Narrator

The narrator is a third person character of the Pokémon anime. He has been in almost every episode and movie. He is voiced by 石塚運昇 Unshō Ishizuka in Japanese and Ken Gates (EP001-AG020) and Mike Pollock (AG021-AG145) in English. Gates, now credited as Rodger Parsons, resumed the role of the narrator (AG146-present) once Pokémon USA took over the production of the series. In Brazil, he is voiced by Fábio Moura, in the Latin American version of the anime, he is voiced by Gerardo Vásquez, and by Rui de Sá and Rui Quintas in the European Portuguese dub.

History

The narrator usually speaks at the beginning and ending of each episode. In the beginning of an episode he usually informs the audience of what Ash Ketchum and his friends are doing or where they're heading. Sometimes he'll even explain what they did in the previous episode. He would usually conclude the episode with what Ash and company had learned during the episode or say what they were planning to do next. In movies, he usually is only heard at the beginning giving an overview of the Pokémon world.

In some of the episodes featured in the Weekly Pokémon Broadcasting Station, some of the regular characters would narrate the episode in first person in place of the narrator. When the episodes were dubbed in English, their narratives were replaced with the regular narration. The only time the first-person narration was kept from the Japanese version was at the beginning of AG001.