Compare & Review: Pokémon Anime v. Electric Tale of Pikachu

I am glad you already know what Pokémon is, because it is a complicated and confusing subject that spans generations, continents, mediums, and pop culture. If something exists, there’s a Pokémon version of it. So let's just get on started.

I recently bought the first season of the Pokémon tv show - the Indigo League- for my son. At least that’s what I told my wife when I bought it for myself. Together, we watched Ash, the ten-year-old, travel from town to town catching Pokémon using them to battle other trainers to earn his way to the Pokémon Championship.

The Indigo season is either 78 episodes or 82 episodes long depending on how you count them. My DVD set has only 78, as 4 are considered banned in the US. Those 4 episodes are Seizure Porygon, Racist Jynx, Too Many Guns Safari Zone, and Guy Has Boobs Beach. I’m not going to cover these episodes, other than saying that Porygon did nothing wrong. Pikachu was the one that used the electric attack that included the flashing screen images that cause seizures in many kids. Yet Pikachu gets to remain the golden boy, while Porygon hasn’t made an appearance in the anime since.

The Indigo League is followed up by season two’s Orange Island, which contains 36 episodes. It’s basically more of the same. The entire series is just more of the same really, but I’m specifically mentioning the Orange Island season because our subject of comparison today adapts both the Indigo League and Orange Island seasons.

The Electric Tale of Pikachu is a manga series created by Toshihiro Ono. Most modern day audiences likely only know of this piece of media because of its uncensored images (and we’ll get there, I promise), but I’m here to tell you there’s a lot more this manga has going for it. There are 4 volumes of 19 chapters total, plus an epilogue, and while it is based on the anime, and has chapters that follow similar arcs of the show, it’s the details that depart wildly from its source material.

For example, there an episode of the anime with a kid named Mikey and his Eevee. Mikey has three brothers who each have an evolved Eevee and they are pressuring him to evolve his own, but Mikey doesn’t want to evolve his. They all seem to be a part of this fan club that obsess over Pokémon that evolve with elemental stones. Team Rocket comes and steals everyone’s Pokémon, but Mikey’s Eevee helps save the day and this victory gives Mikey the courage to tell his brothers he wants to keep his Eevee as it is. His brothers say that’s all he’s ever had to say, though they were impressed by the Eevee’s skills.

In the manga, there’s still the club of stone-evolving Pokémon, but it’s really got a cultish vibe to the whole thing, maybe because everyone has to wear frog-head hats. They say Mikey must evolve his Eevee to be allowed in, but it’s shortly decided that Mikey can be inducted if he and his Eevee can prove themselves in a series of battles. For some reason, they make the battle 2 v 2 and Ash’s Pikachu joins in on Mikey’s side. Pikachu absolutely wrecks the two Vaporeon and the two Flareon they must fight with a single attack and the cultists suddenly realize they made a mistake and decide the last battle must be a 1 v 1 with Mikey’s Eevee going against a Jolteon. Mikey ends up winning, but only because Ash made a suggestion that Mikey’s Eevee should be allowed to use a TM (Technical Machine), that allows a Pokémon to learn a new attack that it couldn’t learn naturally.

In the video games, TMs look like CDs. You press enter, it asks if you’re sure you want to teach the Pokémon the move, you accept, and then the Pokémon learns it. How? Don’t worry about it. In the manga, the TM is some sort of box that sends glittery orbs directly into the Eevee’s brain.

So anyway, the battle begins, and it’s clear that Eevee is completely outmatched in every way by the Jolteon. Jolteon goes for the finish with an attack called Pin Missiles, when the TM the Eevee learned finally comes into play: Mimicry- which allows the Eevee to use the same attack used against it. Both Pokémon shoot Pin Missiles at each other, but the jolteon is defeated while the Eevee still stands, because before using Pin Missiles, Eevee had used an ability that decreases the damage it takes. The cultists accept Mikey and his Eevee after it beats Jolteon.

It honestly doesn’t feel like Eevee and Mikey earned their victory here like they did in the anime. However, it was a great showcase of Ash’s skills as a Pokémon trainer, with him easily handling four pokemon and having the tactical knowledge to pick the right TM for Eevee to learn to win. The anime too often depicts Ash winning solely because of his Pokémon’s tenacity and unwillingness to give up in spite of the odds and even Ash’s own ignorance, literally only winning because the writers wrote it that way. But here in the manga, we see Ash truly showing off his skills.

There’s also a couple of new stories as well, such as the massive Haunter who was worshipped as a god in the distant past and has been eating people’s souls. A massive pokeball is created to catch it, but the Haunter ultimately self-destructs, deciding it would rather be dead than captured by humans. The implications of everything that happened are quickly ignored, and it’s back on the road for our heroes!

The manga runs through the story of the anime very quickly. Most everything happens offscreen; Pokémon catches, gym battles, evolutions. It stops every now and again to tell singular story, such as the aforementioned evolution club and Haunter stories, and it even contains some Team Rocket shenanigans, though they are absent for a large chunk of the beginning, which is for the best, as I feel Team Rocket is overused in the anime.

