Game Theory - Who Does Ash MARRY? (Pokemon)

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he breaks down all the infamous Pokemon Ships! Credits: Writers: Matthew Patrick, Tom Robinson, and Mike Keenan (The Pokémon Biologist) Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Pedro Freitas, JayskiBean, Warak and Shannon (Bomb0i) Assistant Editor: GeekyPeanut Sound Designer: Yosi Berman

Well, I guess it's finally time to say goodbye. Wow, I can't really believe it. We've been through so much together, trying to figure out how old you are, who your father is, even what level your Pikachu is. It's weird to think that it's all over. No, no, it can't be over. I know you finally achieved your dream, but I'm not ready to let you go. Hey, I'm sure we'll still be able to see each other.

I mean, if anyone's going to figure out a way to keep talking about me, it's going to be you. You really mean that? Wait, what? What is this? That's it! I know how I can keep theorizing about you. Well, that didn't take long at all, a Pikachu? Pika-Coh!

Welcome to Game Theory! Oh boy, was I not ready to catch all the feels when Pokemon released their newest trailer. After nine regions, 52 badges, 83 Pokemon, so long as you count 30 Toros, and 25 years of being 10 years old, Ash Ketcham is finally retiring as the protagonist of the Pokemon anime. Last year, Ash finally achieved his turn.

and became the Pokemon world champion at the end of Pokemon Ultimate Journeys. Which meant that, realistically, there really wasn't anything left for Ash to do as a character. He is literally the best, like no one ever was. But it's not like the anime can just end. That machine needs to keep on print and money. In other words, it needs some fresh blood, new faces, new heroes to learn the same lessons that Ash did along his journey. And in the latest trailer, we got exactly that. We were teased a new series set in the Peldaya region from the newly released Pokemon Scarlet and Violet games.

But instead of Ash, we get two new books. protagonists, Roy and Rico. Immediately after the release of this singular image, the fan base exploded with speculation about these characters. They're going to be mentored by Ash. They're going to be introduced in the final episode of Ash's season. Ash is going to be their rival. But of all the speculation, one theory seemed to rise above the rest, that Rico, the new female protagonist is going to be revealed as Ash's daughter. And this isn't just the fan base wildly speculating to keep Ash a part of the series. The evidence they cite is actually pretty compelling. First of all, RICO has black hair, at least partially, which obviously

matches Ash's hair. But more importantly, she's wearing a hair clip that bears a striking resemblance to the L symbol from Ash's original cap when he began his Pokemon journey. Also, careful-eyed fans noticed the necklace that she's wearing looks remarkably similar to the Thunderstone that Pikachu refused to evolve with back during the original anime. Could it be that her pops? Ash Ketchum gave her this memento as a symbol of overcoming struggles and not taken the easy way out. Even the name RICO has been pointed out by some to be a nod to Rika Matsumoto, the longtime Japanese voice actress for Ash. And the theories didn't stop there either. Once everyone was done pinning Ash as Rico's dad,

the internet did what it loves to do, good old fashion shipping. If Ash is the father, who then is the mother? Each corner of the fandom started throwing out ideas to prove that their favorite companion was the true Mrs. Ketchum. But looking around, it seemed pretty clear that people were just being blinded by the wifu goggles rather than the cold hard facts of science. So, you know what that means? It's time for me to break out the old person. Faternity test. Ready your eye colors and earlobes friends. We're settling this debate today. If Ash is truly the father of Rico Who is the mother? Let's start by figuring out our complete list of potential matches, shall we? If Ash is gonna be Rico's father, then it makes sense that her mother would be a character that we as fans are already familiar with. Admittedly, it could just wind up being some random girl named Jennifer that we've never been introduced to before, but that'd be pretty lame. So instead we naturally turn to the roster of Ash's many many female companions.

over the course of the series to find his special romance. I compiled a comprehensive list of maybe mommies to find the perfect OTP for Ash and wound up with 15 candidates in total. Obviously we have Misty from the original series, May from the advanced generation, Dawn from Diamond and Pearl, Iris from black and white, Serena from X Y, Lily, Mallow, and Lana from Sun and Moon, and Chloe from the newest Pokemon Journey series. But to be extra thorough here, I also tossed in a few long shots. These are one-off or side characters who showed some passing romantic interest in Ash to during some point of the series. This list includes Melody from Pokemon the movie 2000, as well as Macy and Angie from Joto and Sino, one-off characters that developed crushes on Ash, usually after he saved their lives.

Hey, you two, you're hanging in there. We're fine. Thank you, Ash. No problem. Glad you're fine. So brave and courageous and so caring. So you're a Pokemon trainer, huh? I guess he'll do.

