Why you think Charmeleon/Charizard didn't obey Ash ??

because Charmander was just a baby when it first met Ash... but once it evolved to Charmeleon it became a teenager and bluntly refused to do anything anyone told him... just like normal teenagers do :P

Charmander did have an attitude problem the first time Ash met it...most likely this would play a very important part in it not obeying Ash when it evolved into Charmeleon which was a teenager at the time. Charizard didn't listen to Ash because he wasn't mature enough to control such a high level pokemon, it didn't started to listen to him until Ash saved it's life in Charizard chills were it lost to that trainers Poliwrath, that is also when Ash started to mature as a Pokemon trainer that Charizard started to respect him a little bit more and started to listen him.

I think maybe Charizard became shallow, only caring about power, because his former trainer was like that. As a baby / Charmander, maybe the signs weren't there, but once he got powerful, maybe it all came to the surface.

My most likely speculation was because Ash was new to being a trainer back then, so he wasn't as skilled with understanding his Pokemon compared to nowadays.

In the episode "The Problem with Paras" when Ash's Charmeleon defies him for the first time Cassandra's grandmother says its happening because Ash is a "poor" trainer. That seems harsh at first, having the correct number badges is widely regarded as sufficient qualification as a trainer. Ash had more than enough badges... Or did he?

When you think about it even though Ash collected all 8 badges from the Kanto region, he was awarded only a couple of them for defeating a leader. The vast majority of them were given to him for doing good deeds. Ash entered the pokemon league with only three badges that were obtained in a normal manner, the thunder badge from Surge, the soul badge from Koga and the volcano badge from Blaine. All of the others have some degree of controversy attached to them. The boulder, cascade, marsh and rainbow badge were all gifts and the earth badge was not conferred on him by a real gym leader.

Since a lot of Ash's gym battles were left unfinished, maybe the power of the badges he had were never fully unlocked, rendering him unable to bring his strongest Pokemon under control.

VisionofMilotic said:

In the episode "The Problem with Paras" when Ash's Charmeleon defies him for the first time Cassandra's grandmother says its happening because Ash is a "poor" trainer. That seems harsh at first, having the correct number badges is widely regarded as sufficient qualification as a trainer. Ash had more than enough badges... Or did he?

When you think about it even though Ash collected all 8 badges from the Kanto region, he was awarded only a couple of them for defeating a leader. The vast majority of them were given to him for doing good deeds. Ash entered the pokemon league with only three badges that were obtained in a normal manner, the thunder badge from Surge, the soul badge from Koga and the volcano badge from Blaine. All of the others have some degree of controversy attached to them. The boulder, cascade, marsh and rainbow badge were all gifts and the earth badge was not conferred on him by a real gym leader.

Since a lot of Ash's gym battles were left unfinished, maybe the power of the badges he had were never fully unlocked, rendering him unable to bring his strongest Pokemon under control.

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Well, technically, Giovanni did consider Jessie, James and Meowth suitable enough substitutes to give them Pokémon to defend the gym with, so the Earth Badge was technically conferred on Ash legitimately. And to be fair to Brock, Ash actually DID come pretty close to finishing Brock off, only stopping from a combination of Brock's siblings stopping him and Ash deciding taking Onix out due to inadvertent help from the sprinkler systems would have been cheap, and even regarding the Cascade Badge, Misty had no say in the matter and if anything protested the decision by her sisters (and besides, originally it was going to be even worse, as they were going to simply give Ash the badge without him even attempting to fight for it). I'll give you Sabrina and Erika, though.

weedle_mchairybug said:

Well, technically, Giovanni did consider Jessie, James and Meowth suitable enough substitutes to give them Pokémon to defend the gym with, so the Earth Badge was technically conferred on Ash legitimately. And to be fair to Brock, Ash actually DID come pretty close to finishing Brock off, only stopping from a combination of Brock's siblings stopping him and Ash deciding taking Onix out due to inadvertent help from the sprinkler systems would have been cheap, and even regarding the Cascade Badge, Misty had no say in the matter and if anything protested the decision by her sisters (and besides, originally it was going to be even worse, as they were going to simply give Ash the badge without him even attempting to fight for it). I'll give you Sabrina and Erika, though.

