Why Pokémon Can Survive Without Ash Ketchum
After 25 years as the headliner of the Pokémon series, Ash Ketchum is on his way out. The Pokémon Company has announced that Ash's story will end in a special mini-series starting in January 2023 with an all-new cast taking over the series that spring. Whether Ash will truly disappear for good or be demoted to mentor or side-character status is currently unclear. I certainly couldn't imagine that the eminently marketable Pikachu would disappear from the screen for very long. Regardless, this is a turning point. Ash and his Pikachu have been the main characters of the anime series since 1997, and multiple generations have grown up with him as their protagonist. His departure would be the greatest change to the status quo in the history of the Pokémon anime.
Or would it?
The Pokémon anime franchise has been busy experimenting for the past few years. The mainline anime redesigned Ash and the rest of the cast for the "Pokémon Sun and Moon" series back in 2016. The following "Pokémon Journeys" positioned Ash alongside another main character, Goh. In the meantime, excellent animated spin-offs like "Twilight Wings" and "Pokétoon" didn't feature Ash at all. Old-school fans of "Pokémon" might have a tough time imagining the series without Ash, but the greater "Pokémon" franchise has spent the past several years preparing for a future without him.
Stand by me
Ash has always been a uniquely difficult character to build a story around. At first glance, his character is as simple as can be. He's a young boy who wants to be the best and is willing to work long and hard in order to achieve that goal. He does this together with his friends, both human and Pokémon. In short, he might as well be a character out of Shonen Jump, the magazine that produced hits like "Naruto" and "One Piece." But Ash's story is built with unique limitations. Unlike Naruto, Ash has no defining tragedy that drives him forward, and he never grows older. Unlike Luffy, the hero of "One Piece," the world of "Pokémon" is not allowed to change in response to Ash's victories. Despite having traveled across the world and caught countless Pokémon, Ash has scarcely matured since his introduction in 1997.
Nobody was more frustrated by this than the original scriptwriter of the Pokémon anime, Takeshi Shudo. Shudo understood the "Pokémon" franchise as a story of adolescence, taking inspiration from films like "Stand by Me." He succeeded in introducing darker, weirder elements to the Pokémon mythos in "Pokémon: The First Movie," but he soon became frustrated with Ash, who was not allowed to change in the way he wanted him to. "I want Ash to show some development as a character," he said in a blog post translated by Dr. Lava. "I want him to one day look back on those past 'days of Pokémon' with nostalgia." Shudo dreamed of an ending to Pokémon where Ash might one day leave them behind, and die remembering his childhood days of adventure. But at the time, it was not meant to be.
The agony of Takeshi Shudo
Takeshi Shudo decided that if he could not change Ash, he would write him out entirely, and the success of "Pokémon: The First Movie" gave him the freedom to do whatever he wanted in the follow-up. As a result, according to Daniel Dockery in his book "Monster Kids," the original draft for "Pokémon the Movie 2000," "didn't even include [Ash] or any of the main cast." Shudo only reintroduced him to the film, per Dr. Lava, when the staff requested that Ash be included. "Even though I'm the one writing the script," he said, "I'm always willing to listen to everybody's opinions and suggestions." Ash may have been a frustrating character to write, but as far as the animators and producers were concerned, "Pokémon" just wasn't "Pokémon" if he wasn't there. Ash would ultimately outlast Takeshi Shudo, who died in 2010 at the age of 61 from a subarachnoid hemorrhage.
Over the course of the "Pokémon" anime, the staff has made small but notable changes to the status quo. First, Brock and Misty took leave of Ash, although Brock would return to serve as Team Dad in Pokémon: Ruby and Sapphire." New characters like May and Serena were introduced to shift Ash from an up-and-coming newbie to a mentor figure. Ash also switched out his roster of Pokémon in each season, leading to new fresh team dynamics. One of the most memorable of these was his bond with Greninja, a powerful new Pokémon from the Kalos region. Ash and Greninja became so close that Greninja briefly replaced Pikachu as Ash's true partner in the hearts of many anime fans of that time.
