ROLES

Games

First Generation: Red, Green, Blue, Yellow
In the earliest games, the player can meet Bill as soon as he reaches Cerulean City, but if the player wants to continue to Vermilion City, he must talk to Bill or cheat. Past the rival and Nugget Bridge challenge, in the northeastern-most corner of Kanto, Bill lives alone in the Sea Cottage. When the player first meets him, it's revealed that he accidentally turned himself into a Pokémon thanks to an experiment gone wrong. If the player chooses yes to his plea for you to help him, the player will simply have to access his computer to turn him back. If the player chooses no... he just begs until you give in anyway. A few quick seconds (and a rather hilarious reaction from Pikachu if you happen to be playing Yellow) later, Bill's back to his normal self, and to reward you for your help, he gives you a ticket to the S.S. Anne and sends you on your way. (By then, the police officer blocking your path to Vermilion should have moved now that you have the ticket.)

Second Generation: Gold, Silver, Crystal
In Gen II, Bill's involvement in the games was drastically cut down, probably because the games were meant to be a virtual sequel to the first generation games. As a result, his PC is already labeled, and his appearance is more of a cameo than a full-on role. The first time you encounter him directly is in Ecruteak City, where he's making final adjustments to the Time Capsule. As soon as the player walks through the door, he appears, and you're forced to speak to him to learn how the capsule works. After this, you're given the ability to trade with Gen I games, and Bill goes back to Goldenrod City, where he'll stay with his family for an extended visit from then onward. Additionally, the first time you talk to him in Goldenrod, he'll give you a level 20 Eevee, and getting his phone number from his little sister in the same house will allow him to call you to warn you that your PC box is getting full. (Keep in mind that this was during the time when the game simply wouldn't let you catch more Pokémon when every slot in a box was taken, so this was actually a pretty useful feature.) Other than that, Bill is actually not as important a character in that he's not given a vital plot point that would force the player to meet him. In other words, it's completely possible to go through the entire game without meeting him at all.

Third Generation: Fire Red and Leaf Green
As remakes of Gen I, FrLg saw a reprise of Bill's first appearance with a few minor changes. (He's a Clefairy now, and his dialogue has minor differences, depending on the gender of the player character.) However, it also expands upon his role much later in the game. Right after the player defeats Blaine at Cinnabar Gym, Bill appears, standing outside the door. Once he spots your character, he rushes up to you and invites you to come with him to the Sevii Islands. Saying no will put him in the Pokémon Center until you decide to pick up this side quest (which is, incidentally, completely optional unless you want to trade with RSE). Saying yes will have the two of you whisked away to an archipelago introduced in these games. There, Bill will bring you to meet Celio, a good friend of his who needs his technological expertise. Because Celio's facing some troubles, Bill decides to send you off to go deliver a meteorite to another friend for him. He'll stick around the Pokémon Center of One Island for that time until you finally hand the meteorite over, and after that, you accompany him back to Kanto, where he'll part with you to return to the Sea Cottage.

Fourth Generation: Heart Gold and Soul Silver
Unlike FrLg, HGSS doesn't actually expand Bill's role at all. Because the Time Capsule doesn't exist in this remake, his reason for being in Ecruteak actually isn't given. Instead, he simply talks to the player a bit about the storage system and how more people across the globe (in particular Lanette, who he mentions by name) are getting involved with developing it, and his dialogue in Goldenrod besides the parts related to the Eevee is limited to talking about his experiments in teleportation. Meanwhile, calling him will not only tell you how many spaces you have left in every box, but he will also rate the name of the box you're using at the moment. Other than that, all of his lines are exactly the same, and he still gives away a level 20 Eevee.

Fifth Generation: Black, White, Black 2, and White 2
The Gen V games are the only generation line where Bill is absolutely not present. Instead, the system administrator of Unova is Amanita, a young girl located in Striaton City. This is likely because Unova is removed from the other regions, so Amanita's relationship with Bill is probably limited, unlike the relationships he maintains with the administrators of regions closer physically to or linked to Kanto and Johto.

Anime

For whatever reason, the anime branched off the games by quite a bit. Bill only appeared in one episode (13, "Mystery at the Lighthouse"), and although the Pokémon Transfer System had a formal introduction in this same episode (with its actual introduction being in the second episode), he's actually not the inventor of the system. Credit for this goes to Professor Akihabara, who wouldn't be introduced for another fifteen episodes.

