Game Theory - What Is Ash Ketchum's Real Age? (Pokemon)

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

This is it Theorists, the FINAL ANSWER to the "age-old" mystery that has haunted Pokemon fans for years! Ha, see what I did there? All of that binge-watching has finally paid off! Today we solve Pokemon's BIGGEST mystery, how old is Ash Ketchum?

As much as we all laugh at Ash Ketchum for not learning anything about basic type advantages and Pokemon battle tactics, his accomplishments are actually nothing to scoff at. Pikachu the Horn! Be it has! Burt! Out of all the trainers in the Conto region, he was one of only 16 to advance to the fifth round of the Indigo Plateau Conference. He's won himself 48 total gym badges. He was a quarter finalist in the Joto League, Hoin League, and Unova League.

He was the Cino League semi-finalists and Callos League finalist. For a guy whose strategy is literally Pikachu shock, it's not effective, will shock harder. Ash has bested some of the strongest trainers in the world. And yet, we've still never seen him face his most formidable opponent. Puberty. No internet, welcome to game theory. Ash catch him. You know him, you love him, you ship him with Misty.

This young would-be Pokemon Master has battled its way through over half a dozen regional leagues, 20 seasons and over a thousand episodes of televised content. Which is a heck of a career for someone who doesn't look a day over Uh, I'm not sure exactly, but he certainly doesn't look like someone who was 10 years old back in 1997. That being said, 20 years passing in the real world doesn't necessarily correlate to 20 years passing on a show. So we can't really be certain of how old Ash is until today. It's time to settle this mystery once and for all. Using the narrator's clues, holidays, seasonal transitions, and even the

ripeness of fruit, we can actually calculate just how old this plucky pre-pubescent Pokemon Professional is. Right off the bat, it's important to establish one key difference between the anime and the video games. Our trainers' starting age. On the second page of the instruction manual for Pokemon Red and Blue, we see that, quote, you're an 11-year-old boy living in Palatown. However, in the TV show, Ash actually starts his Pokemon journey after reaching the age of 10. And now that I'm 10, I can finally get my Pokemon license.

10-year-olds can get a beginner Pokemon from Professor Oak. So for this analysis, we'll be focusing specifically on Ash's age. And that means looking at the TV episodes exclusively, all 1,020 of those TV episodes, which, let me tell you, is a lot of this. Bekachu! Thunder shock! And this. What's like to your record is flashing off again! I don't know if you ever noticed this grown up, but, um, this show is a bit formulaic.

The other key detail we need is the date of Ash's birthday. We know that he's 10 when the show starts, but he may not be exactly 10. It's not like everyone in Palatown suddenly decided to coordinate the start of their Pokemon journeys around Ash's birthday. He could be as young as exactly 10 years old, or as old as 10 years plus 364 days. Luckily, we can pin down the exact date to the day. According to Takeshi Shuto, chief writer for the Pokemon anime, in his novel, Pokemon Pocket Monsters, the Animation Volume 1, we learned that Ash's exact age when he left home was 10 years, 10 years, 10 years,

and months and 10 days. Quote, I can recall all the past 10 years with Ash, 10 years, 10 months, and 10 days. All of the hardships, the times it was too painful to go on. This is how Delia felt the day that her only son led home. End quote. And if you thought that little bit sounded sad, you should absolutely read the part about Ash's father

abandoning his family to become a failed Pokemon trainer a few pages earlier. It is shockingly depressing for a story about a bunch of characters who are meant to be stuffed animals eventually. Anyway, Ash leaves home on April 4th, So counting backwards, we can find that Ash's birthday is on May 22nd, meaning that Ash starts his Pokemon journey at age 10 But turns 11 just a month and a half after leaving Palet town In other words, he's had two birthdays by the time he enters his first Pokemon championship

