(fanfare music)
- Hey, Pokemon masters!
Bird Keeper Toby here and
who is Ash Ketchum exactly?
You probably know him as
the hero from the TV show,
or maybe you know him
from The Electric Tale of Pikachu manga.
He appears across many different
mediums in different forms,
but the one he doesn't appear
in is the video games, right?
Before I get on with today's video,
I wanna do a massive
social media shout out
because I've just opened
two new social medias,
my Instagram and my Tumblr.
Instagram is bird_keeper_toby
and Tumblr is Birdkeepertobyofficial.
I tried to take just Bird Keeper Toby,
but those names were
apparently already taken,
possibly by me a few years ago
and I shut those things down,
but now I intend to use
them fully and properly.
Links to them are in the description
and of course there is my
Twitter, @birdkeepertoby,
and if you wanna know
what's going on with me,
my Twitter and Instagram are
gonna be very very good places
to keep up to date with everything.
On the Instagram I'm gonna be posting
things like early
screenshots, and thumbnails,
and demo thumbnails
and I wanna get your
opinion on those things,
so that's a great place to follow.
So, Ash Ketchum is not in
the video games, right?
In the video games, we
have the character of Red,
the character that Ash
is in fact based off of.
Red is in Pallet Town, like Ash,
he ends up with a Pikachu, like Ash,
he is the video game version of Ash,
so why'd they have to go and
confuse with Sun and Moon?
While there has been an event
for an Ash Pikachu before in the games,
Sun and Moon throws everything on its head
by having Pikachus in the code
that have Ash's various adventure hats on.
Ash Greninja is an event that
you can get through the demo,
and as well as a picture
of Ash Ketchum's shoulder
with Pikachu on it in Mimikyu's room.
That's gonna be important later,
but this means that Ash
Ketchum or some version of him
exists in the same world as Red,
and that is pretty problematic.
So how do we reconcile that?
I talked about briefly in a video before
where I talked about could
Ash and Red be related,
and following up on that idea,
I actually met one of you at an event,
Silver Zephyr Studios.
He has a YouTube channel too.
I'm gonna link to that in the description,
but while we were talking,
he suggested the idea, what
if Ash was Red's father?
Because a lot of people say
that Red could be Ash's father
because Ash's father is
this big point of ambiguity.
No one know who he is.
Ah, what if it was Red?
I don't believe either of
those things are possible.
And a lot of people make the assumption
that Ash is younger than Red
due to the more
mature-looking nature of Red.
He's more fierce, he's more adult.
The mediums he appears in, like
the Pokemon Adventure manga,
is generally more mature than
the mediums like the TV show,
which is very much designed for kids.
So a lot of people assume that
Ash must be younger than Red,
but I really like this idea:
What if Ash predates Red?
And not only do I think it's possible,
I think I have a theory to prove it.
So the first I wanna talk about
when establishing this theory
is that each medium is different.
The Pokemon Adventures version of Red
is not the same as the
video game version of Red,
and the video game version of Red
is not the same as the Pokemon
Origins version of Red.
For example, in Pokemon Origins
he starts with a Charmander,
whereas in the game, canonically speaking,
he starts with a Pikachu,
and in Pokemon Adventures
he starts technically with a Poliwag.
These three Reds are all
generally the same character,
but in each medium they
are totally different
with various different origin stories.
Their stories follow similar plot beats,
but they are different Reds
and the same applies for Ash Ketchum.
The Ash Ketchum in the show
is not the same Ash Ketchum
from The Electric Tale of Pikachu,
and there's another Ash Ketchum
coming up very very soon,
I'm gonna be talking about
that later on in the video.
So if there is a video
game version of Ash,
it is not the same as the
TV show version of Ash.
That is the most important
thing I have to stress here.
Whatever kind of Ash
Ketchum exists in the game
does not exist in the show.
Their plot points might be similar.
For example, there's a good chance
they're both from Pallet
Town, for example.
They both have Pikachu.
It looks like, based on the
hats on each of the Pikachus
who are hidden in the code of Sun and Moon
that the Ash Ketchum in the games
did in fact go on lots
of different adventures
and he definitely did catch a Greninja
that he had a special bond with.
