New Pokemon Anime Recreates Iconic Scene from Season One

Pokemon has finally debuted the latest iteration of its anime in celebration of the release of Pokemon Sword and Shield on Nintendo Switch, but unlike previous iterations, the premiere of the latest series was a bit more nostalgia heavy as it returned to the Kanto region from Red and Blue after spending years away. The premiere episode went even further than just revisiting the first region, however, as it explored Pikachu’s young life before it met Ash in Professor Oak’s lab. This meant fans also got to see quite the nostalgic revisit in the new series’ animation style.

The end of the premiere episode of the series featured a trip down memory lane with a reboot of one of the most iconic scenes from the original anime, and gives Pikachu and Ash’s first shocking meeting a welcome face lift. Check out how they compare below thanks to @CusDB10 on Twitter!

The first episode of the new series followed a young Pichu in the wild and showed us how it eventually evolved into the Pikachu we know today. Given that the episode was entirely in Pikachu’s perspective, this put a new spin on its first meeting with Ash too. Rather than Pikachu emerging from the Poke Ball for the first time we instead see Pikachu’s point of view from the moment as it laid eyes on Ash for the first time.

When Ash tries to hug Pikachu unexpectedly, he gets shocked and it certainly makes a lot more sense from Pikachu’s perspective. This strange boy from out of nowhere suddenly grabbed and held him too closely! Seeing it through Pikachu’s eyes cleared up many of the questions around its orenery attitude from the first series too as Pikachu was living a free life in the wild before getting stuck in a ball.

Pokemon: The Series is now airing new episodes weekly in Japan, but unfortunately has yet to be officially licensed for an English language release as of this writing. You can currently check out the first episode on YouTube, however.

Staff confirmed for the new series include Daiki Tomiyasu serving as chief director for OLM, Maki Odaira as series director, Kunihiko Yuyama as creative supervisor, Shoji Yonemura overseeing series construction, Shuhei Yasuda serving as character designer, Masafumi Mima as sound director, Yuki Hayashi as series composer. Voice cast members include Daiki Yamashita as Go, Yuichi Nakamura as Professor Sakuragi, Kana Hanazawa as Koharu, Megumi Hayashibara as Jessie, Shinichiro Miki as James, and Inuko Inuyama as Meowth.