As the name suggests, Pokémon is about the huge selection of cute, fierce, and loyal pocket monsters we've come to love over the past 30+ years. There are over a thousand species and counting, and together they've driven the success of one of the biggest franchises on the planet in anime, trading cards, video games, and much more.
But what about humans? While humans aren't the series' titular character, they play a huge role. From Ash and Brock to Lillie and Lana, humans are still central characters in the world of Pokémon, so we ranked all major humans featured in the original anime series for it's entire run.
Updated on August 27, 2026, by Niall Walsh: We're revisiting this guide to double-check our rankings. As Pokémon continues to grow in popularity year-on-year, more and more people are discovering the original anime, and views on characters can change over time.
Ash's journey to Alola came packed with the largest core cast of characters in any given era of the anime. Some fans praise this generation for bringing such a diverse group together and giving them all a measure of development.
Sophocles is the gang's weak link, and ultimately the weakest link on this list. The Sun & Moon seasons were clearly pitched as an ensemble approach, but Sophocles never changes. He's tedious at best and downright frustrating otherwise. The writers may have intended to remind us, through Sophocles, that not everyone is an Ash-tier hero. Some fear the unknown. That's totally fair, but it could have been conveyed through someone far less irritating.
For the entirety of the Pokémon anime's first eras- Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh- Ash and Pikachu's male counterpart was Brock. His departure after all that time left an even bigger hole than Misty's did, and it was inevitable that any new male traveling companion would be compared to Brock. It was a tough hill to climb, and Cilan completely flunked it.
Cilan's entire shtick is food. He's a great chef, you see, and hey, that's good. It comes in handy when the team is starving, to be sure. But that doesn't give Cilan a license to never shut up about it. Food puns are this kid's currency of choice, and he trades them relentlessly to the chagrin of pretty much every viewer who ever got through Best Wishes (the Black & White era) despite this dude's every effort to thwart their goal.
Pokémon is a show primarily written for children, and most of its main characters are children. (We'll ignore the fact that Ash has totally been adventuring for over two decades, that 1,200 and more episodes have occurred while he's "ten" somehow, and that some of those episodes even account for several days on their own... OK, perhaps we aren't ignoring it after all.)
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/pokemon-human-characters-ranked/
