Trivia / Pokémon Masters

• All-Star Cast:
  • Unlike the anime (up until Journeys, anyway), the game's English dub boasts a very impressive cast of well-known voice actors, such as Erica Lindbeck, Laura Stahl, Faye Mata, Billy Kametz, Cassandra Lee Morris, Kirk Thornton, Keith Silverstein...the list goes on.
  • The Japanese version has Mamoru Miyano (Cilan in the main anime) as Lear. Aoi Yūki (Iris in the main anime and Eevee in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!) is included in the credits, but it is not yet clear which role she plays (though she's most likely reprising her role as Eevee). Other voices anime fans may recognize are Brendan's voice actress, Yuko Sanpei (Boruto) and Norman's voice actor, Tomokazu Sugita (Chrom).
• Acting for Two:
  • Japanese:
    • Brock and Raihan are both voiced by Kosuke Toriumi
    • Mallow and Nessa are both voiced by Sora Amamiya
    • Brendan and Hop are both voiced by Yuko Sanpei
    • Kiawe and the male Ace trainer (Coincidentally, the game uses the Alolan version) are both voiced by Tomohiro Oomachi
    • Lillie and Emma are both voiced by Maaya Uchida
    • Clemont and the male Alolan Sightseer are both voiced by Daisuke Sakaguchi
  • English:
    • Mike Dent is Elio and Raihan.
    • Laura Post is Flannery and Cheryl.
    • Laura Stahl is Skyla and Hau.
    • Dorothy Elias-Fahn is Agatha and Marley.
    • Emi Lo is the Female Team Galatic Grunt and Evelyn.
    • Cherami Leigh is Kris and Mina.
    • Erica Lindbeck is Maylene and Rachel.
    • Erica Mendez is Hilda and Gardenia.
    • Brianna Knickerbocker is Roxie and Viola.
    • Della Saba is Hapu, the original Lyra and the original Gloria.
    • Cristina Valenzuela is Bugsy, Phoebe and Marnie.
    • Ezra Weisz is Molayne and Burgh.
    • Christopher Bevins is Koga and Brycen.
    • Janice Kawaye is Janine and Kahili.
    • Erik Kimerer is Barry and Grant.
    • Kirk Thornton is Blaine and Clay.
    • Kyle Hebert is Pryce and Crasher Wake.
    • Michelle Ruff is Plumeria and Lusamine.
    • Steve Kramer is Drake and Ramos.
    • Kira Buckland is Liza and Shauntal.
    • Sarah Anne Williams is Whitney and Clair.
    • Sarah Miller Crewes is Roxanne and Caitlin.
    • Sean Chiplock is Siebold and Nanu.
    • Greg Chun is Bruno and Grimsley.
    • Ryan Bartley is Candice and Korrina.
    • Jeannie Tirado is Winona and Sophocles.
    • Phillip Reich is Will and Marshal.
    • Landon McDonald is Flint and Cheren.
    • Brittany Cox is Lisia and Jupiter.
    • Aleks Le is Brendan and Piers.
• Ascended Fan Nickname: The game finally canonized that the female Player Character from Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen is named "Leaf" and The Rival from Pokémon Gold and Silver is named "Silver". Those were just one of their default names in the main games, and they previously had no Canon Name.
• Ascended Fanon:
  • Fans usually paired Lusamine with a Pheromosa due to their heavy resemblance to each other, which becomes official as her Sync Pair specifically is with a Pheromosa.
  • The concept of Sygna Suits is that they resemble the wearer's Pokémon. While this isn't the first we've seen humans dressing similarly to their Pokémon, these are shown in much more detail and also often bears resemblance to "gijinka" fanart of Pokémon redesigned as humans.
• Banned in China: Due to Loot Box mechanics, the game is unavailable in Belgium and the Netherlands.
• Blooper:
  • In the cutscene of Gloria's debut event where Maylene shows up, the music plays the remix of the Hoenn Gym Leader theme, instead of the remix of the Sinnoh Gym Leader theme.
