Summary

• The first season of the Pokémon anime, titled Pokémon: Indigo League, only contains 52 episodes on Netflix, leading to confusion among fans who remember it continuing beyond that point.
• American networks purchased shows like Pokémon Season 1 in batches of 52 episodes to run one new episode every weekday for three months, which is why the season stops randomly in the middle of the story.
• Fans can still watch the episodes that conclude the Indigo League arc in Season 2, titled Pokémon: Adventures in the Orange Islands, which can be accessed through the official Pokémon website, Prime Video's Pokémon channel, or the DVD box set released by Viz Media.

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 stream 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. This confusion has made some fans wonder what happened to the rest of the series and where it can be viewed.

Updated by Timothy Blake Donohoo on January 30, 2024: The Pokémon anime remains a classic in the minds of many, with an entire generation growing up with its first season. Pokémon Season 1, also known as Pokémon: Indigo League, began a phenomenon that's only recently come to a conclusion in its animated form. With the series only a few years shy of being 30 years old, an entire legion of fans are nostalgic for the series that they grew up with. Sadly, it isn't easy to watch the series in its entirety on the biggest streaming platform in the world. This makes some of the Pokémon: Indigo League episodes seemingly lost - at least on Netflix.

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. Now referred to as Pokémon: Indigo League, the series aired 276 episodes over those 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. These networks bought kids' shows like Pokémon Season 1 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 are written around this 52-episode standard, with the last of those featuring either a story conclusion, a cliffhanger, or a natural endpoint. However, Pokémon: Indigo League 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 method of handling syndication means that Netflix isn't wrong when it comes to Pokémon: Indigo League. 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 includes the beginning of the "Orange Island" arc.

While those episodes can't be watched on Netflix, the remaining chapters of Pokémon: Indigo League are accessible through other means. 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 best battles. 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.

The Long Legacy of the Pokémon Anime

Even though Pokémon: Indigo League has long since finished airing decades ago, the anime series as a whole is still going strong. The current season is Pokémon Horizon: The Series, which acts as a borderline soft reboot for the long-running anime. For the first time in the main series, former protagonist Ash Ketchum is not the main character. Instead, Liko and Roy are the main characters, giving the show a major change from the formula cemented by Pokémon: Indigo League. Pokémon Horizon is the 26th season, with the anime as a whole having over 1200 episodes. To be fair, some of these were removed in the English release due to issues of censorship and other reasons. That's without even counting ~20 episodes of the spinoff series, Pokémon Chronicles (which also focused on other characters and their Pokémon).

It's almost hard to keep track with the many entries in the Pokémon show, with each generation of the Pokémon video games sometimes getting multiple seasons of the anime. Worst of all, these seasons - such as Pokémon: Indigo League - aren't available in the same location. Streaming services that have one or more seasons of the series will be missing others. Even in the case of Netflix, having the first season of the show doesn't mean that viewers can watch the entirety of Pokémon: Indigo League on the platform. Thus, purchasing the seasons through physical media is perhaps the best way to be able to watch them sequentially, though it's still an imperfect (and costly) endeavor.

Another method is through Amazon Prime Video, with several of the episodes that aren't already available to stream on the service able to be purchased individually or on a by-season basis. Thus, streamers can outright buy all the Pokémon: Indigo League episodes or the episodes of most of the other seasons. This prevents the need to switch back and forth between streaming services, though it's still an impractical way of enjoying the series from beginning to end. Conversely, the Pokémon TV app is shutting down soon, making things harder than ever to get a hold of from one source. All in all, Netflix is the closest thing to a home for the series' anime, be it Pokémon: Indigo League or the show's newer episodes and shows such as Pokémon Concierge. With this continuing to be the case and Netflix remaining the most mainstream source for streaming, this reality will hopefully see more of the anime's episodes added.