Pokémon’s rarest character aren’t legendaries - it’s a father
Another Father’s Day has arrived, and while many Pokémon fans are celebrating with their dads or as dads, most characters don’t have that luxury.
Ash Ketchum spent 25 years dealing with deities, travelling the world, and eventually becoming the very best Pokémon trainer in the world. At a young age, he traversed regions and dealt with planet-ending threats - yet despite all that, we still didn’t have any time to meet his father.
You’re likely aware already, but the Pokémon franchise is 30 years old this year, making it a special occasion for the entirety of 2026. However, despite generations of games, over 100 Pokémon sets, and the whole of Ash’s Pokémon-catching life, there’s still a sore lack of dads in the franchise.
By now, everyone is familiar with the usual start of a Pokémon game. You wake up on a big day, as your self-insert protagonist bids farewell to their mother, ready to embrace becoming a trainer. Besides a few notable exceptions, such as Norman from Hoenn, fathers are rarer than Legendary Pokémon. At this point, you’re more likely to meet a literal god than a dad who made it into the game.
While kids continue to discover Pokémon for the first time, many of us who grew up alongside Ash are now parents ourselves. I couldn’t imagine sending my son or daughter off to travel the country at ten years old with a backpack and a Pikachu, let alone not turning up to wave goodbye.
It does feel somewhat traditional and normalised now in the series. Mothers are the home, the anchor that ties your character to going back to the beginning, a changed person with a PC full of Zubats and Diglets you no longer need. It almost feels warming, but I can’t see why a father figure couldn’t be present, as it would still capture that same effect.
Sure, it’s a brief few minutes of a region-trekking journey, but on Father’s Day, that hole is more apparent than ever. Is every trainer’s dad just an absent figure in their life? Maybe, but at least you’ve got Squirtle to keep you company, so is it really a problem?
Maybe there’s a secret Pokémon region populated entirely by missing fathers. Perhaps they’re all on their own journeys, catching Pidgey and forgetting to call home. Until Game Freak gives us an answer, we’ll never know.
Either way, Happy Father’s Day to all the Pokémon dads out there. You’re already more present than most of the franchise’s fathers. If you want to treat me to a gift, subscribe to our newsletter above - it’s free, too.
