this is the single worst moment in a Pokemon's career how a Pokemon who was at the height of the league during their prime years fumbled and threw it all away this is the story on how ashes Charizard who was once an Allstar pick Rose fell and maybe rose again but to understand where this all started we have to take it back to season 1 of the Pokemon anime this season takes place in the cancer region where Ash is our main character on his very first Pokemon journey and for lack of a better words he's dumb he's an inexperienced new 10-year-old trainer that doesn't know how to raise Pokemon but the thing about Ash is that he's a kid with a heart and when he sees the dying Pokemon out in the rain he's going to go save him and that's exactly what happened to Charmander early on Ash's Journey he meets Charmander on a rock he looks pretty sick and sad but he won't move at all Ash tries to catch this Charmander and bring him to a Pokemon Center since he's sick and clearly needs help but Charmander refuses to move from this rock let alone getting caught after multiple unsuccessful attempts to save the charmander's life Pikachu comes over and lets the Gang know that Charmander says that it actually has an owner and it's waiting for him to return skeptical the gang stays over at a local place to keep watch at Charmander waiting for its owner to return When The Gang pulls up at this spot they meet Damian they overhear him talking about how he abandoned a Charmander because he was too weak and this is just crazy to me because imagine in real life if you pull up to a hotel and a group of people are flexing that they beat and abandoned their dog with Ash and Brock being the only two sensible people in the room Brock goes up to Damian and presses him Brock tells Daman he should go back and get his Pokemon because he's going to die since it's raining outside and when charmanders lose the fire on their tail they die Damien just doesn't seem to care so Ash Brock and Misty go out and rescue Charmander when they finally find Charmander they find that he's getting beaten to death by an army of sparrows Pikachu uses thundershock on The Sparrows and they wrap Charmander in a blanket to preserve the fire on his tail so he doesn't die Charmander is holding on to his life they manag to bring Charmander to Nurse Joy and she heals him right up but later that night Charmander escapes because he is shocked that Damian actually abandoned him Charmander unfortunately developed Stockholm syndrome where despite the abuse Damen has done towards him he still wants to go back to Damen since it feels like home and to be honest Damen is a straight bum to hurt such a powerful and loyal Pokemon like this especially in the canel region Damien definitely fumbled for whatever trash he has on his team while Charmander was roaming around he encounters Team Rocket which has just captured Pikachu Charmander uses flamethrower to defeat Team Rocket and free up Pikachu repaying his debt to Ash and this bum Damian was lurking around the corner saw how powerful Charmander really is and switched up saying he wanted to get Charmander back on his team Damian started gaslighting Charmander into believing that he was searching for Charmander the entire time and that he was coming back Charmander is sick of the lies and refuses to join Damien's team Damen gets salty and cusses out Charmander by telling him that he was never coming back for him and that he's weak and worthless Charmander gets his get back by by hitting Daman with a flamethrower and joining Ash's team in the end since Ash was the only nice trainer to him and that should be the end of that story right Ash saves Charmander from his abusive trainer Charmander joins Ash's team they get along are loyal and become the best of friends and a star Pokemon of Ash's team but not all stories have the best endings while Charmander was traveling along Ash's team he was actually pretty grateful to be on the squad and helped ash a lot and listen like all the other Pokémon they even had a really wholesome moment where ash was stranded in a c due to a blizzard and Charmander saved him and all the other Pokemon's lives by keeping them warm because of the fire on his tail ever since then Charmander seriously became Ash's number one Pokemon he consistently used them throughout every episode defeating tons of Pokemon he seriously shouldn't have beaten like this Golem and he was seriously getting way ahead of level compared to all of Ash's Pokemon Charmander could honestly 1 B5 them because of charmander's proficient dominance on Ash's team there's an episode where they go to a city with a bunch of executor Charmander uses flamethrower and defeats a bunch of executors giving him a lot of XP which caused him to evolve into Charmeleon at first this would be seen as a good thing since Pokemon evolving is always good right but the once innocent loyal and strong Charmander we once knew was now gone since Charmeleon didn't care about Ash anymore this was the start of his downfall if you've only watched the Pokemon anime you may have been confused on why ashes Charmeleon didn't want to listen to him anymore after evolving but if if you played the Pokemon games you may know this feeling all too well in the Pokémon games there's a mechanic where the number of Gym badges you have as a trainer directly correlates to how strong of a Pokemon you can use this is to prevent new trainers from using super high level Pokemon they really should not have access to and that's basically what happened to Ash Charmeleon redeemed Ash Unworthy of his power and just stopped listening to him in Charmeleon eyes things are going to work on his term and his terms