Pokémon in Italian redirects here. For Pokémon names in the Italian language, seeList of Italian Pokémon names.

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Pokémon in Italy
Flag of Italy
Language	Italian
Continent	Europe
Original animated series airdates
EP001	January 10, 2000 June 30, 2014
AG001	March 24/25, 2004
DP001	September 17/18, 2007
BW001	February 13, 2011 May 30, 2011
XY001	October 19, 2013 April 14, 2014
SM001	November 19, 2016 April 29, 2017
JN001	August 29, 2020
HZ001	February 27, 2024

ThePokémon franchise first reachedItaly on October 5, 1999 with the release ofPokémon Rosso e Blu.

Pokémon video games

All Pokémon video games of the main series have always been sold in Italy and translated in Italian. TheGeneration I games and its spin-offs were distributed in that region by GiG until 1999 when distribution changed toGiochi Preziosi. The company would release theGeneration II games and its spin-offs in that region. By 2002, Nintendo started their own branch in Italy, officially breaking up with Giochi Preziosi. Pokémon events are also released for Italian gamers as well.

Pokémon animation

Italia 1

On January 10, 2000,Italia 1 (Italia Uno), a commercial Italian TV channel owned byMediaset, started airing thePokémon animated series from Mondays to Fridays every afternoon, around 5:00 P.M. The series that year was successful in Italy and it was also broadcast at prime time on Saturdays. From thefourth season on, however, Pokémon lost more and more Italian fans. On Christmas 2001, it was even suspended for one year, possibly for dub problems, and when it started again at the end of 2002, its popularity was even lower.

In 2003,Pokémon: Master Quest began around 4 P.M. With this fifth series, Italia 1 chose to divide the episodes into two halves for the premiere, creating, in this way, a broadcast of two 10-minute episodes each from Monday through Friday. However, when the episodes were re-aired, they were transmitted fully. Nevertheless, Pokémon started being broadcast later and later (Pokémon: Advanced at 4:30 P.M.,Pokémon: Advanced Challenge at 5:00 P.M.) until theeighth season was broadcast at 6:00 P.M., always for ten minutes in February 2006. After a few months, Pokémon was moved to Saturdays and Sundays, imitating the TV schedule ofKids' WB!. The main problem facing this was that Italian children attend school on Saturdays. Due to this choice, some Italian Pokémon sites chose to make together a petition against Italia 1. Perhaps because of this petition or maybe due to the lower audience, Pokémon returned in the afternoon at 5:15 P.M.

With the beginning ofPokémon Chronicles, however, the show was broadcast once again during the weekend, although it was broadcast later in the morning. The same happened forPokémon: Battle Frontier, which was not only was transmitted in the weekends, but also for 10 minutes only. In Summer 2007, Pokémon landed every morning at 8:30 A.M. In September 2007, Italia 1 decided on give another chance to the show and, exploiting the success of the newGeneration IV games, Pokémon came back in the afternoon with the new series,Pokémon: Diamante e Perla. The first episodes were successful, similar to the ones of the first seasons, but after a few episodes the ratings decreased and so in January 2008 "Diamante e Perla" went back to the weekend (also because the series was going too much near the U.S. airings).

After the tenth season, Mediaset decided not to renew their contract for the series. However, various Mediaset channels kept on re-airing the first 10 seasons until mid-2013, when the rights for them finally expired.

Boing

Like most rerunning cartoon series and movies coming from Italia 1, the animated series has also been aired byBoing, a digital television network broadcast via DTT technology, owned by Boing S.p.A., a joint-venture formed byRTI/Mediaset andTurner Broadcasting System (with the latter's share being currently owned byWarner Bros. Discovery EMEA). Boing aired the first ten seasons, and utilized the Italian opening themes and endings that Italia 1 used, due to both networks being part of RTI/Mediaset.

