Satoshi's rival, Shigeru, spent a lot of time during the Kanto portion of the series in a red convertible, riding around the region while his rival was stuck going around the country on foot. But was Shigeru really the one driving? Or did we all Mandela Effect this into our consciousness?

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Why does Shigeru have a car in the first place?

Before we get started, I want to touch upon the reason why such a young kid would have access to a convertible in the first place.

The main reason for this is because the character of Pocket Monsters' Shigeru is, as most Japanese fans understand it, lightly modeled after the character Mitsuru Hanagata from the classic baseball series Star of the Giants.


Mitsuru Hanagata is the snarky rival character to Star of the Giants' protagonist Hyuma Hoshi. While Hyuma and his family are dirt poor, often struggling just to make ends meet, Mitsuru grew up as the heir to his father's fortune and therefore had access to all the advantages that sort of thing offers. After spending five years studying abroad in the U.K., Mitsuru returned to Japan where his growing ennui leads him to become a juvenile delinquent. One of the more famous images of him from the series is of him (illegally) driving a yellow convertible with his nine other teammates all piled into the back, like in the image above. Mitsuru looks down on Hyuma when he first meets him and plays a lot of really aggressive pranks on the poor kid but, as time goes on, the two boys gain a trust and respect for each other as rivals.

Episode 031 "Look at All the Digda!"

The character Shigeru's loosely modeled after drives a convertible, but what about Shigeru himself? Let's take a look at the arguments made to support this claim.

1.  Viewers "remember" seeing him driving in the TV series.

Let's start with the easy one: Viewers swearing they've seen Shigeru behind the wheel of his red car. I say it's the "easy one" because all you really have to do to prove it one way or the other is to just sit down and actually watch the show itself.

The first thing you have to realize about Shigeru's red car is that was barely ever in the show. Shigeru himself appears quite a bit in Kanto -- entering that contest in the beach episode, digging for fossils in Grandpa Canyon, relaxing on Guren Island while Satoshi fights for his seventh Gym Badge, stopping by his grandfather's laboratory, etc. -- but most of the time he doesn't bother bringing his car with him. In fact, Shigeru's red car shows up in only a total of four episodes in the entire series, and in each of those four episodes its screentime doesn't really add up to much.

• Episode 001 "Pokémon I Choose You!" -- A single 5 second shot
  
• Episode 031 "Look at All the Digda!" -- 39 seconds altogether
  
• Episode 063 "Tokiwa Gym! The Final Badge!" -- 30 seconds altogether
  Episode 077 "The Grass Field! An Unexpectedly Powerful Enemy!" -- 26 seconds altogether
  

When all is said and done, Shigeru's red car got a grand total of about 100 seconds of screentime -- a little over a minute and a half -- in all four of its appearances combined. And that's it! So going through all its appearances in the show isn't going to take us that much time.

In the very first episode, "Pokémon I Choose You!," we see the red car Shigeru uses only at the very end of his already brief appearance in the episode. As you can see from the zoomed-in image below, the car's being driven by an unidentified man in a grey hat as Shigeru (rather perilously) sits with his feet on the back seat of the car.


The next time we see his car is a little over half a year later in "Look at All the Digda!" (Episode 031). As you can see, Shigeru's male driver from the first episode's been replaced with a brown haired woman in sunglasses, an animal print shirt, and a red scarf. We also learn that this car's a foreign import, with the steering wheel on the left side instead of on the right side like it is on most Japanese cars.


The next time we see Shigeru's car is in "Tokiwa Gym! The Final Badge!" (Episode 063). Here, we can see the young Pokémon Trainer's in the back seat again, only this time he's on the right side instead of on the left side like he was in the Digda episode. The same driver from before can be clearly seen in the second screenshot here, dutifully waiting as Shigeru taunts his rival.


The fourth and final time we see Shigeru with his red car will be in the episode when he's eliminated from the Sekiei League, "The Grass Field! An Unexpectedly Powerful Enemy!" (Episode 077). And, like every other time, his driver's the one behind the wheel of the car.


Shigeru and his red car appear in the TV series a total of four times, and in all four of its appearances we see someone other than Shigeru in the driver's seat.

2. There's a scene in Pocket Monsters (1997) Episode 031 "Look at All the Digda!" that clearly shows him driving

At the end of his appearance in Pocket Monsters (1997) Episode 031 "Look at All the Digda!," Shigeru gets into his red car, and then it drives away. I've seen people misinterpret this as him getting into the driver's seat and actually being the one to operate the vehicle, but if you look at the scene more closely you'll see he's actually getting into a passenger's seat in the back of the car, not in the driver's seat in the front.

First, here's the scene in question:

Before he gets in the car, we can see his brown hair driver sitting in the cream colored driver's seat.	Shigeru opens the door to get in. This model of car only has a single door on each side despite having both a front seat and back seat.
Shigeru climbs in behind the cream colored driver's seat.	As he waves goodbye, you can see the driver hasn't changed seats (or moved at all, really).
Shigeru and the girls wave goodbye as the car drives off.

Some people may be interpreting the last shot here as Shigeru driving by holding the steering wheel with his right hand and waving with his left, and that he's looking ahead (and not back at Satoshi and the others) because he's busy driving. But that's not what's happening. Shigeru's actually just doing that thing he often does where he waves goodbye to Satoshi without looking back.

