'Pokémon: Path To The Peak' Includes A Surprise Music Choice In Its Third Episode

Finally, the courage to be bold returns!

On Wednesday, The Pokémon Company International posted the third episode of Pokémon: Path To The Peak, titled “Internationals” to YouTube, a series that so far has always posted English first. It has a brief, jaunty bit of triumphant intro music, but there is one music choice in particular that’s caught many people’s attention.

Pokémon: Path to the Peak is about Ava. She and several other fans of her age seek to become competitive Pokémon Trading Card Game players and get in on it. She works alongside her still-unnamed parents, friends Joshua and Celestine, and partner Oddish, to compete and rise to the very top. The episode starts with Josh vlogging Ava, urging her to update her fans on what she’s been doing, but she’s incredibly nervous to do so. Once she musters up the courage, she starts gushing about how a clip of her Regionals win went viral with over 130 million views, and at school, she defeated every single one of her classmates who wanted to challenge her. A few tournaments have gone on since then, but now the trio is packed up to go to Internationals. Ava’s dad turns on the car radio, and the first song to begin playing… is “Pokémon World”, the second English theme song of the original main Pokémon anime, during Ash’s travels through the Orange Archipelago. At first, he’s going it alone, with the kids a bit embarrassed before they drop the façade and gleefully sing along with him.

The usage of “Pokémon World” is a big deal. It’s not just about nostalgia, though it is another instance of acknowledgments of phases of a franchise after the first thing, even if this case it’s still part of the “The Beginning” label it got when the Pokémon The Series titling was introduced in 2013. Some other examples are the 2017 Power Rangers movie using the Zeo Crystal as a Macguffin plot point, or the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Now! special ending with a dance party to the What's New, Scooby-Doo? theme rather than the Where Are You! theme. The third chapter of the animated series Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy, Kingdom, and this year’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts incorporate Beast Wars materials after over 20 years of focusing entirely on Optimus Prime’s crew in various media. Star Trek: Picard was a major step in working on expanding the stories of the series that took place after the original, with The Next Generation and Voyager elements that subsequent series Lower Decks and Prodigy would also take from. More stuff exists and it’s good for them to see that.

In recent years, really dating back to Hoenn the Pokémon English dub had stopped building its soundtrack aside from season openings and movie endings, when there were movies to give endings to. It wasn’t like what they had built up with 2.B.A. Master, Totally Pokémon and even the Pokémon Christmas Bash. Still, for much of the era since 4Kids stopped dubbing the series, unless you were the original theme getting remixed for XY, I Choose You (used again for the climax of the Ash vs. Leon battle) and To Be A Pokémon Master, given a piano rendition, and sung by Ryan Reynolds, you were not getting used. The only instance of 2.B.A. Master music in the TPCI dub was “Double Trouble” replacing the Japanese version’s “Face Forward Team Rocket!” (an opening theme from the Johto era) in “A Lean Mean Team Rocket Machine!” during the Diamond & Pearl series. So to even touch upon such archives when Ash Ketchum has left the anime in 2023 is quite incredible. And it’s the full version of original singer Russell Velasquez’s rendition too, as it was released as a single back in the day.

Path to the Peak is only a 4-part series, and it could probably be surmised from Ava having reached international-level competition that there wouldn’t be much higher t go. With this being episode three, that means the fourth and final episode is set to be released next week, August 30. The full third episode is embedded below for your pleasure.