Pokemon Origins (English DVD)

The Pokemon TV anime hasn’t done too badly for itself, continuing to go strong as a morning “cartoon” with over 800 episodes and 18 seasons to its name. But while new generations of fans can tune in every morning and catch an episode of Ash and his companions as they explore the region highlighted in the latest video game release, they might never have the opportunity to enjoy the plot delivered by the two games which started it all – Red and Blue. Pokemon Origins originally aired in Japan as a series of four 20-minute specials, each highlighting a particular event that took place during the first set of games in the series.

Pokemon Origins follows the tale of an aspiring Pokemon Trainer named Red, who along with his rival Blue are tasked by the legendary Professor Oak to travel around the Kanto region and fill the Pokedex. During Red’s quest he encounters a gang known as Team Rocket which makes a name for itself through stealing as many Pokemon as possible for profit, aims to defeat the eight gym leaders and seeks to complete his mission of catching all 150 Pokemon. That’s right, back in the day it was actually practical to not only see all Pokemon included on the cartridge but actually ‘Catch ’em All’.

To highlight the biggest positive of the series first off, it was really enjoyable being able to enjoy the plot of the original games without a silent protagonist and all the other limitations that would have hit dialogue delivery due to the small size of the original GameBoy cartridge with so much to cram in it. Red pretty much epitomizes what you would expect from the “Player Character” while Blue thankfully dropped some of his dated mannerisms and comes off as being more friendly but still willing to one-up Red with his desire to be the very best no matter what.

Brock and Giovanni also receive enhanced roles in the series, the former serving more as a guide to Red and the latter as a core antagonist with his respective Gym Battle drawn out . Ultimately these two are the only gym leaders who have their battles with Red highlighted. Unlike the TV anime series which works towards developing the Pokemon just as much as the human characters, Origins often limits their roles to battles which to be fair isn’t too far from what the games do even today.

The production team also throw in many obvious references to the original game from the retro loading screen to a familiar battle screen appearing on Gym walls. It may not have contributed much to the overall plot, but it was fun spotting all the references.

As mentioned above, each of the four episodes in Pokemon Origins highlight a particular event from the video games – Red beginning his journey, the trek up Lavender Tower, Silph Co. + Earth Gym battle and finally the Elite Four + Post-Game content. I will be frank in saying the decision to do this left me bitterly disappointed, and while they chose four of the more logical events in the game to highlight for each individual episodes, the rest of the video game’s plot was referenced in short seconds-long flash backs. While Pokemon Origins is not “terrible” because of this decision, a full 13-episode TV season in my mind would have been more appropriate.  Another wise decision would have been to not use the final half-episode to simply promote the Mega Evolution feature of Pokemon X and Y which did not appear in Red / Blue and in a way conflicts with the many retro Pokemon references they put into each episode.

Pokemon Origins was co-produced by animation studios Oriental Light and Magic, Production I.G. and Xebec, three anime studios with a number of notable series under their belt. In all honesty the animation quality was just slightly above average for all four episodes, with the battles thrown into each episode being its saving grace in the Design department. Music however was more positive, consisting of new tracks and tracks from the original game remixed.

I am reviewing the Australian release of Pokemon Origins which was published last month on DVD by Beyond Home Entertainment. This edition only features a newly commissioned English dub which features some localization changes to content. Unlike the TV series, these changes were made so that the references to the game can be appreciated by the wider audience. The English dub features a competent cast of voice actors including “Teen Male Protagonist Voice #1” Bryce Papenbrook as Red, Lucien Dodge as Blue and Kyle Hebert as Professor Oak. The dub is proficiently done, even if it can initially be weird seeing certain characters dubbed by difference voices from their TV anime counterpart.

There is no extra content at all on the disc.

Overall, Pokemon Origins made for an adequate viewing experience that delivered just enough to evoke some fond nostalgic memories but fell short of its true potential as a full anime series rather than a set of four special episodes. Surely off the back of a TV anime series that has spanned 800+ episodes, 80 of which were focused solely around the Kanto region, they could have spanned out the plot for something more substantial. However with adequate design quality, decent characters and some memorable music – I won’t lie that I enjoyed myself watching these episodes… and in the end that is all that counts.