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A friend of mine showed me this during one of our AIM conversations. I thought I'd share the story. I know it's a little fragmented, and when I find the full version I'll put it in. I don't know who wrote it, but props to them.


The accident with the bike? It put Ash in a coma. Three days later he was found and pumped full of painkillers. This is why Team Rocket became less menacing. The drugs kicked in and stabilized his coma dreams, instead of being terrifying, they became idyllic, and he's able to live out his pokemon master fantasies.
It's also the reason that every time he enters a new region, virtually no one has heard of him, despite his conquests, and why Giovanni leads Team Rocket. Ash has daddy issues, so he put his dad atop the evil corporation, and he just can't picture himself as famous, so he essentially adopts a new identity every few months.
In Ash's world he goes on to finally win the pokemon world cup.....right as he's about to claim the trophy, people start disappearing, one by one, he says his goodbyes, and he's left standing alone in the darkness....then pikachu comes running towards him, growing brighter and brighter.

Cut to his hospital room.
We see his mom at his bedside, crying, the doctor looks upset. Apparently there's been no change in his brain chemistry for seven years, and his insurance has run out. With professor oak there to comfort her, she signs the release to have the plug pulled.

Shortly after the plug is pulled, he speaks these final words before falling dead.

"I wanna be.... the very best....."
Brock is Ash's repressed sexuality, he fell into the coma a virgin, and needed an outlet for it. since he can never experience it, Brock must never succeed.
To further expand on this, one will note how Misty, a tomboy, is another aspect of Ash's personality, his feminine side. The feminine side would obviously be upset at the womanizing side, which would keep a normal human being from acting like Brock. This is why she constantly batters him.
Team Rocket is aspects of ash's personality that he has deemed "bad" James implied homosexuality, and Jesse's vanity. You'll remember that Meowth has the potential for rehabilitation, and doesn't want to be evil, so yet again this fits in with the conflicting personalities theory.
Their methods of capture become more and more ludicrous ( and physically impossible) because Ash is just a kid dreaming these things up.

The worldwide socialism can be explained if you once again realize that this is a dream world, he thought up a safe system of government that would run smoothly and keep the world going, allowing his adventures to work like they do.

Pikachu?

Pikachu obviously represents ash's Humanity, hence the episodes where they get separated, and Ash wants desperately to find him, but for some reason cannot. Even Team Rocket is willing to set aside any differences to work together and find pikachu. They want to steal pikachu ( Ash's humanity) and hand it over to his father. They will always be opposed because Ash does not want to become anything like his father and no resolution can ever permanently be reached. However, he will temporarily reconcile with those aspects of himself in order to save his humanity from just becoming flat out LOST.
Mr.Mime is actually a stand in for Ash's father, one that can't abuse him or his mom, because he is a pokemon, a peace loving creature that's oddly humanoid, but that can never hurt a human ( Ash's trust is because he was never really hurt by a pokemon, so he sees them all as harmless, whereas in the real world they may be quite feral or vicious ( as seen in the early episodes), again falling back to the theory that the only real pokemon are the ones from the first season, and everything else is just further speculation coming from his mind on what new species would look like.)
He releases them because his mind is forcing him to let go of them. The second he raises an overpowered team, a tournament comes up, and after fighting his way through it he has to go to a new land for new challenges, but with an overpowered team, there won't be any challenges, and no way to motivate him further, part of Ash wants to stay in the coma, and keep journeying.

The other part wants freedom, and to return to his real life, to finally become a real pokemon master. However, if he's allowed to keep his powerful team there's no reason to meet and tame new pokemon, he'll lose interest, and the chance of becoming self-aware comes around again. so it's not that he gives them up, it's that he loses them, and unless he's desperate ( like with Charizard) he can't get them back. It's basically his mind forcing him to deal with his issues.
The pokemon in Ash's team are his issues, for example Charmander represents his sex drive ( not his sexuality like Brock ) at first it's a cute easy to control thing, but eventually becomes a raging inferno of disobedience. acquiring his team means getting new issues, but as he trains them, he works said issues out.