Making him 12 years old when season 1 comes to a close After losing in the Indigo League, Ash spends his summer licking his wounds in the Orange Islands You can tell that this whole 36 episode arc takes place over just a few months because the events move quickly as they explore small All islands, the weather never really changes, the whole thing is framed as a fetch quest for the GS ball, and shortly after being crowned Orange League champ, we see Ash heading off to Joto in the fall. Now, here's where things start to get tricky. You see, outside of the mainline anime, between 1999 and 2001, there was a sub-series of direct-vh-h-h-hashore Shorts named Pikachu's Winter Vacation, with each collection being two or three episodes with a winter or Christmas theme. Because they weren't part of the main series, they're placed. and the timeline is actually not super clear. However, since they always feature Christmas Day, there are single best clues to knowing how much time is passing in the anime.

And it's these episodes that allow us to determine that the entirety of Ash's Joto Journey took him nearly two years to complete. Let me explain. In the 2000 release of Pikachu's Winter Vacation, the episode Stantler's Little Helpers shows Ashes and Misty's Pokemon teaming up on Christmas Eve to help Santa cure his sick Stantler. The Pokemon we see team include Ash's hair across and Misty's Polywag. It's also important to note that Ash doesn't have a cindiquil in his team yet. This means that the Christmas Day depicted in Stantler's Little Helpers must fall between episode 119 of the anime where Ash catches a hair across and episode 141 where he catches a cindiquil. The presence of Misty's polywag also confirms this because we see polywag evolve into polywhirl in the totodial duel episode 151. So with that being our

first winter spent in Joto, Ash is still Our next timeline clue happens 28 episodes later with the Pechoo centric episode the Apple Corps. Now at this point in the series, Ash is a traveling lineup of Bulbosaur, Tododial, Chikarita, Pikachu, Cyndaquil, and his most recent edition, a shiny knockdow that he caught in episode 154 foul play. The next major change in his team will be Chikarita evolving into Bayleaf in episode 199, current events. So why does all that matter? Well, first remember that Joto is based on the Kansai region of Japan. We're based on harvest calendars apples are in season for all months except for summer. So that helps us narrow things down, but to get a precise date, we have to look at Pikachu's next winter vacation. In 2001, Pikachu's holiday cash-in featured the episode DeliBird's Dilemma, where Ash's team helps a deli bird recover Santa's presents on Christmas Eve.

Ash's team in this episode contained a knock doll and a chicorita, meaning that Pikachu's Winter Vacation 2001 edition had to have been sandwiched between catching the knock doll and the Bayleaf evolution. Meaning that another birthday has passed for Ash. So by episode 200 of the anime, our Husky-voiced Pokemon Master wannabe is now 13. And that's the last time that we see the team in a Joto Winter, meaning that the League Challenge is being held in March of the following year, slightly before Ash's 14th birthday. This leads to the events of the advanced seasons, corresponding to the 3rd Gen video games focused on the Hoan region.

Episode 1 of this series takes place on April 1st, as our Misty Replacement May gets ready to begin her Pokemon, Q. Hi, my name's May and I'm 10 years old. I'm on my way to meet my dad's friend, Professor Birch, and to get my beginner's then I can begin my journey as a Pokemon trainer. And if you're like me at this point, you're probably wondering why every new trainer's Pokemon journey begins on April 1st.

Well, it actually has to do with Japan's school year. According to Article 59 of the Ordinance for Enforcement of the School Education Law, quote, The school year shall start on April 1st and end on March 31st of the following year. And if you're like me right now, you're probably thinking, damn! School year ends on March 31st and the new one starts on April 1st? That's brutal! Also, you're probably asking yourself, why the heck would they start school in April?