only and he doesn't really care what Ash has to say chameleon's rebellious phase was getting out of control and Ash came to realize this along their Journey Ash wanted to help another trainer evolve their Paris and he sent out Charmeleon to help a friendly battle key word friendly Charmeleon just didn't care at all and wanted all the smoke and completely went overboard with this Paris after that mishap Charmeleon shot his fire at Ash it got so bad Ash had to send out Pikachu to deal with Charmeleon to prove that he's not that guy Ash was pretty sad about this since his once beloved Charmander that was once a staple on his team is such a brat Charmeleon that wouldn't even listen to a single instruction Ash decided to give Charmeleon one last chance against Paris to help him evolve and when he sents out Charmeleon he went even crazier and if he did not bump into paris's poison needle that Paris would have been dead after that Ash had to decide to make Charmeleon take a bit of a backseat for now and let him chill off and figure out what's actually going on with this Pokemon and that was it for Charmeleon Ash made the smart decision to not bring out Charmeleon for very long time and the only time Charmeleon saw the light of day is when Ash was in a life or death situation and had to bring out one of his final Pokemon Charmeleon Ash is being chased by fossil Pokemon that wanted to kill him and when Charmeleon finally came out he just looked there smug he didn't care about Ash's life he didn't care about the situation and he lowy just wanted to sleep one of the fossil Pokemon Aerodactyl was a menace and kidnapped Ash and Pikachu and swatted Charmeleon on the way out this hurt chameleon's ego so bad it challenged Aerodactyl to a 1 V one Aerodactyl didn't really view Charmeleon as anything and just emoted on him again and this pissed off Charmeleon a lot evolving him into the Charizard we know today and this Charizard was a beast it was so powerful was able to defeat Aerodactyl and even save Ash for a moment Ash thought that everything was back to normal it's Charizard saved him from the bottom of his heart because his trainer was in trouble but in reality Charizard only evolved because its ego got hurt not because Ash got kidnapped so nothing really changed with Ash in Charizard's Dynamic Charizard was still at the back of Ash's team as this wild card and not the Forefront that used to be but this all changed when Ash went to the seventh gym leader Ash challenged bla the seventh gym leader to a Pokemon battle and he sent out his Charizard a risky move and charar just chilled on the side and he didn't care up until he saw plain's Magmar this Magmar stopped a volcano crisis gaining the respect of Charizard and Charizard challenged him to a 1V one considering Magmar his first worthy opponent and this fight we saw the true power of Charizard him and Magmar went head-to-head even fighting in lava and Charizard revealed his signature move seismic toss ending the battle and proving that he is the strongest fire Pokemon on Blain's Island it was nice for Charizard to finally deem someone a worthy opponent and show us how powerful he truly is to be honest Charizard must be like level 60 while everyone else is level 40 Ash was then appointed the fire gy badge by blade finally maybe something that would be able to prove his Worth to Charizard but even after Ash getting dispatched Charizard did not respect him at all and it was back to the same old same old Charizard can not get over the fact that this 10-year-old kid could improve and you will always view Ash lower than him now every side has two stories and we never actually looked at it from Charizard's perspective how did Charizard develop this ideology it's simply because of the trauma he got from his old trainer Charizard got abandoned because he was considered weak and not good enough and now that he finally has the power and is strong and canody practically anybody he's scared that if he becomes complacence and listens to a trainer like ash it'll end up making him weak and he'll get abandoned all over again repeating the cycle so we didn't see Charizard for a while and the only other Pokemon we've ever seen Ash's Charizard fight after that point was Mewtwo and his clown Pokemon where Mewtwo is obviously the strongest Pokemon in that region and Charizard had to challenge himself in the Pokemon movie against Mewtwo and the Charizard clone in this Pokemon movie if you didn't know Ash actually died and got turned to stone and Charizard and the rest of the Pokemon cried and this is very much Monumental to Charizard's character since this is the first time we've seen him show genuine affection towards Ash since him losing his life is pretty sad but Ash came back to life and Charizard went back to being his old self but this brings us to the height of Charizard's career the Indigo League a tournament where trainers around the region come together and fight to have a chance to verse the Elite 4 and proving who's the best of the best in the caner region this is a big moment in Ash's career and an even bigger moment for Charizard since he only wants to verse strong Pokemon so only strong Pokemon should be here right the Indigo League had over 200 participants and Ash brought along Pikachu Pidgeotto Bulbasaur Squirtle Krabby and Charizard as a sixth Pokemon on his team and Ash took this tournament super seriously making it out of the top 200 being one of the finalists in the top 16 and throughout all the battles leading up to this he didn't use his Charizard once he knew he was a wild card and wanted to play it safe by using his loyal and reliable Pokémon which may have been his downfall