The wild pokemon are his rationalizations of the functioning of the world. It's the "a wizard did it" syndrome. If he doesn't know how it works, his mind says pokemon.

Other trainers are more direct forms of his issues, ones that he must either come to terms with or outright defeat.

And gym leaders are more primary aspects of his personality with each pokemon being stronger than the last, to display a level of skill he could be capable of if only he gave into it. In effect he is doing battle with a part of him that he would rather not have in control.

His rivals and the Elite four are ultimately the strongest part of this cycle. Having pokemon that are essentially godlike, they represent both what can be attained and what is unattainable.
Bulbasaur was Ash's unwillingness to change, this is reflected in its unwillingness to evolve and how it almost decided to stay behind unless he battled it.

Squirtle was his willingness to follow the lead of others, as evidenced by the gang it ran with.

Butterfree was his crushing loneliness, which he dealt with when he released it to join a flock.
His bird types are his recklessness, always willing to sacrifice something at a moment's notice for the win.
If you noticed the early episodes of pokemon were of amazing quality. I believe that when Ash was struck by lightning he was put into a coma. The rest of the series is just the results of his subconscious mind fulfilling his desires, as well as attempting to escape them. Should Ash realize he's in a coma, he would wake up, but suffer brain damage. So he has to take down all his mental barriers one by one until he can come to grips with who he is and escape his coma.

He justifies anything he can't explain with pokemon, and real animals fall into the background because he has no real interest in them.

His traveling partners are actually aspects of himself he can enjoy, but doesn't like to associate with himself. Team rocket are his qualities that he deems "negative", but is coming to terms with. However, the Team Rocket organization has his abusive father sitting atop it. Jesse and James want to appease the father figure. Meowth especially wants to appease him because he remembers the good times with Giovanni.
Jessie is Ash's vanity and gullibility, she will trick Ash's submissive homosexuality into doing her bidding so she can Please father.

Now James is Ash's latent homosexuality, hence why he is constantly punished by pokemon and attacked by random attractive girls. I believe the split between Ash's parents was caused by this part of ash, maybe an incident at school, bringing shame on the family and forcing them to move to the hick town of pallet. Ash's motivations for his journey were to escape mounting pressure at home.

Pikachu is Ash's Humanity, this is why Team Rocket is always trying to capture it and bring it to Giovanni. They want father's love. This is why Ash sometimes joins Team Rocket to search for the lost pikachu. However what is unrealized is that Team Rocket also holds a part of Ash's Humanity in Meowth. This is apparent in the fact that Meowth is the only pokemon capable of speech.
Brock isn't just Ash's latent sexuality, he's also his fatherly instincts, neither of which Ash can come to terms with. Brock leaves his siblings to join the journey because Ash can't cope with having that much responsibility, much as his foray with a real relationship ends on mysterious terms. Ash just cannot handle commitment at his mental level.
Ash's rivals are possible futures he envisions for himself (note that they are all older than him). This originated with Gary Oak, someone Ash knew from real life, and built up into a sort of god within his mind. Gary, however progressed and changed to suit Ash's vision of himself and ultimate desire, eventually settling down into a professor after beating the Elite Four.

With Gary in retirement his mind needed a new rival for him, thus the births of Richie ( the Good aspect of his rivalry) and Paul ( as the darker aspect, a cut-throat Ash, willing to do anything to escape the coma world).
The Legendaries are Ash's mind telling him that he has the power to do great things, and thus escape his happy- go lucky reality.
The Jennys and Joys are symbols of comfort and normality, hence why they're everywhere.
Brock is a projection of his sexuality, and is constantly shot down because ash can never KNOW sex.
Misty is ash's first attempt at a girl he could love, however, being a girl from the real world, that all he knew of her was her anger, she ended up very angry. Constantly berating his sexuality, but eventually mellowing out until she had faded into the background.
Ditto was some of Ash's childish side, wanting to mimic others, however he rapidly dealt with this issue and it didn't recur, also since ditto was one of the original 150, ash had previous knowledge of it
(Summary again)

Every time Ash enters a new region, reinventing his image of himself every time he does so, and making it impossible for other parts of his mind to identify that new self. This is why he gains no recognition for his previous deeds. It is also why he gets a new team, he discovers after taming a given set of issues that he has a whole new group of them to discover and tame. Also, his mind is keeping the world within him from stagnating, and if one considers it, Ash may be of genuis level intelligence.
The worst part of all this is that Ash will die, never having experienced actual love. Imagine if you will, having lived in a world like his, completely shut off from all things but yourself, and your perception of yourself, with nothing to do but better yourself. No other people to interact with, and a boatload of issues.

