Pokémon season 1: Indigo League — 80 episodes, eight badges and a Pikachu that refuses its Poké Ball

On the 1^st of April 1997, a boy from Pallet Town oversleeps and ends up with a Pikachu that flatly refuses its Poké Ball. Season 1 of the Pokémon anime, titled "La Ligue Indigo" in French (Indigo League in English), lays down in 80 episodes everything the franchise would spend twenty-five years building on: a region to cross, eight badges to earn, two traveling companions and an indestructible trio of crooks. It's also the bumpiest season in the show's history, with three episodes French audiences have never seen. Here's what it really contains, minus the half-truths that have been circulating for twenty years.

Contents

• Where season 1 fits in the series
• Airing and episode count: three timelines not to be confused
• Kanto, eight badges and the Indigo Plateau at the end of the road
• Ash, Misty and Brock: the founding trio
• The season's standout Pokémon
• Jessie, James and Meowth: the recurring adversaries
• Episode 38, pulled from the air after December 16, 1997
• The Indigo Plateau tournament: six episodes and one elimination
• The French broadcast: Fox Kids, TF1 and the TF1 Vidéo VHS tapes
• What season 1 built
• Season 1 at a glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

Where season 1 fits in the series

Season 1 opens cycle 1 of " Pokémon the Series ", known as Pocket Monsters. This cycle brings together five seasons — Indigo League, Adventures in the Orange Islands, The Johto Journeys, Johto League Champions and Master Quest — and follows Ash from Kanto to the Orange Islands, then on to Johto. Across twenty-five seasons, the series built around him falls into seven cycles, and his full journey is retraced in our feature on Ash Ketchum.

One clarification is needed before going any further, because it's behind half the mistakes you read on the subject. Splitting the show into seasons is a Western invention, not a Japanese one. In Japan, the series airs continuously, week after week, with no yearly break and no season titles: episodes follow one another, and only the name of the series changes when the production begins a major new chapter. Numbered seasons, with their subtitles and logos, were created for international markets at the dubbing stage. A Japanese series name is therefore never the title of a season, and a season's Japanese dates can't be worked out from its Western dates.

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On the games side, season 1 is exactly contemporary with the first generation. It begins when Pokémon Red and Blue are already phenomena in Japan, and its cast mirrors the structure of the game: a professor who hands over a first Pokémon, eight Gym Leaders, a League at the end of the road. The series does take an immediate liberty, though, by giving its hero a Pikachu rather than one of the three Kanto starters, a choice the game Pokémon Yellow would later make its own.

Airing and episode count: three timelines not to be confused

The standard French-language breakdown runs season 1 from episode 1 to episode 80, for a total of 80 episodes. In Japan, these episodes aired from the 1^st of April 1997, with "Pokémon - I Choose You!", to the 21st of January 1999, with "Friends to the End". In between, the broadcast was anything but smooth sailing: it was interrupted for four months at the end of 1997, for reasons explained below.

In the United States, the season premiered on September 8, 1998 and wrapped up on November 27, 1999. The American count is not the French-language count: the English-language season titled Indigo League stops at 52 episodes in its original TV run, with the rest of the Kanto adventures pushed back to the following season. This is exactly the kind of gap you need to keep in mind: depending on the market, the same run of episodes is filed under different seasons, and the totals don't match.

In France, the season arrived on September 5, 1999 on Fox Kids, a channel then available only to satellite subscribers, and then on January 3, 2000 on TF1, where free-to-air broadcasting turned the series into a playground phenomenon. On TF1, episodes ran back to back without a break up to episode 105 — well beyond season 1 — before the channel started over from episode 1. Gulli later handled the reruns.

Three episodes were never aired in France: episodes 18, 35 and 38. Two special episodes, "Holiday Hi-Jynx" and "Snow Way Out!", were, on the other hand, shown outside the season's running order, on May 8, 2000 and April 8, 2000 respectively. The French opening theme is Pokémon Theme, and the movie tied to this period is Pokémon: The First Movie, the first of the feature films listed in our complete guide to the Pokémon movies.

Kanto, eight badges and the Indigo Plateau at the end of the road

The plot fits in a single sentence, and that's its strength. Ash Ketchum has just turned ten, the age at which anyone in Kanto can legally set off on a journey, and he leaves Pallet Town with a Pokémon he received from Professor Oak. His goal is the Indigo League tournament, which you can only enter with eight badges earned from the region's Gym Leaders. The region itself, its cities and its network of Gyms are placed within the wider Pokémon world in our overview of the regions, from Kanto to Paldea.

