If you ignore the fact that Ash Ketchum is a perpetual ten-year-old, he and voice actor Sarah Natochenny are technically the same age. She was ten years old when it first aired in Japan, and 11 when it landed in America. As she watched it voraciously as a child, she had no idea that she was looking at her future.
Natochenny started acting school at age 12, and as she trained she set goals for herself: she wanted a career in indie films, and planned to make money doing guest spots on TV shows. “My idols were like character actors who you see in every show, but whose name you never know,” Natochenny tells me. She wanted to be a “working class actor.”
Seven years later, in 2006, Natochenny was 18. Out of nowhere, she landed an audition to be the new voice of the young Pokémon trainer she had grown up watching, picking up where Veronica Taylor had left off.
“The director and the engineer are sitting there, they’re like, ‘Okay, so here’s a couple of your lines and we’re going to match it to picture.’ And I’m like, ‘What is that?’” So I’m attempting this, and obviously, I guess they heard that my voice was right, so they worked with me for half an hour, basically teaching me how to dub at the audition. They wanted to see if I could pick it up quickly enough to start recording in a few weeks, obviously spoiler alert, I was able to do it and it took me probably the first season to get really adept at it and another 17 years to get expert at it.”
Ten-Years-Old Forever
Alongside Ash, Natochenny has also voiced a number of other characters in the anime over the years including Ash’s mom, various trainers, and a number of Pokémon – of which Natochenny’s favorites are Chansey and Buneary. I asked her which of the three Paldea starter Pokémon she’d pick as her own, and she opted for Sprigatito.
But her favorite favorite Pokémon of all is Pikachu.
“Pikachu is my best friend,” Natochenny says. “Pikachu is the name of my cat. Pikachu is the cutest. Pikachu is universal and Pikachu is evergreen. Pikachu is the cutest character to ever have been drawn and animated.”
Despite all this Pikachu love, she’s never met Pikachu’s voice actor Ikue Ōtani, nor her Japanese Ash/Satoshi counterpart, Rika Matsumoto. That’s because the Japanese cast record all their lines much earlier than the English crew. And since Ōtani’s lines are the same in both Japanese and English, all of Pikachu’s work is done by the time Natochenny steps in. In fact, Natochenny records all of Ash’s dialogue without any other actors around.
“It’s very lonely stuff, and you don’t realize the impact you’re having until you get out there and do conventions and meet fans,” she says. “I had no idea, until I started doing conventions, how impactful the work is and that’s why I’m crying all the time now. I see the joy that I’ve brought to people’s lives.”
Natochenny has been in the shoes of Pallet Town’s hometown hero for 17 years now, and while Ash hasn’t aged in that time, the role has certainly shifted. She tells me she loved playing a “powerful, dynamic, and dramatic” side of Ash in X and Y when he began merging with Greninja, and then transitioning into a more light-hearted, comedic style in Sun and Moon. While Natochenny is careful to clarify that she cannot speak to official Pokémon canon as to why Ash doesn’t age, she personally feels that his shifts from arc to arc speak precisely to why he’s remained perpetually ten-years-old.
He needs to be there for every generation of kids that watch him.
“He needs to be there for every generation of kids that watch him,” she says. “So I don’t think he really grows over time, but we get to explore every side of his personality as this 10-year-old boy and I think that’s where the power in his character lies.”
Hanging Up the Trainer Hat
But that multifaceted exploration of Ash is about to come to an end. As we learned last Friday, the Pokémon anime is gearing up to say farewell to its protagonist of 25 years. The anime will go on, replacing him with two new trainers, but Ash’s lengthy saga will wrap at last early next year.
It’s a farewell that’s already emotional for many, and the final episodes haven’t even aired yet. But few have as personal a connection to Ash as Natochenny, who learned the news just a few days before the public did during a virtual meeting with other English voice actors. Natochenny tells me she sensed beforehand that something difficult was coming, so she initially busied herself taking notes, trying to keep from crying.
“And they said the thing, and my hand physically just gave out,” she recalls. “And I started bawling at this meeting. The producers were trying to hold it together for me as well, they kept speaking in a very even tone, and you could see a few other actors on the call and the director starting to get emotional as well, just seeing me, because we’re very close and this is so sad.
This is a signal of change in my life, in Ash’s life.
“But I took the day to walk aimlessly in the freezing New York cold, and I was crying, and I felt like I was in that indie film that I thought I’d be starring in when I was 18 years old. And then I turned my thoughts to be positive, because I always knew that this was going to happen one day…17 years is an incredibly long, fortunate amount of time to have steady acting work, especially as one character, so I let my mind flood with the positive thoughts and the idea that this is a signal of change in my life, in Ash’s life.”
