Project #45: Pokémon Origins

*Chibi Isis is playing Pokémon Blue on a Gameboy SD* (Chibi Isis): Go Squirtle, take down that giant Onix! Use tackle! (Nitsuj): No! Use bubble, rock Pokémon are weak against water Pokémon! *Nitsuj notices use* Oh hey guys, welcome to Porject Nitsuj. I was cleaning out my closet yesterday and found my old Gameboy kit. Rather than turn in for what little money I could get for it I decided to give it to Chibi Isis and see what she could do with it. Surprisingly she’s taken a real shine to the Pokémon game, I was expecting her to go straight for Mario games. (Chibi Isis): Yay! I won! Nii-chan I won my first badge! (Nitsuj): Good job Chibi Isis, you’re well on your way to becoming a Pokémon Master. Now go play in the next room with Isis, I gotta do my review. (Chibi Isis): Okay *flies off to the next room*. (Nitsuj): Well since were on the topic of Pokémon, how about we talk about it? Getting started back in 1996 Pokémon has been going strong for years both in and out of Japan with multiple games and an on-going anime that shows no signs of ending anytime soon due the popularity that it has. Even I’m a fan of series, back when I was in elementary school me and my friends were totally into the Pokémon culture it was unlike anything we’ve ever seen and we loved it. We loved the show, the games, even the trading cards were fun to us. It got so big at my school that the principle had no choice but to ban it from school grounds. While I admit I’ve retired from Pokémon I still have a soft spot for it in my heart and will go to watch the show every now and then just to see what’s going on but I’ve always wondered what would happen if the Pokémon show followed the original story like in the games? Well I got my answer with Pokémon Origins. Released at the beginning of October 2013, Pokémon Origins is a 4 OVA special that features the original characters and settings from the first Pokémon games (Red and Blue) and serves as a more faithful adaption than the on-going anime. They were made to celebrate and promote the release of the new Pokémon games X and Y (in a few months I’m sure we’ll see Z) which came out 10 days after the first episode aired in Japan and to help build excitement for the next season of Pokémon. The series was a collaboration project produced by the anime studios Production I.G (Attack on Titan), Xebec (To Love-Ru series), and OLM Inc. (Pokémon the anime). Let’s dust off are pokéballs, take a trip down memory lane, go back to when Pokémon used to be simple and only had 151 Pokémon and take look at Pokémon Origins.

So we start the first episode off like the games with Professor Oak (who looks even older in this anime that he makes the other Professor Oak look like a man still in his 40s) introducing us to the world of Pokémon and what they’re used for (to give 10 year olds an excuse to runaway from home and not go to school). We then meet the star of our show Red (yeah I bet you thought it was gonna be Ash or Satoshi didn’t you? Suckers) voiced by Junko Takeuchi (Naruto from the Naruto Series. Oh God now I’m gonna imagine Red saying “Believe it” every time I see him) running off to Professor Oak’s lab to get his very first Pokémon and start his Pokémon journey to find all the Pokémon in the world and complete the Pokedex (that was my goal too and after 2 years of having the game I managed to collect them all but then they introduced the second generation and I was like fuck it). When he gets to the lab he meets his rival Green voiced by Takuya Eguchi (Kazuya from Gosick). Wait a minute I thought Red’s rival was Blue, what the hell’s going on!? Well for those of you who don’t know or are too young to remember the original games in Japan Red’s rival was indeed Green. The name Blue only applies in America because Nintendo didn’t want to confuse gamers and since the original games were called Red and Blue it only made since to have the rival’s name be Blue. When I first found out about this I thought it was pretty pointless and stupid but then I looked at this from the perspective of a child and yeah I could see some people getting confused by the rival being named Green instead of Blue. The colors red and blue are associated with fire and water the exact opposite of each other, two elements always battling each other and at odds with each other. Red and green, there’s really not that much of rivalry between the two, they look good together and red will usually dominates green because you think of nature when you think of green and we all know fire destroys nature but fire and water usually cancel each other out. So while I find the name changing kinda pointless I can understand why they changed it. Anyway, the two go in, get there pokedex, pokeballs (counting the one’s they have now they each have 4 pairs) and their first Pokémon. As we all know Red chooses Charmander and Green chooses the opposite and chooses Squirtle (my favorite starter Pokémon in the original games). Okay, I got to go off on a small tangent here but I never really got why everyone choose Charmander as their first Pokémon? Everybody I knew at the time my friends and cousins all choose Charmander as their starter Pokémon while I choose Squirtle as my starter Pokémon. Yeah, I admit Charmander’s final form is the coolest out of all the starters but when you think about he was the poor choice to start off with. The first two gyms were his weaknesses so if you wanted to beat the first two gyms you had to find and train a strong second or third Pokémon that could take hits and dish out strong damage which was very time consuming and hard because around this point the only thing you could catch were bugs and bird type Pokémon (there was also Rattata but let’s be honest nobody cared about that). I always found myself choosing Squirtle as my starter because I thought it was cute (shut up, I was a kid and I was huge fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and after watching the show I felt that Squirtle was the best choice for coming up with an effective strategy to win the game. Bulbasaur was also a good choice but it took him too long to learn strong fighting moves so I gave up on him and just stuck with Squirtle. I guess what I’m getting at is why would you make the game harder for yourself just to get a cool looking dragon when you could start off with a Squirtle or Bulbasaur which would have been a better choice and then find someone else willing to trade their Charizard for another Pokémon like I did (it was a legit trade. I gave him a powerful Alakazam and I turned his Charizard into a battling machine).