  • In the preview clip for the Palentine's Day event, compared to the other Pokémon in the cutscene, Dawn's Alcremie is not moving in the slightest and is stiff as a board.
• Content Leak: One the last few days of every month, data for events coming out the next month is released via an update with and then datamined by the community, allowing many to plan ahead for future events. These datamines include the upcoming characters, events, movesets, and art.
  • Shauna was indirectly confirmed to be coming to the game via a Tweet by her original voice actor, G.K. Bowes, which was later deleted. This resulted in her recasting.
  • An extreme example of this occurred in September 2022 a few days before the monthly datamine, where an anonymous source leaked the trainers coming in October 2022 (specifically, Sygna Suit Wally, Victor, and Fall Allister and Iris) on 4chan. Shortly afterward, an employee (likely the leaker) on the development team had their job terminated.
  • Humorously, information from the August 2023 datamine ended up leaking the date and time of an upcoming Pokémon Presents a couple of days early, due to the odd release time for the upcoming Nemona banner and associated events.^explanationThe Nemona banner was datamined to release at a bizarre timing, at around 1pm UTC. This is seven hours later than the reset, which is when banners and new events are commonly released. It was also noted that not only did Pokémon Presents usually happen around that time, there was also a bizarre tag on the banner that included the line "Pokemon Presents".
• Dummied Out: Several of the bustier female character models, such as Skyla, Zinnia, and Melony, actually have their breasts rigged with dedicated bones to allow for movement; in-game, however, these are never utilized. Chuck, Sophocles, Wulfric, and the generic Hikers' models also have dedicated bones for their large bellies.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Jamie McGonnigal, the voice of Barry in the anime's English dub, was kept in the dark about his character's involvement in Masters. When it was announced that Erik Kimerer would voice Barry in the game, McGonnigal was understandably disappointed he wasn't asked to reprise his role. Justified, however, because the game isn't associated with the same studio from the anime and so does not reuse any voice actors from the anime (with the sole exceptions being Ash and the Team Rocket trio.)
  • Yu Sasaki, the producer of this game, considered it boring due to poor usability caused by skewed game designs and sparse contents, and he and his team, joined by Tetsuya Iguchi, wanted to redesign the game's systems and add more contents based on the players' feedback, which is part of why the game was rebranded as Pokemon Masters EX.
• Fake Brit: With the exception of (original) Gloria and Bede’s voice actors, who are both native Brits, all the Galarian trainers in the game have American voice actors doing fake British accents. They range from fairly decent as with Marnie, Piers and Nessa to noticeably fake as with Leon and Hop.
• Meme Acknowledgment: When Nate finally received an alt in December of 2023— and a Neo Champion alt at that, the official twitter account acknowledged the "Even Nate" meme that had been mocking Nate for months until then.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Aside from the Team Rocket Trio and Ash, none of the characters have their voice actors from the main anime series, Origins, Generations, Evolutions or Twilight Wings in the English version.
  • In-game, Stephanie Southerland replaces Della Saba for Gloria starting with her Summer variant in 2021, and Madeline Dorroh replaced Della Saba for Lyra starting with her Sygna Suit variant in 2022.
  • In Japanese, Yuna Ogata replaces Ami Naga for Tate starting from Version 2.24 in July 2023.
  • Following the unfortunate passing of his first voice actor for this game, Billy Kametz, Blue is voiced by Henry Mason starting with his 4th anniversary variant.
• Promoted Fanboy: A Twitter artist known as Touyarokii, a longtime fan of the franchise, went and made artwork that was posted on the official Masters Twitter account.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Japanese:
    • Emmet and Lillie are voiced by siblings Yūma Uchida and Maaya Uchida.
    • Will and Roark are voiced by brothers Hirofumi Nojima and Kenji Nojima respectively.
    • Iris and Cilan are voiced by Ayana Taketatsu and Yuki Kaji who are married in real life.
    • Blue is voiced by Ryōta Ōsaka while Trista/Tricia/Trinnia is voiced by his wife Manami Numakura.
