A 'Pokémon' FAST Channel Has Launched For Prime Video

Do I know when it launched? No, and that might haunt me for a bit. Get ready to feel the heat!

I had to take this with my phone because native screenshots don’t work

It’s been ten months since WildBrain began gearing up to launch free ad-supported streaming television channels for the Pokémon anime. It started with a Pluto channel in October. I recently covered its overdue expansion into the Hoenn saga, covering seasons six through eight, Advanced, Advanced Challenge, and Advanced Battle. Unfortunately it did not complete The Series: Ruby and Sapphire by having Battle Frontier but where it currently stops completes the entire 4Kids dub era. But Tuesday night, I decided to fall asleep to some Prime Video Live TV, the array of FAST channels it uprooted from Freevee. I have Prime Video on my TV, but that’s because I use my mother’s roommate’s account for that. My Fire tablets utilize my Amazon account, and I don’t have a Prime subscription because it’d be redundant to have one. The Live TV channels are free and accessible to everyone. I got curious if they still had their The Outer Limits channel. They do, but before I found it, I found a surprise: A Pokémon channel was here too.

Now, this shouldn’t be confused with the subscription add-on that launched back in 2018, as the distinctive path should indicate. And yeah I’m pretty sure that Pokémon Channel has yet to be discontinued. It also muddied my ability to find any information on when this version of the channel launched. I direct messaged and tweeted Amazon Help for possible assistance, and asked in a couple of Pokémon fansite Discord servers. I charged ahead anyway. I went back to WildBrain’s website too, but the most recent Pokémon FAST launch it had a press release for was Samsung TV Plus back in February, coinciding with Pokémon Day. I checked Bulbanews and PocketMonsters.net. They didn’t have anything about the Prime Video channel. Frankly I’m relieved to see such expansion. For so many FAST platforms to be out there it felt very weird that it seemed like they hadn’t gone beyond Pluto. Three in eight months isn’t so bad.

'Pokémon' Pluto TV Channel Launches October 22

Content-wise, I landed too far out to see if it has any advantages (it was on the early Hoenn episode “You Never Can Taillow”, where Brock returns and Ash catches Taillow, his first Hoenn Pokémon). But that’s not all. While the Pluto channel can be stuck on a generic “We’ll be right back” screen for several minutes at a time, the Prime Video channel’s aesthetic is much more tailored, with a station ID bumper that makes this article’s header image and a similar “Now Back To Pokémon” one. There are at least five unique interstitials, which briefly hype up Ash, his Pikachu, Squirtle, Totodile, and Chikorita, which means what they used wasn’t confined exclusively to the Kanto saga. Even the Ash one, which sounds most similar to the Pluto TV channel’s own promo because it uses early Ash audio and anime footage, has the scene from his Orange League trophy ceremony and its own extra unique (newly-produced) narration. It is these that actually narrow as to when the channel was launched, I hope, as they’re led off with copyright notices led off by 2025, which means it couldn’t be in the same first 10 weeks that the Pluto channel existed.

In terms of live channel comparisons, Prime Video still has a branded Power Rangers channel (as opposed to it having taken over Forever Kids on Pluto but still not being show-branded) and its wholly dedicated original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series channel, in contrast to Pluto TV’s Totally Turtles which has been encroached by Danny Phantom, Invader Zim, and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius on top of the persistent Avatar: The Last Airbender presence, with its only Turtles content being the first Nickelodeon series.

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