Pokémon: Advanced

Lore & Background

The season was directed by Masamitsu Hidaka and produced by the animation studio OLM. The Japanese opening song is 'Advance Adventure' by GARDEN for 40 episodes. The ending songs are 'Because the Sky is There' by Toshiko Ezaki for 18 episodes, and 'Polka O Dolka' by Inuko Inuyama (Meowth) and Nolsol Chorus Group for 22 episodes. The English opening song is 'I Wanna Be a Hero' by David Rolfe, with a shortened version used for the end credits.

Reader's Guide

Pokémon: Advanced marks the beginning of the Ruby and Sapphire era of the anime, introducing the Hoenn region and new main characters May and Max. Critical reception was mixed: Themanime.org gave a positive review, noting that the anime does stuff from the video games and that May isn't just a replacement of Misty. Movie Reviews Simbasible gave a negative review, calling the new characters annoying and the season a bore but with some very good episodes. Alfah, writing for Pokeblog, gave a positive review with a score of 8/10, praising the growth of Ash and May while criticizing Max's bratty attitude. The season's home media in the United States was released by Viz Video and Ventura Distribution on 8 VHS and DVD volumes from 2004–2005, with VHS versions only featuring the first three episodes per release. Viz Media later released two 3-disc boxed DVD sets in 2005 and 2006, and a complete collection on DVD on May 16, 2017.

Did You Know?

• The Japanese opening song 'Advance Adventure' by GARDEN was used for 40 episodes.
• The English opening song 'I Wanna Be a Hero' by David Rolfe had a shortened version used for the end credits.
• VHS releases of the season only included the first three episodes from each volume.

Position in the Franchise Timeline

Pokémon: Advanced occupies a specific slot in the long-running animated series that first aired in Japan on April 1, 1997. As of 2025, the franchise has produced more than 1,300 episodes, making Advanced one of many sub-arcs in an extraordinarily long-running property. It sits within the first nine seasons of the show, specifically nested between Master Quest and Advanced Challenge as part of what the episode list groups under the broader Hoenn-era storytelling. The series is based on the Pokémon video game franchise published by Nintendo, and Advanced represents a chapter in the animated adaptation of that game world. Its placement in the middle of a four-part arc structure—Master Quest, Advanced, Advanced Challenge, Advanced Battle—suggests it serves as a transitional or deepening phase within the Hoenn narrative block, bridging the opening of that regional story and its later escalations.

Cross-Platform Market Strategy

In the United States and similar markets, the Pokémon franchise followed a deliberate cross-platform strategy where the animated television series was introduced to audiences before the video games, effectively priming the market for the Nintendo-published game titles. This means that for American viewers encountering the Hoenn-era stories, the animated sub-arcs like Advanced served as the primary gateway into the broader franchise ecosystem. The anime was not merely a companion to the games but the vanguard of the brand's cultural penetration in Western markets. This sequencing shaped how audiences in those regions first learned the world, characters, and mechanics that would later be explored in the video game format. The fact that the series has sustained over 1,300 episodes since its 1997 Japanese debut underscores the longevity and depth of this cross-platform relationship between the animated adaptation and its source material.

Broadcast Variations and Censorship

Not all episodes of the Pokémon animated series traveled uniformly across international borders. In various countries, certain episodes were pulled from rerun rotation, went entirely unaired, were altered in content, or were completely banned from broadcast. This patchwork of regional restrictions means that audiences in different territories experienced the Hoenn-era sub-arcs—including Advanced—in different forms or with different episode counts. The specific episodes comprising the Advanced arc may have been subject to these alterations or removals depending on the country of broadcast. This creates a fragmented viewing history where no single international audience necessarily saw the complete, unmodified version of the arc. The broader series, which has accumulated over 1,300 episodes since 1997, thus carries a complex legacy of selective availability that varies by region and by the specific editorial policies of each individual broadcaster.

The Hoenn Arc Structure

Within the first nine seasons of the Pokémon anime, the Hoenn-era storytelling is divided into four distinct sub-arcs: Master Quest, Advanced, Advanced Challenge, and Advanced Battle. This four-part structure suggests a deliberate narrative pacing where each sub-arc represents a phase of the overall journey. Advanced, as the second of these four, occupies a middle position—building on the foundation laid by Master Quest while setting up the escalations of Advanced Challenge and the climactic Advanced Battle. The entire block sits within a series that debuted on April 1, 1997, in Japan, and has since grown to more than 1,300 episodes as of 2025. The naming convention itself, using the word Advanced as a prefix for three of the four sub-arcs, signals a thematic through-line of progression and escalation that defines this particular stretch of the show's long and evolving history.