🚗 Ash has to wait until he's ten to leave Pallet Town and take to the roads of Kanto; you take to yours behind the wheel, where a Pokémon rearview mirror charm makes the trip with you.

Kanto's eight Gyms are set once and for all by the games, but the series follows its own order: Pewter City and its Boulder Badge, Cerulean City and its Cascade Badge, Vermilion City and its Thunder Badge, Saffron City and its Marsh Badge, Celadon City and its Rainbow Badge, Fuchsia City and its Soul Badge, Cinnabar Island and its Volcano Badge, Viridian City and its Earth Badge. The role of these Gym Leaders and the hierarchy above them are covered in detail in our feature on the Gym Leaders and the Elite Four.

The last badge is also the strangest of the season. The Viridian Gym is run by Giovanni, who also happens to lead Team Rocket: episode 63, "The Battle of the Badge", therefore brings together Ash's final sporting milestone and the criminal organization that has been hounding him since the second episode. The full story of this double role is told in our feature on Team Rocket.

The season ends at the Indigo Plateau, with the closing ceremony and the farewell to Ritchie; the return to Pallet Town and the departure for the Orange Islands kick off season 2, Adventures in the Orange Islands. Nothing is wrapped up: Ash hasn't won the League, and the series sets off again right away. It's this pattern — a defeat, then a new road — that will shape the next twenty-four seasons.

Ash, Misty and Brock: the founding trio

Ash doesn't travel alone, and season 1 sets the formula for a long time to come: one hero, two companions, a Pikachu on his shoulder. Misty is the first to join the group, in the very first episodes, after Ash wrecks her bike; Brock follows from episode 5, "Showdown in Pewter City".

The detail people often forget is that these two companions aren't just Trainers passing through: they are Gym Leaders themselves. Misty runs the Gym in Cerulean City with her sisters, Brock the one in Pewter City, and both of them choose to leave their posts to follow Ash. Misty sets out to become the greatest Water-type Pokémon Trainer, Brock to become a Pokémon Breeder; on the road, he's mostly the one who cooks and looks after everyone.

Misty's team barely evolves, but it grows: she travels with Psyduck, Goldeen and Staryu, and leaves Starmie along with a Horsea at the Cerulean Gym. She's also the one who ends up with Togepi, hatched from an egg Ash found: the little Pokémon, one of the first members of the next generation to appear, is introduced in our feature on baby Pokémon and in the profile for Togepi.

Brock, for his part, trains Onix and Geodude, joined over the course of the season by Zubat and Vulpix. Standing in their way is Gary Oak, Ash's rival from Pallet Town, Professor Oak's grandson, who pops up now and then to remind Ash how far behind he's falling.

The season's standout Pokémon

The Pokémon of season 1 is, of course, Pikachu, and the series takes care to explain why it never goes back into its Poké Ball: it refused it from the very first episode. The bond forms when Ash shields it from a flock of Spearow, and from then on the little mouse never leaves his shoulder.

Ash's team then comes together very quickly. He catches a Caterpie that becomes Metapod and then Butterfree, a Pidgeotto, and then the three Kanto starters: Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle. These three catches make the series a special case: where a player of Red and Blue has to pick a single starter, Ash ends up with all three.

Charmander is the season's dramatic throughline. Abandoned in the rain by its original Trainer in episode 11, it evolves into Charmeleon and then into Charizard — and stops obeying. This disobedience isn't a minor character detail: it's what costs Ash his decisive match at the Indigo Plateau, and it takes until the following season for the relationship to mend.

🧥 Charmander is abandoned in the rain in episode 11 before becoming the season's throughline; a Pokémon jacket keeps you dry the day you get caught in a downpour.

Other catches go straight to Professor Oak's lab for lack of room on the team: a Krabby that will become Kingler, a Muk sent away because of its smell, and an entire herd of Tauros caught in the Safari Zone. Ash also parts ways with several Pokémon: he releases Butterfree so it can join its own kind, and entrusts his Haunter to Sabrina and his Primeape to a coach he meets along the way. The role professors play in this storage system is explained in our feature on Pokémon Professors.

Jessie, James and Meowth: the recurring adversaries

The Team Rocket trio shows up as early as the second episode, "Pokémon Emergency!", attacking the Pokémon Center in Viridian City. Their goal narrows almost immediately: they set out to steal Pokémon in general, and now all they want is Pikachu.

