All Major Humans In The Original Pokemon Anime, Ranked

It’s even in the name: Pokemon is about Pokemon. Pikachu, Charizard, Mewtwo. Lucario, Greninja, Mimikyu. Over a thousand species and counting, and collectively they’re responsible for the success of one of the biggest franchises on the planet.

But what about those weird human-looking characters? You know, the humans? There are hundreds throughout the games, and thousands across the incredibly long-running anime. Today, we’ll be looking toward the (original) anime especially, where dozens of non-Pokemon denizens received ample characterization for decades.

33 Sophocles

Ash’s journey to Alola came packed with the largest core cast of characters in any given era of the anime. Some fans praise this generation of the show for managing to bring such a diverse group together and provide a measure of development for them all.

Sophocles is the weak link of the gang, and ultimately, the weakest link on this list. The Sun & Moon seasons were clearly pitched as an ensemble approach, but Sophocles never changes. He’s tedious at the best of times and downright frustrating otherwise. The writers may have intended to remind us, through Sophocles, that not everyone is an Ash-tier hero. Some fear the unknown. That’s totally fair, but it could have been conveyed through someone far less irritating.

32 Cilan

For the entirety of the Pokemon anime’s first eras — Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh — Ash and Pikachu’s male counterpart was Brock. His departure after all that time left an even bigger hole than Misty’s did, and it was inevitable that any new male traveling companion would be compared to Brock. It was a tough hill to climb, and Cilan completely flunked it.

Cilan’s entire shtick is food. He’s a great chef, you see, and hey, that’s good. It comes in handy when the team is starving, to be sure. But that doesn’t give Cilan a license to never shut up about it. Food puns are this kid’s currency of choice, and he trades them relentlessly to the chagrin of pretty much every viewer who ever got through Best Wishes (the Black & White era) despite this dude’s every effort to thwart their goal.

31 Max

Pokemon is a show primarily written for children, and most of its main characters are children. (We’ll ignore the fact that Ash has totally been adventuring for over two decades, that 1,200 and more episodes have occured while he’s “ten” somehow, and that some of those episodes even account for several days on their own… OK, perhaps we aren’t ignoring it after all.)

Back on track, then. If these perpetual kids, Ash and his friends, are the stars, then the only way to write a kid who isn’t bizarrely grown in mentality and oddly capable in matters of liberty is to create someone even younger than the rest. We can forgive Max, May’s seven-year-old younger brother, for being immature. He is, after all, seven. And a more believable seven than his sister’s ten.

That doesn’t mean we have to accept just how annoying this brat can get. It’s a teaching episode, sure, a moment to learn from, but the highlight example of the sorts of things Max brings to the show during the Hoenn era is how he pilfers all of Ash’s badges when Ash defeats his Max’s father. Refusing to accept his dad isn’t some deity is just another Tuesday for this kid. Max never really progresses past this, even if the writers seem to insist otherwise.

30 Lana

Lana is… fine. She’s another member of Alola’s schoolhouse squad, the smallest of the bunch and easily the biggest lover of the open seas. Most of the time she’s kind of a blank slate, a siphon for the plot so that other characters can handle the situation.

The girl picks up the pace a little at seemingly random intervals, when she’s momentarily revealed to be trolling her friends in conniving ways. That may sound bad, but it’s pretty much the only thing about Lana we can routinely remember, let alone chuckle over. File this one under flat.

29 Clemont

Cilan failed to replace Brock, and Clemont didn’t pull it off, either. But compared to Cilan, who is replaced directly by this spunky, tech-obsessed Kalosian gym leader, Clemont is a breath of fresh air.

It’s important that we reiterate, Clemont’s only really that breath of fresh air relative to his predecessor. He’s got a bit of Sophocles in him, which is never a compliment; Clemont’s sudden bouts of fear and trepidation are rarely entertaining. The shtick with him building contraptions to assist the team, only for his inventions to inevitably falter, grew old a quarter of the way through the X & Y years.

The best thing we can say for Clemont is that he’s better than he might have been in other eras of the anime. X & Y gets pretty intense sometimes, forcing us to see the better side of this young inventor when it does.

28 Mallow

It seems like Sun & Moon’s oversized posse is dropping practically one after another. Perhaps they’re just so much better together than when considered separately? Regardless, Mallow is another fairly ho-hum addition to the anime.

It’s kind of neat that Mallow balances her studies with helping out at her father’s restaurant. There’s a bit of intrigue over whether inheriting the family business is really what she wants from her future, but it’s never quite resolved, because so few of Sun & Moon’s cast ventures wayward from their home turf at any point.

27 Matori

Matori’s a name you might not have heard of before, particularly if you quit watching the Pokemon anime after Hoenn. Introduced as a recurring threat during the Sinnoh era, Matori is a whipsmart and devious member of Team Rocket who is designed to instill the sort of fear in her foes that Jessie and James are just too bumbling and pure to achieve.