Well, I dug even deeper to find that one out. Apparently, it's structured this way to match the fiscal year, aka the business year as defined by when you have to pay taxes, which runs in Japan from April to March. Now, all of that might seem like random trivia, but knowing this information about Japanese schools actually really helps us place these early Hoan episodes. You see, in episode 12,

the low tad lowdown, it's established that it's warm enough to swim in a lake. But just three episodes later gonna rule the school, we see that classes are in session. So knowing that Hoan is a more tropical region based on Kyushu, a Japanese island closer to the equator, we can look up the average monthly temperatures in that region to see when we could do some decent swimming, and then compare that to the typical Japanese school year, which takes its summer break between August and September. To ultimately conclude that the Hoan adventure starts around June or July, meaning that Ash is now 14. That's where it stays. For a surprisingly long time actually. The Hoan Ark has a ton of episodes, but we don't actually get that many time jumps in it. With each episode adding only a day or two to the overall journey,

we can actually double-check this with the episode Garden of Eaton, number 88, where the team tries to save a local banana harvest from a hungry snorlax. If you look closely, you'll notice that the bananas used in this episode are slightly smaller than you would expect. And this isn't an accident. While Kyushu isn't tropical enough to really grow its own bananas, the Japanese island of Okinawa, a bit more south, absolutely is. And it's known for growing smaller bananas known as the Shima banana. It's harvested from May to October, which allows us to know that 88 episodes into the season were still in the same year. We actually don't hit summer again until the Battle Frontier arc. And we know this through, of all places, two Pikachu-centric shorts that aired exclusively on Japanese Airlines. Yeah, I'm not kidding about that. This short is tightly. called Pikachu's Summer Festival and features Brock's Lombre, which he captures early on in the battle frontier arc.

We get further support that this is indeed summer in the Pokemon anime from a second Pikachu short, Pikachu's Ghost Carnival. Another of those airplane exclusives, which appears to be Pikachu and the gang celebrating the Hungry Ghost Festival. A traditional Buddhist celebration held in Asian countries like Japan. During the festival, which is held in August, ghosts are free to roam the earth where they seek food and entertainment. These ghosts are believed to be the ancestors of those who forgot to pay tribute to them after they died, or those who were never given a proper ritual send-off. And in the short, we clearly see the Pokemon putting out food for the spirits. We also clearly see Ash's Fampi coming into the fun too, who just a few episodes later,

number 154, reversing charges, will evolve. With this being in August, once again, Ashes crossed his birthday, making him, drum roll please, 15. Why can't this kid ever get acne? Or some awkward body hair! It would make this whole episode so much easier to do! Sorry about that outburst, but I'm now an hour 40 of researching this stuff. Referencing episodes, cross-referencing Pokemon teams, analyzing day-night cycles, looking for every detail I can find, and I'm only up to season 9 of 20!

40 hours! Oh, it's like chipping away at a giant block! It's a good episode, but it is the most tedious process ever. Okay. I don't know if you can tell right now, but I'm quite literally losing my mind. So the next time we see the season's change is in episode 431 overall, or episode 157 by the advanced arc, Time Warp heals all wounds. Which is, without question, the point in this series when all possible craps about the writing were thrown out the window. It is the single, strangest episode of Pokemon ever created, opening up all sorts of cans of worms that are probably discussed for another day. Don't believe me? Here's what happens in the episode.

Ash's travel companion May finds herself a locket on the ground, which for no explainable reason teleports her back in time with Meowf and Squirtle. That alone would make this an unusual episode of Pokemon, but no! No, they are not done yet. While May is in the past, she changes the course of history by making it snow. So when she teleports forward again, this guy, who used to be dead in the present, is suddenly alive. And this train station, which was completely abandoned in the present, is now fully operational. You know what this means? We mess with the space-time continuum and stuff. What? I can't even!

Usually the most fantastical part of this series is how Brock doesn't get arrested for sexual harassment. But this, this just crosses a line! Anyway, all absurdity aside, you can tell its winter because it's close to the anniversary of this day and no one thinks it's odd for it to be snowing. I didn't hear anything about a snowstorm today, did you? When is the weatherman ever right? By episode 182 of the Advanced Series, or episode 454 overall of the entire series, we're back to summer.

