Pokemon and I go way back. I was there when Ash picked Pikachu, when Misty’s bike became a casualty of becoming a Pokemon Master, and when Pikachu fell in love with the Ketchup bottle. Pokemon shaped my imagination, gently held my hand as I stepped into the growing world of gaming, and ushered in years of obsession over video games, massively popular TCG, and anime. It even pays my bills now. That expansive background is what makes it so hard for me to admit that, after nearly thirty years, I’ve finally accepted that Ash Ketchum was never a great character.
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For many of us, Ash Ketchum is the iconic face of the Pokemon franchise. We mourned his retirement from the animated series and were cautious of these new characters that took up the mantel. However, in watching Liko and her crew explore and grow, I realized that Horizons: The Series was giving me something I always craved from Ash: Character growth. These new, dynamic characters were written into a beautiful world that was interconnected, not episodic. They were complex and had dimensions that Ash was never able to achieve. It broke my heart, but also allowed me to think more critically about this show that I loved so much.
Ash Is Really Only as Good as His Friends
I think most Pokemon fans can admit that Ash really is only as good as his companions. It’s a brutal truth, but as a fully static character, his reactions to things are magnified or decreased based on the intensity of those traveling with him.
For example, during Indigo League, Ash seems immature, careless, and obnoxious thanks to his regular fights with Misty. While he has a good moral compass and cares about his companions, he is considered headstrong and rash as he pushes Pokemon and friends to the breaking point to meet his goals.
In Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, Ash is nearly unbearable in his partnership with May and Max. This is easily his worst iteration, coming across as stubborn, sulky, and brash. May, who embodies many similar traits, seems to fuel his antics rather than dampen them. I remember trying to watch these series arcs as a young teen and truly just disliking him as a character.
By the time we reached Pokemon Black and White, I had properly fallen off the anime. Dawn felt like a less confident version of May, with some of Misty’s temper thrown in. The return of Brock and his generic, creepy older friend personality only made the episodes cringey. It was also painful to watch Ash go through the same basic character arc of being a good trainer out the gate, showing unusual connection with his team, losing a battle or two, crashing out in confidence, finally getting it together, and then failing to beat the Elite Four or Champion in every new era. It was exhausting and repetitive.
Then we got to XYZ. This was easily the best of Ash Ketchum, and it wasn’t because he had suddenly become an amazing character. The introduction of Serena, Clemont, and Bonnie saved Ash’s personality. Serena is, hands down, the best female character of the series. She has a proper character arc, grows as a person, and learns so much about herself throughout the story. She transforms from a shy, unsure person into a confident and driven trainer with dreams. Her growth acts as a softening agent on Ash’s rigidly stiff character, softening the edges of his outbursts and allowing him to appear more carefree and clueless than stubborn and stupid.
Clemont is equally as important, gently drawing out Ash’s competitive side with his own desire to grow as a trainer. Clemont is refreshingly free of the gross tropes that many of the other male side characters of the Pokemon anime have introduced. He is married to his work as a Gym Leader, has excellent manners, and cares enormously about his little sister. He feels more relatable than any other male counterparts Ash travels with, and his transformation into a more emotionally connected Gym Leader left me in tears.
Unfortunately, the lessons learned in XYZ were tossed out the window, as Sun and Moon debuted with a hideous art style, thin, flimsy characters, and yet another iteration of Ash Ketchum who seemingly had erased all previously learned lessons from his mind. This was the era of Ash we would end with. A bumbling, accidentally lucky, infuriatingly dim person with no real charm. These traits were brought to Pokemon Journeys, where I cringed and winced my way through his and Goh’s antics. I wanted so badly to like the final seasons, but genuinely…I was rooting for Leon in the final battle, and was genuinely sad when he lost.
Writing And Growth Are Important
Surprisingly, I’m not the only person who seems to feel this way. As Mizuki on Twitter has stated, “Pokemon Horizons clears any Ash series in terms of writing and character development.”
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But why? What does Pokemon Horizons do differently? I have three running theories for this bold claim. The first comes down to how the episodes play out.
The original seasons of the Pokemon anime could be watched in any order. The episodes followed a simple formula, where the main conflict could be resolved by its conclusion. Meowth gets a fever and needs help? One episode of finding a cure and meeting a one-off side character. Ash and Pikachu have a fight, and it nearly joins a colony? Epic music and tears, but tied up in twenty-five minutes. The reason XYZ did so well was that it was one of the first in the series’ history to add plotlines that could go beyond a few episodes.
Malamar’s reappearance was a sinister multi-arc plotline, Squishy’s history and its journey with Bonnie took up a full season, and Professor Sycamore’s journey to Mega Evolution was woven seamlessly into Ash’s journey through the region. While still quite basic, the writing invited players into a world that was bigger than Ash’s desire to be a Pokémon Master. It made us care about the world and the other characters in it.
Pokemon Horizons took this improved writing and ran away with it. The creators developed a deep plot with interconnected mysteries. Viewers need to watch the episodes to understand what is happening, and it nurtures investment in Liko’s journey and what she is trying to do and learn. You care about everyone because every character is important.
The next big point is that time elapses. Hear me out. We have definitely beaten the “Ash is 10 forever” topic to pulp, but it’s actually very important for characters to age in their timeline. A lack of time passing prevents a character from gaining anything from their experiences. This is why every new era of Ash feels like a blank character. In order to keep him young, relatable, and iconic, they had to abandon any chance of him learning and growing from his journeys. Liko isn’t held back by this issue. She is allowed to mature, gain greater perspective, and become a better and more defined person. It’s a more complex and beautiful version of what occurred with Serena, who feels much older than Ash by the end of XYZ, and even more so in her cameo in Journeys.
The last and most important thing is the abandonment of tropes. Pokemon leaned heavily on trope-based characters or archetypes for decades. Brock is the “ladies man”, Ash is the “loveable hero”, Gary is the “haughty rival”. The characters are flat, and that allows for minimal connection to the audience. People are complex, and we want to see ourselves in the heroes we look up to. By Pokemon Journeys, Ash wasn’t a character we could connect to anymore. He became a Frankenstein’s monster of our creation. Decades of characters stuffed in one ten-year-old skin left him so unrecognizable that many of us mourned the loss of childhood nostalgia over his actual departure from the anime. Ash is my age. He deserves to settle down and sort himself out.
However, in watching Pokemon Horizons, I realized that not only was Ash never as good as I wanted him to be, but that in clinging to him, we prevented the creators of the Pokemon series from expanding and exploring new and interesting opportunities. I’m glad Ash is gone. I’m excited to see what Horizons has in store, and I am so happy to finally be enjoying the anime again.
I don’t want Liko to be the next Ash. I want her to be the force that paves the way for many excellent, interesting characters with growth arcs. I’m excited to see how Pokemon explores with open doors, and how they might create even more relatable and interesting characters in the future. While Ash may have helped lay the foundation of my childhood Pokemon love, it will be characters like Liko who do it for my children, and for future generations of fans to come.
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