That sounds great on paper, but in reality, Matori is a fairly mixed bag. Sometimes, she’s great, with presence and cunning. Too often, she’s outplayed by Ash and friends in the most absurd ways, even by Pokemon anime measures, to the point that her very brief moments of darkness are all but washed away.

It’s nice to see her factor into several eras, and it’s good to have a “real” Team Rocket threat, but Matori is just not as smart as she ought to be. She’s also far too infrequent to leave a lasting impression.

26 Bonnie

Bonnie is Clemont’s little sister. Like May’s little brother, Max, she tags along with the team, raising a would-be trio to a quartet. Unlike Max, Bonnie has some semblance of sense to her. The recurring joke where she attempts to marry her older brother to female guest characters is always worth a chortle.

The problem is that she has basically nothing especially noteworthy about her, from the beginning all the way to the end of her tenure. It’s fine to be fairly one-note, given her age and disposition, but by default it makes Bonnie kind of uninteresting.

25 Tracey

When we mentioned earlier that Brock was Ash’s traveling compoanion for four full back-to-back sagas, that was admittedly a bit of a misnomer. For the span of around 33 episodes, primarily during the original series’ made-up Orange Islands arc, Brock was busy elsewhere and “Pokemon watcher” Tracey did the best he could to make up for that fact.

He isn’t around long enough to leave much of an impression eitehr way, but Tracey does get a nifty write-out in the form of being permitted to begin working as an assistant to his idol, Professor Oak. This also lets him pop in every couple hundred episodes (truly, this is a long anime) to check in with Ash and the others.

24 Iris

After Misty left at the end of Johto, May took over her role. After May, it was Dawn. And after Dawn, as Ash headed into Unova and the Best Wishes saga, it was this gal.

Iris shakes things up after both May and Dawn, both of whom we’ll cover a bit later in our list, have the goal of winning Pokemon contests. Unlike her predecessors, Iris is all about Pokemon battling, which could have led to a pretty special dynamic with Ash. Sadly, Best Wishes’ overall lack of oomph works to her detriment, and we’re left with someone who doesn’t advance much beyond a few threadbare spotlight episodes.

If anything, seeing a more mature Iris a handful of times in Pokemon Journeys has helped her more than much of her own era did.

23 Kiawe

We’re back in Alola again for another glancing shot at the schoolhouse gang, and our hearts beat with a volcano’s own flame. At least, that sounds like something Kiawe would say. The guy’s fire puns are as frequent as Cilan’s foodstuff, but there’s enough added effort put in Kiawe’s characterization for him to avoid being a total misfire.

Yes, that was also a bad fire pun. At any rate, there are some cute moments between Kiawe and his little sister, as well as a handful of instances in which Kiawe learns to really cool off and take one for the team. He tries to fill a role as Ash’s rival to some extent, but it never quite works, given their schoolmate dynamic and Sun & Moon era’s overall laid-back vibe.

22 Chloe

It wouldn’t be quite right to label Chloe as Ash’s female traveling companion during Pokemon Journeys, the Sword & Shield era’s representative seasons. After all, she doesn’t actually leave her father Professor Cerise’s laboratory often, though that begins to change around the start of the second Journeys season.

Taken on its own, that might make Chloe sound like the dullest friend Ash has ever had. Thankfully, that’s hardly the case. Chloe’s character arc has been intriguing to watch unfold. For quite some time, she’s actually not certain she even cares enough about Pokemon to go on any adventures. Frankly, ti’s refreshing to see someone who isn’t head over heels about the things from square one.

Things do change, and Chloe winds up raising an Eevee who seems to see the world through similarly fresh eyes. We can’t say Chloe is the most engaging Pokemon anime protagonist, but we applaud the writers for taking her through an unexpected path.

21 Lillie

Many of the characters who define the Pokemon anime are hardly an afterthought in the games. It’s a little wild to remember, but even Misty and Brock are just gym leaders in Red & Blue. Lillie, yet another Alolan tagalong at Ash’s school, may very well have the singular distinction of being better in the games than the show.

Don’t get us wrong. Anime Lillie is just fine. Unlike most of her peers, she has a real arc. She goes from being petrified to so much as touch Pokemon to cuddling her Alolan Vulpix without a second’s thought. Lillie and her brother have to handle of the anime’s grimmest parental tales, too. It’s a lot.

Yet all that being said, Lillie is still held back by the structure of the anime’s Sun & Moon seasons, never achieving the sort of travel-induced growth that her gaming counterpart does. No wonder her resolution in the anime, while ostensibly tied to her father’s disappearance, is essentially a sudden dose of wanderlust. She’s chasing her superior self.

