By Dogasu
Posted January 1st, 2022

Every year I make an attempt to predict what will happen in the World of Pokémon and then post those predictions on my website as a sort of fun little game. Part of that game is to then check back on those predictions a year later to see how I did. So let's take a look to see if any of the stuff I thought would happen in 2021 ended up coming true.

Video Games

For the 25th anniversary I think we'll get Virtual Console style re-releases of Red / Green / Blue / Pikachu on the Nintendo Switch. But not just the same ROMS that were released on the 3DS Virtual Console; this time around I think it'd make sense for us to get the Super Game Boy versions, with the borders and Super Game Boy colors and everything.

I still, for the life of me, cannot figure out why this didn't actually happen. Why didn't Nintendo have this ready in time? How are we nearly five years into the system's lifecycle and we still don't have a Game Boy Virtual Console on the Nintendo Switch?

Predicting that the next main series game is going to be Diamond & Pearl remakes is boring, so instead I'll say the new games will be sequels to Diamond & Pearl set 15 years after the events of the first games. They'll come out in November of this year and will feature a new Gen 8 Mythical Pokémon or two.

Whoops, we ended up getting those "boring" Diamond & Pearl remakes after all! We are, of course, also getting a "sequel" game later this month, except it's more of a prequel and is taking place a few hundred (?) years before Diamond & Pearl, not 15 years later.

The first Gen 9 games will be teased sometime this year but won't actually come out until late 2022. Game Freak will initially be very tight lipped about whether or not the new games will have all the 898 Pokémon from Generations 1 - 8 included from the get-go but I'm betting they won't.

So far we've heard absolutely nothing about any of Game Freak's plans after the release of Pokémon Legends; Arceus, including Generation 9.

The Switch's New Pokémon Snap will contain the voice actors from the TV series voicing the Pokémon, just like the Nintendo 64 original.

I never actually bothered to pick up a copy of the game but it apparently doesn't? And the Pokémon just make random animal noises instead?

Pokémon GO will finish both Gen 6 and Gen 7 this year. Satoshi Hat Pikachu will be made available again in February, around the time of the video games' anniversary. A Zarude special mission will come out to commemorate the English release of Movie 23.

A "Kanto Celebration Event" took place from February 21st to February 27th that gave players a chance to get a bunch of Shiny Kanto Pokémon but unfortunately Satoshi Hat Pikachu wasn't one of them. However, a "Secrets of the Jungle Event 2021" took place from October 1st to October 10th that did bring Zarude into the game so I got that one right.

Pokémon Sleep will not come out in 2021 either, making fans wonder if the game (or app, or whatever) has in fact been canceled.

Let's be real, Pokémon Sleep is never actually coming out, is it? I asked that very question back in August and it seems like most people more or less agree.

I made this prediction last year, but a recent tweet from Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada is prompting me to say this again; we'll see an announcement of a Pokkén 2 this year, with the game being slated for a 2023 release.

So far, nothing! I hope we get a new Pokkén Tournament game at some point because the first one was really fun and exactly the sort of game this franchise needs every now and then.

Animation:  Pocket Monsters 2019

This is not so much a prediction for 2021 as it is for 2022, I guess, but I do not think Pocket Monsters (2019) is not going to wrap up after only three years. I think we'll still be following the adventures of Satoshi and Gou through Generation 9 (if not longer).

I feel like I'm one of the only people who thinks this...? Everywhere I go people are acting like 2022 is going to be "the last year of Journeys" but I just don't see it that way at all. I mean first of all, we have no idea when Generation 9 is even going to come out but also, why would a new generation mean the end of the series?

Returning characters in 2021:  Other than the ones we already know about I think we'll see Hikari and Takuto ("Tobias") appear again.

Hikari's come back twice now (with a third appearance scheduled for later this month) but Takuto did not.

Satoshi's World Pokémon Championships rank will hit within the Top 300, thanks in part to battles he'll have with additional Galar Gym Leaders. I'm thinking we'll see Satoshi go up against Yarrow and Makuwa before the end of December.

Satoshi is at Rank 36 as of the end of December 2021. So I was way, way off! Neither Yarrow nor Makuwa appeared in the main series in 2021.

The Yell-Dan will make their debut in the TV series for ...let's say a two-part episode.

They didn't, but that teaser trailer we got at the end of last month tells us that Mary and Nezu are showing up in early 2022 so maybe the Yell-Dan aren't too far behind?

There will also be a Isle of Armor / Crown Tundra mini arc sometime this year, during which Satoshi will get a Dakuma.

This didn't happen. Project Mew members Tsurugi and Asahi both have one Wulaosu each and Dai Soup slid in an appearance in the very last episode of 2021 but that's about all the Sword & Shield DLC content we've gotten in the TV series so far.

We'll get two more "two-in-one" episodes, and three more episodes without Satoshi in them like that Gou / Tokio episode from last year.

We got another "two-in-one" episode in March; Episode 058 "Panic! A Ball of Gokurin!! / Come On, Kamukame Turtle Race!". We had zero Satoshi-less episodes in 2021, however; I guess that one episode they did back in 2020 was an experiment that the staff of the show didn't think paid off?

The episode that aired just a few days ago opened up the possibility of Gou getting legendary Pokémon so I think he'll get...let's say three more in 2021. But I don't think he'll get any full sets right away; like, he'll get Groudon or Kyogre, but not both. Dialga or Palkia, but not both. And so on.

Gou has not gotten any new legendary Pokémon since Suicune.

The Japanese Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" Blu-ray / DVD will come out around July 2021.

Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" did indeed come out on Blu-ray / DVD on July 14th, 2021.

My Movie 24 prediction is that we won't see the film released until July 2022. If you want to be pedantic then you could consider Pocket Monsters The Movie "Koko" as the film for both 2020 and 2021 (it was technically in theaters both years, after all) and so it's not like we'd really be "skipping" a year, right? Movie 24 comes out July 2022, setting the stage for Movie 25 to come out the same year Pocket Monsters The Movie "Mewtwo Strikes Back!" celebrates its 25th anniversary.

We did not end up getting a new movie in 2021 and so far we've gotten no word of any coming out in 2022, either. The presence (or absence) of any news in the next month or so will really tell us a lot about what they're planning to do with the movie franchise from here on out.

Miscellaneous

I don't know enough about the Pokémon TCG to make any decent predictions so I'll just say we'll get some kind of memorial book released in 2021 with lots of  card galleries, illustrations, interviews, and other commemorative content.

As far as I can tell no, we did not get any sort of commemorative book.

We'll get a second Yuki Hayashi Pocket Monsters (2019) soundtrack released at some point during the year.

This didn't happen. In fact, 2021 was the first year in the franchise's history that we did not get a single Pokémon-related CD release in Japan at all!

There will be...something done to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Kosaku Anakubo's Pocket Monsters manga. Not really sure what that'll be, but I think we might see some "Best Of" graphic novel release in Japan or something like that.

This did not happen, no. The manga continued its run in CoroCoro Aniki but isn't doing much else as far as I can tell.

Machito Gomi's Pocket Monsters (2019) manga will continue to exist...?

It did continue to exist until October, at least, when CoroCoro Comics published the final chapter. Viz Media also started releasing an English translation in the U.S. under the title Pokémon Journeys and will continue to do so throughout 2022.

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...and that's it for my 2021 predictions! I'll be posting my 2022 predictions when I do my website's anniversary write-up later this month