Pocket Monsters in the TV Series

Dogasu's Backpack | Manga Guide | Pocket Monsters

Characters | Volume One Synopsis | Pocket Monsters in the TV series | About the Author

The Pocket Monsters manga achieved what no other manga has managed to accomplish; it crossed over into the television series. In Episode 086 of Pocket Monsters Advanced Generation, "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:


Pikachu, Red, and Pippi are walking.	Pippi starts complaining about being hungry.

Suddenly, he smells something good!	It's Himeguma's hamburger!

Delicious!	Pippi rushes over to the pokemon.

He swipes the burger...	...and gulps it down in front of Himeguma!

Red and Pikachu start yelling at Pippi.	Meanwhile, Himeguma cries for its mother.

From the distance, an angry Ringuma runs toward our heroes.	Nobody messes with her child!

Pippi realizes that he's in trouble.	POW!

"Ya na kanji pi~!"	A young Satoshi finds the movie hilarious.

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 animated 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 animated series:

In the manga, Pippi is holding a press conference for his big TV 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 TV producers lied to him about him being in the show, so Pippi marches over to the animation production company to find out what happened. When the fairy pokemon arrives, a Kairiki whose working part-time tells Pippi that there must have been a mistake and starts animating the show right away. However, Kairiki 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 television 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 them, one group at a time.

None of the characters from Pocket Monsters, nor any other manga for that matter, have appeared in any of the animated series 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 TV series | About the Author