Home ---> Videogames ---> Pokémon ---> Manga ---> My Manga
THAT'S RIGHT!!! I'M WORKING ON A POKEMON MANGA SERIES OF MY VERY OWN!!
It's not official, obviously. Gamefreak will probably sue me if I try to publish it. But that's okay, my hope is that when I get it started they'll want me to publish it for them or something. IDK how they work with the mangakas of all the different Pokémon mangas out there.
Anyway, my manga has quite the evolution of its own. Originally it was going to be a novel series that was mix of the anime and Adventure manga cannons, with all the protagonists together and whatnot. Basically a trainwreck fan fiction. And it was going to be centered around this girl who was kidnapped by the Masked Man along with Green and Silver like in the Adventures manga, and that's how she gets a Houndour as her first Pokémon (it's common in the Adventures manga for some of the heroes to have a Pokémon with them even before their starter, like Red's Poliwhirl, or Silver's Sneasel), and when they all escape she decides she wants to go on a journey and find her older cousin who left to become a master years ago, and I don't even remember how the rest of it was supposed to go now. It was pretty stupid. I was, of course, 10 when I was imagining all of it. Though honestly I had been thinking the past couple of days that maybe I should do another manga series, about an orphan girl who sets out with her Houndour to find her cousin. Just without a huge-ass group of Ash and all the Adventures protagonists traveling with her to every region. I don't know why I ever thought that was a cool idea.
Because if I'm being honest, the anime SUCKS and so do the manga. Seriously I tried binge watching The Johto Journeys season on Pokémon TV and fuck is it annoying and aggrevatingly boring. The battles are just trainers using the most basic attacks (Tackle, Wing Attack, Peck, Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Razor Leaf, Vine Whip, etc), like, it is SO lame. I mean Pokémon be taking hits that should barely scratch them, but acting like it's a huge deal, like Chikorita fainting from Bulbasaur's RAZOR LEAF! But then other times Ash will have his unevolved Pokémon take on evolved opponents and somehow come out on top, like in the Black and White era, when he comes across the Trainer who abandoned Tepig, and he has Tepig and SNIVY a GRASS-type fight against this psychopath's HEATMOR and EMBOAR! And Tepig evolves and somehow wins. And in The Johto Journeys it takes Ash 15 episodes to reach Violet City, and in all that time he's only caught a whopping TWO Johto Pokémon, Heracross and that clingy-as-hell Chikorita. Seriously, I have never understood this about the anime. Sure he had his Kanto Pokemon with him, but similar shit happens in the anime. Even if you only catch the new Pokemon it's not hard to acquire a full team before the first gym. But I guess the difference is Ash isn't wading through tall grass looking for Pokemon; no, they all have to have a special episode dedicated to their backstory before he catches them for some reason. That would be fine for every other Pokemon, but all of them?
And you know one thing I hate about the anime? When Ash's Pokémon DON'T EVOLVE! I mean don't get me wrong, I'm cool with Pikachu not evolving, in fact I like Pikachu over Raichu, but what reason is there for his other Pokémon to not evolve, or evolve later than they should? And I know some people will be like "muh but Ash is a new trainer" I know he's a new trainer. I get it, and for as many times as I've played through AlphaSapphire, my play and battling style has changed a lot since I last played it, but that is not an excuse for him not evolving his Pokémon, or "earning" badges he didn't win, or shit like that. Also the Elite Four exists in the anime. What even is their purpose if the Pokémon League is a tournament event?
And another thing I was recently reminded of: why in the early anime do some Trainers say "Go, Poke ball!" or "Poke ball, go!"? Surge says it, Misty says it, so does Nurse Joy. It's one thing if they're trying to catch a Pokemon and send an empty ball after it, but these three said it when sending a POKEMON into battle! If you're trying to make it a surprise what Pokemon your sending in, why not just say "Go Pokemon!" Actually what's the point of keeping it a surprise? Your opponents gonna know what the Pokemon is when they see it. But it's smarter then telling the Poke ball to go becuase the ball ain't gonna do shit! Literally why tell the Poke ball go enter the battle?
Another thing I hate is how incon-fucking-sistent the anime is with levels. I can forgive a lot of the early anime's issues and assume most of them are because 4Kids was stupid with dubbing and censoring. So shit like Ash telling Charizard to use Tackle, a move the Charmander line can't learn, and shouldn't be on a Charizard if they could, or calling Status moves like Scary Face "attacks". But there's shit I can't forgive, like Falkner using a Pidgeot, or Ash using Charizard against Chikorita, or Snivy and Tepig against a fucking Emboar! The anime is very inconsistent with levels. At least in the English dub (which is an even less reliable source of information than the original Japanese but I don't know where to watch the original Japanese), levels are referenced, but they're never applied to battling. But bloody hell they could at least be consistent, like Falkner shouldn't use a Pidgeot against Trainers with no badges (though Ash had Charizard, so I guess it was more of a fair fight but still...), Ash shouldn't have been a dick and used Charizard against Kasey, and there should have been no way in hell Tepig could have beaten Emboar. Honestly there's only two things the anime does right that I think should be included in the games: being able to tell your Pokemon to dodge attacks (and no this shouldn't be 100% foolproof, obviously), and the Pokemon evolving in the middle of a battle. But honestly that last one should only apply to level-up and frendship/affection evolutions, not stone/item or trade evolutions.
