Game Theory: You're WRONG About Ash's Pikachu! (Pokemon)

[Music] did we get him i i think we got him finally after five whole seasons of anime 276 episodes chasing this one pikachu across kanto johto and the orange islands we finally got him that's a lot of episodes dan i think it's worth a celebration can we do the thing please can we yes i think we can do the thing yeah prepare for trouble and make it double to protect the world from devastation to unite all peoples within our nation to denounce the evils of truth and love to extend our reach to the stars above matpat dan team theorist blasts off at the speed of light surrender now or prepare to fight meow that's a really weak pikachu youtube bozos realize he's only level 40. what but how can it be we've covered nearly 300 episodes and five movies i don't know maybe things pick up in the next 300 hello internet welcome to game theory the level 99 pain in the butt to any developers out there that don't think through the details of their fictional universe case in point the pokemon anime last episode we are presented with a problem season 14 episode 1 the start of the black and white arc pikachu is pitted against a trainer's brand new level 5 snivy and loses and not just loses after landing one blow pikachu gets hit twice by snivy and faints it is a blowout and it is absurd at this point the series ash's adventures have covered 600 episodes and 13 movies they've been across five regions with a grand total of 52 badges like it should not be physically possible for that loss to have occurred literally running the numbers it should not have happened and so last time we started off on an impossible mission actually calculating pikachu's real level at the time of the snivy battle to show how impossible pikachu's defeat here would be and yeah sure mechanics don't fully translate over into the anime etc etc but we can roughly translate what we know from the games into the anime to get a general sense of how strong pikachu should be at this point in his adventure but in order to do that we had to watch the show literally every episode front to back because guess what friends prior to our research there was no full and complete list of every battle pikachu fights in the anime well as our bleeding eyes can attest to there is now long story short i never want to watch brock awkwardly leering at women ever again last episode we were able to get up through the end of the johto arc at the start of season 6 276 episodes in pikachu was standing at a shockingly low level of 40. but when you actually look at the data it makes sense what we found while watching was that he doesn't fight as much as he might think in the anime sure pikachu regularly blasts off team rocket but for engaging in actual battles against other mods that can give him experience pikachu averages between 20 and 25 fights per arc which isn't a whole lot relative to the number of episodes instead he's usually sidelined for whatever shiny new pokemon the anime wants to promote from that generation giving him limited opportunities to actually get stronger so just how powerful is pikachu well we've got another 324 episodes and eight movies to cover and i am determined that this will not be a three-parter so let's just get going so so much more always you don't have to rub it in theme of pokemon advanced you don't have to rub it in as we get started a few quick reminders to find the experience of battling pokemon if they're wild i'm taking the route they're on and using the median level number for that route for trainer battles i'm instead using the mean level or average level for all the trainers on that route adding them all up and then dividing by the number of trainers with gym leaders and team rocket appearances i'm just using the level of those pokemon directly from the games here's the equation we're putting all that information into which i went into in much greater detail last time and lastly we're taking pikachu's total experience and finding the cube root because pikachu is part of the medium fast exp category and if you have any questions about battles or the facts and figures that i use a link to the full document is in the description below this video right next to that subscribe button go figure which if you haven't pushed yet you probably should because let's face it no other person on earth is going to take such a dumb question so seriously and you clicked on the video so clearly you're at least moderately interested in getting the answers to these sorts of things so come on join the community of theorists already 46 of you aren't subscribed right isn't that the thing i'm supposed to say which brings us to the next stop on our journey hohen and this is where things really get interesting you see there's a theory online written by reddit user joe's cool that claims that pikachu's level resets at the start of every other region not including the orange islands to quote from that original theory in the final johto episode hoenn alone james fires up a giant magnet which causes a bunch of stuff to come up and whack ash knocking him out in addition pikachu gets trapped onto the magnet and his electricity is drained these two events cause ash to lose part of his memory and pikachu to lose the power it gained through its journey this explains why ash and pikachu seem to reset they both get