We know this because in the episode channeling the battle zone, Ash catches himself an apom. An apom that appears prominently with the rest of his team in the ninth Pokemon movie, Pokemon Ranger and the Battle of the Sea! It's a pretty cool name for a Pokemon movie. It's the Pokemon Ranger! Hi-ho, Silver! It appears that nature's protecting arms have gotten quite a bit warmer than our heroes would like. And because it's summer in the movie, we know that Ash has once again passed his birthday, making him now sweet 16. From there, we're practically done with the battle frontier arc.

The season ends in winter with its final episode, Home is where the start is. Even though there isn't snow on the ground, we can tell it's winter based on this shot. A clock showing the time to be 5.05 p.m. just before dusk. Looking at Japanese solar calendars to track sunrise and sunset times across the year, we know that this is either happening in October or February. So long story short, it's about winter as the advanced series finally comes to an end, and we prepare to head off to a new region. And you know what that means?

A brand new arc means a brand new girl for Ash to have totally platonic relationships with. Episode 1 of Diamond and Pearl introduces us to Dawn, who, just like May before her is a 10-year-old girl ready to start her Pokemon adventure. And this young lady, Dawn, is one of those people, as her 10th birthday has come and gone, and her Pokemon now waits in the wings. As we established last episode, Pokemon Journey start on April 1st to parallel,

parallel the Japanese school year. So this means that yet again we're near Ash's birthday. His 17th birthday. And on that note, can I please make a public service announcement? Dear Tumblr shippers, please remember these ages. Ash is 17, dawn is 10. If that totally squicks you out, chances are you may be dealing with a problematic fave. Please adjust your fan art accordingly. Figuring out the timeline through the four diamond and pearl seasons is actually pretty darn simple. We just talked about how we're starting in spring and by episode 88 camping it up. We're into summer. We're directly told that this is summer school by the narrator. It's time for Pokemon Summer Academy

And we can double-check using the Japanese title for the episode, Pokemon Summer School course The summer school adventures carry on for a few episodes before Ash and the gang head to Snow Point City And it's here that we get a pretty decent jump in time Although we were just in summer only 30 episodes later we're back into winter and you can tell this based on episode 116 the drifting snow runt where everyone's caught in a snowstorm sure the town is called snow point, but here's the thing. Sino is based on the real world Hokkaido, the northern most of Japan's main islands. And when I say based on, I mean, directly ripped off from.

Snow point in the game directly relates to the city of Wakenei, IRL. But here's the thing. Even though Wakkenai is so far north, it only dips below freezing temperatures between December and March. Meaning that the snowstorm that we see Ash and the crew caught in could only be happening during the winter. By episode 126, we're back in school, meaning that we're in the third trimester of the Japanese school year, but praise Arceus because it's not too long before we're back in summer. How do we know this? Ash catches himself a Pokemon, in this case Monferno in episode 132, which appears in some other Pokemon related thing outside of the main timeline. This time though I'm not talking about an obscure

short made for Japanese exclusive airlines, I'm talking about a movie that raked in more than $50 million in the Japanese box office, Arceus and the jewel of life. Or as Wikipedia literally translates it, pocket monsters diamond and pearl the movie. Arseus to conquering space time, the best Pokemon in all of Pokemon games. Something tells me the people at Wikipedia may have missed fact-checking that one. Although the setting for the movie Machinatown is inspired by Greece, specifically the city of Meteora, which is one of the craziest places I've been to actually, they just have these monasteries on top of pillars of rock that just hang out in the middle of nowhere.

It's wild! Machina Town is still set in Sino, and that's how we get our date. Watermelons. They sure are. Wow. This is our lucky day! Hold on! Those watermelons are ours! They were cooling down, but the stream caught them!