for this top 16 round Ash is going up against a kid named Richie and they're down to their final Pokemon Ash only has Charizard left while Richie has Charmander and Pikachu and to be honest how did this kid even make it to the top 16 with his weak team but I'll digress Ash takes the risk and sends out his Charizard in front of thousands of people at the live tournament event and Charizard listened to Ash he actually defeated Richie's Charmander with ease since Charizard is way stronger than Richie's entire team but then Richie sends out his star Pokemon Pikachu or Zippy Charizard was far from impressed from his matchup he has the power to beat this Pikachu but he's just disappointed that this is what everything was leading up to him versing a couple first and second stage level Pokemon rather than him fighting strong Pokemon like the Magmar he met back at Blain's Island so instead of Charizard swiftly taking care of this Pikachu so they can fight stronger trainers the farther they go up in the tournament he chooses the nuclear option Charizard throws it all away at the height of his career and refuses to battle Chara's actions resulted in Ash getting eliminated from the Indigo League the thing that they were working up for for so so long all over his pride now that's where the story would have ended for most trainers including myself if I got that amount of disrespect in front of a tournament that lizard is off my team but that's not where it ended for Ash Ash still had a little bit of Hope in Charizard and kept him on his team he didn't treat him any differently he was patient with him and worked with him in the orange Islands the next season after the Indigo League there was a glimmer of hope for Charizard as was versing a pretty strong Poliwrath and sends out Charizard but Charizard doesn't want to listen until Charizard gets won up by the Poliwrath getting Frozen and defeated this is one of the first times Charizard's felt true defeat he lost a fight because of his own incompetence even though Ash trusted him but Ash didn't dwell on Charizard's loss at all he was actually more concerned about Charizard's Health since he took on a full Ice Beam from the Poliwrath and is potentially dangerous for Charizard Ash stayed up all night healing Charizard being with him and keeping him warm and Charizard realized that Ash really did care for him and Ash wanted the best for him in and didn't care if he won or lost so since Charizard finally saw the good in Ash he threw away his abusive pass to Damian and looked forward towards the future with Ash and when they teamed up they were stronger than ever the next day when they were working together they bodied the Poliwrath and Charizard finally sore his allegiance to Ash as his loyal Pokemon and they were Unstoppable Charizard was the Luca donic of the Pokemon League this guy was Unstoppable ever since they teamed up and they even won the orange Islands together things were finally looking consistent ly up for this lizard no one was really a challenge for Ashton Charizard and they even went to the jotto reason and that was even easier for Charizard he had basically no threats throughout the jto region at all word were spreading around fast that Ash was a trainer that was able to tame this powerful Charizard that they got invited to the charific valley and everything changed from that point the charific valley is a place where only the best Charizards live they eat sleep fight alongside each other to only improve as a Charizard Liza is the leader of this Valley and she wanted to ashes Charizard skills to see where he Compares with the rest of the Charizards and Ashes Charizard was the weakest in the room seriously there was not one Charizard that he was stronger than in that Valley they even wanted to test Ash's skills as a trainer to see if he knew how to fly with Charizard and they were incapable of even flying together Charizard was just a stroke of dumb luck fighting low ELO people and when he finally got to the big leagues it showed that he wasn't as good as he really thought he was once Liza saw Ashley Charizard's performance she actually banished him from the kingdom since she did not not think he was worthy at all from training there or even being around these Charizards Charizard spent that entire night reflecting in the water on how to improve and become a better Pokemon even Team Rocket felt bad for Charizard getting outcasted by his own people that they helped Charizard get back into the charific valley by staging a team rocket attack and making Charizard be painted as the hero that saved everyone because of all of this Charizard got invited to stay at the Char Civic Valley to train and become as strong as possible and with new opportunities presented with Charizard that just means some doors have to close and unfortunately the door that has to close is Ash traveling with Charizard Charizard was pretty down with just denying the offer and still traveling with Ash but Ash knew what's best for Charizard is to stay with Charizard to get stronger and to be the best that he could possibly be Charizard was pretty shocked by Ash's response since he didn't think Ash would wanted to go stay with these Charizards but Ash knew it was for the greater good and left wi teers leaving Charizard behind at the charific valley promising to meet again as friends and Ash went on to travel a bunch of other regions and periodically meeting Charizard throughout the way with little cameos and even in Pokemon Journeys reuniting with the original gang again for all time sakes this story shows how Charizard was able to overcome his emotional abuse from Damian and end up trusting humans again