The boy will die, Never having known his dream, except as naught but a dream. The second he gets out into reality for that last moment, part of him knows it was all a lie. His faithful pikachu? His friends? All his imagination, and maybe, he could have fought and clung to life, maybe even made a full recovery. But knowing that his efforts and ambitions had all been for naught, he just gave up and let the motion carry him away, just so he could be with pikachu, in a place where his friends were waiting.

three things to say:

1 - story was PA -THET - ICK!!!!!!!!!!

2 - Pokemon is based off of Digimon
------Digimon was released in japan about 2 & 1/2 years before pokemon was even sketched - and PKMN plagarized many popular Digimon

3 - on top of things: you have to realize, america wouldnt show soemthing near that severity of drama as akids show - thus why i said my view as no.1 thing to say

those dates are all wrong Nadian

they may be the American dates or may be highly-spiritual cult-like believers

but i know ten Anime-relase-experts - two of them being the girls i like

and 9 of them say Digimon came out before Pokemon

when io look at Baby Stage Pokomon in Digimon S3 - i see Pikachu
Renamon - the rookielevel evo of Pokomon - i see Jolteon

and i ask which one has more seasons and more monsters?
---the answer: Digimon

btw Nadian, not to single you out, but that "10th anime-release-expert" is you

everyone i know iRL and eveyr OTAKU i've met has agreed with me once i showed them the evidence

btw: for factual dates ad so on - DONT trust WIKI
for info on an aniem character - it's your choice to trust WIKI but isuggest you ask the creators

I'm not even gonna try to debate any further or even quote any of that highly flamed post, but i'll reference it here:

first off - i merely stated my sources, and these people have all been to anime cons all over america, yeah that may not mean much, seeing as i'm sure you've been to a few yourself

as for source sites - please name a few - no one's ever told me any source site other than wiki for anime information

as for saying my sources arent reliable - the girls i like each know aperson who used to live in japan, and those Japanese americans, when i met them, asked me which one came first outta the blue - and i siad "pokemon? i dunno" they both told me digimon, these two Japanese Aericans arent even listed as my sources sicne i only met them once, but they'd at the time, both been in america for only one year

as for you getting on my case - there's no call for it, i mentioned what i mentioned about Digi due to this topic's ludicris statement about stuff like Scizor and Rayquaza being dreamed-up by ash simply because he was comatose

Scizor and Mercurymon are the exact same entity, a three-faced steel-type warrior with impressive skill Mercurymon has mirrors for his 'face' and arm-mount weapons, Scizor's Pokedex data signifies the eye-patterns in his/her pincher make them appear to have three faces

BurningGreymon is easily Charizard - by both personality and element, and many of the attacks, but 'information data' is all different

anyways, there's no reason for you to go all "cut the throats off people for expressing the side at which they stand" on me
---right now - my view is merely that - an oppinional view,

but yes i did say the dates were wrong, because pokemon came out in america in mid-97 - i remember watching the episode where Ash caught Caterpie while waiting to hear if my sister gave brith to a boy or girl - i couldnt forget that anxiety or day of which it happened

so let's drop this - you can lock the topic, delete it or whatever it's just this:
i know what i've heard is highly debated, but with so many leaning on the digimon being first, i've baiscally no choice, in fact, you're the only ones thats 'yelled' at me for stating what i've heard in this area

((to clarify 'yelled' is in marks because i cant hear your voice but can understand a line or two in fullcaps is definitely yelling))

Well, I might have called him on it, but I was also pretty pissed off at how horribly hypocritical and condescending the post I replied to was ; my response is a bit flamey because, prior to submitting, I had to go through and remove most of my post because the first revision was blatant name calling and mostly all-caps, which even in my angered state didn't feel right.