You see, Hokkaido in real life is indeed known for producing watermelons, including its $200 specialty black watermelons, which all have a harvest season of June through August, thereby making it summer and meaning that once again, Ash has crossed his birthday. 18 years old! 18 years old and still sleeping alone in a tent with a tweenager. Nothing creepy to see here, ladies and gentlemen! Nothing creepy! After getting his eighth Cynobad, it's established that

there's a one month gap before the start of the league championship. The Cinell League is taking place in a month on Lily of the Valley Island, which basically confirms that by the end of the arc, we're well into autumn. So to recap, 13 seasons and 645 episodes in, we've got ourselves an 18-year-old Ash Ketchum ready to start as Black and White Adventure. Or do we? Cue the mysterious music. Cue it! Come on, please, please cue the music. You've ruined the dramatic mystery guys. You see, things start getting a bit sticky here because it was around this point in the series when the Pokemon company attempted a shift that many fans consider to be a soft reboot of the series. The idea was to keep Ash as the main character of the series, but then treat him as an adventurer who was starting off for his very first time. Wherever you may find yourself, chances are, Pokemon will be there too. And that includes the Cantoregion's Palatown. Home to this young man, 10-year-old Ash Catch-um. This would all be totally totally

Fine, I am more than happy to end the episode here, but there's one huge problem. Ash retains all his memories from his past adventures. First, when Dawn rejoins the team... It's been a long time, Ash. So you're the Don who traveled all over the Sino region with Ash! And later, when Dawn specifically mentions that Brock cooked for her and Ash on their journey. He'd give Brock a run for his money. Who's Brock, Ash?

He's a good friend I was on my journey with for a long time. And in the wider Pokemon world, time has clearly continued to pass. For a great example, look all the way back to Joto and the episode A Golden Rod Opportunity, where the magnet train specifically needed a year to be completed. And yet, fast forward to the best wishes episode until we meet again, where Ash's new friends decide to travel from Canto to Joto using that exact same train, which shows us that there has indeed been a passage of years here. You're going to the Blackthorn Gym, right, Iris?

From there, you catch the magnet train to Jotow. It's almost like they knew an 18-year-old Ash Ketcham was getting awkwardly old to be hanging out with 10 year old girls. So they decided to boot him back a bit. But not boot him back far enough, I guess. Anyway, since it's all still part of the same canon with the same guy and the same memories, I'm gonna keep treating this character like he's the same Ash. Even if the black and white series sometimes has him acting more like a rookie trainer than someone who's competed in four regional leagues and has saved the world multiple times from overpowered Pokemon gods.

So we plow onward to the actual substance of black and white, or best wishes, as it's sometimes called. As I mentioned earlier when we left Ash at the end of Diamond and Pearl, it was in the autumn following his 18th birthday. Once we got to the Unova region, the Univa region, uh excuse me what what region? The Univa region. Univa region. So pronouncing it may not be as easy as we all thought, but telling the seasons is, Hank the Grudon, because of the existence of Deerling, a Pokemon that has different appearances depending on the season. At the start of Ash's Univa. Journey we see Deerling in its pink color spring form. They then switched to

to summer form in episodes 54 and 55 of the season. And with the Deerling now in its summer form, it means we've once again passed May 22nd and another birthday for Ash, thereby making him 19. Oh wow, we're going by boat! I'm totally psyched. What a kid. You girls don't know the half of it. And believe it or not, but the Deerling stand their summer form for the rest of the black and white series. Episodes 85, 90, 92, 112, 1114, 117, 117, 117, 117, all once,

have summer form Deerling. Towards the end of black and white's third season, Adventures in Univa, we get a reminder that the autumn migration is coming, which solidifies the idea that all of these episodes are still happening in the summer. They're all beginning, their migration. Once again, there's a two-month gap between Ash obtaining the last required gym badge and actually challenging the league for the region, so the Univa League event must happen sometime during the late summer or early fall of that year, with Ash still at age 19. So progress check, that is 17 seasons done and 799 episodes covered.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the final stretch. Now where most of black and white occurred during the summer, most of X and Y occurred during the fall. We can figure out when he arrives in Callos for the XY series by looking at one of the seasons' earliest episodes, a jolting switcheroo, which takes place in a vineyard as the grapes are ripening. As any wine connoisseur will probably tell ya, grapes tend to hit peak ripeness around late summer and early fall,

