Airing and production
Pokémon premiered in Japan on TV Tokyo on April 1, 1997.[53][54] The series is broadcast on the TX Network family of stations first on Thursday evenings; it is then syndicated throughout the rest of Japan's major broadcasters (All-Nippon News Network, Fuji Network System, Nippon Television Network System) on their local affiliates as well as on private satellite and cable networks on various delays. Production in Japan is handled by TV Tokyo, MediaNet (formerly TV Tokyo MediaNet and Softx), and ShoPro (formerly Shogakukan Productions). Kunihiko Yuyama served as the series' chief director up until the 2023 episode, "To Be a Pokémon Master". The anime made millions of dollars in Japan when it first aired.[55] An average Pokémon episode costs about $100,000 to make.[56]
Internationally, The Pokémon Company handles production and distribution of the anime with Iyuno Media Group and Goldcrest Post[57] with publication by VIZ Media, which was formerly VIZ LLC but merged with ShoPro. The anime currently airs in 192 countries.[4] In the United States, the anime aired on Kids' WB as a Saturday morning cartoon starting in February 1999.[58] In its first week under the Kids' WB umbrella, Pokémon would manage to hit a 3.9 rating (a percentage of how much a specific demographic of people is watching), reaching 3.1 million viewers by September, and resulting in Nielsen stating that "half the boys (ages 6–11) watching TV (at 10 a.m.) are seeing Pokémon" by that November.[59][60][61][62]
Beginning in 2020, Netflix gained the exclusive rights to stream new episodes of the series in the United States; the twenty-third season, titled Pokémon Journeys: The Series debuted on June 12, 2020 [63] and ended on March 5, 2021, with its fourth twelve episode batch.[64] It continues with the twenty-fourth season, titled Pokémon Master Journeys: The Series, which debuted on the service on September 10, 2021.[65] The series has previously aired in syndication, with new episodes premiering on Kids' WB,[66] Cartoon Network, and Disney XD. In the U.S., library episodes also aired on Cartoon Network in the Kids' WB years starting in 2002[67] and Boomerang in the Cartoon Network years starting in 2010[68]
Pokémon was originally licensed in the United States by 4Kids Entertainment, which produced a localized English adaptation that was syndicated by The Summit Media Group.[72] The localized version premiered in first run syndication on September 8, 1998, twenty days before the North American release of Pokémon Red and Blue. Pokémon was distributed on VHS and DVD by Pioneer Entertainment and Viz Video, which sold 25million units of the series in 2000.[73] Following the eighth season in 2006, the series' dub production was taken over by The Pokémon Company. Beginning with twelfth film, 2009's Arceus and the Jewel of Life, DuArt Film and Video took over as the lead production studio, which lasted until the twenty-second season in 2018.
OLM, Inc. handles animation production. Until episode 259 (episode 262 in Japan), during the fifth season in 2002, the series was animated using cel animation. Beginning with episode 260 (episode 263 in Japan), titled "Here's Lookin' at You Elekid!", all subsequent seasons are digitally animated.
In a 2018 interview, the creators of Detective Pikachu, which features a talking Pikachu, revealed that the original intention for the anime was to have the Pokémon talk, but OLM, Inc. was unable to come up with a concept that Game Freak, developer of the mainline games, were accepting of.[74]
The following table lists the annual content revenue from Pokémon anime media in Japan, as reported by market research firm Hakuhodo.
Streaming and digital
Pokémon is currently available for streaming on Netflix in 216 regions and countries with different dubs and subtitles; all countries have at least English audio.[82] Pokémon is globally one of the most widely watched shows on Netflix, as of 2016.[83] It is also available on Hulu (in the United States and Japan), Amazon Prime Video (in the United States),[84] and Jiohotstar (in India).[85] From when the series made began airing on Disney XD, as much as every in-circulation episode was available on Watch Disney XD and later DisneyNOW in the United States[86] until February 2022.[87]
