'Pokémon' Is Stuck On Pluto, On Break On YouTube

Checking in on the long-running anime’s newest streaming setups

Well that was a highly energetic 8 weeks. But things took a turn for the slowpokes. On October 22, 2024, Pluto TV launched its 24/7 channel dedicated to the Pokémon anime with the first four seasons up to Johto League Champions. On November 8 they completed the Johto saga by adding the fifth season, Master Quest. And as of writing it’s been stuck there ever since, running the original series over and over again. Some check-ins were wider spaced but still came in with the same results. Checking in with Pokémon TV’s YouTube relaunch, things were promising, but well, let’s go through it.

How promising was the pacing? The first season was finished ten days after they started uploading. But the catch is, that’s the 52-episode broadcast season, up to “The Breeding Center Secret”, on December 16, not the full Indigo League saga to either “Friends to the End” or “Pallet Party Panic” which would be about 26 or 27 episodes more. Two days later, on December 18, “Princess vs. Princess” was uploaded with an orange panel replacing the blue of the season 1 episodes. It was the only upload that day. Same for “The Purr-fect Hero” two days later. The days of daily strings of hourly uploads were quickly realized to be gone. Sometimes the channel would go several days without uploading. Admittedly I did not take note of every date an episode was uploaded. It would certainly be more useful than having to click every upload now to grab dates. Of the important ones, the Indigo League’s “All Fired Up!” start was uploaded on January 13 and finished with “Friends to the End” on January 22. Arriving in the Orange Islands two episodes later was on January 25. His Orange League Championship battle, which takes place over “Hello Pummelo” and “Enter the Dragonite” were released on March 3 and 5, while “Viva Las Lapras” was two days later from them. The finale, “The Rivalry Revival” was posted March 10, one week ago. A whole week without uploads? How suspicious.

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Well I’m glad I looked, because it turns out the channel addressed what was going on the next day: it’s part of a much larger 18-day break. Uploads for season 3, The Johto Journeys were announced to start on March 28. The full post reads “Hi Trainers! We hope you've been enjoying Pokémon: Indigo League & Pokémon: Adventures on the Orange Islands! Looks like Jigglypuff saw we needed some much needed rest, so new full episodes of Pokémon: The Johto Journeys (season 3) will start up March 28th after we've found an Awakening! Until then enjoy the fun new Shorts, Compilations and 24/7 livestreams we have planned while we ZzZzzzZZz....” And indeed, while it’s only been about a week since the break started and isn’t halfway over, the amount of shorts produced really picked up. Cannot pick a date as to when but there’s a lot there.

Being where we are, it’s not clear when Pluto TV will go beyond Johto. There’s a tweet on Twitter from January that was already calling for expansion that didn’t come to pass. We don’t know if the Pokémon TV uploads will be keeping the pace or returning to previous, or choosing a new one, but if uploading 112 episodes in just over 3 months, that’s about one and a quarter episodes a day. That means to get to episode 1120, the 35th episode of Journeys, it would take at least another 2 years. But we’ll see what happens. Two weeks after Pokémon TV uploads resume, Horizons, the current ongoing series begins its fifth arc, “Mega Voltage”, and two weeks after that, the final batch of “Terastal Debut” episodes will hit Netflix in the United States.

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Source: Pokémon TV