Pokemon U.S. Dub Theme Song Rankings

19: Pokemon BW: Rival Destinies (Season 15)

This song is a cheesy country duet that just blows so hard. I’m mad that there’s a generation of kids that started watching Pokemon and were stuck with this horrible song. I don’t blame them if they hate Pokemon.

18: Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl (Season 10)

The Black and White songs are collectively groaners, but this is the biggest Failed Experiment. And it sucks even more because it probably got close to being good at some point, if only people let it be a little weirder. It is talk-sung, and could easily be the good kind of talk-singing (like Talking Heads), but instead is the bad kind of talk-singing (like The Killers). The drums are weird, making the whole thing into a rap-rock Limp Bizkit grossness.

17: Pokemon DP: Sinnoh League Victors (Season 13)

I really hate this one. It’s boring, it’s soft rock, it’s faux-inspiring and generic and slow. Other than the necessary shouts of “Pokemon!” and “Sinnoh League Victors!” it sounds like it would be in your dentist’s office.

16: Pokemon: Black & White (Season 14)

This is more country music horseshit, but it’s a duet, with a chorus that can probably get stuck in your head easily. None of the lyrics particularly matter, none are said with any sincerity, and very little stands out other than “It’s not always blaaaack and whiiiiite.”

15: Pokemon: The Johto Journeys (Season 3)

Some full-on Kenny Chesney bullshit, and the first chronological instance of it.

I like the jaunty doot-doo-doos in the background, but so much about this theme isn’t good. Ending with the phrase “It’s a whole new place with a brand new attitude, but ya still gotta catch ’em all to be the best that you can be” reeks of marketing. Like they weren’t confident people would know what Pokemon was about if they didn’t slide in Gotta Catch ’Em All.

14: Pokemon: Advanced Challenge (Season 7)

More generic butt rock. It does offhandedly mention “trainers” but otherwise is totally devoid of anything regarding Pokemon. Too soft, desperately in need of a catchier hook. The brief guitar solo is so goofy.

13: Pokemon: Master Quest (Season 5)

Boring generic rock music. Other than the occasional background shouts of “Pokemon!” you’d have no idea what this is from. I wish there was more to recommend this particular theme because it stuck in my mind as being enjoyable, but it just doesn’t hold up.

12: Pokemon the Series: XY Kalos Quest (Season 18)

Odd one, another experiment I’d consider a failure. It’s attempting to kind of harden the rock found in these themes, but it doesn’t work. Doesn’t feel like Pokemon.

11: Pokemon: Battle Frontier (Season 9)

The mainline of this song is a little too weak to stand at the top. It tries to be climbing and driving, but it just gets in its own way. The “chorus” is better, a little more upbeat, with better rhyme. It doesn’t fix the song at large, though.

10: Pokemon the Series: XY (Season 17)

Strangely, this is kind of a ZZ Top open road country rock version of the original theme, word for word. It doesn’t improve, but only marginally hurts what we’ve come to know.

9: Pokemon the Series: XYZ (Season 19)

More weird ZZ Top stuff. It almost comes off Kesha-y in its devotion to being A Little Filthy, In A Pop Way, but the way “gotta catch ’em all!” is shoved in there roots it firmly in the goofy southern rock ideas it wants to work with. Which is a shame. They’re really pushing this idea but I just don’t dig it.

8: Pokemon BW: Adventures in Unova and Beyond (Season 16)

So this one is almost as bad as the other Black and White themes, but…it kind of saves itself right at the end. It starts, yet again, as this cheesy country-fried duet, but it somehow segues into a goofy 80’s pop song with these peeling synths and “oh oh!” refrain I can’t help but kind of shimmy along to.

7: Pokemon: Advanced (Season 6)

This theme takes a little bit of a different approach, seemingly sung from Ash’s perspective. The first line is “A kid from Pallet Town with a whole new world to see, don’t know what’s ahead but I won’t let it get the best of me.” It speaks heavily of wanting to be a hero, which I never felt was particularly Ash’s goal. Overall it’s not terrible, but easily forgettable.

6: Pokemon: Indigo League Theme (Season 1)

The original English dub Pokemon theme is as iconic as a thing can be, and that is really the problem. It’s difficult to look at it with an impartial eye. It means things, it carries baggage. Nowhere else in Pokemon canon is the phrase “I want to be the very best, like no one ever was” written, but it’s one of the more well known phrases of the franchise.

It would be one thing if it were the best Pokemon theme. It would be another if it were somehow the worst, because that would mean we’ve gotten eighteen better songs. But it’s neither: it’s just a fine song. A little cheesy, overly earnest, but not really any more so than the other themes. It projects a sense of pride and determination, which are good themes for a trainer to embrace. It doesn’t blow my hair back, and I can’t really tell what the line just before “our courage will pull us through” says (“our hearts so true”?) but otherwise the lyrics are good.

Other than everything we have imbued it with, it’s nothing special. It’s a testament to us, not itself.

5: Pokemon DP: Battle Dimension (Season 11)

This is the first female-fronted theme, and I love the vocalist. She has a kind of smokiness you wouldn’t associate with a driving energy for a kid’s show, but it comes together in a sort of uplifting way. She’s clearly having a good time with the general “heroes” “destiny” “change the world” subject matter in the lyrics. The thing that weirds me out, though, is this is where the subtitle starts getting mentioned before the word Pokemon. The whole song ends with “Battle Dimension, Pokemon” as though she were addressing a detective named Pokemon and answering their query about which dimension they’re in. It’s goofy, and it keeps happening for a while.

4: Pokemon: Adventures in the Orange Islands (Season 2)

This theme has some hip hop elements, trying to come off a little “cooler” in comparison to the first season’s intro. There’s a triumphant call-and-response section, and “we all live in a Pokemon world” is a fun repeated phrase, but it doesn’t do much for me overall.

3: Pokemon: Johto League Champions (Season 4)

It starts by making itself known that it’s playing on original theme, while also setting itself apart. It’s a little quicker, a little harder, a little weirder than the ones that came before it, and I applaud that. Lines like “My whole life has led to this, time to test my skills” are exciting, as are the “Johto!” shouts (though not nearly as emphatically screamed as I remember them being as a kid).

2: Pokemon DP: Galactic Battles (Season 12)

If it hasn’t become evident by now, here are my favorite Pokemon Theme gimmicks: driving bass with drums to match, saying something and then having a crowd shout the thing back, building to a big break and then letting it go over the top, etc. Basically I want every Pokemon theme to be 2014 EDM, since I guess that is what jazzes me up to catch some monsters.

This theme hits all those nails on the head. It starts a little too soft, but quickly recognizes that the fun of a Pokemon theme is in uplifting wondrous thumping energy.

It ends with Pikachu shouting its name: fine. But then a Chimchar, Buizel, and Gligar all also hop on screen, shouting their names, and it’s jarring and awful. Ruins an otherwise ideal theme.

1: Pokemon: Advance Battle (Season 8)

Hell yeah! Hell yes!

This one opens with one of the catchiest little melodies, a frequently repeated “Oh oh oh oh Woah oh!” and then the claim “I’m unbeatable!” That statement is a little incongruous with Pokemon: it’s always been a show where sometimes Ash loses, and does so respectfully and graciously. That’s an important aspect of the anime: when you win, be cool about it, and when you don’t, take it as positive as you can and learn from it.

The lyrics in this song are a little more arrogant than that particular lesson, but hot damn if I just don’t love this theme. It’s fast, hard, intense, bass heavy, has a crowd shouting “Advance Battle!” and more. This is the only Pokemon theme that I don’t mind being as long as it is. And it is the best one.