20 Delia

We’re at that point now when characters who are fully enjoyable are starting to drop due to a lack of overall screentime. Delia, Ash’s perpetually single mother contrary to all the fandom pairings with Oak (we are not getting into the fringe fandom pairings with Mr. Mime…) a terrifically supportive mom to Ash, but crucially, a fun woman in her own right.

There’s a certain sense of youthfulness to Delia, a playful personality that can tangle with Ash’s fierce dedication to comedic effect. Too often, Pokemon kids’ moms are seen doing nothing but washing dishes in the kitchen, you know? Delia washes dishes, but she’s also her own person, and it’s always a treasure seeing her for a few episodes per saga before she’s off to do her own thing again.

19 Joy

In case you’re unaware, there isn’t just one Nurse Joy. There are dozens. Heck, at this point it’s safer to assume there are hundreds. They’re all cousins… or something. And every one of them is destined to inherit leadership over a local Pokemon Center. It’s honestly a bit unnerving.

It’s not for lack of screentime that Joy only goes this far, because goodness, if we add up all her family members, she’s probably got more coverage than Brock. It’s more that her constant career path limits her to select situations. Few of those situations give Joy the chance to go adventuring, and fewer have any implication of changing her in any discernible way. She simply is; sometimes, that’s okay.

18 Alain

A handful of Ash’s rivals made the candidacy cut. We picked the ones with the most presence, since this article is all about the anime’s major characters. Alain, Ash’s rival in the X & Y years, doesn’t actually meet the hero until fairly late into the three-season stint. But he has something no other rival does — courtesy of the numerous Pokemon Mega Evolution special episodes starring Alain, he gets to grow and develop as a trainer first.

Alain is critical to XYZ, the final Kalos season and handily the best. The events of XYZ feel appropriately climactic. The evil Team Flare makes a serious play for power, and the Pokemon League finals between Ash and Alain are rad because they feel like two newfound friends coming together to finish the story anyone could have predicted after going through the ringer together in a story none could have anticipated.

17 May

Many a fandom war has been fought over whether May or Dawn is the superior Misty replacement, with May taking up the mantle first for the Hoenn years and then Dawn doing it for Sinnoh’s. As we’ve previously mentioned, both girls have the ambition of becoming top-class Pokemon Contest competitors, which is sort of a point against Dawn; her goal is an echo of her plot ancestor’s, if you will.

But Dawn feels more well-rounded despite that fact, as if the writers figured the second time’s the charm and got a handle on someone who seems to be more than the sum of her parts. That’s not to say May isn’t enjoyable, or that she doesn’t grow, but that growth is somewhat limited by Hoenn’s fairly routine approach.

16 Giovanni

Next up is the head honcho of Team Rocket, the man with a plan who shows up a few times per era to bark orders at Jessie and James. Curiously, despite their consistent blunders, and how much he berates them for it thorughout their tenure at each region, Giovanni ultimately seems to think they’ve done an excellent job at journey’s end so that the plot can compel him to order them elsewhere for further fun.

Giovanni’s ties to Mewtwo, which lead to the first ever Pokemon movie (and surely one of the most cherished), paints him as a more imperative figure at a certain point in the Kanto seasons. That never quite builds up afterward, though there are infrequent stints in which the devious man is seen doing more than just sitting on his chair and talking.

15 Goh

In recent eras, the Pokemon anime has shaken things up from Kanto through Kalos’ traditional “Ash meets a few friends and wanders from one end of the region to the other” formula. Opinions are varied on how well that’s worked, but it’s arguably more of a net win for Pokemon Journeys, the Sword & Shield seasons presently on their final stretch (in Japan, at least.)

In Journeys, Ash and new companion Goh both work for Professor Cerise in Vermilion City, setting out to each of the franchise’s main regions on the regular to solve one crisis or another. Ostensibly, it’s to photograph and researdh various issues, but truly, it usually involves some degree of crisis.

Goh is great in that he feels less like a sidekick and more of his own kid. His goal to catch every Pokemon, an obvious nod to Pokemon Go, revializes the series by creating co-leads. In many ways, Goh feels just as important as Ash, and while he isn’t quite as dynamic as his friend, he’s still pretty solid.

14 Jenny

There’s another Joy in every town. She goes by Jenny. Her family is just as inconceivably sprawling. Rather than serving as a nurse, Jenny chooses the life of law enforcement. Officer Jenny, or rather, the Officers Jenny, are cooler than the Nurses Joy. Controversial stance? Maybe, though likely not the most controversial stance on this Pokemon main human characters ranking escapade of ours.

What makes Jenny the better eerie clone gal is that she, by virtue of her occupation, gets to, you know, touch grass as the kids these days are prone to say. Jenny’s only indoors to take down notes on an alleged crime, and then she’s off to the races, problem-solving and arresting perps in real-time. Naturally, it’s usually Ash and his buds who save the day, but Jenny provides excellent clean-up duty.