A Fan’s Retrospective on Pokémon for its 30th Anniversary
I hope that I never forget the day that I discovered Pokémon. I was around six or seven years old and at our local library with my mom. We passed by the section where they kept the VHS tapes, when I saw one for the original Pokémon anime. It was the episodes where Ash got the three starter Pokémon for the Kanto region, and it looked so cool. My mom let me check it out, and when we got home, I popped it into our VCR. From that moment on, my life would change forever.
Saying that I was in love with Pokémon would be an understatement. I was enraptured by it. The strange creatures with superpowers, the style of animation that I would come to know as anime, and the fact that a kid only a few years older than me didn’t have to go to school and could just travel the world. It all sounded like this incredible dream come true! Pokémon became the center of much of my life from that point on. Fast forward to 2026, and here we are, celebrating the 30th anniversary of this beloved franchise.
I’m RJ Writing Ink, and today, I wanted to talk about my journey as a Pokémon fan with you guys in honor of its 30th anniversary. And what a journey it has been!
Back in the Trenches
These days, if you want to watch an anime, it’s pretty easy to do so. All you need to do is look online or on a streaming platform to find whatever show you want to watch. When I grew up, though, things were different. You had to either hope that it was being shown on TV, or try to find it on VHS or DVD. Unfortunately for me, that meant that I had to either wait for reruns of Pokémon to run on Kids WB, check out copies of the VHS tapes at the library, or hope that Blockbuster had them. Either way, it took a while, but eventually, I was able to watch the entirety of Gen I of the anime. Plus the filler season that was the Orange Islands.
Sadly, my attempts to actually play the games was coming up short. I was probably the only kid at my school who was into Pokémon, so I didn’t have anyone to play the card game with. And the video games themselves, I was more or less a failure. I had Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Gold on the Game Boy, but I couldn’t figure out how to get to where the third gyms were. In hindsight, I chalk it up to me being too young to figure it out for myself. I didn’t care about either, though. As long as I had the anime and all the stuff I had collected, I was content…to an extent.
I don’t remember when exactly I stopped watching the anime, but I know that it was sometime around the Johto era that it started to wind down. Having gotten into anime as a whole, my interest had started to pivot towards Yu-Gi-Oh!, but I did keep track of Pokémon. But after I saw Ash finally beat Gary, my interest started to fade fast. It didn’t help that the OG trio of Ash, Brock, and Misty split up, either. By the time the show got to the Hoenn region, I had devolved into a casual watcher. Ironically, Ruby and Sapphire ended up becoming my favorite games in the series, thanks in part to the fact that I was able to finish them.
After Gen III passed, though, my interest in Pokémon had more or less petered off. I was getting older, and finding other things to be interested in and obsess over. In addition, I realized that Ash was likely never going to win a Pokémon League. So I fell off the bandwagon and didn’t get back on until Gen VI, with X and Y. The addition of Mega-Evolution was enough to get me back in the games, and once again, I loved them. Even better, though, I was paying attention to the anime and saw that Ash was doing better than ever. For a moment, I thought that he was finally going to win. And to this day, I have no clue how his Greninja lost to a Charizard.
I Still Love Pokémon
I did try my hand at Sun and Moon, but never got around to finishing them. My interest in the anime also went dormant again, and now that Ash has become the world champion and is no longer the protagonist, I had no interest in playing the games anymore. That, and I refused to buy the Switch 2 due to Nintendo’s threats to brick players, making it impossible to play the Gen IX games.
These days, I’ve largely moved on from Pokémon, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t forgotten it. It was thanks to Pokémon that I discovered what anime was, and that helped define who I am today. It didn’t make me many friends, but to me, that didn’t matter. I was happy with what I had, and I’m even happier knowing that Pokémon is more popular than ever. I’m convinced that it’s only a matter of time before technology allows to create Pokémon VR games or create holographic Pokémon that we can play with and battle in real life. And when that day comes, I’ll grab my Pokéballs again. But until then, thank you, Pokémon! And happy 30th birthday!
