Jason Moses
September 3, 2013 
If you happened to be on the receiving end of the Pokémon marketing onslaught of the late 1990s, you likely have certain memories of the Pokémon TV show. Like how it wasn’t quite a slavish adaptation of the original Game Boy games. There were some liberties taken to adapt the material for the small screen, right?
Well, brace yourself, because somebody decided we needed that slavish adaptation, and it’s dropping in just a few months.
The one-off TV special, called Pocket Monsters: The Origin, will hew closer to the universe presented in the actual original Pokemon games for the Game Boy. That’s Red and Green as far as the Japanese audience for this thing is concerned, which — holy cow — were released over 17 years ago. American audiences will know those games as Red and Blue, which were released in the US a few years later in 1998.
There are a couple points about this show that tickle my fancy, at least on paper. First, it looks a lot more like the world of the games that I actually remember playing, as opposed to the Pokémon TV anime, which featured markedly different character designs from those of game series character designer/art director Ken Sugimori. It’s also not going to feature Pikachu in a major role. How about that?
Second, TV Tokyo’s going to be airing this thing at 7 pm, and between that and the very specific inclusion of the original brick Game Boy in the promotional video, it certainly seems like they’re targeting an older audience with this one. Animation production is being handled by XEBEC, Production I.G. and OLM, who also joined forces for the 14th Pokemon movie.
Pokémon: The Origin will be airing in Japan on October 2, two weeks before the release of the newest Pokémon games, X & Y, on the 3DS. Something tells me they’re looking to bring back lapsed fans right before the release of the new game.
Do we have any longtime fans of the Pokémon TV anime who are excited about this one? Let us know in the comments!
Source: animeanime.jp
This story originally ran in the 9/3/13 issue of the Otaku USA e-News
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