Their teams are modest and very recognizable. Jessie starts out with an Ekans that evolves into Arbok and picks up a Lickitung; James starts with a Koffing that becomes Weezing and adopts a Victreebel that spends its time chomping on him. Meowth, for its part, talks, which makes it the only Pokémon in the trio able to hold a conversation with its victims.

Season 1 sets up their comic routine — the recited motto, the jury-rigged trap, the forced blast-off — but it doesn't reduce them entirely to comic foils. Giovanni, their boss, is presented as a threat of an entirely different caliber, and episode 63 shows him running the Viridian Gym. This two-faced side of the organization, somewhere between gags and real crime, is broken down in our feature on Team Rocket.

Episode 38, pulled from the air after December 16, 1997

It's the most documented event in the entire history of the series, and it belongs to this season. Episode 38, whose Japanese title でんのうせんしポリゴン is rendered as "Electric Soldier Porygon", aired only once, on Tuesday, December 16, 1997, at 6:30 p.m. on the TV Tokyo network. It never received an official title in English or in French, and it has never been rerun or released anywhere in the world since.

That evening, the episode drew the best ratings in its time slot, with about 4.6 million households and a 16.5% rating in the Kanto region. Around the twentieth minute, an electric attack from Pikachu destroys a series of vaccine missiles and sets off an explosion that flashes violently between red and blue, at a frequency of about 12 hertz for a few seconds. The technique, known as paka paka in Japan, was common in animation; what causes the problem here is its intensity and its duration.

The consequences are well documented, and there's no need to either exaggerate or downplay them. Japanese emergency services recorded 685 viewers taken to the hospital by ambulance, including 375 girls and 310 boys; the Reuters news agency put the figure at 729, and the Japan Times at 651. Reported symptoms ranged from headaches, nausea and vision problems to convulsions and loss of consciousness, with most cases being photosensitive epileptic seizures. The Japanese press dubbed the affair "Pokémon Shock".

The reaction was immediate. The series was pulled from the air for four months and didn't return until April 16, 1998, with episodes 39 and 40; Japan's Ministry of Health convened a panel of experts, and video rental stores pulled the series from their shelves. Broadcast guidelines were then adopted: no more than three flashes per second for red images, no more than five otherwise, and a limited total duration. For years, a warning urging viewers to watch TV in a well-lit room and at a distance from the screen ran before Japanese animated programs.

Two side effects are worth mentioning. The special episodes "Holiday Hi-Jynx" and "Snow Way Out!" were moved from their original Japanese time slot because of the hiatus. And Porygon, which isn't even the source of the flashes — the attack at fault is Pikachu's — has all but vanished from the series ever since, as have its evolutions.

Episodes 18 and 35, also missing from French screens, are a different story. Episode 18 was shelved because of its beauty contest and James's fake inflatable chest; aired once in the United States on June 24, 2000, in a shortened version, it was pulled afterward. Episode 35 was censored for what was deemed an excessive presence of firearms, with a character shooting at Jessie and James.

The Indigo Plateau tournament: six episodes and one elimination

The tournament spans six episodes, from 75 to 80, and takes place at the Indigo Plateau. It is preceded, in episode 74, by the opening ceremony and the arrival of the flame, then runs through four preliminary rounds on themed fields — water, ice, rock, grass — before moving into the main stadium.

There, Ash meets Ritchie, a Trainer whose Pikachu goes by the name Sparky, and the two boys become friends before being drawn against each other. Ash is knocked out in the round of 16, in other words the Top 16, because his Charizard refuses to battle: the Pokémon decides its opponent is beneath it and falls asleep on the field. Ritchie goes on to the quarterfinals. Gary, for his part, goes out earlier, in the fourth round. The name of the tournament winner is never given.

😴 At the Indigo Plateau, Ash's Charizard decides its opponent is beneath it and dozes off in the middle of a round-of-16 match; our Pokémon duvet covers would give it a far better field to nap on, right in your bedroom.

This result is anything but trivial for what comes next. The Top 16 at the Indigo Plateau becomes the starting point of a very long run of "almosts", which our feature on Ash traces all the way to the world title he won twenty-five years later. The season closes at the Indigo Plateau, with the tournament's closing ceremony and Ash's farewell to Ritchie; the return to Pallet Town and Professor Oak's next mission already belong to season 2.

