New Pokemon Generations Episode Shows Elite Four Battle

The third installment in the new Pokemon Generations animated series premiered today.

It's titled The Challenger and takes place in the Kanto region from early Pokemon games. We see a man, the challenger, square off in a Poke-battle against the Kanto region's Elite Four. The challenger was pretty confident from the start, stating, "Just you wait, Elite Four. The greatest Pokemon trainer in the world? That is me."

The first two episodes debuted last week--you can watch them here. Episode 1, racked up more than 5 million views on YouTube since last week, while Episode 2 had 2.8 million views there over the same period of time.

There will be 18 episodes in all, with one episode to debut each week through December 23. The episodes aim to shed new light on some of the franchise's most popular characters, locations, and stories. You can see some concept art from Pokemon Generations in the gallery below.

Gallery

2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the Pokemon series. It's already been a big year for the brand, as The Pokemon Company kicked things off with a Super Bowl 50 commercial in February. Pokemon Go was released in July and took over the world, reaching 500 million downloads and becoming the most profitable mobile game.

The next entries in the mainline series, Pokemon Sun and Moon, come out in November for Nintendo 3DS. Just this week, The Pokemon Company announced more creatures for the game and also confirmed that the Pokemon Bank feature won't be available until January 2017.