Ask John: How Much Pokemon Is There?

Question:
I was wandering if you could tell me how many episodes there are to the Pokemon TV series. Also, I know there are two movies: Pikachu’s Summer Vacation and MewTwo Strikes Back. But when I saw MewTwo Strikes Back, I saw a trailer for what seemed to be a another Pokemon movie (something about a phantom pokemon). Could you inform me on this?

Answer:
Pocket Monster is still running on Japanese TV. At the moment there are over 100 episodes. From what I’ve heard, though, the current series will be concluding soon. It will be replaced by a new series featuring at least 100 new Pokemon and a new set of human characters. As far as the movies go, it’s sort of difficult to really determine how many movies there are. It sort of depends on how you want to classify them. In Japan, there are “two” Pokemon movies. The first set of movies premiered last year. Pikachu’s Summer Vacation was a 30 minute feature that ran in front of the hour-and-a-half long Mewtwo Strikes Back. It is these two films that will be spliced together and premier theatrically in the US next month. The new movie(s) which premiered last August consists of another 30 minute short film and the 90 minutes long Revelation Lugia, the “phantom Pokemon.”