Pokémon Horizons: The Series started airing on Boing and Boing Plus on February 27, 2024, marking the return of the animated series on the channel after more than a decade, followed byPokémon Horizons: Season 2—The Search for Laqua on May 26, 2025.

Hiro

The animated series has also reran on Hiro, a short-lived Mediaset network that broadcasts anime. The channel launched in 2008 and closed in August 2011.

Jetix/Disney XD

After Mediaset's decision not to renew the rights for the series, Jetix Europe obtained the rights for broadcasting theeleventh season in Italy, wich began on March 30, 2009.Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time & Darkness, the onlyMystery Dungeon special to ever be dubbed in Italian, had previously aired in July 2008.

Jetix changed its name to Disney XD in September, and became the main network to premiere the episodes in Italy, but sometimes alternating with K2 (for example, the last episodes of thefourteenth season). From 2012 onward, K2 always premiered the episodes (it also happened for the XY sneak peek of October 19th, two days after the Japanese airing), with Disney XD airing them after some months.

Disney XD continued to air the animated series up until thetwentieth season.

Toon Disney

The fourteenth season was also broadcast on Toon Disney in 2011 until the channel's closure shortly afterward.

K2

K2 (Kappadue) is a free-to-air network formerly owned by Jetix Europe before being transitioned over to Switchover Media, and later Discovery Italia/Warner Bros. Discovery Italia. As with Jetix, the eleventh season started airing on K2 in 2009.

Since 2009^[1], a re-dub of the first three seasons had been in the works and finally premiered on K2 in 2014 following the expiration of Mediaset's license. The new dub was to be more faithful to the English one and to the official Italian names for moves and cities used in the games. The original English Pokémon themes and texts (only for the "To be continued" and the title of the first about 20 episodes of Indigo League) were dubbed and translated in Italian as well.Since June 30 to August 4, 2014 the first season was broadcast; the second has been skipped for unspecified reasons and the third one has been aired since August 5 to September 7, 2014. The second season eventually aired on K2 in 2016 using the original Mediaset dub, which is to this day the version employed on official releases for the first 49 episodes ofPokémon: Adventures in the Orange Islands (the remaining 11 episodes of the Orange League arc had been redubbed as part of thethird season).

The first two episodes ofPokémon the Series: XY premiered on K2 on October 19, 2013 as a sneak peek and premiered fully on April 23, 2014.

Pokémon the Series: XY - Kalos Quest premiered on K2 on April 25, 2015;Pokémon the Series: XYZ premiered on May 7, 2016 on the same channel, although the first two episodes premiered on the official Pokémon site on May 3.

Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon premiered on K2 on November 19, 2016 as a sneak peek, with the season airing starting on April 29, 2017.Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon—Ultra Adventures aired on K2 on May 5, 2018, followed byPokémon the Series: Sun & Moon – Ultra Legends on May 4, 2019.

The broadcast of the twenty-third season,Pokémon Journeys: The Series, started on August 29, 2020. BothPokémon Master Journeys: The Series andPokémon Ultimate Journeys: The Series began broadcasting with the first two episodes airing on K2, starting on September 11, 2021 and September 10, 2022, respectively. Ultimate Journeys was eventually revealed to be the final season to air on the channel, as in December 2023 it was announced thatPokémon Horizons: The Series would debut on Boing in 2024^[2] in place of the originally-announced K2^[3].

Cartoon Network

The twentieth season was also broadcast onCartoon Network from March 2024.

Digital distribution

Many episodes of the animated series are available onNetflix,Prime Video,Mediaset Infinity, the official Boing App, and have also been previously available onPokémon TV, theNintendo Anime Channel for Nintendo 3DS,Dplay anddiscovery+. As forother animation,Pokémon Generations,Pokémon Evolutions,POKÉTOON,Pokémon: Path to the Peak,Pokémon: Paldean Winds (dubbed in Italian),Pokémon: Twilight Wings andPokémon: Hisuian Snow (only in English with subtitles) are available on theofficial Italian Pokémon channel. Additionally,Pokémon: The Arceus Chronicles andPokémon Concierge are included in Netflix's library, whilePokémon Origins and theMega Evolution Specials are not currently available on any platform.