caught up in an accident that seriously hurts them and this is a great theory that explains a lot or at least it would be if the episodes didn't directly contradict all of it and again i know this because i gotta watch em all to do the theory sure we see pikachu get overcharged at the end of johto pikachu [Music] if you're burning up you must have a bad fever but the very next episode the start of hoenn we're told multiple times that pikachu is able to recover back to his normal state pikachu's output is incredible it appears that pikachu's electricity pressure has reached normal levels and all this is without even mentioning the fact that ash's memory seems completely unaffected by all of it a similar thing happens in in the shadow of zekrom the first episode of the black and white series in this episode pikachu and ash get caught up in a thundercloud and pikachu gets overloaded by electricity from zekrom pikachu is completely enveloped inside a powerful electric field all that electrical energy pikachu absorbed from the thunderstorm was too much and that would explain why pikachu's not able to use any electric type moves and while it does certainly seem to hamper him temporarily pikachu's level again doesn't actually reset as even without electricity he's still able to use advanced moves like iron tail that as we see earlier in the anime pikachu had trouble actually learning it's also worth noting that pikachu fully recovers one episode later and also also piqued you getting overcharged is a very common occurrence throughout the series with no long-term consequences to his power levels anyway all that's to say that there isn't solid evidence of levels getting reset here plus it would ruin the fun of figuring out what the big number is at the end of this thing so owen the playable region from ruby sapphire and later emerald this region spans four whole seasons of the anime and ash returns to using pikachu as his primary pokemon which means a lot more battles for him things start off simple enough just a basic journey following along the path of the games but midway through things get a little funny as season 8 shifts to follow more closely with pokemon emerald in order to coincide with that game's release you can tell this in season 8 episode 18 with the introduction of juan who is the 8th gym leader in emerald as opposed to wallace from ruby and sapphire the anime also includes the battle frontier which is only present in pokemon emerald in the end there were 47 total victories in the region for pikachu nearly double any of the previous arcs rather than read all that information out which would be dumb and long and tedious and no one wants to hear it i'm just gonna list them here with the episode number route and level yeah told you there was a lot and like i said the google doc will be linked down in the description below so if you really want to dig in you can find all the information down there anyway the main place to stop is right about meow this is where ash goes to the battle frontier and faces off against the frontier brains now how the battle frontier works in pokemon emerald is that there are two categories of gameplay level 50 and open level level 50 is the first class for pokemon level 50 or below and all the opponent pokemon will be at level 50 themselves whereas open level means any pokemon over level 50 can enter and the opponent's pokemon will match your highest level pokemon fortunately for us at this point in the series pikachu actually caps in at 47. so he only qualifies for the level 50 mode meaning that all the frontier brain pokemon are gonna level at 50. i love it when things just work out after beating the brains he only gains himself one level and so pikachu finishes off the hoenn region at level 48. next up sinnoh and this region [Laughter] this region hohen was a breeze nothing complicated easy to follow but i knew it was too good to be true sinnoh was determined to break me another four season region another 49 battles which you can see here but the worst part the worst worst part was team rocket first you jesse and james in the immortal words of markiplier it's big brain time so the first pokemon pikachu encounters in the sinnoh region is dawn's new piplup that's easy enough it's level 5 all starter pokemon are however in that first episode pikachu also encounters meowth mime jr and wabafet from team rocket he of course makes quick work of him but the issue is that we have very little to go on for the levels mime jr is probably the least complicated as we see him use the move mimic in episode 17 of season 9. we also know that move-based evolution is considered important within the pokemon anime universe as later in diamond and pearl apom learns double hit and soon after evolves into ambipom so even though time has passed since mime junior used mimik he can't have leveled up otherwise he would have evolved into mr mine meaning mime jr here in this battle is sitting at level 32. mobile that's a little harder to figure out but we know that he was traded back on route 34 of the johto region which would have made him at about level 11. so going on the idea that he's traveled two regions and taking into account pikachu's level gain i put him at level 40. the hardest in this instance though is meowth last time we saw him lose a battle was encanto where i estimated his