inside Pokémon anime, gym leaders have the final say on who deserves one of their badges and who doesn’t, to the point where Ash sometimes wins badges for helping with disasters or even just by going up against Team Rocket. However, in order for gym leaders to get those badges in the first place, they have to go through an amazingly difficult challenge.
In a special episode of Misty-focused Pokémon Chronicles, titled “Blue Badge of Courage,” Misty is left to run the Cerulean Gym on her own, along with her sisters on vacation. However, what they forgot to tell her is that the gym actually ran out of badges to give out, and she’ll have to go to a place called Rifure Village to get more. It turns out that gym badges are not mass-produced but handcrafted by local artisans, and the creator of the Cascade Badge is a pretty strict guy, willing only to hand the badge to the head of a gym who can prove their worth.
Pokémon Gym Leaders Must Earn Their Badge
Misty, along with Tracey (from the Orange Islands section) and her challenger Sakura agree to the old badge maker Kinso’s challenge. Kinso asked them to do errands and then tried to make their own badges, guiding them through the forging process. Only after he was satisfied were the women allowed to paint the badge and lacquer it. However, before Misty is allowed to leave with a new supply of badges, Kinso challenges her, meaning that Misty must actually win her own battle to even get a gym badge to give to the challengers. Misty was about to fight Kinso’s Feraligatr, but when he saw how pathetic her Psyduck was, he withdrew the offer. In the end, Misty is able to win Kinso’s respect by repelling some thieves looking for badges, and she’s finally allowed to return to the gym and carry out her leadership duties.
Having a handmade badge actually means a lot; they’ll be much harder to make fakes, for example, and as shown in the episode, it’s much harder for thieves to steal them this way. While most fans might assume that some challenges and qualifications must be met to run a Pokémon gym, the idea that some of these challenges might have come from the artisans behind the badges is probably not on anyone’s radar. This may not necessarily be the case in other regions, but since Kanto is shown to have a lot of active gyms (Gary Oak has 10 badges at a time) in the anime, these types of extra challenges may be more casual there.
Misty, at least, proved that the Cascade Badge represents a lot of her work, making her gifting it to an opponent who defeated her an even greater sign of respect – something that probably applies to a lot of the Gym Leaders Ash has faced in the past. Pokémon series.