Nintendo releases a trailer promoting a new Pokemon anime series based on the entire span of the games thus far, and reveals that it will be free to watch online.

Nintendo, Game Freak, and The Pokemon Company are hard at work building up hype for the latest entry to the Pokemon series, and they're not done yet. Nintendo has now revealed that a brand-new Pokemon anime series will be released on the internet leading up to Pokemon Sun & Moon.

The new anime, entitled Pokemon Generations, will encompass major events from the entire Pokemon series, beginning with Pokemon Red & Blue. The series will be available to watch for free on Pokemon's official YouTube channel, with each episode spanning from three to five minutes long. The series will debut on September 16th at 9 a.m. Pacific Time, with Nintendo releasing two episodes on that day and one episode every week thereafter, running through December 23rd.

Although the episodes are quite short, the trailer below reveals them to be beautifully animated with dynamic battles and plenty of action. The mini-series strongly resembles the Pokemon Origins anime, which is fitting, considering the 4-episode anime series was based directly on the Pokemon Red & Blue games rather than acting as a reboot of the original anime series. The original anime is clearly iconic for Pokemon fans, with over 70,000 viewers tuning in to a recent Pokemon anime Twitch stream. However, the style used in Generations and Origins is much closer to the original art for the Pokemon game series, which should help it to stand out from the adventures of Ash & Pikachu.

[HTML1]

While this is hardly Pokemon's first appearance as an anime, releasing anime shorts online prior to a game's release to help build excitement appears to be a popular choice recently. In addition to the film Kingsglaive, Square Enix has released a short anime series to YouTube based on Final Fantasy XV. However, Nintendo appears to have gone the extra mile, choosing to dub their release into English for western viewers.

Pokemon Generations is the latest in Nintendo's celebration of the series' 20 year run, and it's great that it's free for fans to watch. Although the Pokemon series has always been popular with gamers, its wide-spread appearance in other forms of media helps to cement Pokemon as a permanent cultural experience rather than it only having a brief flash in the pan of popularity. One Game Rant writer previously stated that 2016 is the year of Pokemon, and it definitely looks like the parent companies behind the game are trying to make that reality.

Pokemon Generations will begin on September 16th at 9 a.m. Pacific Time.

Source: YouTube