From its earliest iterations, Pokemon has been a cross-media platform par excellence. With media ranging from an anime with over eleven hundred episodes and over twenty films, to eight generations of mainline games, a popular trading card game, and one of the most downloaded mobile games ever, it’s safe to say that Pokemon has earned its place as one of the most successful cross-media franchises of all-time. One of the most fascinating things about the series has always been the cross-platform synergy that exists not only with the collectible Pokemon themselves, but the items, locations, and battle strategies found between the different parts of the franchise.
With all of that said, creating the world of an anime or manga is a lot different from the more technical rules and objectives of a video game. For all the faithfulness they show in many aspects, the Pokemon anime and manga were still never afraid of taking some sizable, sometimes outlandish liberties from their video game counterparts. This can be most seen in the various items used by Pokemon or their trainers, which in the games follow very exact rules and usage opportunities. But in the anime, items can often take on stupefying new powers and purposes well outside what’s seen elsewhere in the franchise. As such there are a few different items found in the anime that can’t be replicated in any of the series games, and their wide-reaching powers make for a unique, somewhat odd class all their own.
Pinkan Berries: The Rare Berries That Can Change Any Pokemon’s Color
Being separated from the canon of the Pokemon video games, it makes sense that there would be some interesting liberties taken during the second season of the Pokemon anime set in the Orange Islands between the First and Second Generations. In the eighth episode of the season, “In the Pink,” the main character Ash and his friends are trapped in the remote location of Pinkan Island, which is home to a strange variety of berry named after the island. Pinkan Berries are shown in the episode to have a unique property that changes the color of the island’s Pokemon upon being ingested. These unique effects seem equally potent on all of the creatures found on the island, whether they’re small Pidgeys and Rattatas or massive Rhyhorns and even a Nidoking.
In the games berries function as a staple of strategic team building (and in Generations 3 and 4, they even have a color-based system to give boosts for the Pokemon Contest minigames), but there’s nothing that comes close to altering the very color of the Pokemon that consume them.
The games do have a mechanic for extremely rare pallet-swapped “shiny” Pokemon, but nothing that can distinctively alter coloration after consumption like the Pinkan Berries. In the episode, Ash is informed by the recurring character Officer Jenny that Pinkan Island is typically off-limits because the uniquely colored monsters are liable to attract poaching. (But since the coloration is so heavily tied to the berries themselves, wouldn’t there also be a more practical desire to smuggle out those rather than the Pokemon that happen to be under their effects?)
Dark Balls: Power-Enhancing Pokeballs that Make Pokemon More Dangerous
Pokemon need to be caught in specially-designed Pokeballs, but there’s more than a few types of balls to capture them in style. These different balls can be distinguished for boosts to their base catch rate (like Great Balls, Ultra Balls, and the once-in-a-game Master Ball), to later innovations that are linked to specific locations (Park Balls, Safari Balls) or specific playstyles like Quick Balls and Timer Balls. Each of these devices has a distinct look, and their in-game visibility from Generation 3 on means that veterans of the games have even been known to match the aesthetics of certain Pokeballs with certain Pokemon for stylized team aesthetics. The multiplicity of unique capture items is found in the anime as well, but there’s also a unique “Dark Ball” featured only in the anime that not only captures Pokemon, but boosts their powers and even has the nefarious perks of capturing Pokemon that already belong to other trainers and altering their temperament.
In the fourth full-length anime film, Pokemon 4Ever, these Dark Ball items are the tool of choice of the Iron-Masked Marauder, the antagonist of the film. The Marauder claims that these items have the power to enhance the power of Pokemon, and they also seem to make them more malevolent in personality as well. While these items that make Pokemon act more evil (perhaps thankfully) never made it into the games, the Generation 4 games happen to introduce a Pokeball that is specially suited to catches at nighttime and in caves that is literally translated as “Dark Ball.” However, perhaps to avoid confusion with the item in the movie, the unrelated ball was changed during localization to instead be referred to as the “Dusk Ball.”
