A few questions about the pokeball.

[Azureth]

1. Is a pokeball voice activated or do they press a button to recall and summon pokemon?

2. When they throw a pokeball to summon a pokemon does it come back to the trainer somehow? When the summon a pokemon they never seem to care where they throw it.

3. What happens if a pokeball gets damaged? Does the pokemon die? Is there a fail-safe where it'll release the pokemon if damaged?

4. How does a trainer know which pokeball is his?

5. What would a trainer do if he summoned a pokemon but somehow lost the ball?

 

[Charicific]

All I can say is......"Its A TV Show Man!" :P
But yeah they never seem to care about those cases, the one that teases me most was how do they distinguish their pokeballs. Man that made me angry!!! I remember episodes were ppl's pkmn were stolen and when they retrieved them, the whole bag was filled with identical Pokeballs. And the trainers are like "Oh..that's my Pokeball over there" :@ :@ :@ !!!

 

[PlatinumDude]

1. Is a pokeball [COLOR=blue !important][FONT=inherit !important][COLOR=blue !important][FONT=inherit !important]voice[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] activated or do they press a button to recall and summon pokemon?: As seen numerous times in the series, the trainer pushes the button on a miniaturized Poke Ball (with the Pokemon inside) to make it bigger before calling it out. If the trainer wants to call the Pokemon back, then they enlarge the empty Poke Ball with the same method, and a red beam sucks the Pokemon back in.

2. When they throw a pokeball to summon a pokemon does it come back to the trainer somehow? When the summon a pokemon they never seem to care where they throw it.: The Poke Ball does return to its trainer after being thrown, as seen in Challenge of the Samurai

3. What happens if a pokeball gets damaged? Does the pokemon die? Is there a fail-safe where it'll release the pokemon if damaged?: If the Poke Ball is damaged while a Pokemon is inside, then it can't be called out. If a Poke Ball is damaged when the Pokemon is outside, then the Pokemon can't be recalled or the ball can't be used for catching Pokemon.

4. How does a trainer know which pokeball is his?: This has yet to be explained, but Ritchie marked his Poke Balls with stickers so that he could easily tell them apart

5. What would a trainer do if he summoned a pokemon but somehow lost the ball?: Again, yet to be explained

 

[CliveKoopa]

These are questions I've been trying to theorise also.

Another question I would like to know is how will the pokeball know when a pokemon is being called out or being released? What happens when a pokemon is released and how does being owned stop other trainers' pokeballs from catching it? An example would be Damien's Charmander. Why did Charmander go in the ball on Ash's second attempt instead of just bouncing off like when Dawn tried to catch Pikachu.

As for Ritchie, he marked them all the same and it still doesn't explain how, like other trainers, he would know which pokeball contains Zippo, which is Happy, etc.

 

[pineco-a-go-go]

1. They press a button in the center to enlarge or shrink the ball, but I believe that a pokemon can hear what's going on outside of the ball and comes out at will. That's why none of the pokemon would come out of their pokeballs when asked to fight the diglett in the Kanto region. Also why Wobbuffet and Psyduck always came out at inappropriate times. I believe the return feature is voice activated, but there may be a small button that may not be visible on the cartoon.

2. They've been shown to return automatically, even when thrown from great heights like from hot air balloons. (See any team rocket attack)


3. Technically when a pokemon escapes capture it damages the pokeball. Think of the ball as a containment system. If the containment system is damaged, it can no longer contain the pokemon. Therefore, the pokemon is released and needs to be recaptured in a new ball. In most cases I would think an owned pokemon wouldn't care if it needed a new ball or not.

4. I have no idea. In a giant pile of pokeballs regained from a foiled Team Rocket theft, I would think that it would be easier to just have all of the pokemon come out and find their own trainers. Yet somehow every trainer seems to grab 6 pokeballs out at random and always get the right ones.

5. Why would that happen? That would probably be a pretty disorganized trainer. I guess they'd just have to use a different pokeball, but if they're just leaving $200 pokeballs sitting around and forgetting about them maybe they should consider a different hobby.


Edit:

Here's a Pokeball question I've always wondered about:
Pokemon are not immortal. This has been mentioned before. What happens if a Pokemon dies of old age while in a pokeball?

The only answer I've come up with is that they're contained as energy in the ball, so if the pokemon is no longer alive the energy fades from the pokeball. If that were to happen, the ball would deactivate or reset as a new pokeball to be used again. I wouldn't think that it would eject a dead corpse to mortify children... that would be just wrong.