Instead, Bill is both a lighthouse keeper and a Pokémon researcher with a specific focus on Pokémon behavior. When Ash first met him, he was trying to study Kabuto's lifestyle using special costumes intended to help him understand what it was like to actually be a Kabuto. Unfortunately, a small miscalculation occurred somewhere along the line, leading him to become trapped in the costume until Ash came along to release him. Afterwards, out of respect for Professor Oak (who had asked him to teach Ash and his friends about Pokémon), Bill gave them a quick lesson about the basics before leading them up the lighthouse's tower to reveal his second project: identifying a mysterious call that came to him from across the sea. He comes very close to coming in contact with the source, but before he could, Team Rocket (who had been planning for the entire episode to break into the lighthouse and rob him blind) managed to scare the giant Pokémon (Dragonite, apparently) away. Nonetheless, Bill ends the episode vowing to remain at his lighthouse until the Pokémon returned, which unfortunately meant that he would thereafter be a character of the day basically.

Special

Because Bill is actually a recurring side character instead of just a one-shot character or one with a more minor role, it's hard to summarize every single one of his appearances. So, this section will actually be pretty brief in an attempt to cover everything without drowning out the other incarnations.

The series starts off mirroring the games in a lot of ways, and as such, it has the obligatory "Bill is turned into a Pokémon" episode, chapter nine. ("Vs. Fearow"/"...But Fearow Itself!") The chapter starts off with a problem with the Pokémon Transporter and an as-of-then unnamed youth rushing into one of the chambers to fix it. Unfortunately, he neglects to realize that the tail of his shirt has gotten caught on a latch, and as he crawls deeper into the chamber, the door slams shut behind him. Right afterwards, the machine roars to life with him in one chamber and a Rattata in the one next to it.

A page later, we're treated to panels of the protagonist, Red, complaining that although he's been catching a lot of Pokémon, it's getting to be a hassle to carry them all. Right then, he stumbles across a strange-looking Rattata dragging a log by a rope. Thinking it's a new species, he sneaks up on it, intending on capturing it, but before he can, the Rattata starts talking to itself. Red naturally freaks out, which prompts the Rattata to explain that it's actually Bill, a Pokémon expert. Unfortunately for him, he stays in place just long enough for a Fearow to swoop in and grab him. He pleads for Red to help him, and one chase (along with several bits of "constructive criticism," an electrocution, and a capture) later, Red helps Bill change back to his normal, human self. In return, Bill takes one of Red's Poké Balls and offers to let the trainer use his system to lighten his load and transfer Pokémon when he needs them. Unfortunately, the Pokémon he grabbed just happened to be the Fearow that tried to eat him.

Since then, because of his friendship with Red, Bill has gotten into a number of misadventures. He's helped Red locate a Rocket-modified Eevee, cheered him on in the League finals, fought members of the Elite Four (which was preceded by being "talked into" getting involved by Blue, a female thief and con artist), and has generally been involved in most arcs where Red also appears, right up to the Sevii Islands arc, where he helps investigate Deoxys activity in the archipelago. Although he's usually seen as more of the butt monkey (read: comic relief), he's also frequently a valuable source of information for the characters, both with his understanding of Pokémon and his technological brilliance. For example, in the latest arc, he equipped Red with the VS Seeker, revealed that Deoxys might be controlled by Team Rocket, and used his connections with Lanette and Brigette to uncover the secrets of Deoxys's shapeshifting abilities. Additionally, he also has the ability to recognize on sight Pokémon attacks (by looking at their stances), which has proven useful to Red on their first encounter. (In other chapters, this kind of ability supplies readers with background information. Example: His commentary during the League's tournament.)

Most of his off-screen time, however, is spent either working for the Pokémon Council (a committee that organizes the Pokémon League) or conducting research at his home in the Sea Cottage (later assisted by Daisy Oak, Professor Oak's granddaughter).

His final appearance to date is a cameo at the end of the Emerald arc, after Scott wishes for more visitors to the Battle Frontier. He and Celio are on a ferry heading for the island. Given the fact that the manga is now well into the BW story, it's unlikely that he'll make another appearance.