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True, Giovanni did let Team Rocket use his badge and Pokemon, but Giovanni is not the most scrupulous of people. I think its highly unlikely that he was supposed to turn over his gym to somebody who has no training at all. Similarly, the Sensational Sisters probably weren't supposed just give out badges to trainers without even going through the motions of a battle like they originally wanted to.


Yes, I think it is fair to say that Ash probably could have won some of the battles if he had not been interrupted. But unfortunately, since his battles with Brock and Misty were never completed he did not officially win anything. He technically gets the cascade badge for saving seel, not defeating a gym leader.


Saying all that I don't think this makes Ash a bad trainer, but having too few badges is a reason why a Pokemon may disobey. Its still my theory that because Ash did not always have outright victories he may not have fully unlocked the power of every badge. However, I'm open to debating other possibilities too.

VisionofMilotic said:

True, Giovanni did let Team Rocket use his badge and Pokemon, but Giovanni is not the most scrupulous of people. I think its highly unlikely that he was supposed to turn over his gym to somebody who has no training at all. Similarly, the Sensational Sisters probably weren't supposed just give out badges to trainers without even going through the motions of a battle like they originally wanted to.


Yes, I think it is fair to say that Ash probably could have won some of the battles if he had not been interrupted. But unfortunately, since his battles with Brock and Misty were never completed he did not officially win anything. He technically gets the cascade badge for saving seel, not defeating a gym leader.


Saying all that I don't think this makes Ash a bad trainer, but having too few badges is a reason why a Pokemon may disobey. Its still my theory that because Ash did not always have outright victories he may not have fully unlocked the power of every badge. However, I'm open to debating other possibilities too.

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I agree Ash most likely won against Brock had he continued, though I can't say the same about Misty (we really don't know how that would have turned out. Yes, Starmie had its life limited, but it was also right near the pool, so all it really needed to do was dive in to the pool after dodging Pidgeotto and then it would regenerate, like Staryu did. Even if I weren't a big fan of Misty, I'd probably still be saying this, largely because I remember how Ash managed to own Ekans, Koffing, and Meowth's butts with his Caterpie despite it obviously being in very bad shape thanks to Pidgeotto earlier and his stupidity in having him fight it, and realize that Misty may pull something similar.). I'm pretty sure Ash would have lost against Kadabra again had Haunter not interfered though (since it DID regenerate from a very high-powered thunderbolt). As far as Erika, well, like Misty, that probably could go either way.

So far as Misty's sisters, to be fair, they did apparently attempt to actually battle the other three Pallet challengers prior to Ash, but they not only got utterly creamed, but, in the case of Gary, he rubbed their loss in their faces, so by that point, they went "screw it" and proceeded to just hand out badges. But yeah, they definitely were incompetent (that being said, no matter how incompetent they were as Gym Leaders, they're professionals compared to Brock's family, especially Lola and Flint. Just look at A Family that Battles Together Stays Together or Grating Spaces and you'll see what I mean by that. I'm honestly surprised after what Lola pulled that they DIDN'T shut down Pewter Gym.).

And yeah, Giovanni definitely wasn't scrupulous by any stretch (though I'm pretty sure even he, no matter how desperate, would not have handed the gym to people who were grossly incompetent at the job).

Personally, I'd suspect that Charmeleon started disobeying Ash when the latter told him to throw a fight against Paras, considering he didn't show any issues against Ash when he evolved into Charmeleon in the first place, or even when Ash had him try to fight Jigglypuff.

He spit out fire in Ash's face in a menacing way after he evolved, that's pretty disrespectful. Ash had Charmeleon fight against Paras because he was the only Pokémon that hadn't been used yet to try to lose to it to help it gain XP.

jjc927 said:

He spit out fire in Ash's face in a menacing way after he evolved, that's pretty disrespectful. Ash had Charmeleon fight against Paras because he was the only Pokémon that hadn't been used yet to try to lose to it to help it gain XP.