AniDB is one I directly linked to in my post. They list the original air dates of every single episode they can. They also provide links to other popular anime databases. Consider it to be the IMDB of anime ; in other words, a collection of enthusiasts who try to collect information that they can. I trust this site because:

-No obvious agenda (no spotted discrimination between different anime)
-Lots of data (suggests put together by fans)
-Links to other sources (where you can corroborate data)
-No obvious data inaccuracies (matches up with dates found elsewhere, episode titles mentioned elsewhere, anime lengths, groups subtitling, episode lengths, alternative titles, etc.)


Consider this ; if your hypothesis is that somebody might be fudging dates in order to make Digimon look bad, you should be able to find the correct dates somewhere out there, or at the very least find inconsistencies. Otherwise, you're jumping into true nutcase territory of "huge world-wide conspiracy" for a topic that's simply "Digimon vs. Pokemon."


Notice that this explains exactly why your other sources aren't reliable (as they have been presented) ; they aren't telling you the release dates. They aren't giving you information you can look elsewhere for. The correct question isn't "which came first, Digimon or Pokemon?" The correct question is "what were the air dates for Digimon and Pokemon?" Ask the right question and you'll get the right answer.


Outside of that, people will be BIASED ; they will have seen one before the other and think it's that natural order. This inconsistency even exists in only one side of the debate ; some people really think the anime came before the games. The release dates of both conclude the opposite. (The release of both the anime and the games here in the US were around the same time, though.)




I personally use GameFAQs for game release information because they show data for all region releases. Any inconsistencies that I've thought I've found have always been me misreading the dates.




Finally, Wikipedia is actually quite useful. You always have to be careful there ; the more popular something is, the more likely it'll be fixed, so less popular pages should always be taken with a grain of salt and followed up with other research. Wikipedia, in other words, is a great *starting point*.



Now, here's the final deal; these are all *hard dates*. You can google around and look for more information. Maybe you increase your confidence. Maybe you decrease your confidence. But, you have a starting place.

In the case of pokemon game and anime releases, I'm pretty confident. Google searches of other sites have always revealed the same story. Bulbapedia agrees, Wikipedia agrees, GameFAQs agrees, AniDB agrees, IGN agrees, Nintendo Wikia agrees, Gamespy agrees... Pokemon started in 1996.




Now, in the case of Digimon, the conspiracy would have to be much bigger. GameFAQs would have to be explicitly skipping releases of various Digimon games ; the earliest I could find was a release for the Sega Saturn in 1998. In the case of the anime, it's pretty clear that the anime didn't start until the 20 minute theatrical release of "Digimon Adventures" spurned enough interest to create an entire show, and that showed in theatres in 1999.

After that, you have to wonder if Digimon started out as something that was neither a console game nor an anime which is why you turn to Wikipedia, where you find out there were hand-held Digimon. I stopped at Wikipedia because I didn't know much about it but that pushed their start date back to 1997.



These have always been japanese dates, save for maybe the Digimon hand-held monster. At this point, further research is to look for information on Tamagotchi ; it's pretty universally acknowledged that these hand-held pets are how Digimon started. (Fan sites and big sites seem to be saying the same thing in a google search.)

Digimon and pokemon are the same thing ninja

and no I dont have unbiast sources or wikiquotes to back up my claim but there is nothing you can do about it now....just like my terrrible spelling and grammer!.

*runs off into the sunset giggling like a ninny*

I had fun reading that story, though it WAS a tad repetitive. Still, I hope the full version gets posted around here soon.

ok, about the ash in a coma thing: interesting. but to me ash is ash, misty is misty, and everything that happened happend. it's the easiest and happiest way to look at it.

and about the digimon copied pokemon or pokemon copied digimon argument: I personally have a hard time believing either of them copied the other. just because the names are similar people get all worked up about it but watching the shows, they are so different its not even funny. they are nothing alike, how can they have been copies?!