Who Were The Other Pallet Town Trainers In The Pokemon Anime? | Pokemon Unsolved Mysteries

You gotta love how Prof. Oak let Ash open those empty Pokéballs even though he knew damn well there was nothing in them just to troll the kid

Obviously the reason Brock didn't recognize Damien is because he never opened his eyes to see him.

Always felt it was a missed opportunity, not having the other two trainers as actual recurring characters.

It’s very possible they lost to Sabrina and maybe got turned to dolls 😳 I can believe Gary was skilled enough to beat her when she was in her “creepy phase”

Well the other Trainer didn't have annoying Team Rocket slowing them down every episode. Ash literally had to deal with a criminal organization that targets only him trying to steal his Pikachu.

Well, I didn't want to say anything, but I was the Charmander trainer. I gave up after finding out the fairy type gym wasn't going to open for another 16 years and decided to take a job as a computer programmer instead. There just happened to be a job opening for that after some incident with missiles and a Pikachu or something.

The best reason I can think of to mention the other trainers again and again like they do is to establish that Ash is lagging behind the rest. Comparing him to Gary exclusively creates a situation where average is unknown - Is Ash lagging behind, or is Gary exceptional? We wouldn't know. By saying Ash is behind all three, they establish an average playing field. Ash is struggling to keep up, but it turns out that it's not because he's unskilled, but because he's a magnet for trouble and his kind nature has him helping every time he encounters trouble. Gary is the type to walk past trouble and he's skilled, so he pulls out ahead - The other two trainers had enough skill to go a good way into the challenge, but couldn't meet the skill level needed at the end, where as Ash does.

Another strike through against Damien being the Charmander trainer is that Nurse Joy’s comment about him and his gang having bad reputations in the area implies that Damien lives in the area. If he was the Pallet Town trainer, he wouldn’t have stayed long enough in the area to have a “bad reputation” to begin with (since we know that the Pallet town trainers got 5 badges in the time that Ash got 4, which implies that the Pallet town trainers didn’t lollygag around one area for too long)

I feel like Pallet Town is a small enough place that Ash would know everyone who lives in it. Especially other kids who grew up there at about the same time as him. I really think it would be weird if he managed to grow up in such a small town for 10 years without meeting the other children there too. In fact, I'm surprised he never talks to them when he returns home, like calling over and asking them how their journeys went.

If Gary and Samurai didn't mention the trainers, I'd almost be tempted to say the two mystery trainers never existed, and Professor Oak set things up to make sure Pikachu would be Ash's starter. After all, he'd remember that Ash would end up with it, thanks to a certain time traveling onion 50 years before...

I always just thought the other two trainers were a nod to the real human players of the games for Red and Green.

A theory I heard somewhere is that the two trainers could’ve been turned to dolls by Sabrina, and after she was turned good, they could’ve been too traumatized.

Even if the other pallet trainers didn't show up again as skilled battlers I would have liked it if they still showed up and shown different avenues that trainers can take instead of just the gym circuit. They would eventually do this more and more with characters like Brock and May anyway but it would have been cool if one of the other trainers showed up later having decided to be something else instead of just dropping off the face of the earth.

I like how it didn’t matter that ash missed the opportunity to get the starters because he got all of them later

the early seasons were so weird and unique, I love seeing analysis of it

They probably originally planned to have the other trainers be rivals, but the gym leaders ended up filling that role

2 years late but when you mention the charmander right after Hypnos nap time, being held by the fashion guy, the trainer next to him is holding a bulbasaur

When i was a kid i thought the other trainers were a reference to us playing the game as pallet town trainers

Maybe the two trainers will show up in the final 11 episodes of Ash's journey. That'd be something

With Ash story now at its conclusion. I kinda wish we saw the two mystery trainers from Pallet Town.