Pokémon bids farewell to a legend next week. In Japan, the final episode of the two-and-a-half-decade-old Pokémon anime to star Ash Ketchum (or Satoshi, as he’s known over there) will broadcast, paving the way for a new series. But the voice behind the forever-young Pokémon trainer is sending him out in style.
While a few English-language voice actors have shared in Ash’s legacy in the dub of the Pokémon anime, Rica Matsumoto has voiced the character since the very beginning in Japan — and she also sang the show’s very first opening song there, “Mezase Pokémon Master,” or “Aim to Be a Pokémon Master.” As iconic as our own original theme was culturally, “Mezase Pokémon Master” has returned multiple times in the original anime — and a new version recorded by Matsumoto has become the theme song for the final episodes of the current epilogue series bidding farewell to Ash, itself titled Pokémon: Aim to Be a Pokémon Master.
And now, you can hear Matsumoto belt it out in the video above, for the popular Japanese music YouTube channel, the First Take — which invites stars to perform their iconic tracks live in a single take. She is, of course, accompanied by a small chorus of Pokémon plushes as she sings, including some notable ones special to Ash’s journey, like Greninja, Ho-oh, current team members (like Dragonite, Lucario, and Gengar), and, of course, Pikachu.
It’s just a very sweet way to mark a time as the Pokémon fandom prepares to bid farewell to its hero.
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