And then there's the mangas. Of course, the only ones I have are a few Adventures volumes and the adaptation of "Arceus and the Jewel of Life" (I had a serious obsession with Arceus after getting my hands on Adventures HeartGold & SoulSilver vol. 1). And they deviate from their source material, too. Though I will admit the ending in the Arceus manga is more logical than in the movie, because when the heroes return to the present Arceus is no longer attacking, as why would He continue if Ash saved Him and returned the Jewel in the past. Actually why would He have come to earth that day at all... But anyway, as much as I used to like it, I just have a hard time enjoying the manga now, especially the ORAS arc, which I only have two volumes of, but especially in volume two I am just constantly like "What is going ooonnnnnn..." I mean Archie and Maxie's plan is just so ridiculous, and so is the plan of the two grunts of their who don't exist in the games, they were just made up for the manga.
But that's why I think my series would be the best, because the actual plots of the main series games are the best stories in the franchise, though I do have to make the tiniest deviations to make it work with the same protagonist for every arc. And I'll try to let loose and learn to be loose with the details with the secondary series, because the more I think about it the more I really want to try a manga series about an orphan girl setting out on a journey with her Houndour, where they befriend new Pokémon and form one of the greatest (maybe not THE, but one of) Trainer and Pokémon teams in the world, all while these Pokémon help their Trainer find her cousin. I actually think that would be cool, though I will try to make it not a copy of the games. This one can be its own story. I might even give the girl a partner Jolteon too. Idk why but for some reason after rewatching Pokemon Origins and watching Red's Jolteon fight Team Rocket I've just really liked Jolteon, and wanted a protagonist with a partner Jolteon instead of a partner Pikachu.
And if I'm being honest the only thing that would be better than the manga would be if they decided to make a whole anime after it, complete with color! Voices! Movement! Action! And the games' soundtracks!
If I want to write a manga as accurate to the games as possible, I have to play them! The first playthrough is a sort of reconnesance playthrough, where I just play casually and have fun, get a feel of how I would react to the other characters if I were actually living through it, and figure out what I want my manga protag's team to be.
Most game characters have their own "Quotes" page on Bulbapedia. Usually what I do is play through the game again, and copy-paste their lines as they say them in the game, so that everything is in the right order.
I used to do this alongside Step 2, but it took forever and I'd give up because I just wanted to get through the game. This will be the third playthrough, and it's where I document things like battles, catching Pokémon, the latest mechanics like picnics, that sort of thing.
Figuring out a good stopping point for each chapter in a game has been trickier than I expected, so I save it for the end of the script-writing prosess.
Just play through the game, going along the script, to make sure I didn't miss anything. At this point I should have played through at least four or five times.
See Step 7 for Y.
That was all the script. Now, I haven't finished a single one yet for Pokemon, but I have started setting up pages for my "EAGLET" comic. Basically what I do is I use Google Docs. I select "Add Shapes" or "add drawing" or whatever, and making a rectangle - this is one panel -, and inside I add the dialogue for that particular panel. Since it's easier to just copy and paste dialogue, and text in most manga is in all caps, that's why I do Step 7. Since text in a rectangle is proportionate, if I need to make a panel bigger or smaller I usually have to go back to the drawing window and change the size of the panel or the text so that the text isn't too big or too small for the panel, nor is the panel too big or to small for the page. I also make sure to make the page dimensions the same as one of my manga, and make the panels fairly large so that they won't be too small when printed.
This can be done whenever. Practice drawing the Pokemon, practice drawing their attacks, practice drawing the human characters, the buildings, the landscapes. When I struggle with a Pokemon, I usually trace from an image on the internet, then I sketch the big shapes over it. I'll have to post some pictures have such tracings later to show you what I mean. Once I'm good enough at drawing pre-existing images, I'll be practicing drawings from pre-existing Pokemon manga, and then drawing my own poses.
First encirlce the dialogue with speech bubbles, then I'll draw the scenes, just like I practiced, with pencil and eraser. And then I'll probably do another print-out so I can trace my illustartions with pen and ink.
Who knows what'll happen once I'm done with my manga. Maybe I'll make a whole new website dedicated to showing it off, but since I prefer physical media, I'll probably see if the overlords at Nintendo and Gamefreak will let me publish it officially. I mean, both companies are engaging in shitty practices right now, like bricking Switch 2s, selling "game keys", and suing Palworld. But if they get their act together then I wouldn't mind making some deal where I can draw the best Pokemon manga they'll ever read, and they publish it, and we both make a profit. But until then I have to finish the first nine steps.