IN Pokémon, Ash and Professor Oak are said to have first met when the young coach was growing up in Pallet Town, but their actual first meeting actually created a huge hole in the plot. The much older professor actually met the future World Champion when Oak was a young boy. Pokémon 4Ever revealed this detail, but Ash never really found out the truth about his friend.
Pokémon 4Ever was released in Japan in 2001 and in the United States in 2002. The film was directed by Kunihiko Yuyama with a screenplay by Hideki Sonoda. The film follows the franchise’s usual formula, in which Ash and his friends hear about a legend, meet a rare Legendary Pokémon – and in this case – thwart an evil plot. of the wicked. In this cartoon, Ash meets Celebi and befriends a boy named Sammy.
Pokémon Professor Oak was just a kid when he first met Ash
Sammy doesn’t seem like a particularly unusual or uncommon name. However, he has traveled from the past, teleported by Celebi during a time of emergency. The end of the film reveals that Sammy is actually Samuel Oak, long before he became the principal professor and Pokémon expert of the Kanto region. A faded sketch on his desk matches one done by Sammy for the duration of the film, featuring Celebi and Pikachu together. However, despite wondering if he should say something in the movie, Professor Oak never actually tells Ash the truth about who he is and when they first met.
While Sammy’s future is a fun secret to share with audiences, it seems odd that Professor Oak will never tell Ash, Brock, or Misty the truth about his identity. This creates a huge change in their dynamic relationship as it adds a new layer of respect and appreciation between the two that was never depicted on the show. For Ash, Professor Oak has always been his mother’s mentor and family friend. For the professor, however, Ash is a close friend who helped him save a particular Pokémon – as well as someone who shared his rather traumatic experience when he learned that Celebi was dead.
By not telling Ash the truth about his identity, the young coach always wonders what happened to his friend after he returned to his timeline through time travel. In addition, Professor Oak probably admired and respected Ash far more than the young trainer had ever known. Anime creators could easily overlook some of the broader potential impact the films could have on making them stand-alone adventures.
However, it also misses out on the opportunity to create some incredible and emotional reconnections between the characters. In this way, it almost feels like every Pokémon movie that exists outside of the show’s events off of Ash’s team matches the concurrent release season at the time. However, Pokémon 4Ever forged a great time-traveling friendship between Ash and Professor Oak with startling consequences that has just been left behind as a plot hole that will likely never be revisited.