After getting his Charmander, Red begins his journey of trying to catch all the Pokémon in the world (gonna be long journey kid). As you imagine he starts off bad but quickly gets better and begins catching all kinds of Pokémon such as Pidgey, Spearow, Caterpie, and even Rattata (now I know you’re amateur, nobody goes after Rattata. I thinks it’s been cemented that Rattata is one of the least favorite Pokémon in history). He eventually comes across another trainer and actually tries to capture his nidoran (, I say that but let’s be honest those who had the game at least did this once). On his way to Viridian City (good times) he runs into Green and the two have battle where we see that these fights are a lot more violent and brutal than the show such as seeing Squirtle bite Charmander so hard that he screams out in pain (good luck getting that out of your nightmares). Red loses and falls into depression wondering how he lost to Green even though they both just started (it’s because water beats fire anyday of the week you idiot, believe it) but out of nowhere Brock shows up (man even Brock looks older and cooler in this show) and tells Red the reason he lost is because he’s not in sync with Charmander because he is weak and if he wants to get stronger he should challenge gym trainers but not before taking Charmander to the Pokémon center (oh good I like to see what they did to Nurse Joy). He goes to the Pokémon Center (not operated by Nurse Joy mind you, https://youtu.be/MdSH0l9NMek) gets his Pokémon healed and heads towards Pewter City where he sees that the Gym leader is Brock the guy he unknowingly met in the forest. The two have their battle (scene here: https://youtu.be/6Z02yqV0VZk, that is so cool, they use health bars and everything, and they even have TMs on floppy disk that is so 90s) with Red winning and running off to continue his journey now with a new purpose of becoming the Pokémon Champion and completing the Pokedex (no pressure).

We begin episode 2 with Red arriving in Lavender Town (holy shit we jumped ahead a lot. I was really hoping to see Misty and Surge’s battle) and hearing stories about Pokémon Tower being haunted by ghost and Team Rocket occupying the tower and capturing Mr. Fuji the owner of the Pokémon House a house that takes cares of abandoned and orphaned Pokémon (for those of you out there who were assholes and abandoned your Pokémon chances are you’ll find them here). Red goes to the Pokémon House where he runs across a Cubone who lost its mother to Team Rocket and has closed off its emotions not trusting anyone in the Pokémon House except Mr. Fuji who as I said before is being held captured by Team Rocket in the Pokémon Tower which is the graveyard of Pokémon who have died (think Arlington Cemetery only in the form of a giant tower). Red decides to go into the tower and rescue Mr. Fuji but little does he know Green has also entered the tower to play the hero and beat Red (amazing just like in the video games this guy continues to be an asshole). He enters the tower but once the ghost shows up he turns tail and runs away leaving Red to fight the ghost (don’t cross the streams) and sneaking past Red only to fight a member of Team Rocket. Green beats the Team Rocket member, steals the Silph Scope, and throws them to Red who puts them on to find out that the ghost is really Cubone’s mother Marowak who hasn’t been able to pass on because she still thinks her child is in danger. Cubone comes running in to see its mother and they have a touching but short-lived reunion (I find it confusing how their interacting with each other but fuck it this is a very moving seen). After the mother sees that Cubone is safe and in good hands she’s able to move on from the world and find peace (um your son is wearing your skull I think he has mental issues that needs addressing). Red goes to take on Team Rocket and with the help of Cubone he’s able to beat them, save Mr. Fuji, and restore peace to Pokémon Tower. Red receives these rare stones from Mr. Fuji and rides off on his bike (walking is for noobs) to the next town. Also, Cubone is interacting with everyone now in the Pokémon House (aww~).