 

[CliveKoopa]

Here's a few questions I always wondered but you failed to ask.

How do pokeballs know when a pokemon is being called out or being released? (Dawn's Pachirisu, for example)

What stops other trainers from catching other people's pokemon?

 

[Hikamaru]

Here's a few questions I always wondered but you failed to ask.

How do pokeballs know when a pokemon is being called out or being released? (Dawn's Pachirisu, for example)

What stops other trainers from catching other people's pokemon?

Well, if you watched the DP episode "Two Degrees Of Separation" Dawn tried to catch Pikachu in a Poke Ball not knowing that Ash already owned him.

If you look at Bulbapedia's page on Poke Balls, it says that Poke Balls mark their captures so other Trainers can't catch the Pokemon until its Trainer releases that Pokemon from ownership.

 

[Guest123_x1]

1. Is a pokeball voice activated or do they press a button to recall and summon pokemon?
I always thought the trainer had to press the big button in the center to release and recall a Pokemon.

2. When they throw a pokeball to summon a pokemon does it come back to the trainer somehow? When the summon a pokemon they never seem to care where they throw it.
I have no idea what exactly happens when a Pokemon is summoned from or back to their Pokeball, although it might depend on how the trainer throws the ball. (What I'm trying to say is that the trainer probably has to throw the ball a certain way in order for it to come back to him/her.)

3. What happens if a pokeball gets damaged? Does the pokemon die? Is there a fail-safe where it'll release the pokemon if damaged?
I always thought that if a Pokeball gets damaged, the Pokemon comes out of it and it cannot be summoned back to that Pokeball. I remember a similar scenario involving a damaged Pokeball on the show (probably during Orange Islands)

4. How does a trainer know which pokeball is his?
I wouldn't really know for sure, but some trainers may mark them to identify them as theirs. Ritchie did this by putting yellow star stickers on his Pokeballs, which leads me to try and explain the following:

As for Ritchie, he marked them all the same and it still doesn't explain how, like other trainers, he would know which pokeball contains Zippo, which is Happy, etc.

A Pokemon could be identified while in its ball by placing it on to a machine that reads Pokeball contents, such as a trading machine, or the machine used to deposit them into the PC.

5. What would a trainer do if he summoned a pokemon but somehow lost the ball?
I don't remember this situation actually happening from watching the show (I only watched until shortly after Hoenn started), but it might end up as the trainer having to get another ball.

As for:

If you look at Bulbapedia's page on Poke Balls, it says that Poke Balls mark their captures so other Trainers can't catch the Pokemon until its Trainer releases that Pokemon from ownership.

I thought it was entirely the trainer's action to intervene and stop their Pokemon from being captured by other trainers. (As said when you try to catch another trainer's Pokemon in the games: "The trainer blocked the ball. Don't be a thief!")

 

[joshmw14]

As you can clearly see from where James had his Carnivine locked in a chest for all these years, he remembered that it was his and what it was. There is a special bond between a trainer and its Pokemon. The center of the PokeBall has a button on which you press. The voice "I choose you" all that stuff is just for the sake of keeping it more interesting then simply pressing a button

 

[CliveKoopa]

Well, if you watched the DP episode "Two Degrees Of Separation" Dawn tried to catch Pikachu in a Poke Ball not knowing that Ash already owned him.

If you look at Bulbapedia's page on Poke Balls, it says that Poke Balls mark their captures so other Trainers can't catch the Pokemon until its Trainer releases that Pokemon from ownership.

That doesn't really answer my question. In one of my posts, I mentioned Dawn's Pachirisu. How did Dawn's pokeball know that Pachirisu was being released and not simply being called out.

 

[pineco-a-go-go]

That doesn't really answer my question. In one of my posts, I mentioned Dawn's Pachirisu. How did Dawn's pokeball know that Pachirisu was being released and not simply being called out.

Maybe there's an effective range, or maybe just before the trainer releases the pokemon for the last time, they activate a reset button. It's probably a dull process that involves sticking an unbent paperclip into a tiny hole and holding it for 5 seconds until the light on the front of the ball flashes 3 times or something. Then the mark applied by the ball is removed and once the pokemon is released the ball is reset to factory settings and can no longer recall the pokemon unless through conventional capture methods.

It's probably such a dull process that they don't bother showing it on the show.