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Rumor:
Pikachu was originally going to be able to speak human language
Rumor Status: True

Pikachu "speaks" in Pocket Monsters The Movie "I Choose You!"

With the exception of the Rocket trio's Nyarth and a few legendaries, the overwhelming majority of the Pokémon who appear in the Pocket Monsters animated series are only able to make a very limited selection of noises. But did you know that wasn't always going to be the case? And that Pokémon like Pikachu were maybe going to be able to speak in full sentences?

Precedents

Prior to the start of the animated series it was rarely ever necessary to tackle the question of how much Pokémon can speak. In the video games that started it all, Pocket Monsters Red & Green, the Pokémon you can talk to on the overworld just sort of make animal-like roars, suggesting that Pokémon cannot in fact speak human language.

An NPC Pokémon "talking" in Red & Green

Other Pocket Monsters related releases from 1996 were able to largely ignore the topic as things like figurines and playing cards didn't really require its distributors to make a decision one way or the other.

The only other piece of pre-animation media to really tackle the question was Kousaku Anakubo's Pocket Monsters manga. In this long running comic series, almost all the Pokémon are able to speak in full sentences, just like the humans do. The Pokémon often end whatever they say with a syllable or two from their names but other than that their speech isn't really any different from that of any of the human characters.

Pippi yells at a Zubat for stealing his fish. From Volume One, Chapter 4.

So when it came time to create the animated series the show's producers had two precedents from which to work. Would they make the Pokémon just make noises, like in the video games? Or would they have them talk like in the manga?

Early plans

It turns out there actually were plans to have at least Pikachu speak human language early on in the show's production. We know this because of the 2000 book Pokémon Story (ポケモンストーリー) by Kenji Hatakeyama and Masakazu Kubo. In the "Pikachu" section of Chapter 2-5: Animation, we learn from the show's director Kunihiko Yuyama that the show's creators actually went back and forth a bit when it came to the topic of Pikachu speaking. From Page 333:

On top of that, the way Pikachu and the other Pokémon -- with the exception of Nyarth -- came to not be able to speak human language gives us a good look at how the cartoon team's views on the Pokémon themselves changed over time.

また、結局ピカチュウをはじめとするポケモンたちが、ニャースを除いてしゃべらないという方針を最終的に固めてゆく過程にも、アニメチームのポケモン観が変化しながら深まっていったことがよく示されています。

"The outline we received from Mr. Tsunekazu Ishihara and Mr. Satoshi Tajiri stated that 'Pikachu shall not talk.' But since it was going to be traveling alongside Satoshi every week we really wanted to be allowed to give it dialogue. And so we spoke with them again, and this time they actually did agree to let us have Pikachu talk. But, as we got further into the series we started to see the Pokémon more and more like regular animals, and started to think that if Pikachu was allowed to speak human language it would no longer be an animal, it'd just be another character named Pikachu. And that really didn't sit well with us. We also had the feeling that if Pikachu was allowed to talk that'd probably kill off a lot of its cuteness, right? And so in the end we decided not to have it speak after all." (Kunihiko Yuyama)

「ピカチュウはしゃべっちゃダメっていう設定を石原さんと田尻さんからもらっていたんですけど、サトシと旅をするわけですし、やっぱりしゃべらせたいっていう話をしたら、じゃあしゃべっていいっていうことになったんです。でも、やっていくうちに、やっぱりポケモンは動物なんだとどんどん思うようになってきた。だからピカチュウも、しゃべっちゃうと、動物じゃなくてピカチュウという動くキャラクターになってしまって、それはすごく気持ち悪い感じがしたんです。逆に、ピカチュウのかわいいさを殺いでしまうような気がしたんです。だから、やっぱりしゃべるのはなしだねっていうことになったんです」 (湯山)

In April 2004, the English language website Manga University conducted an interview with Pikachu's voice actor, Ikue Otani. During the back and forth with university founder Glenn Kardy, Ms. Otani provides her perspective on the whole "Pikachu speaking human language" topic.

Any chance we’ll ever hear Pikachu speak a whole sentence?
"As I’ve mentioned, Pikachu was supposed to learn a language, like a baby learns a language, and that’s the way I was doing it at first. Then, a few months later, the producers told me Pikachu wasn’t going to speak. At the time, I was disappointed. But because Pikachu doesn’t speak Japanese, children all over the world can hear my voice. So it turned out OK. I’ve since given up any dream of Pikachu ever learning or speaking Japanese."

About seven years later, in 2011, TV Asahi aired an episode of its Onegai! Ranking GOLD (お願い!ランキングGOLD) TV series that reportedly featured a tidbit about these plans to have Pikachu speak. For a bit of background, Onegai! Ranking GOLD was a weekly countdown series that conducted polls on any number of topics -- food, vacation spots, singers, etc. -- and would then announce the results of that poll in each episode. Every now and then the show would do episodes based on Japanese animation, and in November 2011 they did an episode ranking who its respondents thought were the best animation voice actors.

In this image posted online on various social media accounts, it seems as though voice actor Keiichi Nanba is telling the panel that "It seems the idea to have Pikachu speak was abandoned because (Ms. Otani) was able to convey emotions using only its Pokémon cries" (鳴き声のみで感情表現ができたためピカチュウがしゃべる設定をやめたらしい). The idea here is that it was actually Ms. Otani's amazing performance that was one of the factors that made the show reconsider having Pikachu speak human language, something neither the Pokémon Story text nor the Manga University interview touched upon.

Unfortunately I have not been able to find this episode online to confirm any of this for myself. I'm about 95% sure the screenshot above comes from the November 12th, 2011 episode of the show -- if you check this archive of the show's official website you'll see the episode features the exact same panelists wearing the exact same clothing, and that Ikue Otani (大谷育江) has the same sixth place ranking on the website as she does in this screenshot -- but unfortunately I'm not able to find a copy of this episode anywhere online to confirm this one way or the other.

