Pocket Monsters in the Anime

Dogasu's Backpack | Manga Guide | Pocket Monsters

Characters | Volume One Synopsis | Pocket Monsters in the anime | About the Author

The Pocket Monsters manga achieved what no other manga has managed to accomplish; it crossed over into the television anime. In Episode AG 86, "The Movie Rides on Bakuuda" ("Lights, Camerupt, Action"), Satoshi recalls watching a movie featuring Red, Pippi, and Pikachu as the stars. The general plot outline is as follows:

The gang is walking along when Pippi starts to complain about being hungry. Red yells at him, saying that he had just eaten.	Suddenly, Pippi smells something delicious!
It's the smell of this Himeguma's hamburger!	Pippi decides that it's time to eat.
Pippi scoops up Himeguma's burger and swallows it whole!	Red and Pikachu scold Pippi for stealing the bear pokemon's food.
Himeguma starts to cry for its mama.	And here we see Ringuma angrily charging toward the pokemon who made her baby cry.
Pippi knows he's in trouble now.	BAM!
Pippi is sent blasting off again~!	And child-Satoshi laughs hysterically as the movie continues.

Unfortunately, the episode's credits don't list the voice actors for any of the characters in the short, so it is unknown who provided the voices of Red, Pippi, Pikachu, Himeguma, or Ringuma in the Japanese version.

The Pocket Monsters manga version of Pippi's anime debut was actually announced in the August 2004 issue of CoroCoro Comics (released July 15th, 2004). In addition, the Pocket Monsters manga chapter for that month dealt specifically with Pippi's debut in the anime:

In the manga, Pippi is holding a press conference for his big anime debut, Oogui no Houmonsha Pippi ("The Gluttonous Visitor, Pippi"; the title is a parody of the title of the second AG Movie, "The Sky-Splitting Visitor, Deoxys"). However, nobody's showed up to congratulate him! Pippi wonders if the anime producers lied to him about him being in the show, so Pippi marches over to the anime production company to find out what happened. When the fairy pokemon arrives, a Kairikii whose working part-time tells Pippi that there must have been a mistake and starts animating the show right away. However, Kairikii passes out after it eats some poo Pippi had disguised as dumplings, so Pippi is left to animate the entire show himself! Pippi quickly figures out that he really isn't any good at drawing, so he resorts to photocopying images of himself to animate the show. With precious few minutes remaining before showtime, Red and the gang rush over to the television station, braving a typhoon in the process. However, it turns out that the typhoon has cut the power to the TV station, which means that Pippi's big anime debut cannot air! The chapter ends with Pippi vowing to be recognized by his "millions of fans" by walking around the country and putting on his show for all his fans.

None of the characters from Pocket Monsters, nor any other manga for that matter, have appeared in the anime since then. Hopefully, "The Film Riding on Bakuuda" won't be the last time we see Pippi and friends on our TV screens.

Characters | Volume One Synopsis | Pocket Monsters in the anime | About the Author