I do wish the manga was a lot longer. Only seeing two gym battles and a small percentage of the championship, you don’t get to know any of Ash’s Pokémon team aside from Pikachu. You don’t even see Ash catch a Charmander, but all of a sudden he’s talking about his Charmeleon evolving into Charizard and that it’s not listening to him anymore. And despite this manga being its own thing, there’s a footnote in one of the panels telling you to check out the anime for more info on a specific thing that’s happening, so that sends some confusing signals when a lot of what else happens in the manga can contradict the anime.

But even with this shortcoming of the story, the world of The Electric Tale of Pikachu is far more interesting than its anime counterpart. The anime practically ignores most of the workings of its world. A billion seasons into the anime and unless it deals directly with Pokémon, no one knows how the world of Pokémon functions. Hell, how the titular creatures themselves function is left mostly unknown. They are supposedly natural creatures, but they work a lot more like digital creatures, being able to learn moves through CDs, shrinking to fit in pokeballs, and being able to be stored in computers.

One of the more frequently asked questions is how does the world function if ten-year-olds don’t need schooling and are just allowed to roam the world without any kind of adult supervision in a reality filled with monsters that can kill you a thousand different ways. Well, the manga answers the schooling question in the first chapter: there is normal school, and most children have to attend, but apparently you can get out of it if you can succeed in getting your Pokémon license.

The world is also slightly tweaked in the manga to include a higher technologically advanced society. Bigger futuristic buildings- Lavender Tower is a modern day Tower of Babylon for instance- some sleek flying machinery, Team Rocket’s got a mecha at some point, it gives the world some much needed flavor, as the anime world, excluding the Pokémon themselves, is extremely dull. The focus is still mostly on Ash and the Pokémon, so the world is still little more than a backdrop on the page with little story relevance, but it really does make all the difference.

In contrast to the manga’s higher level of technology, the Pokémon are drawn and characterized to be more animalistic. They’re primal, natural, sometimes terrifying creatures, and it’s hinted at that them not listening to their trainers is a more common occurrence (though still a mark of a poor Pokemon trainer). I would absolutely love to see the illustrator draw each and every Pokémon. The only featured redesign that I thought was a flop was Hitmonchan, and I feel that was solely because they had tried to make such a humanoid Pokémon fit the same aesthetic as the others.

Now we’ll move on to the character. Let’s start with the manga’s namesake, Pikachu.

Pikachu and Ash’s relationship start off relatively the same way, though in the manga, Pikachu isn’t one of Oak’s beginner Pokémon, but literally just a rodent doing rodent things that Ash catches- with a rope that he uses to drag the Pokémon around. The main difference occurs during the event that gets Pikachu to become friends with Ash; In both the manga and anime, a flock of Spearow (citation needed for the proper term for a group of Spearow is called) attack and Ash sacrifices himself to keep Pikachu safe. The difference, and in my opinion this is a very huge difference, is who started the Spearow problem. In the anime, it’s Ash that ultimately starts the problem, throwing a rock at a one of the creatures thinking it was something else, but in the manga, Pikachu is literally just being an asshole and shocks a Spearow for no reason. This goes a long way to show that it’s not just Ash trying to impose his will on his Pokémon, it’s showing that Pikachu was also to blame for their sour-starting relationship and it makes Ash’s sacrifice all the more meaningful. From there, the two form a partnership and Pikachu’s characterization and growth ends there.

Gary: The beginning of the manga infers that Ash and Gary were at least partially friends before. They talk mad shit to each other, but mostly in a friendly manner, though Gary likely does consider himself to be the better of the two and he’s not afraid to belittle Ash. Gary actually wishes Ash good luck in the tournament and they both hope the other advances. In the end, their rivalry is completely extinguished and they travel together on an adventure and end up meeting the legendary Pokémon Lugia.

Misty: Misty also starts pretty much the same way as the anime, though she sure dresses in far more revealing clothing when not being edited into modesty for the US release. The difference in characterization starts subtly. The teasing, bickering, belittling that Ash and Misty go back and forth on in the anime between the two happens the same in the manga, but then a character mentions how the teasing must mean there’s something more going on between the two, which of course is vehemently denied. From there, it moves on to a single small panel of Ash and Misty touching hands.

The relationship isn’t focused on though, and it never really develops beyond that, mostly because, much like everything else, the closer the manga gets to the end, the more rushed it feels and the more non-essentials are skipped over. Though there certainly is hard evidence to a growing relationship between the two, even after they went their separate ways after the Indigo League championship, as Misty appears again in the Orange Island arc as an accompanying character. There’s no Brock or Tracy tagging along like in the anime, just Misty. There’s also a panel in the prologue that to me looks like Misty was taking a bath and Ash fell in the tub on accident, but it’s really hard to figure out exactly what’s happening and the words aren’t really helpful in figuring that out either, as the prologue is told from a letter Ash writes to his mom. Misty is red with embarrassment, but she’s also not screaming at him to get out. I guess whatever happens after that point of interaction is up to the reader.