The sun rises
The "Pokémon" anime series would see its first big changes to the formula in "Pokémon Sun and Moon." For the first time, Ash would not spend the season roaming from town to town. Instead, he attends the Pokémon School in Alola, which serves as his home base for the next several hundred episodes. This coincided with a series-wide overhaul of the cast's designs to be easier to animate. For the first time, Ash and Pikachu were able to truly emote beyond "small determined boy" and "cute mischievous mouse." So could their new friends, and this time there were a lot of them. "Sun and Moon" takes full advantage of its school setting to flesh out the cast. In earlier seasons, characters like Kiawe and Lana would have been one-and-done episodic characters, but "Sun and Moon" develop them so that they are capable of carrying whole episodes on their shoulders.
Lillie is the heart of the "Pokémon Sun and Moon" anime series. She's introduced as a shy and withdrawn girl who knows everything there is to know about Pokémon, but past trauma has made her too scared to ever touch one. It takes 14 episodes for her to catch her first partner Pokémon, an Alolan Vulpix she names Snowy. Lillie gradually comes out of her shell and learns to love Pokémon along with Ash and his friends. She reunites with her brother Gladion, helps to save her mother Lusamine from the powerful Ultra Beast Nihilego, and ultimately finds her lost father and restores his memories. Lillie's journey in broad strokes is not so different from that of May and Serena, but the extent to which she is allowed to grow and change at last fulfills Takeshi Shudo's ambitions from all those years ago.
On twilight wings
"Pokémon" took even greater risks in the following films and spin-offs. 2017 saw the release of "Pokémon: I Choose You!," a reimagining of Ash and Pikachu's first meeting that departs from earlier continuity. 2018's "Pokémon: The Power of Us" fully realizes Takeshi Shudo's dreams for the second movie, making Ash and Pikachu side characters in the story of Risa and her local community. Meanwhile, 2020 would see the debut of three of the greatest "Pokémon" animations ever produced. "Pokémon: Twilight Wings" was a miniseries directed by Shingo Yamashita at Studio Colorido and despite the short episode length, successfully fleshes out the cast of the "Sword and Shield" games through a frame narrative involving two original characters. Nick Creamer would write for Crunchyroll News that "Twilight Wings" was "not just 'a story in the Pokémon world,' but vignettes that actually capture the feeling of living in a world surrounded by Pokémon."
Next came the debut of "Poketoon," a series of charming shorts about Pokémon and their adventures. The series would not truly come into its own until the next year, but the first episode "Scraggy and Mimikyu" served as a statement of intent. Last was "GOTCHA!," a music video directed by Rie Matsumoto. Matsumoto is one of the most talented directors of her generation, and yet has been trying and failing to get a movie off the ground since directing "Blood Blockade Battlefront" at Studio Bones. "GOTCHA!" utilized her ability to coordinate energetic movement across multiple layers in order to sell audiences on the entire "Pokémon" franchise, and succeeded with flying colors. These projects all revolutionized the depiction of Pokémon on screen as well as the stories that could be told about them, with Ash Ketchum nowhere to be seen.
Another evolution
This whole time, "Pokémon" has been testing the waters. First in the early seasons by substituting Ash's friends and Pokémon for new characters, then by allowing the side cast to take the spotlight in "Sun and Moon." Later films imagined Ash as a character able to grow and change from the beginning, introduced him as a side character in somebody else's story, and finally removed him from the picture entirely in miniseries like "Pokémon: Twilight Wings." Whether or not the Pokémon Company intended from the beginning to retire Ash from the spotlight, this development was clearly inevitable. The series had done everything they could with the character, allowing him to win the Alola League Championship and finally the Masters Eight Tournament. Were he to remain the focus, "Pokémon" would well and truly stagnate.
In the end, Takeshi Shudo was right. The "Pokémon" anime has always been at its most affecting when telling stories about change. You can see it in "Bye, Bye Butterfree," a famous early episode where Ash says goodbye to one of his first Pokémon. You can see it with his Charmander, who grows into a stubborn adolescent Charmeleon and then a proud Charizard that must learn humility. Years later, "Sun and Moon" would introduce a Litten who must learn to move on when his guardian Stoutland passes away. Now Ash himself is on the verge of a similar change, evolving from a happy-go-lucky 10-year-old boy to somebody else. I don't know what will happen next, or even if the next stage will live up to the show's recent successes. One thing's for certain — if "Pokémon" is to survive — it must evolve. The next generation deserves an Ash to call their own.