I’m not sure my heart can take much more of these adorable Pokémon shorts

The English dub for the latest episode of Pokétoon, Murkrow and the Midnight Adventure, just dropped on the Official Pokémon YouTube channel, which means it’s time for me to flip on the fans so my heart doesn’t melt onto the floor.

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Pokétoon: The Pokémon Cartoon Animation, also known as POKÉTOON, is a web-exclusive animated anthology show that started airing on YouTube with English dubbing back in 2022. The series is made up of animated shorts, generally ranging from five to twenty minutes, which follow the misadventures of various Pokémon. And they’re some of the most charming video-game-inspired shorts you’ll ever see.

Right off the bat, the shorts are a treat for the eyes. Produced by various Japanese animation studios, the art style shifts like a Ditto on a caffeine high between episodes, but they always look great. From the bouncy Warner Bros.-inspired look of Scraggy and Mimikyu to the unabashedly anime-esque colors and line work of Another Day with Gardevoir, you never know what each short is going to look like.

Another major draw to the series is its willingness to focus on Pokémon that don’t always get the spotlight they deserve. Lesser-known faces like Slugma, Snowrunt, and Charcadet, who rarely get much acknowledgment, have entire episodes dedicated to them. They say every Pokémon is someone’s favorite, and Pokétoon goes out of its way to give smaller players some love.

All that said, the true power of Pokétoon lies in the simple but strong stories driving every short. At its core, Pokémon is a series about people and magical creatures living and working together, but the core series games rarely let us see what Pokémon or their trainers get up to when they aren’t in the thick of battle. Pokétoon has the freedom to explore these ideas, and it runs marathons with it.

Pokétoon goes out of its way to tell stories about Pokémon that could never be fully realized in the games, and they always manage to play on the heartstrings. Shorts like Sing! Dance! Altaria! are grounded tales that explore how people and Pokémon work together to pursue careers and hobbies outside of battling, while stories like Help! I’ve Turned Into a Gengar swing for the fences with some really weird ideas.

While most of the shorts are pretty low-stakes, some use the tropes of Pokémon to touch on surprisingly heavy subjects. One of my personal favorites, A Tale of Two Charcadets, explores what happens to wild Pokémon after trainers catch their friends, and it ends in a spectacular duel that serves as a heartfelt, bittersweet reflection on how the relationships we forge in our youth tend to change as we get older and life pulls us in different directions.

No matter who gets the limelight or what the short is about, Pokétoon is always a fun ride. It’s easily one of the most creative bits of Pokémon content out there, and every fan of the series owes it to themselves to check it out if they haven’t already.

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