Season
- If you were looking for the game mechanic introduced in Generation V, see seasons.
- If you were looking for the six-week-long divisions known as League Seasons, see Play! Pokémon.
A season of the Pokémon anime is a collection of dubbed episodes that begin airing for the first time in the United States starting between August and September (Seasons 1-9) or between January and June (Seasons 10-present), continuing to air regularly over the course of the following year. They usually share an opening, and are often 52 or fewer episodes long. Seasons are used by all dubs based on the English dub, and are also used in some capacity in Asia, although the exact definitions used by these dubs vary.
There is no distinction between these dubbed seasons in the original Japanese airings, except when the seasons' beginnings and endings coincide with those of a new series in Japan. Each season also has a movie that corresponds to it, though the pairing of a movie with a specific anime season is merely due to the annual release they undergo in Japan. It should be noted that these seasons do not apply to the Japanese version of the show, where episodes of Pokémon air nearly every week.
Previously, the English dub was aired on a schedule similar to most American shows, where each season is typically aired new for nine months out of the year, with three months (usually during the summer) taken off to begin production for the next season, during which reruns air. The Japanese release schedule, with an episode airing nearly every week, was eventually adopted by Pokémon USA (now known as The Pokémon Company International) after 4Kids Entertainment lost dubbing rights.
List of seasons
There are three distinct definitions of a season used in official media: the televised airings, home video releases, and digital releases. Since season 7, these definitions have coincided.
- The television definition used by Region 4 home video releases and formerly on Pokémon TV, Toonami Jetstream, and Cartoon Network Video, corresponding to groups of episodes that aired regularly over the course of a year with a break taken in between.
- The digital release definition is used by DisneyNOW, digital home video releases and currently used by Pokémon TV, matching the TV definition except between the second and third season and the fifth and sixth season, where it splits the seasons by series or arc.
- The home video definition is used by most Region 1 home video releases, corresponding to groups of episodes that share the same opening and are part of the same series or arc.
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This article is part of Project Anime, a Bulbapedia project that covers all aspects of the Pokémon anime. |