Pokémon movies

All of thePokémon movies have been released in Italy so far. On February 28, March 6 and 13 2004, the first three movies were supposed to be broadcast, for the first time on TV, on Italy 1 in prime time. However, due to the low audience, only the first two movies aired. One year later, finally, thethird one was broadcast, this time on Sunday afternoon. After almost four-and-a-half years without any movie release (except for the events' cinema projections of the eight and tenth movies), the movies started to air again in 2009:the eight andthe ninth were aired on Hiro (respectively in January and November 2009),Destiny Deoxys was aired for the first time on Boing in July 2010, andThe Rise of Darkrai premiered in July 2011 via online broadcast on the official site; later movies (fromthe eleventh onward) regularly aired on Disney XD and K2 every year, following the seasons' path.

Only the last two movies ofPokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire haven't been released in DVD yet, while during 2011, the four films ofPokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl were released from Universal Pictures; Miramax released the first twoAdvanced Generation movies in 2012, along with Universal's release ofthe fourteenth (Universal Pictures released the new movies every year). Thesixth movie aired for the first time on March 16, 2012 on Sky Cinema Family (also in 720p-HD version), becoming the "Italian" movie with the longest gap from the Japanese and American releases (almost eight years from the American release, eight-and-a-half years from the Japanese).

On February 21, 2015,the seventeenth movie (the last one to also get a DVD release) premiered in the Italian cinemas with its special Pikachu episode, being the first Pokémon movie to be shown in cinema since almost fourteen years.Hoopa and the Clash of Ages was first released in January 2016 oniTunes, then premiered in TV (K2) on May 2.Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel aired for the first time on K2 on November 19, 2016;I Choose You! premiered in cinemas on November 6, 2017, whileThe Power of Us was released on December 11, 2018 oniTunes andGoogle Play.Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution andSecrets of the Jungle were distributed byNetflix, debuting on the platform respectively on February 27, 2020 and October 8, 2021.

Music

For more information, seeCategory:Italian songs.

Traditionally, Mediaset, since its origins, has always created openings for cartoons and anime, some independent from the Japanese and North American opening themes. For Pokémon, nine themes have been made (for the first ten seasons and for Pokémon Chronicles). These Italian openings were not necessarily used for the same number of episodes as their counterparts in the English dub, withPokémon: Beyond the Skies of the Adventure for example being directly introduced in thefirst episode of what in Italy became itseponymous season.Pokémon: Advanced andPokémon: Advanced Challenge later shared the same theme song, albeit with updated footage, as didPokémon: Advanced Battle andPokémon: Battle Frontier. This makes Italy the only dub outside of Asia apart from the English dub to have created original music for the Pokémon animated series.

A CD compilation of several of the Italian opening themes,The Master Saga, was released in 2006. Although the Italian dub had its own music, an Italian-language translation of thePokémon 2.B.A. Master soundtrack was also released, entitledPokémon: Le Canzoni Autentiche Della Serie TV, including thefirst Italian opening as a bonus track.

The English theme songs have been regularly translated and adapted for the Italian dub of the animated series starting withWe Will Be Heroes. Before that, only the first three English opening themes had been adapted in Italian, and exclusively in their movie version. Official Italian versions of the remaining English openings from the first ten seasons were also retroactively produced between 2014 and 2016, with many being shown for the first time onPokémon TV (some episodes were however uploaded with the English openings and/or endings kept, without having been fixed since) around that time, effectively replacing the previous Italian-exclusive openings.

Dubbing

When the animated series was licensed by Mediaset (from thefirst to thetenth season) the Italian dub was produced byMerak Film, which also got to be the studio where the Italian dub ofPokémon Channel was recorded.