Pocket Monsters (1997) Episode 116 "A Rival Showdown! Satoshi vs. Shigeru!!"	Pocket Monsters (1997) Episode 228 "Dash at the Pokémon Ride!!"

So while it may look like he's the one driving, Shigeru's simply sitting in the back passenger's seat.

3. They heard about ten-year-olds being considered adults from Takeshi Shudo's novel

In November 1997, Takeshi Shudo released Pocket Monsters The Animation Vol 1. Journey, the first of two novelizations based on the TV series. The first book retells the first four episodes of the original Pocket Monsters TV series, with a lot of brand new background information and other details added in that weren't there in the TV show.


Since the book was written by the TV show's head writer, Takeshi Shudo, many fans see this novel as the "real" story, the version of the show Takeshi Shudo himself actually wanted to do before those pesky network executives got in the way and started mucking things up. That's...debatable, to say the least. But, if you do treat the book as an actual part of a TV series and not the alternate universe re-telling that it is, then it's a treasure trove of lore details that help explain how someone as young as Shigeru can even drive a car in the first place.

Shigeru is introduced on Page 30:

For example, there's this kid named Shigeru Ookido, who's the same age as Satoshi. たとえば、シゲルというやつがいる。サトシと同 じ年のオーキド・シゲルだ。

The book also tells us that in the Pokémon World, ten-year-olds like Satoshi (and Shigeru, apparently!) are actually legal adults, for all intents and purposes. From Page 16:

It's said this country (in which Pokémon takes place) is very similar to the Japan of the 20th century, but there are also some differences. Let me explain. この国は、二十世紀のニッポンによく似ていると いわれるけれど、ちがうところもある。そこらのこと、ちょっとだけ説明しておこう。 One example is that elementary school education is compulsory only up until the age of ten. たとえば、義務教育の小学校は十歳までだ。 If you want to go to middle school after that, then you're free to do so. 中学校は行きたい人が行けばいい。 But legally, you're considered a child only up until the age of ten. As soon as you leave elementary school you're treated the same as an adult. 法律的には、十歳までが子供で、小学校を出ると大人と同じ扱いをうける。 This is closer to another country from the 20th century called the U.K. (United Kingdom) than it is to Japan. ここいらは二十世紀のニッポンというより、イギリス…英吉利という国に似ている。 This system is known as the "Everyone Who Graduates Elementary School is an Adult Law," often abbreviated as "Elementary Graduate Adult Law." これを、「小学校卒業みんなが大人法」。略して小卒大人法 (しょうそつおとなほう) という。

If Shigeru is ten-years-old, just like Satoshi, and ten-year-olds are legally adults, then that means he should be eligible to drive, right? According to the lore provided by this novelization...probably, yes. More details about the law, from further on in Page 16:

You're treated as an adult across the board. You won't be denied things because you're not eighteen yet, for example, but you won't get away with anything because you're only fourteen or fifteen either. For example, if you take something from a convenience store and try to leave without paying, you won't just get away with just being scolded; you'll be arrested by the police, just like an adult would. No matter how much your mother or father try to apologize on your behalf, if you do something wrong then you're the one who'll have to pay. すべてが大人なみ だ。十八歳未満お断りもないが、十四歳だから十五歳だからといって、許されることはない。たとえばコンビニから黙って物を取ってくると、怒られるだけじゃ なく、警察に逮捕されてしまう。お父さんやお母さんがどんなに誤っても、悪いことをしたら本人の責任なのだ。

While driving isn't explicitly mentioned here, based on the text above we can reasonably assume that Shigeru is old enough to drive a car.

So if we "see" Shigeru driving, and a book written by the show's head writer implicitly tells us Shigeru's old enough to drive, then that just all fits together perfectly, right? The problem with this, other than that first part about ever seeing Shigeru drive, is that the book tells us he has a driver in that version as well. From Page 66:

Shigeru waves goodbye as he gets into the convertible, the driver already sitting behind the wheel. シゲルは、手を振りながら、運転 手付きのオープンカーに乗り込む。

So even though Shigeru is technically an adult in the world of Pocket Monsters The Animation Vol 1. Journey, he doesn't actually exercise his right to drive a car.

How did a rumor like this get spread?

Shigeru's never been seen actually driving a car, and yet there are still so, so many people convinced otherwise. So what in the world's happening?

The best explanation is probably a combination of faulty memories and a just straight up Mandela Effect in action. The Mandela Effect is the name of a phenomenon of multiple people sharing the same false memories. Wikipedia lists a number of well known examples of this phenomenon in action, though there are of course many, many other examples:

・Memories of the respective title component of the Berenstain Bears children's books being spelled "Berenstein" ・The logo of clothing brand Fruit of the Loom featuring a cornucopia ・Darth Vader telling Luke Skywalker, "Luke, I am your father" in the climax of The Empire Strikes Back (he actually says, "No, I am your father" in response to Skywalker's assertion that Vader killed his father) ・Mr. Monopoly wearing a monocle ・The existence of a 1990s movie titled Shazaam starring comedian Sinbad as a genie

A lot of the people talking online about how "Gary used to drive around in a car" probably haven't seen the show since they were a little kid and so their memories of what actually happened in the show got jumbled around at some point. Your five-year-old self "remembers" Shigeru driving, and so you keep that memory alive for years and years and years, never questioning its validity.

But, if you take a look at the actual show itself you'll see that nope, Shigeru never actually drives a car in the Pocket Monsters animated series.