Those things are definitely the same,
but one big key difference I think here
is that the game's in a world
where characters actually age.
Well, apart from Wally.
I should probably do a theory
about that at some point.
Whereas the show seems to exist in a word
where characters don't age.
Well certainly Ash doesn't age.
And again, this immortal Ash
is not the Ash we're talking about
when we're talking about the games.
So the first part of this video,
does Ash predate Red?
Well, if Ash was younger than Red,
if ash was his younger
brother or son for example,
there's a good chance that
by now, we would've seen them
either in Red and Blue
living in Pallet Town
in the same house as Red
or we would've seen him in Sun and Moon
now that Red is an adult,
but that doesn't make sense
because in Sun and Moon
in Mimikyu's room, there is this picture
of Ash Ketchum's shoulder.
He likes he did when he was about age 10,
and for ash to have been
10 while Red was 20,
Red would've needed to
have Ash when he was 10,
so the timeline doesn't add up.
And of course the reason
I suggest they're related
is because look at them.
If they're gonna exist
in the same universe,
genetically they've got to be similar.
And again, they both
origins in Pallet Town.
So again, let's go back to this idea
about Ash predating Red.
Now, I don't like the idea
of Ash being Red's father.
Not just because I don't
like it willy nilly,
but because I have evidence
for something different.
What if Ash was Red's older brother
and Ash predates Red by exactly 10 years?
And all of this comes together
because of a video I made recently
about Mimikyu and why Mimikyu
looks the way it does.
Just a recap, Mimikyu
looks the way it does,
it takes on the appearance of Pikachu
because of the rise of popularity
of Pikachu-styled merchandise
according to the Sun and Moon website
from around 20 years ago.
That number's important.
20 years ago in the Pokemon
chronology from Sun and Moon,
Pikachu became super popular
and Mimikyu decided well
hey, I wanna be loved,
so I'm gonna take on the
appearance of Pikachu.
And I theorise that because Red and Blue
came out 20 years before Sun and Moon
that the reason that Pikachu
became popular 20 years ago
was because of Red and Red's Pikachu.
Red, this powerful trainer who
conquered the Indigo League
and defeated the Elite
Four and the Champion
with a Pikachu by his side.
It's quite a feat and plausible
that it would've bought fame to Red
and to the Pokemon, Pikachu.
There would've been a rise
in Pikachu-styled merchandise
and thus Mimikyu takes
on the form that does.
But there is a problem with that video.
There's a problem with that theory,
and that is that 20 years does not add up
with the Pokemon timeline.
See, the generation
one and and three games
happen while Red is age 10.
The generation three and four games
happen three years later,
with the generation five games
happening three years after that.
According to Bulbapedia,
the generation five sequels
as well as X and Y happen
two years after that,
and by the lack of
ageing of Dexio and Sina,
you can see that Sun and Moon
don't happen too long after.
According to Bulbapedia,
another two years.
And if you've added all
that up, that's 10 years.
Sun and Moon happening 10 years
after the events of Red and Blue
when Red supposedly made Pikachu famous.
10, not 20.
So Pikachu became famous 10 years
before Red and Blue even started.
So the question is who has a Pikachu
that might've made Pikachu famous
10 years before Red and Blue started
Well, possibly Ash.
If Ash is Red's brother,
or cousin, or relative
because they look so
so similar, or whatever
from 10 years before
Red and Blue even start,
and he goes off on his quest,
he goes around to various
different regions,
he catches this legendary Greninja,
he makes a name for himself,
and he makes Pikachu famous
because he does it all with a
Pikachu of course by his side,
then that is what Mimikyu
is basing his design of off.
The rise in popularity of
Pikachu-styled merchandise
is because of Ash's Pikachu,
which makes sense as well in correlation
to the real world Pokemon franchise
because Pikachu wasn't really
a mascot until Ash came along.
And if that's true, that leaves
us with two new questions:
Number one, what is it that Ash did
to make him and Pikachu so famous?
And two, where is Ash now
in the Pokemon universe?
So let's deal with the first question,
and the answer is I don't actually know.
It could've been any number of things.