We jump ahead again in episode 3 with Red now having 5 badges and his Charmelon evolving into a Charizard (was it worth it folks). Red is now in Saffron City where he and Green help the secretary of the President of Silph Company escape from Team Rocket. After getting to a safe spot she tells them Team Rocket has taken over the company (and yet nobody in the city realizes the building is under hostile takeover? Goes to show how close the company and the people of Saffron City are) and are pleasuring them to finish making the Master Ball the pokeball that can capture any Pokémon. Green goes to the police station while Red storms Silph’s building and takes on Team Rocket where he frees all the captured Pokémon, the scientist, and gets a Lapras from one of the scientist for saving them. He goes to face the leader of Team Rocket Giovanni (who is somehow more evil and despicable in this version than the other version) and gets defeated allowing Giovanni to escape to fight another day. But this doesn’t stop Red from challenging Sabrina (the teenage physic) and using his ghost Pokémon Hunter (Hunter: You do know this is the first generation, I’m weak against physic Pokémon? (Red): Don’t worry you’ll be fine, believe it! (Hunter): I don’t believe it! (Red): Die non-believer! (Hunter): I’m already dead) and win his 6th badge. He then goes to fight Blaine (hey ditto ditto time for a riddle) where he wins and earns his 7th badge and makes plans to return to Viridian City where he’ll challenge the 8thgym leader. He arrives at Viridian City where he sees that the gym leader is none other than Giovanni (son of a bitch~). Red can’t believe that Giovanni is the gym leader but he still agrees to battle Giovanni to avenge all of the Pokémon that Giovanni has hurt in the past. Giovanni also decides to get serious and instead of using his regular Pokémon he decides to use his two strongest Pokémon (scene here: https://youtu.be/19XwDOYn5co). Red wins the match, Giovanni dissolves Team Rocket, and Red earns his final badge and makes his way to the Elite 4 where he hopes to become the next Pokémon Champion.

In the final episode Red battles and beats the Elite 4 (okay its official, Ash is Red’s bitch. I’m not kidding he is, Red just got all of his badges in three episodes, defeated Team Rocket, and the Elite 4. Ash has been doing this since the 90s and he can’t even beat the first gym leader of each region without going through some trouble. I’m sorry Ash but you aren’t fit to wash Red’s sneakers let alone stand in his shadow). But if you played the games you know that you have to face the real Pokémon Champion your rival Green (or whatever you called him in the game. Scene here: https://youtu.be/yGucRehpSJc, as a fan of Blastoise it is so painful to see it lose to Charizard but that’s what it gets for biting Charizard when it was a Squirtle). After the match Professor Oak shows up and leads Red to the Hall of Fame where he and his Pokémon get inducted. Now you’re probably thinking that’s the end of the show right? Wrong, we’ve only begun! After becoming champion Red continued on his journey in completing the Pokedex and began capturing Pokémon left and right including the legendary birds (http://youtu.be/8VWDekbIaJE?t=5s). He finally completes the Pokedex and goes to tell Professor Oak the good news but when he returns he finds out that Green was attacked by a mysterious unknown Pokémon and Professor Oak wants Red to go face it (sure let’s send a child to face the dangerous powerful Pokémon that just hospitalized your own grandson I’m sure nothing bad will happen to him). As Red is preparing to set off and face this new Pokémon he remembers coming across research in his journey about Mr. Fuji being a brilliant scientist and trying to create a new Pokémon using Mew’s DNA but his research was dismissed on the idea of heresy (Mr. Fuji: They just jealous of my Pokémon making swagger). Red finally leaves to go and face Mewtwo where he starts off using Gangar who gets defeated off screen (Gangar: I told you I was weak against Physic-type Pokémon. (Red): That’s because you didn’t believe it. (Gangar): Oh I believe it alright. I believe that you’re a complete dumbass). The fight continues with Mewtwo beating all of Red’s Pokémon until he’s down to Charizard which Mewtwo throws into the water and Red uses the stones he got from Mr. Fuji and we see where the highlight or in my opinion the whole point of these OVAs (https://youtu.be/i0purbwzs4U, Holy mother of our Great Lord, Mega Charizard X! I swear this was the whole point of these OVAs, to show off that sweet S.O.B. Forget everything in the OVAs, this was the main point of this whole series and the funny thing is I can’t even get mad at it because its straight up awesome. I’m still confused why he turned back into Charizard but it’s okay). So Red captures Mewtwo and the Pokedex is complete (no really that’s cool Red that’s an achievement except you still got about 600+ more to go) but Red realizes that Mewtwo is the child of Mew which means there’s still one more Pokémon left for Red to catch (and the journey goes on).