Here's your traditional welcome kits. Mew-hmm. We also have Lira from Diamond and Pearl and Miet from XY, rival characters who outright tell Ash's female companion for each series that if they don't make a move on Ash, they're just gonna steal him away. I guess if we're all gonna spend the rest of our lives in here, we'll get married here. I've got three choices. One thing. Either you tell Ash how you feel about him, or I'll tell him how I feel. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Finally, we of course have Lodias. Yep, the Pokemon. If you're not familiar with this particular Nugget-a-Lore, at the end of the Pokemon Hero, Lodios and Ladias movie, the Pokemon Lodias in the form of a girl named Bianca gives Ash a kiss a move that shocks the whole gang as well as everyone in the audience. And yeah, the Pokemon movies up to that point were considered canon. So with our complete list of 15 assembled, or 14 and 1 Pokemon, it's time to use our greatest companion science to narrow down this list of ladies and find the mother. Let's start with eye color, shall we? We've discussed eye color plenty of times on this show, so to quickly summarize every single person is two copies of each of their genes. One comes from mom and one comes from dad. These genes come in different flavors called alleles. Dominant alleles are for the traits that are stronger and cover up the weaker recessive alleled traits. When it comes to eye color, there are actually three possible alleles, brown, green, and blue.

If you inherit a blue allele from your mom and a blue allele from your dad, well, congratulations, you got yourself blue eyes. Two brown alleles give you brown eyes and two green give you green. Super simple. But what happens when you get two different alleles? Well, in the case of eye color, brown is gonna be the dominant gene. blue is recessive and green is just somewhere in the middle. So if you get yourself one brown allele, it's gonna butt in like Jesse's Wobaffet. Means you're likely gonna have yourself brown eyes.

If someone gets one green allele and one blue, they're gonna have green eyes because green is dominant over blue. The only way to get blue eyes is with two recessive blue alleles. Knowing that, let's then apply it to Rico. Since Rico has blue eyes, we know for sure that she has two recessive blue alleles. Except that already presents us with a problem. Ash has brown eyes, just like his mom. Sure, Ash may,

may have brown eyes and still pass on a recessive blue allele to his children, but it makes the odds of him having a blue-eyed child much, much lower. Now, while it's true that Rico's mother could also have herself a secret blue allele, it is much more likely if Ash is the father that the mom has to have blue eyes, so she's guaranteed to pass that trade on. As such, we're gonna eliminate all the candidates who don't have blue eyes. That eliminates Iris, Lily, Mallow, Chloe, Angie, Miette, and LaDias, which, who, I am glad that we knocked LaDias out right away,

because the idea of Pokemon and humans having romantic feelings for each other would definitely be uncomfortable. The blue eye criteria also puts Macy and Misty on the bubble because their eye color is annoyingly inconsistent. Sometimes it's blue, sometimes it's green. On the wiki, Misty's eye color is actually labeled as Veridian, which is both blue and green. So we're just going to keep them both in the running for now. So with our potential mom list cut in half, it's time to look at our second favorite genetic trait, hair color. Hair color is predominantly determined by the presence or absence of two pigments in your hair. U-melanin, a black-brown pigment, and fial melanin, a yellowish-red pigment.

You can actually think of these two as dials that can be turned up and down to generate a whole different range of hair colors. If your hair contains high levels of u-melinin and lower levels of feel-melin, then your hair is going to be a dark color, such as black or brown. If your hair has low levels of u-melinin and high levels of feel melanin, then your hair is going to be lighter like a blonde or a redhead. And in between those is just a whole other spectrum of color. Now, in the main image that we've seen for Rico, it's kind of hard to tell what her exact hair color is thanks to the light. However, looking at this brief scene from the announcement trailer, it makes it a lot clearer that her hair is black with blue underlights. That's the official term for highlights that are hidden underneath the top layer of hair. Now, blue is of course not a natural hair color in our world, but this is an anime.

Weird color hair just kind of comes with the territory. So we're gonna have to make some assumptions about the genetics of non-natural colors. Since more hair colors are possible in the anime world, that most likely means that there just must be more pigments besides e-melinin and feo melanin. Therefore, there are more dials that we can play with. with when deciding hair color. There's probably a dial for green hair, purple hair, and most importantly for us, blue hair. Since Rico's hair is both black and blue, that means that the jeans for both are going to be cranked up to the max. If Ash is the father, that then explains the black hair. Meaning that we need ourselves a mom that has blue hair to contribute that half of the jeans. My deepest condolences to all the Serena and Misty shippers out there, because there are only two girls left in our list that have both blue eyes and blue hair.

Dawn from Diamond and Pearl and Lana from Sun and Moon. Hey, Dane, is Ash your boyfriend? Huh? Ash, no way! Hmm. Come on, if you had to choose between the three, who would it be? Uh, I never thought of it. Lana is your boyfriend?

So, now that we've narrowed it down to two, we need to find some feature to distinguish between our two female finalists. How do we decide between Dawn and Lana? Well, normally I'd go to earlobes or face shape, but honestly, it isn't nearly that complicated. All we really need to do is take a close. closer look at their eyes. If you look at Dawn's eyes, there are three different visible colors. The whites of her eyes, known as the sclera, the blue irises, and her black pupils. Now take a look at Lana.

Notice anything strange? Her sclera is non-existent. What's even weirder is the fact that her pupils aren't black, they're actually white. And this isn't just part of the weird redesign that all the characters got for the Alola arc. Every other lead character has themselves normal eyes. And we know it's a genetic trait here because the only other characters in the show to have the same quirky look are Lana's parents and her two little sisters, Harper and Sarah. It is a trait that is passed between generations. And when we look at Rico, she's lacking that crucial family feature, meaning that Lana cannot be the mother. And so we come to the end of our investigation.