Regardless, this screenshot kept being used as proof for the next twelve years or so. And then, in early 2023, the show's general director Kunihiko Yuyama brings up the topic again in a new interview.

On Page 30 of the April 2023 issue of Animedia, the interviewer asks the following:

Satoshi and Pikachu have a friendship that surpasses humans or Pokémon. What do you pay special attention to when depicting their relationship?

サトシとピカチュウの間には種族を超えた友情が芽生えていますが、ふたりの関係を描くうえで大事にしていることはなんですか？

Here's how Mr. Yuyama responded:

"To not have them dependent on words. Ever since the animated series first started we thought it'd be good to give viewers the sense that these two communicate using only gestures and animal noises as much as possible. At first we even toyed with the idea of having Pikachu speak like the Rocket-Dan's Nyarth (laughs). But we soon realized it'd be a lot more realistic and interesting to have them be able to communicate with one another without using words instead. And that's how Pikachu ended up the way it is today."

言葉に頼らないことですね。アニメ開始当時から、なるべく行動や鳴き声だけで通じ合っている感じが出せるといいなと思っていました。じつは当初、ピカチュウもロケット団のニャースみたいにしゃべらせようかという案もあったんです (笑)。でもしゃべらせずにコミュニケーションをとれるほうがリアルで面白いんじゃないかという話になり、今の形になりました。

So while the nuance may vary depending on who it is that's actually telling the story, the general through line's the same; Pikachu was going to speak human language at some point, but then the show decided against it shortly after.

The Rocket trio's Nyarth

Speaking of the Rocket trio's Nyarth, how'd he get around this whole "no talking" rule? For the answers to that we need to go back to Pokémon Story, more specifically Page 336:

"We asked to at least be allowed to have Nyarth speak because we wanted to make the Rocket trio be like the villains in Time Bokan. So we thought it'd be best to have our Nyarth be a Muttley-type character. The goal was always to make Nyarth a bad guy who's able to speak human language." ((Animated series producer) Chouji Yoshikawa)

「ニャースだけはしゃべらせてくださいってお願いをしました。というのは、ロケット団を、まあ言ってしまえばタイムボカンみたいにしたかったのと、ケンケンみたいなのが一人いた方がいいだろうと思ったからなんです。はなっから、ニャースを悪者にしてしゃべらせようと思っていました」 (吉川)

The Time Bokan series mentioned here refers to a popular animated series from the 1970s that helped popularize the bumbling villains trope seen so often in Japanese animation. The "Muttley" Mr. Yoshikawa's talking about is referring to Muttley (or "Ken-Ken" in the Japanese text) from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races, which enjoyed quite a bit of success in Japan back when it first aired..

And finally, from Page 337:

However, the success of the combination of the talking Pokémon Nyarth and the rest of the Rocket trio was purely happenstance. Yuyama explains:

しかし、このしゃべるポケモンのニャースとロケット団の組み合わせの成功は、実は偶然の産物でした。湯山がその事情をこう説明しています。

"When it comes to Nyarth, you know, we didn't really think that deeply about it. He started speaking from around when we were given the OK to have Pokémon use human language, and talking cats aren't really all that rare, and so we had him speaking from fairly early on in production."

「ニャースはですね、あまり深く考えずにですね、ポケモンはしゃべってもいいだろうくらいのところで始まったときに、こいつネコだしということで、早くからしゃべらせちゃってたんですよ」

The Nyarth in the animated series is brought to life by voice actor Inuko Inuyama and her unique voice, starting with the Rocket trio's first appearance in the second episode. Once the final decision was made to not have any of the Pokémon talk, however, it was far too late for the show to go back and change Nyarth back to be like the others.

アニメとなったニャースが、声優犬山犬子の個性豊かな声を借りてしゃべり始めるのは、ロケット団が登場するアニメ第２話からです。ですから、ポケモンはしゃべらせないという方針が固まった頃には、もう修正が利かないところまで仕上がっていたのです。

Once the Pocket Monsters animated series started airing, the kids watching noticed, of course, that the only Pokémon who could speak human language was Nyarth. And so the team got a lot of questions from the audience asking why that was.

しかし放送が始まれば、当然のことですが、子どもたちはポケモンの中でしゃべれるのはニャースだけだということに気づきます。そして、その理由を問い合わせてくるようになったのです。

"With Nyarth we had established that there actually are Pokémon in this world who can speak human language, and yet as the series continued on Nyarth was still the only one who was able to do so. We had kind of painted ourselves into a corner there. So we asked the writers to come up with an episode to get us out of that jam and explain to our audience how this particular Nyarth became able to speak."

「しゃべるポケモンもいるよっていうことでニャースを設定したのに、気がついて見たらしゃべれるのはニャースだけになっていたんです。逆になってしまいました。それで、しゃべらせちゃった後始末のシナリオを書いてもらって、子どもたちに、しゃべれるようになったわけをお話ししたんです」

That story was broadcast as Episode 68 of the TV series, "Nyarth's ABCs," and the children accepted the explanation it provided.

それは第68話「ニャースのあいうえお」として放送され、子どもたちも納得したのでした。

So there you have it! It seems as though there were some plans to have Pikachu speak human language early on but that those plans were abandoned fairly early on. Outside of the Mystery Dungeon series and a few of the other manga series, Pokémon have largely either only ever said their own names or make animal noises, regardless the media.

This is probably for the best. Aside from how drastically different the TV series would be if Pikachu was allowed to chat it up with Satoshi each and every week, the "no speaking" rule also helped Pocket Monsters stand out from all the other monster shows of the era. That's certainly worth speaking up about.

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