Ash Ketchum may be the face most people connect with the Pokémon anime, but bro, he was never the only story worth animating.
ComicBook Anime has revisited Pokémon Generations, the 2016 short-form anthology that gave longtime fans something different: an animated Pokémon series that leaned closer to the games’ lore instead of reshaping everything around Ash’s journey. And honestly, looking back now, the idea still feels fresh.
Produced by OLM, the same studio behind the main Pokémon anime and shows like The Apothecary Diaries and Komi Can’t Communicate, Pokémon Generations ran for 18 episodes on YouTube. Rather than following one hero across a full season, it jumped between key moments, characters, and regions from the games.
The opening episode starts with a familiar energy: a young trainer catches a Pikachu and begins a journey from Kanto through to Kalos. But after that, the format opens up. Instead of another Ash-style adventure, the shorts zoom in on moments like Detective Looker investigating the Viridian City Gym, only to learn that Giovanni has already vanished after a recent battle.
That shift is the whole appeal. Ash’s anime worked because he became a flexible protagonist who could travel across generations, meet new rivals, and battle iconic trainers. But older fans also know the running frustration: big league battles often ended with Ash losing, tying, or being redirected so the show could keep moving.
Pokémon Generations solved that by stepping outside Ash’s perspective. It treated the games’ world like a wider universe, where villains, champions, investigators, and player-character moments could all carry their own dramatic weight.
One major example is Detective Looker, who first appeared in Pokémon Platinum in 2008 and later returned in games including Pokémon X and Y, Sun and Moon, and Black and White. Generations used characters like him to make the world feel connected, not just like background dressing for a single trainer’s adventure.
The series also nodded to major game moments without always fully spelling them out. Episode 15, for example, focuses on the clash between Ghetsis and N from Pokémon Black and White, with the player character arriving just as the episode cuts toward its climax. It’s a smart move: enough nostalgia to make fans go “wei, I remember this,” but still cinematic enough to work as a short anime vignette.
Pokémon has tried similar projects since. Pokémon Evolutions, released in 2021 for the franchise’s 25th anniversary, delivered an 8-episode mini-series with each episode focused on a different region and fan-favourite lore moments. Pokétoon has also been running since 2021, though that series is framed more around smaller animator-led stories rather than direct game adaptations.
Still, the article’s main point is hard to argue with: nothing has fully replaced the specific magic of Pokémon Generations. The episodes were short, but they pulled millions of YouTube views, and as of the source article’s writing, The Pokémon Company and OLM have not announced an official sequel or continuation.
Analysis: For Malaysia and SEA readers, the interesting part is the format. A YouTube-based anthology built around game lore is low-commitment, easy to jump into, and doesn’t require following a long weekly anime arc. If Pokémon wants to serve older fans who grew up with the games but may not be locked into the current anime, Generations-style shorts are basically perfect.
No need to reboot everything. Just give us sharp, lore-heavy episodes from across the games, animated properly, with enough respect for the moments fans already care about. Pokémon has the history, the characters, and the regions. The blueprint already exists.
Bring back Pokémon Generations, lah. The concept still hits.