See, like I say, between
the different mediums
of Pokemon Adventures,
and Pokemon Origins,
and Pokemon Generations,
and the video games,
Red, they are all different characters
that follow relatively similar story arcs,
and when it comes to Ash,
you've got The Eletric
Tale of Pikachu manga,
you've got the TV show,
and now the video games,
and again, they're all
gonna follow similar arcs.
And in the show, Ash
has done a lot of things
that could make him famous.
I mean, if you just look at the movies,
he's saved the world nearly 20 odd times,
he's encountered loads
of legendary Pokemon,
and heck, in the games
he might've just been a
more competent battler
than he is in the show and
actually won a league or two.
So if any of those plot points
carried over into the games,
there is any number of reasons
as to why Ash would be
famous in the games.
Number two is a far more
interesting question.
Where is Ash now?
He was 10 before the
events of Red and Blue,
he's 20 during the events of Red and Blue,
and he'd be age 30 by the time
Sun and Moon comes around.
So I started looking.
Is there any characters
around the age of 30
that are significant or insignificant even
who have a Pikachu?
Could any of them be
Ash Ketchum in disguise?
And I found nothing in
the main series games.
However, I did find something
in Pokemon XD: Gale of
Darkness and Colosseum,
and that is the character
of Eagun from Agate Village.
Eagun is an old man, granted not 30,
which would mean if this was Ash Ketchum,
and this is a stretch here,
that it's set a long long
long time after Sun and Moon.
Probably like another 50 years later.
Although the world of Colosseum
actually could be set that far after.
I mean, the world is totally
different from Pokemon.
Wild Pokemon are a lot less scarce
and people double battle
instead of single battle,
so maybe that's just a cultural change.
However, when you look at Eagun
you start seeing a lot of
similarity between him and Ash.
Number one, his favourite and
starter Pokemon is a Pikachu.
Number two, he is famous
within the world of the Orre region
as one of the world's greatest
Pokemon trainers, apparently.
Number three, he has had at
least two encounters with Ho-oh,
which again, if the story
between the show and the games
parallel each other,
then Ash will definitely encounter Ho-oh.
As well as having encounters with Celebi,
which again, Ash has had.
Oh, and his granddaughter genetically
seems to share a lot of traits
with a certain Ash Ketchum love interest/
Pokeshipping confirmed?
And going back to the note about Ho-oh,
that seems to be a consistent thing
about Ash's characters across every medium
because we just had the announcement
of the new Pokemon 2017 movie,
which shows yet another version of Ash.
This is not a reboot,
this is not the same Ash from the show,
this is a new version of Ash,
and in the very first poster
we see him looking up at Ho-oh.
Maybe the version that
we're gonna see in that show
is going to be even closer
to the real version of Ash.
It's going to be even closer
to the video game version.
Maybe it'll show us why Ash
Ketchum became so famous.
How he became the Ash
Ketchum from the video games,
the one that his younger brother, Red,
looked up to and aspired to,
or cousin or whatever.
We'll see him become a great trainer,
as well as his buddy, Pikachu,
who will become an icon, a mascot,
who will become famous
in the Pokemon world,
and that will cause a rise in popularity
of Pikachu-styled merchandise
that 20 years later
will become what Mimikyu
bases itself off of.
And if you stretch it
just a little bit further,
very possibly in the far far future,
Ash becomes Eagun of Agate Village,
but maybe not that last part as well.
Why don't you let me know
what you think about this Pokemon theory
on Twitter as well in the comments,
and of course, my new social
medias, Tumblr and Instagram.
I cannot recommend following
those places enough.
It is the best place to catch up
with what's going on with me.
Also, I wasn't going to
be able to make this video
because my audio equipment broke
and I did a donation stream last week
and we raised more than enough money
to replace the audio equipment,
which is what I'm using right now.
So this video and all subsequent videos
would not be possible without
those people that donated.
Their names are coming
up on screen right now,
and I wanna say a massive
thank you to all of them
who came out to the stream
who were generous enough to donate.
It makes a massive massive difference.
So hi, Pokemon masters.
Also, a special thank you
to my Patreons of the month,
including Joey Powells
and John D. Gotlage.
Thank you!
- [Ash] This is Ash Ketchum!
You just watched a video
by Bird Keeper Toby!
That makes you a Pokemon Master!
