Ash Ketchum Becomes Pokémon League Champion

Overview

Ash Ketchum Becomes Pokémon League Champion refers to the Pokémon series protagonist Ash Ketchum becoming the first regional Pokémon Champion of Alola in the 139th episode of the Sun & Moon Series which aired September 2019 in Japan. Ash started trending on Twitter in September due to a large amount of users congratulating the character on finally winning the title of regional Pokémon Champion after 22 years worth of episodes.

Background

On September 15th, 2019, The 1,078th episode of Pokémon "誕生！アローラの覇者" aired in Japan.^[1] During the episode, Ash defeats Gladion at the Manalo Conference becoming first regional Pokémon Champion of Alola. Although Ash had previously won the Orange Island League and the Battle Frontier this was his first regional league win.^[2]

Notable Developments

On September 15th, 2019, Pokémon director and composer Junichi Masuda^[3] congratulated the character on Twitter (shown below, left). The tweet garnered over 14,300 likes and 2,600 retweets in a day. That same day, Twitter user @Alpha_Eevee^[4] gained over 53,800 likes and 20,700 retweets on their tweet about Ash's win stating, "More than 20 years of traveling far and wide. More than 20 years of Pokémon training+battling. In more than 20 years and 1000+ eps, his courage pulled through, his destiny was fulfilled, and finally became the very best. Congratulations, Pokémon League Champion Ash Ketchum." (shown below, right).

The next day, Twitter user @Ajax_Ranger^[5] pointed out that "The worst thing about Ash Ketchum trending is all the people who haven’t cared about Pokemon since they were 12 crawling out of the woodwork to tell us how much they hate the Sun & Moon art" (shown below). The Sun & Moon series of Pokémon differs from the animation of the series many Twitter users were used to.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References