While the suddenness of this revelation to those most impacted by it may sound shocking, Natochenny understands why The Pokémon Company kept it close to its chest.
“I think any large show like this, any show of this magnitude, has to be very careful what they tell their actors,” she says. “If you ask any actor working on a video game or on a Marvel property, they sometimes record things or film things, not even knowing who they’re playing or what’s going on in the scene, so I think producers don’t want to burden us with this secret because we get asked these questions and we’re actors, we tend to be very honest. So I don’t blame them for keeping this from me. I would’ve done the same thing.”
To Be a Master
Among her many feelings about saying goodbye to Ash, Natochenny is reflecting on the ways in which the two have mirrored one another’s journeys over the years. They were born in the same year, they won prizes at the same time (Natochenny won a Voice Arts Award the same year Ash finally became a Pokémon League Champion), and now they both get to, at last, grow and move on. In Ash’s case, he’s at last getting the chance to grow as a person and character after 25 years of perpetual childhood. Promos for his farewell tour of episodes have him struggling to answer the question of what it really means to be a Pokémon Master – a question that may very well remain open-ended by the final episode.
And for Natochenny, saying goodbye to Ash means revisiting the things that brought her into acting in the first place. She wants to return to film acting and on camera work – both of which she loves, but has shied away from over the years.
“Voiceover just took over my whole existence and career,” she says. “And I didn’t want to be famous. I got a little taste of what it is to be famous and have negative comments written about you on the internet and stuff. That really scared me off. That really scared me off from pursuing acting, really fully pursuing acting. And if you are not fully pursuing acting, other people are, you’re not going to make it. You have to be really, really tenacious. And I had this stop in me. I had this fear.”
But while she’s committed to revisiting her long-held acting ambitions, Natochenny also wants to create things of her own. At the moment, she’s working on two dark comedies – one’s an animated series, and the other’s a live action series that, ironically, she started several years before she learned her days as Ash were numbered.
“It’s about a famous voice actor’s catastrophic descent after getting fired from a huge job that defined her as an actor for 20 years,” she says. “Sound familiar?””
For now though, Natochenny still has some time left to say goodbye to Ash. Because English episodes air significantly behind the episodes in Japan, Natochenny hasn’t even gotten to record Ash’s big World Coronation Series win, let alone the special teased “final chapter” of Ash’s journey.
These are going to be the best episodes of television the world has ever seen…I will be giving these episodes some extra love.
She has had one regular recording session since that fateful Tuesday, though.
“I will tell you my approach is significantly more meticulous,” she says of her work since learning the news. “I’m like, these are going to be the best episodes of television the world has ever seen, so I will take a little bit… I will be giving these episodes some extra love.”
In fact, last week was quite the whirlwind for Natochenny. Not only did she learn her role of 17 years would be concluding soon, she also attended a fan convention that weekend – something she’s been doing a lot more frequently in 2022. She says convention appearances have helped her realize what an enormous impact Pokémon has had on its fans. People have approached Natochenny to tell her Pokémon helped them learn English, lift them up during depressive episodes, get through tough times, and inspire other professional artists and animators.
It’s been an extraordinary privilege to have been the English voice of Ash Ketchum for what will be 17 years. No matter what lies beyond his final chapter, he’ll live forever in the hearts of many generations to come. I’ll keep him present for all of us in every way I can. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/UZxPO4xD6E
— Sarah Natochenny (@sarahnatochenny) December 16, 2022
It’s always been inspiring, she says, but this weekend was extra emotional.
“I cried, I don’t know, 30 times,” she says. “There were people in Ash cosplay. Now, when fans thank me, I’m holding their hands at this point and we’re just crying together, because it’s had such meaning in their lives and that, in turn, has such meaning in my life. Yeah, it’s very hard to say goodbye, but I’m very grateful that the memory of the work that I’ve done will live on in these people for the rest of their lives and will be renewed in their children’s and their grandchildren’s lives and I hope that I get to see folks and talk to them about this for the rest of my life.”
While Natochenny isn’t allowed to speak on behalf of Ash’s character or from the perspective of Pokémon’s writers, I asked her what she would want Ash to tell fans before he heads off into the sunset.
“If I could speak as Ash Ketchum, I would say what Sarah Natochenny would say, and that is, to quote Jason Page’s song, ‘Be the best like no one ever was.’ And do it with love. Don’t be cutthroat. Don’t step on people to get what you want, but know what your goals are and do them to the best of your ability. Do them with passion and do them while also loving the people around you and being kind.”
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