    • Lyra and Hugh are voiced by real life married couple Sayaka Senbongi and Tasuku Hatanaka.
    • Steven and Irida are voiced by husband and wife Tomoaki Maeno and Mikako Komatsu
• Refitted for Sequel: Tina's data files were removed during the 1.3.0 update despite being in the code since the game's launch, she finally comes back during the Villain Arc.
• Role Reprise:
  • Aki Toyosaki reprises her role as Rosa from the Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 anime trailer.
  • Returning from the anime are Megumi Hayashibara as Jessie, Shin-ichiro Miki as James and Inuko Inuyama as Meowth.
  • Also returning from the anime's English dub are Michele Knotz as Jessie and Jimmy Zoppi as James and Meowth.
  • Takahiro Sakurai, Leon's voice actor in Pokémon: Twilight Wings, reprises his role here. The same can be said for Kishow Taniyama who returned as Piers.
  • Kosuke Toriumi returns as Raihan, his role in Pokémon: Twilight Wings. Interestingly, he also voices Brock in this game.
  • Many of the Japanese voice actors who have roles in Pokémon: Twilight Wings have reprised their roles in this game. So far, the only exceptions are Gloria and Marnie, who got different voice actors in the game.
  • Both of Ash's voice actors (Rica Matsumoto for the Japanese version, and Sarah Natochenny for the English version) reprise their roles here.
  • Maaya Uchida reprises her role as Emma from Pokémon Generations.
• Schedule Slip: Jessie, James, and Meowth were left without English voices on their debut due to COVID-19 Pandemic-induced recording difficulties for a short time. These were patched in at a later date.
• Uncredited Role:
  • While the credited English voice actors aren't assigned to their roles anyway, a few voice actors are outright missing from the credits and not allowed to talk about their roles at all, most likely due to contractual reasons surrounding them taking the parts. These include Karen Strassman (Fantina), Mick Wingert (Ghetsis), and Chris Jai Alex (Kiawe).
  • In a strange case, the voice actors who recorded for the game between the release of the 2021 edition of the credits in August and the start of 2022—Brent Mukai (Male Team Rocket Grunt), Heather Gonzales (Female Team Rocket Grunt), Kai Jordan (Male Team Galactic Grunt), Mike Haimoto (Saturn), Christie Cate (Mars), Brandon McInnis (Lucian) and Morgan Garrett (Sonia)—also did not end up on the 2022 edition of credits, having only confirmed their participation via social media accounts.
  • When it comes to the more Reclusive Artists in the game's voice cast, particularly on the English side (some of whom can't talk about it due to contractual obligations), you'll only be able to find educated guesses at best with regards to the characters they play. The version 2.15.0 update added in-game voice credits for the Japanese voice actors, but the English voices remain uncredited in-game. This is likely due to changes in the contracts following Gina Bowes's casting and subsequent firing due to leaking information.
• Unspecified Role Credit: Unusually for a gacha game, Masters only features the names of the voice actors in the credits, without mention of which characters they played, in English and Japanese, and said list also being updated only sporadically since launch, leading to a lot of Uncredited Roles. However, it's mitigated by many of the original and dub voice actors identifying their roles themselves on Twitter and other social media platforms, as well as the official Japanese Twitter account for the game confirming some of the characters' voice actors in that language themselves.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There was meant to be another rival, whose name is Camilla, but she was scrapped for reasons unknown. She would later resurface in the game's version 2.15.0 update, albeit with her name changed to Tina.
  • Gina Bowes was originally supposed to voice Shauna, but she was recast with Daisy Guevara after the former accidentally leaked Shauna's planned addition via a Tweet.
• Word of Saint Paul:
  • Kimberley Campbell, voice of Dawn, honestly thinks that Dawn doesn't know what she's doing based on some of her dialogue in game.
  • Jackie Lastra mentioned in an interview with the Pokémon Masters Discord server that she believes that Serena, in this game, is closer to about 15 or 16 and voiced her accordingly.

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