The Pokémon manga is much tougher than the anime you all know

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The Pokémon universe is one of the largest anime franchises in the world. So it’s no wonder that there are several manga series about pocket monsters. The most internationally successful manga is Pocket Monsters SPECIAL, which is published here under the title “Pokémon: The First Adventures”. But the manga isn’t as happy as the anime.

What is “Pokémon: The First Adventures?” The world’s most famous manga in the Pokémon series has a few special features:

  • Unlike many other manga, the story is not based on the anime but on the video games.
  • That’s why the protagonists and rivals are called the same as in the video games.
  • The manga sheds more light on the background of the video game characters, for example that Silber is Giovanni’s son.
  • The manga is much more direct about some topics like torture and death.

    • The last point in particular seems a bit disturbing. In the anime, it has rarely been an issue that a Pokémon died. After the fights, most pocket monsters are only “defeated” and can be nursed back up by Nurse Joy.

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    Things are more brutal in the Pokémon manga

    How does the death of Pokémon manifest itself in the manga? Because Pokémon can die in battles, the manga seems much darker than the anime. The pocket monsters are not simply killed by a fire or electric attack and fall over, but often die in a brutal way (via CBR):

  • Giovanni, the boss of Team Rocket, is a sadist who doesn’t care about the lives of Pokémon. He freezes several Magmar with his emission and breaks them into several pieces.
  • The Gym Leader Koga uses Poison Pokémon. His arbok has such strong venom that in one scene it burns the skin of an duckling. As a result, several bones can be seen and even the eyeballs melt into the eye sockets.
  • Later, Blue uses his Glutexo against the Arbok, cutting it in half. The spine and muscles can be seen in cross section.
  • Team Rocket conducts genetic experiments on Pokémon. In one case, it fuses Lavados, Arktos, and Zapdos into one being that suffers pain through its existence.

    • Some of the scenes mentioned can be seen in 13TwistedScraps’ tweet:

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    Things are also brutal outside of Pokémon battles. For example, Siegfried, a member of the Top Four, wiped out an entire city with a hyper beam. Even mistreating one’s own children is a theme in the manga.

    Where can I read the manga? If you want to see the adult plot for yourself, you can get the manga yourself. The printed manga is available from Panini Verlag, and you can buy the digital version on several sales platforms such as Amazon.

    How many volumes are there? There are now all arcs, from red, blue and green to crimson, every generation of games is included. Even Black and White 2 as well as Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire have their own arc.

    The regular volumes run up to volume 65, the mini-volumes, which were only introduced from X and Y onwards, now comprise 25 volumes. Pokémon is the absolute leader today. But there was a time when Digimon was briefly ahead: Pokémon has been the biggest anime franchise for 27 years, but there was a time when Digimon was ahead

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