Now it’s time to talk about Ash. Ash is pretty much characterized the same way he is in the show, but it’s the circumstances that make him out to be a better character and a more competent Pokémon trainer. In the anime, at least the first season, Ash rarely actually catches a Pokémon through battle. Most of Anime Ash’s Pokémon come from befriending them, which I suppose makes the entire situation of forcing creatures to battle each other a little less morally terrible when they’re there 100% of their own free will, but manga Ash captures a lot of Pokémon. Even his first run-in with those Spearow, Ash manages to come away with a Fearow that Pikachu helped take down.

Side note: the manga has a scene where Ash says he’s named his Pokémon. The scene takes place pretty early on, so he doesn’t have many Pokémon yet, but those he named are; Jean luc Pikachu, Fearless the Fearow, Walter Pidgeotto, and Felix the Caterpie. Not that he ever actually calls Pikachu that ever again, just know that Star Trek canonically exists in the Electric tale of Pikachu universe.

A big moment for Ash that differs greatly from the anime is during the final match of the Indigo League championship. Ash is up against his opponent and they both have only 1 Pokémon remaining: Ash decides to send out his Charizard, who was shown to not listen to his orders the last time we saw it, while his opponent also sends out a Charizard. This echoes what happens in the anime up until this moment, but from this point in the anime, Ash’s Charizard just goes to sleep and refuses to fight, causing Ash to lose. In the manga, Charizard battles the opponent’s Charizard, but battles its own way, refusing to listen to Ash. That seems fine, since Ash’s Charizard begins to win, but soon it heavily gains the upper hand and begins to just overdo it on the opponent, brutalizing and nearly killing it (The opponent can’t retreat his Charizard back into its pokeball because the mechanism is broken). Ash has his own Charizard retreat and loses the match because of it- and afterward, he doesn’t blame his Charizard for not listening, but he blames himself for the loss because what kind of Pokémon trainer would send out a Pokémon as ill-trained as his Charizard? He deserved to lose, he says.

Afterward, Ash moves on to the Orange Islands where he’s shown absolutely devastating a local group of trainers who try to 3 v 1 his pikachu, and he goes on to win the championship there. This arc is extremely brief, even compared to the rest of the manga. It feels like the author wanted to be done, but wanted to end it with Ash getting his victory, because it’s literally just that first confrontation, then he’s thrown into the championship match, wins it, then a quick epilogue to wrap the series up. It’s way too short, but it’s only a complaint because I would have loved to see more. The anime has the opposite problem. It just keeps going and going, throwing more and more contrivances on Ash, and to keep the status quo, Ash can never make too much progress. He does eventually come out on top, but man, it took a really long time.

That’s why I think the manga ending how it did was fantastic. I do wish the middle parts were stretched out more so I could enjoy the journey from beginner to Orange Island champion more, though I also don’t think the anime’s first season overstayed its welcome, either. It contained varied content and challenges for Ash to overcome. Team Rocket’s schtick got a bit tiring in the anime as they make an appearance in almost every episode, but overall the journey to the Johto championship was an enjoyable one. It’s only after season 2, when they try to stretch everything out beyond Orange Island that it really starts to suffer.

So which of these do I prefer? Honestly, I don’t think the manga would be anywhere as good without having watched the anime, or at the very least, have more than a passing knowledge of the show. If this was a fight, a cage match to the death between the two pieces of media in which one can no longer exist, I honestly think I’d have to choose the manga to lose. It’s too shallow, too fleeting. I absolutely love what it’s doing, and I am happy I read it and suggest other Pokémon fans do so as well, but it’s just too dependent on its source material to stand on its own. It’s a companion piece. I would kill for a more fleshed out version, an expanded story. But that’s not what I have.

So thats it. That’s my thought on The Electric Tale of Pikachu and there’s definitely nothing else to talk about.

Just kidding. Time for boobies!

The manga’s creator, Toshihiro Ono, also creates under the pen name Kamirenjaku Sanpei, which he uses to draw hentai (manga/anime porn). Electric Tale has women dressed up more than a few times in highly sexualized clothing, and many of them are given huge torpedo breasts. All of that was censored for the west though, and his bosses must have gotten tired of having to censor things, because later in the series, the absolutely ridiculous stuff stopped showing up even in the Japanese version.

Like, giving Misty extremely short shorts and an extremely revealing bathing suit was one thing, as it at least still somewhat made sense in the context of the story, but torpedo boobs just didn’t look good on the characters and the tight, one piece thong uniform thing one of the characters wore was just… weird. You’re really not missing much if you read the censored version aside from some extra clothing tacked on and smaller, non-torpedo-shaped busts. I think the biggest cut they made was a handful of panels that included Misty in a sauna splashing water on her breasts in an attempt to use the water’s supposed properties to make them bigger, only realizing as she’s doing it that it’s a co-gender sauna and Brock and Ash are gawking at her.

The censored content doesn’t add anything of substance to the manga, and in my opinion, only serves to distract. You also have to rely on fan-translated sites to find it in English, which isn’t hard to do if you’re already in on that kind of scene, and honestly the average user would probably have to rely on fan-scanned pages to begin with because you can only find it on the secondary market nowadays.