Melody Berries: The Glowing Fruit That Gives a Legendary Pokemon Its Power
Legendary Pokemon, a special type of Pokemon that only appear once-per-game and often have influence on the game’s plot, are well-known to harbor attachments with special items. These can take the form of items and flutes used to specially summon the main legendaries in Generations 4 and 8, to held items that give special power boosts to Legendary Pokemon as far back as Generation 3. However, in one of the lesser-known anime specials, there is another special item that seems intimately tied to the powers of one of the rarest Pokemon in the entire series.
Meloetta, introduced in Generation 5, is a rare Pokemon that is only obtainable through special promotional events, and its fighting strategy varies greatly on different forms triggered by an out-of-combat transformation. In the little-known anime spinoff short “Meloetta’s Moonlight Serenade,” Meloetta is shown to have a deep connection to a curious type of berry known as the Melody Berry. Fitting for the musically-themed Pokemon, the Melody Berry is regarded to have the ability to produce music, and the berries glow when Meloetta performs near them.
Likewise, the beginning of Meloetta’s performance includes the quick sprouting of a special tree that produces five multicolored Melody Berries to assist Meloetta in her performance. After the berries are blown away in a sandstorm, Meloetta is unable to continue without getting the empowered berries back through the help of Pikachu and his friends. While it’s unlikely for an older generation legendary Pokemon to get a new item in a future game (with many in-game berries themselves already being rare event items), Melody Berries are a unique show of a Pokemon’s out-of-combat powers.
The Machine that Evolves Pokemon (and Transforms into a Giant Robot)
Anyone who’s played one of the main series games set in the original region of Kanto remembers a familiar experience early-on in the game: a salesman of questionable repute sells you a Magikarp, a seemingly-useless Pokemon, for 500 in-game credits. The Magikarp can be quite a hassle to train until it hits level 20, at which point it evolves into the incredibly powerful Gyarados. Years later, this game-centric dilemma is interestingly spoofed in “Ya See We Want an Evolution!,” the twentieth episode of the Generation 4 anime season. However, this play on the familiar game trope takes on some bizarre turns in the anime episode.
In the beginning of the episode, the anime’s recurring villains Jesse and James encounter a Magikarp salesman. While Jesse and James initially reject the offer for his Magikarp, the salesman proceeds to show them a unique unfinished machine that automatically evolves Pokemon into their stronger forms without going through the normal effort of training. Once Jesse and James rebuild the machine, they fail to take into account the salesman’s warning of waiting a week before being able to successfully use the machine. Jesse and James try to steal and evolve the heroes’ Pokemon, but they fail to stop Ash and his friends as per the norm.
However, after their defeat, Jesse and James are able to transform the machine into a giant robot as an inexplicable backup plan. Just as surprisingly as the evolution machine changes its size and purpose, it quickly disassembles and crashes because it was unable to charge without a successful Pokemon evolution. “Easy come, easy go” applies to some things, but very rarely to giant war robots built as a failsafe on experimental machine prototypes. Needless to say, it’s unlikely that we’d ever see this in the games anytime soon.
Mewtwo’s Floating, Clone-Producing Pokeballs
If we’ve already seen anime-exclusive Pokeballs that can affect the temperament and strength of their captured Pokemon, a sinister plot point in the series’ first anime movie brings in some more strange, fantastical dimensions to the setup. Unlike the Dark Ball’s ability to just capture and affect other trainers’ Pokemon, a type of specialty ball used by Mewtwo in Pokemon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back actually clones the captured Pokemon and creates evil counterparts to form Mewtwo’s personal army.
These strange Pokeballs are a mixture of black and purple coloration, and the normal capsule button at the center of most models is adjusted to an eye-like sensor of some sort. Furthermore, once activated, they seem to seek out targets to capture, floating through the air like a form of guided missile. While not explicitly named, these dangerous Pokeballs have come to be known as either “Mewtwo Balls” because of their wielder or “Clone Balls” because of their purpose. While the items were only featured in the first movie and never in the games, there was a limited-edition merchandise run in 2019 where a reproduction of Mewtwo’s PokeBall was released as part of a set at limited retailers in Japan.