Rico's mother and Ash's true shipping partner is, in fact, Dawn from Diamond and Pearl. She's got blue eyes to pass on the blue allele, blue hair to match with Rico's underlights, and actual pupils that her daughter can inherit. So there you have it. Ash and Dawn together forever. Unless that's not actually the full story here. I did a lot of research for this episode, and the more I looked, the more I realized that the initial premise this entire online theory is based on

is shakier than Grudon's earthquake. This whole time, we've been working with the assumption that Ash is the father, but no, it just doesn't make sense. Let's start with the hair clip, shall we? Well, the design is undeniably a reference to Ash's iconic cap. It's a hair clip. It's not a paternity test. Rico is just as likely to have gotten that clip the same way Ash got his first ever cap.

I had to send in about a million postcards to win that hat. You know what else that hair clip looks like? The antenna of an orbital. Maybe that's who the real father is. And what about that thunderstorm necklace that supposedly came from the anime's original season? Well, it would make for a great story. To say that Ash held on to that thunderstorm all these years, eventually gave it to his daughter as a symbol of how Pikachu and Ash got stronger through hard work,

it would be a complete retcon of what we see happen in the story. We know what happens to that thunderstorm. It was originally featured all the way back in, episode 14 and after Pikachu rejects it, the fate of the stone is left as an open mystery. However, it does finally show up again in episode 540 during the Diamond and Pearl arc. In this episode, Ash reveals that he's kept the stone the entire time. What's that? It's a thunderstorm.

Huh? You see, something like this happened once. And back then, the Nurse Joy from Vermilion City gave it to me. I've been holding on to it all this time. in case Pikachu ever wanted to evolve into Rai Choo. In the episode, the pair has to face off against another strong Rai Choo, meaning Ash and Pikachu must once again contemplate whether or not to use the stone to evolve. I love that it's not just enough to recycle the same plot theme, but even doing it against the same Pokemon?

Like, why not a dragon Pokemon or a god Pokemon or something? Nope, those darn Rai Chu just always causing you to have that real existential crisis. Anyway, as you can probably guess, they decide not to evolve Pikachu again. But this time, there's a twist. Team Rocket shows up, steals the Thunderstone, and at the end of the episode, reveal that they plan on selling it. Hey Sunshine, what about this? Since pursuit can be expensive, let's sell it. First we are seeing it online, so we all be rich.

In short, the Thunderstone is long gone before Ash ever thinks about having kids. And before you say it, no, Rico is not the child of Team Rocket. Trust me, I checked. Even the genetics are against Ash. Sure, Ash could have a recessive blue allele, but that's a big if. And the whole black hair thing, characters with black hair and blue eyes in this series are a dime a dozen. Just take Go from journeys, or even Riley, from Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. For completeness, I also ran an analysis on their faces and found that, again, the likelihood of it being ash was minimal.

If you'll watch the episode where I revealed that Bo Burnham is secretly Dream's father, you'll know that face shape can be a big tell in genetics. So I found the best shots of all the characters facing forwards, did some pixel measurements, put them into an online face shape calculator, and the results were surprising. Most of the women ended up having the same or very similar ratios. Basically, all of them were categorized as a heart-shaped face. Rico also has a heart-shaped face, so it doesn't really help me narrow the field any. Now, scientifically speaking, daughters are supposed to get a balanced mix of their moms and their dad's face shapes. And while Ash's measurements do lead to a heart-shaped face,

all his other proportions are too big to match with Rico's. His jaw is much longer, his cheeks are wider, and his forehead is far too bulbous. Soar, couldn't help myself on that one. All of this means that Ash's head is simply too large to be paired with any of the companions on the show in order to produce a daughter with the face shape of Rico. The science just doesn't add up. I don't think Rico's parents are going to end up having some significant lore implication. And you know what? I am more than happy with that. Well, yeah, it'd be cool to see the daughter of the legendary Ash Ketchum go on her own journey to become a Pokemon master like her father.

I also think it would kind of defeat the purpose of bringing in a new protagonist in the first place. Pokemon is a story about how anyone can rise to greatness through hard work and deterred. Asch started off as a derpy screw up from a small town in the middle of nowhere. He had good intentions and a great heart But not a lot of skill. Honestly, he still doesn't have a lot of skill using Thunder Shock for everything does not a strategy make But he has matured. He's learned. He's grown. He's gone through more than his fair share of failures and now he's achieved his childhood dream To just hand the Torchick off to his daughter is falling into the trap that so many other franchises have fallen into recently that you have to be one of the chosen ones in ordered win. It under undermines that core idea that this trainer could be anyone. It could be you.

It's scary for things to change, but it's also okay. I also know that eventually Ash is going to show up as a surprise battle for Rico towards the end of her journey because that's how Pokemon do. So, well, yes, I am loath to see Ash go. I'm also okay moving on, because let's be honest, he really should have gotten with Serena or Misty the entire time. But hey, that's just an opinion. My gamer opinion.

Thanks for listening.