The French broadcast: Fox Kids, TF1 and the TF1 Vidéo VHS tapes

France discovered the series nearly two and a half years after Japan. Fox Kids, later renamed Jetix, kicked things off on September 5, 1999 for satellite subscribers; TF1 took over free-to-air on January 3, 2000 and turned the series into a pop culture phenomenon. Gulli would later handle the reruns.

The home video release followed quickly. In 2000, TF1 Vidéo released twelve VHS tapes and DVDs covering episodes 1 to 42, excluding the censored episodes, with three and then four episodes per volume; the VHS tapes were reissued as six-tape box sets and the DVDs as three-disc box sets starting in 2001. Three special VHS and DVD releases came out in 2002, gathering ten additional episodes plus one episode from the following season.

One detail will amuse collectors: four volumes announced on the covers never saw the light of day. Later, between 2007 and 2009, the magazine Planète Pokémon reissued the first three seasons on DVD, with issues 1 to 26 covering season 1. Today, part of the season can be watched on the official Pokémon website and on demand on Netflix.

What season 1 built

Seen from a distance, season 1 looks like one long tutorial — and that's exactly what it is. It sets up a grammar the series will never abandon: one region per cycle, eight badges, a final tournament, companions chasing their own dreams and a Team Rocket that fails every single week. Later cycles would change the settings, the battle mechanics and the companions, but not this framework.

It also establishes an iconography. The cap, the Pikachu that refuses its Poké Ball, the insolent Charizard and the motto recited by Jessie and James all come from these 80 episodes. For many French-speaking viewers, the way into the Pokémon universe didn't come through Red and Blue but through the TF1 opening theme in January 2000, which explains this season's special place in collective memory.

Finally, it left a mark the franchise has never erased. Episode 38 remains the only aired episode in the entire series to have been banned worldwide, and the flashing rules adopted after December 1997 still apply to Japanese animation today. A foundational season, then, in every sense of the word.

Season 1 at a glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• How many episodes are in Pokémon season 1?
  The French-language breakdown counts 80 episodes, numbered 1 to 80, from "Pokémon - I Choose You!" to "Friends to the End". Note that the breakdown varies by market: the English-language season titled Indigo League stops at 52 episodes in its original TV run, with the rest of the Kanto adventures filed under the following season.
• Which episode was pulled from broadcast after the 1997 incident?
  It's episode 38, whose Japanese title でんのうせんしポリゴン translates as "Electric Soldier Porygon". Aired only once in Japan, on December 16, 1997, it contains a sequence in which the explosion caused by a Pikachu attack flashes red and blue at about 12 hertz. Japanese emergency services recorded 685 viewers taken to the hospital, including 375 girls and 310 boys; Reuters reported 729 cases and the Japan Times 651. The series was suspended for four months, and the episode has never been rerun or released anywhere in the world.
• Why were episodes 18 and 35 never aired in France?
  For reasons unrelated to those behind episode 38. Episode 18 was shelved because of a beauty contest and James's fake inflatable chest; it aired once in the United States on June 24, 2000, in a shortened version, and was then pulled. Episode 35 was censored for what was deemed an excessive presence of firearms, including a character shooting at Jessie and James.
• Who travels with Ash in season 1?
  Misty and Brock. Both are Gym Leaders themselves — Misty in Cerulean City, Brock in Pewter City — and they choose to leave their posts to follow Ash. This lineup only holds for this season: from season 2 on, Brock stays behind in the Orange Islands and Tracey Sketchit takes his place.
• Did Ash win the Indigo League?
  No. The tournament spans episodes 75 to 80 at the Indigo Plateau, and Ash is knocked out in the round of 16, in other words the Top 16, by Ritchie. His Charizard refuses to battle during the match and falls asleep on the field. Ritchie makes it to the quarterfinals, Gary goes out in the fourth round, and the name of the tournament winner is never revealed.
• When did season 1 air in France?
  On September 5, 1999 on Fox Kids, a channel then available only to satellite subscribers, and then on January 3, 2000 on TF1, free-to-air. The series had already been airing in Japan since April 1, 1997, so the gap was nearly two and a half years. Gulli later handled the reruns.
• Which movie goes with season 1?
  Pokémon: The First Movie, the franchise's very first feature film, centered on Mewtwo. The movies are not seasons and don't fit into the episode numbering: they are separate productions, released in theaters alongside the TV broadcast.

In short