Toshihiro Ono Series

Toshihiro Ono's Electric Tale of Pikachu stems mostly from the anime. Rather than follow the adventures of the hero protagonist of the games, it actually follows the adventures of Ash Ketchum. Yet, in this version, Ash doesn't meet Bill in his lighthouse, and Bill certainly isn't a one-off character. Instead, Bill's first appearance (in the third chapter of the series, "Clefairy Tale") on Mt. Moon, where Ash, who had been searching for Clefairy, runs into Professor Oak after being rescued from a cave-in by the very Clefairy he had been chasing. Shortly after meeting the Pokémon expert, a young man arrives on the scene, equipped with the DVD recorder and noodles the professor had asked for. It turns out this newcomer is Bill, who had discovered the colony of Clefairy hidden on Mt. Moon. After (a brief introduction courtesy of Oak and) being guided up the mountain by his Clefairy friends, Bill explains to Ash that they're there to witness a Clefairy evolution, something no human has previously witnessed. That night, Bill shares a bit about his past to Ash, just before the Clefairy come along to give each of the humans Moon Stones to use on three of the bravest Clefairy. All three Clefairy manage to evolve, striking a chord in the three human attendees, including and especially Ash. The next day, Bill and Oak give the young trainer a prototype of the newest Pokédex upgrade and bid their farewells, after which Oak ends the chapter by asking Bill if he remembers the same kind of feeling Ash must have experienced at the end of the Clefairy ceremony. In other words, most of Bill's appearance here is more or less a metaphor for a person's own personal evolution -- going from childhood to adulthood, basically.

His second appearance is a little less serious. Although it's the penultimate chapter, "Ash vs. Gary" actually takes place just before Ash hits the Orange Islands (where the rest of the fourth and final volume of Electric Tale takes place), when Ash attends to the Pokémon Cutting-Edge Research Technology Center's annual open house. There, he expects to check out the latest discoveries and inventions made by the company that year, but because it's where Bill normally works, who else should pop up but the researcher himself? At first, Ash mentions he's impressed by the new Poké Ball prototypes, which Bill labels "antiques" before he guides Ash to his own find, a giant Slowpoke that he had fished (no pun intended) out of one of the storage system's unused databanks. He attempts to tell Ash about the Slowpoke (because he's evidently a fan of it), but before he can, the trainer runs off to have a battle against Gary, who happens to be there with his grandfather, Professor Oak. Luckily, Bill's not particularly disappointed because right after, a suspicious trainer (read: James of Team Rocket in disguise) expresses his interest in Slowpoke, causing Bill to rush up to have a maniac-to-maniac talk. Unfortunately, Bill and Oak are knocked out shortly after, and the Slowpoke is stolen. Once Ash and Gary discover them (and eventually realize that they aren't, in fact, dead as the two trainers assume they are at first), they rush off to stop the Slowpoke thieves, leaving Bill behind with Professor Oak. Neither Bill nor Oak appear for the rest of the chapter until Meowth attempts to attack the trainers with a mecha-Venusaur, which prompts both researchers to pull a deus ex machina and pop up from literally nowhere to haul Meowth away to "study him" (which apparently entails analyzing him with one of Bill's latest devices... which is equipped with drills). Bill appears with Oak and the others one more time after Slowbro evolves to admire the majesty of the Water-type Pokémon.

How I Became a Pokémon Card

One of the more obscure manga, this was a Japanese-only series based on, of all things, the TCG. Basically, it took TCG art and formed miniature stories around them, usually leading up to a snapshot of that Pokémon in the pose that it's making on its respective card. The first chapter is about the Dratini card and features a curious Dratini who wanted to know more about humans. (Apparently, this was before humans and Pokémon actually lived together... which is kind of mind-boggling considering other canon, but it's best just to go along with it.) Unfortunately for it, the Dratini is captured during a nap, but just as the humans around it (who mistook it for a snake) are trying to decide what to do, a young boy (Masaki as a child, though he's never named throughout the chapter) rushes up to the cage and insists that it has a right to live. He frees it, causing other people to ask the local professor (Professor Oak/Ookido-hakase, though he's also unnamed here) for advice on what to do. Luckily, the professor, who thinks it's interesting that the boy cares about the serpent, decides that it's best if he takes care of it until it's nursed back to health. For the next few pages, we're treated to a view of a day in the life of the boy, with an added Dratini in the mix. (Breakfast, school, bath, and a heartwarming panel of them asleep.)

The next day, the child explains to the Dratini that everyone has potential in their lives, which he shows by using a seed as an example. (He says that it's a miniature life, waiting to get started.) Just as he's watering a row of plants in the pots, they hear something outside. As it turns out, Dratini's Dragonite father assumed that humans kidnapped his child, and as a result, Dragonite began attacking the boy's town in search of Dratini. The townspeople, attempting to defend themselves, readied to attack right back, but before they could, Dratini and its caretaker got in the middle of the battlefield to call out for both sides to stop fighting. The boy, realizing that he can't keep Dratini, gives the serpent back to its father, but before he does, he tells Dratini he would never forget it and puts a seed on its tail as a gift. After their goodbyes, Dratini is seen in a field, nudging a plant that had apparently sprouted from the same seed the boy gave him.