Studio Asci took over from theeleventh to thefifteenth season, and was also responsible for the re-dubbing of the first three seasons. Starting from thesixteenth season dubbing passed toSDI Media (now part ofIyuno), which had already cooperated with Studio Asci initially through SDI Media-ownedSun Studio as early as thetenth movie.

Despite these changes, the role of voice director has almost always been covered byFederico Danti, who also provided thenarrator's voice up to the end ofPokémon the Series.

Cast and crew

The main role ofAsh Ketchum was dubbed byDavide Garbolino. Other minor roles Garbolino had on Pokémon includeJared.Misty, the second main character in the series, has been dubbed byAlessandra Karpoff, who also dubbedLilian Meridian andRhonda.

Brock's role was taken byNicola Bartolini Carrassi (also known asNicola Ryan Carrassi), the man who brought Pokémon to Italy. He is also a journalist, scriptwriter, anime expert, and anchor. Nicola left the cast after the character'stemporary departure, and starting with theJohto saga, the role was taken byLuca Bottale.

TheTeam Rocket trio ofJessie,James, andMeowth has been voiced byEmanuela Pacotto,Simone D'Andrea, andGiuseppe Calvetti (also known asBeppe Calvetti), respectively. Starting withAG041, however, the role of Meowth was passed toPietro Ubaldi.

May (Vera) was dubbed bySerena Clerici, who also voicedJanina andVerity. May's brotherMax was dubbed byFederica Valenti, who also voicedCasey andMelody.

Dawn (Lucinda) was dubbed byTosawi Piovani inseasons 10 and11, and their respective movies; she was also the voice ofCasey andMarina. After her retirement, the role passed toLudovica De Caro, who also previously voicedSolana, and later voicedCarlita,Virizion,Viola,Valerie,Risa,Sonia, andMollie.

Iris was voiced byFrancesca Bielli, who had already voicedMaylene andLyra, whileCilan (Spighetto) was voiced byDavide Albano.

Clemont (Lem) andBonnie (Clem) were voiced bySimone Lupinacci andValentina Pallavicino, respectively.Serena was voiced byDeborah Morese.

Lillie (Lylia),Mallow (Ibis), andLana (Suiren) were respectively dubbed byGiulia Maniglio,Sabrina Bonfitto andStefania Rusconi.Kiawe (Kawe) was dubbed byAlessandro Capra, who had already provided the voice forN, whileSophocles (Chrys) was dubbed byPatrizia Mottola, who had also been the voice ofRitchie andSawyer.

Goh was voiced byRichard Benitez, whileChloe (Cloe) was voiced byValentina Framarin.

Following the cast renewal inPokémon Horizons: The Series, the roles of the new protagonistsLiko andRoy were respectively assigned toGiada Bonanomi, who had previously voicedHapu, andElisa Giorgio, the voice ofCynthia inPokémon Journeys: The Series.

Other notable voice actors in the Italian dub includeRiccardo Rovatti asProfessor Oak,Patrizio Prata asTracey Sketchit,Flavio Arras as thePokédex,Renata Bertolas andJolanda Granato (plus many others) asOfficer Jenny,Laura Brambilla andTiziana Martello (plus many others) asNurse Joy,Massimo Di Benedetto asGary Oak (although he was initially voiced byNicola Bartolini Carrassi inEP001, andPaolo Sesana voiced him up to his first appearance in Sinnoh),Paul (only for a season, then replaced byMaurizio Merluzzo),Drew andTrip andStefano Pozzi asBarry,Luke,Cameron andRotom Pokédex.

In the re-dub of the first three seasons,Benedetta Ponticelli, who also voicedBianca, provided the voice of Misty (although the role returned to her original voice actress inPokémon the Series: Sun and Moon); both Brock, Gary Oak and Meowth have been voiced by their current dubbers. Almost every secondary character received a new voice.

