The Pokemon anime is going to celebrate a huge milestone!
It has been announced that the Pokemon anime is going to celebrate the airing of their 1000th episode. This is a huge milestone as not many scripted television series have reached such a feat. Pokemon will get to share this honor with Doramon which has 1,787.
It is a surprise that the Pokemon anime will celebrate the airing of their 1000th episode. Many anime series tend to skip over such milestones and Pokemon has been no different. It has long passed 500 episodes during the Diamond & Pearl saga. The 500th episode was simply a normal episode. Though, it seems like Pokemon wants to celebrate their 1000th episode with a few special events.
Pokemon has announced that they will be hosting a special event on November 11th at the Sunshine City Department Store in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Several voices actors from the Pokemon anime will be in attendance. One of those voice actors include Rika Matsumoto who has played Ash in Japan since the beginning of the series.
It has also been revealed that comedian Sunshine Ikezaki will voice character in an upcoming Sun & Moon episode to celebrate Pokemon reach 1000 episodes. He has been involved with Pokemon through Pokenchi and Oha Suta.
Pokemon Centers in Japan will celebrate the 1000th episode milestone by featuring 1000th episode merchandise. This merchandise will be sold from November 3rd to December 24th, 2017. The celebration will be part of the “Celebrate! Commemoration of the Broadcast of the 1000th Episode of the TV Series Pika-Pika Winter Vacation” campaign.
In case you are wondering how and which episode makes up the 1000 episode of the Pokemon series then Dogasu from Dogasu’s Backpack has compile a table. This table includes the “Cyber Soldier Porygon” and “Holiday Hi-Jynx” episode, the Diamond & Pearl episodes aired during Black & White and the Mega Evolution Specials. You can look at the full table below.
| Series | Number of Episodes | Notes |
| Original Series | 276 | Includes “Cyber Soldier Porygon,” “Rougela’s Christmas,” and “Iwark the Bivouac.” |
| Advanced Generation | 192 | Does not include the unaired episode “The Battle of the Shaking Island! Dojoach vs Namazun!!” or any of the Side Story (“Chronicles”) episodes. |
| Diamond & Pearl | 193 | Includes the two specials that aired after the start of Best Wishes!; “Hikari – A New Journey!” & “The Greatest Crisis in the Nibi Gym’s History!” |
| Best Wishes! | 144 | Does not include the unaired “The Rocket-Dan vs. the Plasma-Dan!” Parts One or Two but does include “Dent and Takeshi! Gyarados’ Imperial Wrath!!” and “Iris vs. Ibuki! The Road to Being a Dragon Master!!” |
| XY(&Z) | 146 | The four Mega Evolution specials are counted in this total. Also included is the Pikachu movie episode, “The Legend of XYZ!” and “The Ultimate Duo! Citron and Dent!!” |
| Sun & Moon | 49 | The episode that airs on November 9th will be Sun & Moon episode 049. |
The 1000 episode will be the 49th episode of the Sun & Moon saga. Currently their is no episode title for the 1000th episode. There is no word if this episode will be important or simple just be another filler episode. As of right now, the Pokemon anime has 990 aired episodes. The 1000th episode will aired on November 9th.
There is no word if the English broadcast of Pokemon will acknowledge the airing of their 1000th episode. It looks as if they will need to use their own system to determine their 1000th episode as they have not aired the same episodes as the Japanese broadcast. Some of the episodes that were not aired in English included recap clip episodes, Brock & Cilan episode and Iris & Clair episode that was aired in XY.
Source: Dogasu’s Backpack
