The Pokémon anime is one of the most famous and beloved animated series ever made. For many American kids, this was their first exposure to the medium and became the show that kicked off a lifetime of love. However, newcomers and longtime fans who aim to watch the classic first season of Pokémon encounter a strange issue — and it continues to cause a lot of confusion and debate online.
Viewers who go to Netflix will find that the first season of the Pokémon anime — dubbed Pokémon The Series: Indigo League — contains 52 episodes, with the final one being “The Breeding Center Secret”. However, many fans remember the season continuing well beyond this episode and frequently wonder if Netflix made a mistake. Here’s what happened, and where can fans find the remaining episodes from Pokémon Season 1.
Pokémon’s Seasons Are a Relic of an Earlier Time
This issue gives fans a fascinating look at the Pokémon franchise’s earliest days in America. Japanese television has always been more flexible with TV show lengths, featuring many shows that run for just a handful of episodes and others that run weekly for years, with only sporadic breaks. For instance, the original Pokémon anime aired its first episode in Japan on April 1st, 1997, and ran until November 14th, 2002, when the “Johto League” arc concluded. The series aired 276 episodes over these 293 weeks, showing how little time the anime missed.
American networks, especially those that aired syndicated shows (which the initial run of Pokémon was), had much stricter rules. They would buy kids’ shows like Pokémon specifically in batches of 52 episodes; this allowed the network to run one new episode every weekday for three months, meaning the show covered an entire standard TV season. If these episodes did well, the network would buy another batch.
Most American cartoons produced for syndication would write around this 52-episode standard, with the last of those featuring either a story conclusion, a cliffhanger, or a natural endpoint. However, Pokémon was not scripted with this in mind because it was primarily made for the Japanese market, which didn’t follow this standard. This is why Netflix’s Season 1 stops randomly in the middle of the story — that cut-off was not accounted for when the show was originally being written.
Where to Watch the Rest of Pokémon Season 1
This means Netflix isn’t wrong. Due to some episodes being skipped for budget or content reasons, “The Breeding Center Secret” is the 52nd episode of the show’s initial run and, thus, the official end of the first season of Pokémon. Thankfully fans can still watch the episodes that conclude the overarching “Indigo League” arc. These episodes are included in Season 2, titled Pokémon: Adventures in the Orange Islands, which also contains the beginning of the “Orange Island” arc.
This season is available to stream on the official Pokémon website via its Pokémon TV service, and can also be found on Prime Video’s Pokémon channel. Fans who prefer physical media can also get the series on DVD thanks to Viz Media, which released a box set containing the entire season in 2015.
The confusion surrounding Pokémon’s first season is a major stumbling block for new fans or those who want to go back and revisit the anime’s early days. The story being spread over several platforms, likely due to ownership issues, means viewers can’t finish it without some research. However, this situation is also a fascinating glimpse at an earlier era when broadcast networks were king and anime localization was rare. Hopefully, the Pokémon Company can one day find a way to guide new fans through this confusion so fans can enjoy Ash’s earliest adventures more easily.