the same time that Ash was done with his business in Univoc. We get another mid-series time confirmation in the 73rd episode of the XY series, A Fashionable Battle, where the camera shows us falling autumn leaves in the sky. And lastly, there's episode 98, Dream A Little Dream from Me, where the characters take a break from their journey to camp outside and observe the lit leonids, an annual meteor shower based on the real-life event, the Leonids, named after the constellation Leo. Except in the Pokemon universe, that meteor shower is totally more lit fow! Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep!

This real-life meteor shower peaks in November telling us, yes, Yet again, that this final part of the XY story arc is still happening during the fall, and it stays that way through to the end of the last episode. And with that, at the end of the XY arc, Ash is 19 and a half, which I gotta admit feels kind of weird. Time was flying for Ash in the earlier seasons, but after that soft reboot at the top of black and white, each arc has only seemed to take a couple months. It's almost like they realized that they were making him too old for his own good. And once again, technically, I could end things here. There's a lot of agreement that the most recent arc, Sun and Moon are the start of a new canon. At least, that's what the staff of the show want you to think.

Quote, this is not a continuation of Pokemon X, Y, and Z, it's a completely new Satoshi, Ash, and Pikachu. But dear theorists, if I've taught you anything over the course of this series, do not believe everything that you're told at face value. They are lying to us. The show goes out of its way to show us that, hey, this isn't just a character who happens to have the same name and roughly the same appearance as the Ash Ketchum we all know and tolerate.

The first episode of Sun and Moon specifically, makes the point of mentioning the fact that he caught a bunch of Toros in the Kanto Safari zone. Actually, I'm good at dealing with Toros. See, I've caught some. We are still very clearly rolling with the same group of characters with some familiar faces from Kanto that Ash seems to recognize. Let me introduce you. They're my friends, and we've all traveled together before. They even have a collective flashback to some of the key events from the first season of the show. We did lots of things and had lots of fun.

Not everything was fun. So yet again, I call Fowl. This is still the same 19-and-a-half-year-old Ash Ketchum. We are following his adventure in these episodes to the absolute bitter end. So the question is, when does sun and moon start? Well, it's harder to track the seasons in the Olola region because it's based on Hawaii, which is tropical all year round. Likewise, there are some episodes that take place with visible snow, but that's because they take place on a mountain,

where it snows year round due to climate and elevation, not due to seasons. Luckily though, we get a reference point during the first episode of the Sun and Moon arc. There are vendors selling seasonal produce, which we're told is all fresh. The berries at this market are always fresh and delicious. Sounds great. In that episode, we see Lichies being sold, which peak in the summer months between May and September. Which means that this season does start during the summer months. In other words, Ash would have turned 20 years old, which makes it kind of awkward that he's still acting like a hyperactive kid who runs off whenever he sees an interesting

looking Pokemon. Hey, don't let the world kill your enthusiasm, Ash Ketchum. No need to be embarrassed about being excited, friend. You do you. And that's where things sit for now. Everything in Alola up to this point has seemed to be happening in the summer months. As for how old Ash is by the end of Sun and Moon, well, that information will have to wait since the current season is still airing. But based on the creator's slowing down time for Ash in these more recent seasons, I'm gonna say that Alola ends at the end of summer or late fall, which means he'll still be 20, probably by the end of Sun and Moon. So there you have it. After research, this topic for literal days out of my life, I think I have the most definitive answer that we will ever get. Ash is 19 years and 6 months old at the end of the events of the XY series and turns 20 shortly before the events of Sun and Mood. You haven't changed one bit. I haven't changed, have I?

Sorry, Ash, I think you've changed a lot more than you realize. Just watch out for that midlife crisis. It's sooner than you think. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Probably took years off my own life doing it.