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Yeah, correct me if I'm mistaken, but didn't Charizard continue to spit out fire in Ash's face, even AFTER he obviously became very respectful and obedient to Ash?

Yes but that just became the way Charizard greeted him because he was fired up to be back with Ash and battle, it wasn't with intent to harm like before Charizard started to obey him and when he was still Charmeleon.

Mine's a theory I have. I think after it evolved, it had evolved out of anger cause even though Ash was in a trance and didn't know what he was doing Charmander didn't know that and just felt that Ash was being mean and pushing him too hard, so despite what the show says I believe it refused to obey him cause it thought Ash was too crude to it on that episode right before it evolved.

That does kinda make sense. After all its first trainer mistreated it. So, it's probably very sensitive to being hurt by humans and has a hard time trusting humans. And after it evolved it thought Ash had mistreated it. So, Ash lost its trust and had to earn it back.

In the Orange Islands after Charizard had gotten hurt it saw how much Ash really cared and decided to trust him again. That's what I think anyway, even if no one else thinks so, that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it, even if I am wrong, this is the way I prefer to see it.

I don't really see that being the case. They never showed Charmander having any signs of distrust like they did with Chimchar after he decided to join Ash's team in DP. I think it was just to pay homage to the games where a Pokémon disobeys if it is too high a skill level for the trainer. Charmander evolved because it had enough battling experience.

jjc927 said:

I don't really see that being the case. They never showed Charmander having any signs of distrust like they did with Chimchar after he decided to join Ash's team in DP. I think it was just to pay homage to the games where a Pokémon disobeys if it is too high a skill level for the trainer. Charmander evolved because it had enough battling experience.

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Ya, but I like my idea better.

It is funny though. Even with all 8 kanto badges, Charizard still did not obey Ash. I guess anime is different with this to the games. Ash needed more than just badges to get it to obey him again.

I don't know why Charmeleon/Charizard was such a jerk to Ash considering Ash helped save his life when he was a Charmander, but frankly Ash was at fault for letting Charizard's disobedience get out of hand. Ash didn't really try to fix Charizard's issues until around 60 episodes after he had fully evolved, so I blame him for allowing Charizard to have free rein for so long.

Right, he didn't really try to work with Charizard. He just ignored the problem and used Charizard in desperate situations, then later he brought Charizard out hoping he'd obey whenever he needed him to battle or do something for him.

It's more of a respect issue I think, and Charizards own arrogance really. When Ash lost to Ritchie it wasn't because Charizard won't listen to him, it's that he doesn't think Sparky (Ritchie's Pikachu) was a worthy challenge for him.

Charizard had always been an independent Pokemon choosing to fight his battles without support or strategy. So it made it all the sweeter when he finally did listen to Ash... Even went out and battle Elactabuzz destroying it with an epic Flame Spin-Seismic Toss Combo. It even battled a Dragonite, inevitably getting knocked out by it, but to be fair to Charizard, that Dragonite had like 8 or 9 moves. And his efforts led to it being KO'd by Pikachu.

CidHazard said:

It's more of a respect issue I think, and Charizards own arrogance really. When Ash lost to Ritchie it wasn't because Charizard won't listen to him, it's that he doesn't think Sparky (Ritchie's Pikachu) was a worthy challenge for him.

Charizard had always been an independent Pokemon choosing to fight his battles without support or strategy. So it made it all the sweeter when he finally did listen to Ash... Even went out and battle Elactabuzz destroying it with an epic Flame Spin-Seismic Toss Combo. It even battled a Dragonite, he inevitably getting knocked out by it, but to be fair to Charizard that Dragonite had like 8 or 9 moves. And his efforts led to it being KO'd by Pikachu.

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A bit of a correction, but that was Magmar it fought and KOed, not Electabuzz. Other than that, I probably agree.