Pocket Monsters Special moves to the Weekly CoroCoro Comics website
February 27th, 2025

Dogasu @ 22:51 JST -- Some important news about the Pocket Monsters Special manga came out last week and so I wanted to be sure to highlight in its own dedicated post. This is from the manga's official X (Twitter) page:

Announcement in publication change for Pocket Monsters Special Scarlet & Violet Thank you for reading Pocket Monsters Special Scarlet & Violet. Up until now the series has been published in the monthly magazine CoroCoro Ichiban! but, starting from the next chapter (Chapter 19), Pocket Monsters Special Scarlet & Violet will be moving to its new home on the online comic site "Weekly CoroCoro Comics." The series will continue to be released monthly, just like before. We will let you know once the release date for Chapter 19 has been decided. We thank you for your continued support of Pocket Monsters Special.

The Weekly CoroCoro Comics page for Pocket Monsters Special can be found here.

Chapter 18 of the Scarlet & Violet arc -- the one printed in the issue of CoroCoro Ichiban! currently on shelves -- will most likely be added to the Weekly CoroCoro Comics website on March 21st. We don't know when Chapter 19 -- the first web exclusive chapter -- will make its debut, but if they don't release it alongside the online debut of Chapter 18 then it's likely we might not see it until April-ish.

And just to make sure we're all on the same page here, the Pocket Monsters Special manga will continue forward as a monthly series, despite it being hosted on a website called Weekly CoroCoro Comics.

The Pocket Monsters Special manga began serialization in April 1997 in the magazine Shogaku Yon-Nensei. In the years that followed the series would bounce around from magazine to magazine until it ended up in CoroCoro Ichiban! in 2010, where it's been running pretty much non-stop for the past 15 years.

No reason has been provided for why Pocket Monsters Special is moving on to a web-only series.


Manga Guide: CoroCoro Ichiban! February 2025 Updates
February 26th, 2025

Dogasu @ 22:59 JST -- The April 2015 issue of CoroCoro Ichiban! came out last week (yes, the numbering is a bit confusing) and so here's the newest batch of Manga Guide updates.


Pocket Monsters Special, aka "Pokémon Adventures" in the West. In this month's chapter Violet and Nemo finally meet up with Scarlet and Pepa and work together to take on the Leader Pokémon Mimizuzu! Can they defeat "Lurking Steel" and get the newest spice?

Pokémon Card Game Yarouze~!, the "Pokémon tries its hand at a Yu-Gi-Oh! type manga" series. This month's chapter has Retto trying out the "Mary's Morpeko & Ohlonge ex" set on his old rival Monjana. Can the young card game player defeat Monjana and her seemingly endless supply of Basic Energy cards?


Pokémon 4-Koma Gakuen, one of the current series of Pokémon related comic strips. In this month's collection the Pokémon students enjoy gags revolving around school lunch.

Pokémon Frienda Oshiete! Friender-Man, the comic based on the current Pokémon arcade game Pokémon Frienda. In this month's chapter, Renda learns all about the special Melmetal pick that came packaged with this month's issue of CoroCoro Ichiban! Can he defeat the 5-Star Kyurem at the end of his playthrough?


On another note, this batch of updates officially makes it half a year since I started doing these monthly Manga Guide updates for the site. It's been a lot of work but I think it's been good to get a lot of this documented and the Manga Guide up and current again. Pokémon manga is one of those things that often gets overlooked in this fandom and so I'm happy to use the access I have to the manga here in Japan to help shine a spotlight on these series.



Rumor Guide: Pikachu was originally going to be able to speak human language
February 16th, 2025

Dogasu @ 22:44 JST -- For the first post-25th anniversary update to the site I've decided to update the Rumor Guide with another rumor regarding Satoshi's starter. Are the rumors that Pikachu was originally going to be able to speak human language true? Let's find out!


This one's a bit shorter than a lot of the other more recent entries -- the answer's fairly cut and dry, actually -- but it's still a great read filled with information I haven't seen posted anywhere else.

While I was at it I also moved all the current Rumor Guide entries over to their own page since the Features page that had been archived on before was starting to get a bit crowded.