Final Thoughts

These were very good. They took the actual video games and did a solid representation of them hitting all the right notes. There was so much effort and attention to the source material in these OVAs that it puts the actual series to shame. Red just pwns Ash easily, he starts off not really having a clear goal for himself and not knowing anything about Pokémon which is something I think everyone went through when they first started playing them but by the end of the first episode he gets a full idea of what Pokémon are and realizes that Pokémon only become stronger through the bonds they share with their trainer. After that he just continues to keep growing stronger and better as a character that I honestly wish he was in the on-going anime instead of Ash. Green is also done well, they manage to capture that asshole personality from the games and bring it to life. Hell, even Giovanni is done well, they actually give him a legit reason why he stopped Team Rocket, to start over because he wants to experience that same passion he felt when he was Red’s age about loving and be excited about Pokémon just like Red.

The animation is nice, the characters look like the characters from the video games but at the same time they look like they could hold well in today’s anime world. The music is awesome, it’s the soundtrack from the original games so those of you who have played the original games will feel a sense of nostalgia like I did when I was watching it. The fights are intense and even a little brutal at some points but that’s how they should be from the get go. They’re supposed to be brutal and cringing to watch because these are living creatures fighting each other. The on-going anime does a poor job at showing how brutal and tough these battles are but this anime doesn’t pull no punches they show just how brutal these fights can be and how much pain the Pokémon can be in like when Squirtle is biting Charmander. I also love how the fights have an hp bar with their Pokémon on the side and levels play out here just like they did in the games like in the OVAs the reason Charizard was able to beat Blastoise was because Charizard was at a higher level so Blastoise’s attacks will be less effective and the reason why Mewtwo was able to beat Articuno so easily was Mewtwo is level 70 while Articuno is level 50 it all plays out and makes perfect sense unlike that other anime where Ash has had Pikachu for years and yet it can’t beat the first gym leader of the Johto region by itself with just one hit. Having the TMs also be floppy disk was a good touch as well it really made you feel like it was the 90s again.

Now with all the good stuff I do have like 3 complaints. For starters I kinda didn’t like how it just fast forwarded through a lot of the gym battles and events in the games, I was really interested in seeing how Red did against the other leaders and the strategies he came up with. I also didn’t like how this special was all over Charizard, he was always the one to win the matches, the other Pokémon in Red’s team always went down or we never got to see them really fight. One of the things I really like about the on-going anime is that Ash doesn’t always rely on Pikachu to wins his battles all the time even though Pikachu is possibly Ash’s strongest Pokémon. Ash would rely on his large assortment of different Pokémon showing us that any of his Pokémon could be the ace of the team. Even in my game I had different aces. It’s true that Blastoise was my strongest Pokémon but he didn’t always win my battles for me, sometimes it was my Snorlax, Articuno, Jolteon, the list goes on. The point I’m getting that is that I wished the anime showed off more of Red’s team. He had a Lapras beat a Dragonite, come on I wanna see that plus I wanted to see his fights against the legendary bird Pokémon. Those were always the battles I had the most fun doing because I didn’t have a master ball so I had to strategize and come up with the right plan to capture them without knocking them out. The third complaint is a childish one on my part but why isn’t this 24 episodes? This could have easily been a 24 episode anime which would have easily outdone the on-going anime currently airing. They could even gone beyond 24 episodes and have Red journey to the other regions, battle their gyms, and become the champion of that region and beat the rival from that region it would been great and something I would watch. But what are you gonna do?

Final Score

Pokémon Origins earns a 7.5/10. Despite my complaints these 4 OVAs are great to watch and touch at my generation’s inner child. While I wished this was a 24 episode series I’m content with these 4 episodes and I’ll hold on to the hope that they’ll do this for the other regions as well. Pokémon has been going strong for almost 20 years and as long as fans and newcomers find the games fun and interesting it’ll continue going for another 20 years. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj *gets up and goes into the TV room where Isis and Chibi Isis are*.

(Nitsuj): Ladies, how are we doing to today?

(Isis): Doing fine master no complaints. Although I think you might have created a monster.

(Nitsuj): How so?

(Isis): Chibi Isis has already caught all of the original 151 Pokémon and is working through the Johto region as we speak.

(Nitsuj): What! How did she do this in one day!? It took me 2 years to catch all 151 original Pokémon!

(Isis): *Chuckles* you really underestimate the abilities of AIs.

(Nitsuj): I don’t believe this.

(Chibi Isis): Nii-chan, I’ve just earned my 4th badge and caught 42 new Pokémon in the Johto region. At the rate I’m going I’ll have this game beat and ready to move on to the Hoenn region.

(Nitsuj): *stares at amazement at hearing Chibi Isis’ progress, chuckles, and smiles.* Keep up the good work my little Pokémon Master *pats Chibi Isis on the head*.

*All images, pictures, and videos are not owned by me and belong to their respected owners. All rights reserved*

Thanks for reading. As always feel free to leave a comment or send them along with requests or feedback toiamprojectnitsuj@gmail.com.

Posted in Projects, Year 1 and tagged , .