>>50888628Firstly, ESL?
Anywho, here's the rundown. Ignoring JP, Pokemon Adventures originally released as volumes, typically the size of other manga.
It spanned across 29 volumes, with gen 4 beginning the trend of all new generations having their own numbered volumes.
You could pretty much explain this as VIZ possibly not wanting to alienate new readers every time a new generation comes out and seeing "Volume 55" intimidate them.
Especially with older characters reappearing less and less throughout the generations and not remaining relevant to the plot.
On the note of those "smaller" volumes, starting with gen 5, it's essentially just VIZ releasing the translated chapters in a faster manner, without having to wait for the "full" volumes.
So my honest advice on collecting Adventures volumes, if you're starting with gen 1, is to get the collector's editions first.
They combine three volumes each and are significantly cheaper to collect compared to individual volumes, even if you're getting them bundled together.
The downside is that they only go up to 10 volumes, which conveniently stops before gen 4 so after that you're going to have to collect the volumes individually or bundled.
Gen 6 is just starting to get the regular sized volumes, so if you want to wait for that to finish then I'd say just give it another year or get the smaller volumes.
Either way, hope this helps you.