Pokémon manga

Italy is one of only a handful of countries outside of Japan to publish a translation of thePokémon: Yeah! I Got Pokémon! manga series. It was released by Play Press Publishing under the titlePokémon.

There is also an Italian version ofPokémon Adventures (Pokémon: Le Grandi Storie a Fumetti). The first tenmonthly issues were translated by Planet Manga, a subsidiary of Panini Comics. Planet Manga also translated an Italian version ofMagical Pokémon Journey (Il magico viaggio dei Pokémon), though only the first twomonthly issues were translated.

In autumn 2013, Italian manga publisher J-POP e GP Manga announced at theLucca Comics and Games comic book convention that they would be publishing theBlack & White arc of the Pokémon Adventures manga in Italian with the titlePokémon Nero e Bianco. This release is based on VIZ Media'smini volumes of the magazine version. The first Italian volume is due to be released on August 27, 2014. In 2016, they also began releasing a new edition of Adventures calledPokémon - La Grande Avventura. theRed, Green & Blue arc and theYellow arc were released in November 2016, theGold, Silver & Crystal arc was released in November 2017, theRuby & Sapphire arc was released in November 2018, and theFireRed & LeafGreen arc and theEmerald arc were released in March 2019.

Pokémon merchandise

The Pokémon merchandising in Italy immediately reached one of its highest points right after the animated series started, in January, 2000. Five stickers album were released during the corresponding seasons (from the first to Master Quest). In early 2000s,Pokémon Trading Cards series 1 andseries 2 were available, published by Topps. During theoriginal series years of theanimated series, several types of merchandising products were released in every way: lots of very popular school equipments, bottle caps featuring the Johto Pokémon (Yoga fruit juices), various types of lollipops and candies, animated series VHSs, and many others.With the start of the Advanced Generation, Pokémon's popularity in Italy quickly fell; however, a last sticker album featuring the Hoenn Pokédex's Pokémon was released,Pokémon Advanced Action Cards were available in 2005, and various type of new action figures were released (more than in other generations), but didn't have a great success.Diamond and Pearl seemed to have the same destiny, but fromBattle Dimension on, with new TV airing times, its popularity raised again: new DP toys were released from Giochi Preziosi S.p.A., the DVDs of the first two seasons were re-released, and minor merchandising such as Easter Eggs were available. From February 2011, with the ending ofSinnoh League Victors, the first ItalianPokémon Official Magazine was released; Pokémon gadgets (action figures and TCG cards) also came back to McDonald's after many years. Pokémon's new popularity is represented by the fact that 7 Pokémon Movies (6-7-10-11-12-13-14) were released in DVD for the first time during the span of only 2 years, 2011 and 2012, after 6 years (2005-2010) without any type of home-video release. Also Movie 4 and 5 have been re-released in 2011.

Community

Notable Italian Pokémon fansites includePokémon Millennium,Pokémon Times,PokéNext, andPokémon Central along with its wiki,Pokémon Central Wiki, to which theJohto World site is also affiliated.

Events

Pokémon Day has been celebrated in Italy every year since 2005 until 2014.Pokémon Camp, a tour organized by Nintendo, was held in 2011.

Trivia

• All the Italian Pokémon-related voices inSuper Smash Bros. Brawl andSuper Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U were recorded inGermany, whilePokémon Battle Revolution's Italian announcer lines were done inthe United Kingdom.
• The PokémonMeowth's name was mistakenly translated as simply "Meo" in the first elevenseasons of the animated series, andPersian's name was sometimes translated in Italian by error asPersiano. A similar error was made in the 2009 redub ofEP006, in which a group ofParas are calledparassiti.
• In the 2009 redub ofEP016, Squirtle was accidentally dubbed with the sentenceSquirtle pronto! which literally meansSquirtle ready!.

References

External links

• The official Italian Pokémon website (full website)

Related articles

• List of Italian Pokémon names
• List of Italian Pokémon themes

This article is part ofProject Globe, aBulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on the Pokémon franchise around the world.

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