys aired in late 2000, I still loved playing the video games, though, incidently, I also dropped off of those around the time that Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver came out here in North America in 2000. I was almost 14 years old when The Johto Journeys started and I lost interest in the anime similar to how I lost interest in Digimon after Tamers wrapped up in June, 2002 and lost interest in the then current run of Power Rangers after Dino Thunder finished airing in late 2004.

Lately though, due to my nostalgia for the '90s and early 2000s, and the fact that a few years ago I watched the first two episodes of Pokémon on iTunes, I started getting the urge to revisit the original season of the show, since I hadn't actually seen any of it, besides the first two episodes, since it transitioned into Pokémon: Adventures in the Orange Islands on December 4th, 1999, which just happened to be my 13th birthday. So I bought the Pokémon: Indigo League - The Complete Collection DVD set from Amazon. It's just the 2014 volume releases combined into one set, but I love the way the episodes are laid out on the discs. There's 8 to 9 episodes per disc and while it's like any other anime DVD or Blu-ray set, where it plays all the episodes whether you hit play all or go to any episode in the episode menu and hit play (it plays from whichever episode you selected). However, unlike other anime sets that I've experienced, the 9 episodes (or 8, depending on the disc) are separated into three episode blocks, so that the run time is 1 hour and 5 minutes per block, so I've been watching three episodes every night, except the nights when The VHS Club holds its weekly meetings on YouTube, or whatever night I'm watching a movie for the show. And it's working for me.

What threw me off about this DVD set though is that the Pokérap is the complete version and it's after the last episode on each of the first six discs, rather than split up into the Monday-Friday version that originally ran at the end of each episode before the closing credits. Which is fine, but there's no separate bonus features section to select the Pokérap from. It's still fun to watch it though.

I am really enjoying getting to watch Pokémon again after all these years. I'm not going to buy the other DVD sets to watch all 25 seasons that have Ash as the main protagonist, because I really don't have the space for them, but with Indigo League being the Pokémon series that I watched when I was in my tween years, it's fun going back and revisit the show that started the anime that still continues to this day through Pokémon: Horizons. 

Alright my friends, that's it for now. I'm gonna come back to Pokémon once I'm finished watching the DVD set, but I just wanted to talk about the set itself and my history with Pokémon and its various incarnations. I'll be back next week for more posts so until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.