level to be 31. it'd be safe to assume that he grew at the same rate as arbok and wheezing until they were released which means by this point i've estimated meowth to be level 70 which i know seems high but once again it's not going to make all that big of a difference in the final tally the last anomaly in this region is the battle tower that ash part takes in during his time back in twin leaf town episode 36 of season 12. the battle tower in diamond and pearl is slightly different to the battle frontier in that the only option is level 50 with all pokemon being dropped to that level in your party regardless of their actual level as this throws off a lot of calculations i instead opted for the open level approach from the battlefrontier making his opponents the same level as pikachu which at this point is 58. and now we're finally here after pikachu fights a few more pokemon we are finally in the univer region this is once again where the series tries to do a soft reboot by trying to make ash and pikachu seem like a new team however we know that this is absolutely 100 percent not true ash retains all of his memories of the journey thus far when dawn rejoins the team we get this interaction and later when dawn specifically asks about brock cooking for her and ash on the journey we also know that pikachu retains all the moves that he's learned up to this point like iron tail which a new pokemon trainer is unlikely to have taught a brand new pikachu even the show only half-heartedly adheres to its own reboot as in that very same episode we get this hard to say pikachu reverted back to level 5 when he's actively being called the world's most powerful pikachu so with all that being said it means we're here we've finally arrived at that big final number pikachu's level in his battle against snivy what is he level 90 100 200 we'll strap in because that number is after compiling all 148 pikachu battles across 600 plus episodes and doing really elaborate calculations to get there drum roll please pikachu's final level is 61. kind of underwhelming right like he's traversed five whole regions most people are getting close to that level after doing a single run through a game even if you didn't like some of my estimations for team rocket battles if we remove them entirely from the equation it would still only put pikachu at level 59. any way you slice it he's not as powerful as we all think he should be i've seen forums of people online saying it must be a hundred if the levels went over a hundred he'd be like a thousand at this point but having sat down and painstakingly scrubbed through all the episodes looking for every tiny detail i can tell you definitively that that is not the case he is like low 60s at best so what's that mean for our battle against snivy long story short snivy still should have been toast as i mentioned at the start pikachu is the first to land a hit with a successful quick attack to give snivy the best best possible chance we're gonna assume that this is just the buffest level five you could possibly get with an hp of 21 and defense of 12 and let's also say that pikachu is my lower estimate of level 59. at that level the lowest pikachu's attack stat could be is 69 with quick attack's base power bn40 and the randomizer feature set to its lowest setting of 0.85 we can use the in-game equations to figure out that pikachu's attack would do 95 damage and 21 snivy hp minus 95 damage equals negative 74. snivy could be knocked out three more times with just that one hit and to really round it off let's just say that somehow snivy did survive the quick attack when it goes on the offensive its attack and special attack stats are both 11. pikachu's lowest possible stats here would be hp 110 defense 52 special defense 64. let's also say the randomizer hits at its highest point and both attacks are critical hits for snivy with tackle having a base power of 50 and leaf tornado being 65 the most total damage that could be done would be 32 hit points pikachu would still have 78 hp remaining so where does all this leave us well i did it i calculated what level pikachu is a task that no sane person has ever completed i feel amazing and also very very empty the show is just painfully repetitive anyway kudos to you ash sure you lost against snivy you don't know that you have to weaken a pokemon before catching it and you didn't realize that bug pokemon are weak against flying types but you've managed to win against the elite four using a pokemon that's half their level and that's gotta account for something so maybe you are better than everyone gives you credit for so is it a water type no ash it's a grass type never mind still an idiot but hey that's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 2,679,787

Rating: 4.9555893 out of 5

Keywords: ash ketchum father, pikachu level, pokemon snap, pikachu, pokemon brilliant diamond, pokemon shining pearl, pokemon snap gameplay, pokemon sword and shield, pokemon journeys, pokemon go, pokemon sword and shield crown tundra, pokemon sword and shield episode, pokemon sword, pokemon shield, pokemon episode, pokemon full episode, pokemon movie, pokemon song, game theorists, game theory, matpat, game theory pokemon, pikachu level game theory, pikachu level 100

Id: Ow3bMlScrzs

Length: 15min 22sec (922 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021