Pokémon Masters EX

ポケモンマスターズ EX (Pokemon Masters EX)

6.0(246)

MAL Score

Popularity #16900

Action
Fantasy

Duration: 1 min
Aired: Dec 5, 2019 to ?
Status: Currently Airing

Synopsis

In the vibrant world of Pokémon Masters EX, trainers from various regions come together to form unique teams and engage in thrilling battles. Players step into the shoes of a new trainer on Pasio, a land where they can partner with iconic Pokémon and legendary trainers from the franchise's rich history. Each encounter tests strategy and skill, as trainers combine their strengths to overcome formidable opponents.

The game features a blend of exhilarating battles and captivating storytelling, inviting players to explore the bonds between trainers and their Pokémon. As they progress, trainers can unlock new characters, develop their skills, and immerse themselves in the dynamic universe of Pokémon, celebrating the spirit of teamwork and friendship that defines the series.

Otaku Consensus

Pokémon Masters EX lands as a niche promotional anime rather than a full dramatic pillar of the franchise, reflected in its modest MAL score of 6.03 and AniList score of 52. Its clearest strengths are the tightly centralized direction, planning, and storyboarding by Toshitaka Shinoda and a production pipeline built around polished game-adjacent motion, while the recurring criticism is that it feels more like franchise advertising than a self-sufficient anime work.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Pokémon Masters EX if you want the Pokémon franchise in concentrated crossover form without committing to a long TV journey or a region-by-region adventure structure. Its appeal is less “follow a new saga” and more “see the franchise treated as a curated battle showcase,” with Ijigen Tokyo and OLM Digital shaping it as a sleek companion piece to the mobile game. It scratches a different itch from the main Pokémon anime: closer to a promotional event reel than a traditional season, and more useful for viewers interested in how modern Pokémon branding translates game systems, trainers, and battle spectacle into animation. If you enjoy franchise projects that prioritize recognizability, quick impact, and celebratory fan-service over deep serial storytelling, this is the version worth sampling.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The production is credited to Ijigen Tokyo and OLM Digital, giving the project a distinctly digital-commercial profile rather than the feel of a conventional long-form TV anime season.
2
Toshitaka Shinoda holds three key creative credits at once: director, storyboard artist, and planner. That concentration of responsibility gives the anime a unified promotional rhythm, even if it limits the sense of broader authorial experimentation.
3
Rio is credited for both character design and animation direction, a pairing that suggests close control over how the game-linked character appeal is translated into animated form.
4
Shuuji Hirai’s motion design credit stands out because movement design is unusually central to a project tied to a battle-focused mobile game, where impact, readability, and recognizability matter more than extended dramatic staging.
5
AniList tags the work as Advertisement at 60%, an unusually explicit signal that the anime is best understood as a branded companion to Pokémon Masters EX rather than as a standalone narrative adaptation.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The anime began airing on December 5, 2019 and is still listed as currently airing, making it a long-running promotional presence rather than a closed seasonal release.
Fun fact 2: Despite belonging to the Pokémon brand, its database footprint is tiny: MAL lists only 246 votes and a popularity rank of #16900, while AniList records just 2 favourites.
Fun fact 3: Toshitaka Shinoda’s combined director, storyboard, and planning credits make him the central named creative figure in the available production data.
Fun fact 4: The animation-side credits are split across Rio and Hyoue Ishida as animation directors, with Rio also handling character design and Shuuji Hirai credited for motion design.
Fun fact 5: Takuya Sakamoto is credited as animation producer, Takumi Yamato under production, and Yutaka Satou as unit director, pointing to a compact but clearly segmented production structure.