Masaki (and by that, we mean the young boy) doesn't appear again throughout the volume or series except in the prologue in the back of the volume. There, he's shown grown up and in a labcoat, holding a pot with a small sprout in it.

Pokémon Zenshou

Another Japanese-only release, Zenshou follows the events of the first-gen games closer than any other incarnation in the franchise. So, for the most part, Masaki's appearance here is basically the same as the one he gets in the first-gen games themselves. It starts off with the main character of this series (Satoshi, not to be confused with the anime's Satoshi) encountering an error in the storage system while visiting the Cerulean City Pokémon Center. The attendant there notes that it's been a problem for awhile and sends Satoshi northward to find the administrator of the system, Sonezaki Masaki. (It should be noted that Zenshou was the first time Masaki's surname was mentioned in canon.)

When he gets there, Satoshi doesn't find a human. Instead, he finds a strange-looking Nidoran getting the mail, so as a trainer, he does the first thing that comes to mind: chuck a Poké Ball at its head. By a stroke of luck, he captures the Nidoran in the first try, but only afterwards does he realize that his new catch is Sonezaki Masaki, stuck in that form after an experiment gone wrong. Just like in the games, Satoshi helps him get back to normal, and the two sit down to have a small chat. Masaki reveals that he's collected all the forms of Eevee and that he was experimenting with the teleporter, and Satoshi, to the latter point, wonders what would have happened if Masaki had used a female Nidoran instead of a male one. (This resulted in a rather awkward panel of a hermaphroditic Nidoran. Seriously.) After walking towards the teleporter with Nidoran in his arms (only to be stopped by Satoshi), Masaki opts to drop the subject and offers Satoshi a ticket to the S.S. Anne for his help. After that, the chapter ends, and one can only wonder what he was planning on doing with that Nidoran.

Pocket Monsters

Pocket Monsters (yet another Japanese-only release) is actually the most popular manga incarnation of the franchise in Japan, but it's fairly obscure outside of that country. The best way to describe what it is would probably be what would happen if you took the Pokémon games and forced them to have a love child with MAD Magazine. In other words, Pocket Monsters is basically Pokémon with a lot of toilet humor, visual gags, and general absurdity all over the place.

That being said, Masaki's appearance here is also one of the more unusual ones, and it starts off with the theft of the Moon Stone by Mew. When the protagonist, Isamu Akai (alias Red) and his rival Kai Midorikawa (Green) go to investigate, they stumble across a row of strange-looking Pokémon -- Pokémon that, as it turns out, were actually dolls. However, they stumble across a real Pokémon, the result of an experiment in merging multiple species to create the strongest monster in existence. And who ran this experiment? Masaki, who happens to also be the Pokémon Red and Green encountered. Yes, that's right. Masaki is the villain in this incarnation.

Unfortunately, he's also a little off-center in terms of sanity, and as a result, he attacks Red and Green out of the blue. Luckily, Mew, who happens to have actually been Masaki's human partner at one point, interrupts to explain everything, including why she took the Moon Stone. Using the Moon Stone's power in conjunction with their equipment (and after a ridiculous battle between Red's Clefairy and Green's Charizard), Red is able to help both scientists return to normal... resulting in yet another sight gag when it turns out Masaki was actually a monster of a man as well.

Golden Boys

Golden Boys, a manga take on the Gen II games, is not only a Japanese release but also the manga notorious for never being completed. As in, before any of the loose ends were tied in the story, volumes stopped being produced. No one's really sure why, but in any case, Golden Boys is a bit tough to find. (There isn't, as far as Keeper's chief researcher knows, a fan translation of the whole thing, particularly the chapters in which Masaki enters the story properly.)

Masaki's introduced into the manga long before he actually meets any of the characters face-to-face. Specifically, when the main character, Gold, is in Violet City with Professor Oak, a mysterious cloud appears above the town. Oak mentions that the cloud could be the result of a time distortion caused by the experiments of the mechanical genius, Masaki (who, at the time, is working on the Time Capsule). Sure enough, what should appear from the cloud but a Pikachu who seems to already know the protagonist.

After that, Masaki doesn't appear for quite some time, and the first time he meets Gold is in Goldenrod City for the miniature Pokémon tournament. (Whitney, Gold's companion at the time, automatically recognizes him, as does Gold's Pikachu.) Team Rocket attacks the tournament, and naturally, Bill decides to help the protagonists by lending them his Espeon and Umbreon to use.

Other than that, I'm sorry to say I haven't really been able to obtain good scans of this incarnation, so if anyone has any information whatsoever, please feel free to drop Keeper line.

Back