Eight Seasons Of The Pokemon Anime Are Now Free To Watch Through Hoopla

04.05.2024 - 20:57 / thegamer.com

Pokemon is a multimedia juggernaut and its the various forms it comes in that have made it so massively popular for more than two and a half decades. However, you would think, considering how important an arm of the Pokemon machine it is, that the anime would be easier to watch from start to finish. With its 25 seasons shared between multiple streaming platforms, watching 'em all not only requires thorough research, but it can get pretty expensive too. Hoopla has entered the anime fray to help Pokemon fans on both those counts as the free service is now carrying eight seasons of the show.

Hoopla announced this week that starting right now, seasons six through 13 of the Pokemon anime are now free to watch through its platform. All you need to access what it has dubbed its Pokemon BingePass - one of many BingePasses available through the service alongside thousands of other shows, movies, magazines, and books - is a library card. Despite being eight seasons long, its Pokemon BingePass only counts as one borrow, and you can keep the collection for up to seven days.

For those who haven't been to a library in a while, they work a little differently nowadays. That means no, you won't have to traipse down to your local library and cart home eight boxsets only to make the same return trip a week later to give them back. The BingePass can be accessed online or even through the Hoopla mobile app. As for the period the BingePass covers, seasons six to nine are the Ruby & Sapphire era of the anime, and the four seasons after that, right up until season 13, are the Diamond & Pearl era.

No, it's still not the perfect solution to the Pokemon anime problem. That would be The Pokemon Company providing a platform where all 25 seasons of the show are available, not to mention the movies that accompany it. It's a significant improvement on the situation those of us who want to watch the anime have faced since the Pokemon TV app shut down earlier this year, though. Let's be honest, Hoopla would be a better place to watch these eight seasons of the show even if Pokemon TV were still around. The lack of upkeep during its final few years made it an incredibly frustrating service to navigate.

The one thing eight seasons of the Pokemon anime's arrival does suggest is there probably isn't a plan for Pokemon to gather up all its anime seasons and put them in one place. Some fans, myself included, were hopeful that was the plan after Pokemon TV disappeared and it became clear just how difficult it was to watch the show. On the bright side, if you have a library card from nearly 10,000 public libraries spread across the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, there are now eight seasons of the Pokemon anime waiting to be