Pokémon Trainer is NOT Ash Ketchum

This is a short guide so that others might see that Pokémon Trainer is actually a trainer named Red, and not Ash Ketchum, as some have suggested. This will feature a fair amount of Pokémon vocabulary, so where possible, I shall provide Bulbapedia links so that you can read up more.


When the first generation of Pokémon games came out, the player character (seen to the left) had the possible names of Red, Satoshi and Jack in the Japanese Red Version. This meant the rival character (of whom Gary is based in the anime) was named Green by default.

When the games were released in English as Pokémon Red & Blue the player character retained the default names of Red and Jack, but Satoshi became Ash. As Oriental Light & Magic, who make the animé, had named their main character Satoshi, when 4Kids Entertainment dubbed the series, Satoshi became Ash, and thus the world at large knew of the trainer Ash Ketchum.



In the second generation of games, players had a new character who was named Gold by default, and various things were mentioned about a person who defeated Team Rocket many years ago. In the end, Gold discovered Red in a cave named Mt. Silver, where he had been training since losing the championship three years ago. His team resembles the team of the Pokémon Special character named Red who was based off the original player character from the games.

I know there's lots of character variations, but that's just how it is.

The third generation of Pokémon games came around and now having a female player character was standard (Kris was introduced in Crystal, the third second generation game however) and the region of Hoenn, with the new games, Ruby & Sapphire which also introduced the trainers Brendan and May, the first two player characters not to be named after their games. Hardly any mention was made of Kanto, Red or even Blue in these games, leaving players wondering what had happened.

He was later redesigned for the games FireRed & LeafGreen

Then FireRed & LeafGreen, remakes of the original games were released, and Red was given the above redesign, which is how he appears in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Okay, it took me a fair while, and a short Pokémon history lesson to get there, but hopefully now it is clear.

Ash Ketchum is the aura controlling,cross-dressing, crazy Tauros capturing star of the Pokémon animé.

Red managed to defeat Team Rocket, become Elite Four champion and now stars in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.