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As far as I know, pokémon can evolve when they gain enough experience or while
using a specific item.  
There are also some rare cases that involve specific emotions/weather.  
However, I'm sure none of these was the case.

So in episode 22 in season 1, how was it possible for Abra to evolve within
the match, when he didn't even gain any EXP from it?


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2013-09-10T14:35:21.660
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2013-09-10T14:53:47.723
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pokemon
How come Abra was able to evolve in episode 22?


In the anime, evolution is a bit different to evolution in the games. For
example, Pokémon do not evolve when traded and can refuse to evolve.

If you look at the [list of evolution in the
anime](http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_anime_Pok%C3%A9mon_by_evolution),
you'll find many Pokémon that did not evolve after a battle. It's more like
they constantly gain experience and can sometime decide that they want to
evolve now, mostly when it's needed. Also, the idea of "levels" aren't very
much used in the anime, so I don't think it really matters. It's just a
mixture of emotions and experience.


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2013-09-10T18:37:12.833
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Sabrina, the Gym Leader of Saffron City is a Psychic and a powerful one at
that, her pokemon Abra/Kadabra is psychically-linked to her, it wouldn't be
too much of a stretch to think that Sabrina could force her pokemon to evolve
with her powers, also in the anime she only had Abra/Kadabra and Ash won
thanks to Haunter causing her to laugh, the psychic link to Kadabra caused him
to laugh unable to fight making Ash the victor

in the original Red/Blue/Green, she had 4 pokemon and Alakazam was her
strongest, in the original Yellow she had 3 which was Abra, Kadabra and
Alakazam, all level 50 however Alakazam is most likely the strongest because
the only move it has different is Reflect which doubles defense over Kadabra's
Kinesis which decreases accuracy on the target, none of this is shown in
either battle Ash has with her so there is a clear difference between the
anime and game


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2013-09-10T22:24:49.530
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2013-09-25T23:04:43.183
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Once I rewatched the episode I had in mind the simple answer - she **timed**
the evolution of Abra exactly at the start of the battle, she knew, whether
with Abra's experience or knew with her psychic power he will evolve.

For the **first option** , it's not very far to say that trainer can know when
his Pokemon will evolve in the anime, I don't remember now which episode, but
in one of the episodes in the Advanced series, there was one who his Pokemon
just evolved and said "I knew it is about time he will evolve", showing that
trainers might know when their Pokemon is about to evolve.

Another example of that is in Blak and White series, where Ash had a rematch
with Lenora, she had evolved her Lillipup to Herdier saying just for the
rematch with Ash, the first match and the rematch was only 1-2 days from each
other, it is clear that Lenora knew that with a little more training her
Lillipup will evolve or she won't say that she evolved Lillipup just for the
rematch.

But the **second option** she knew with her psychic power Abra will evolve
during the battle even have an evidence in the episode:

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pQOnE.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pQOnE.png)[![enter
image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zxpsr.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zxpsr.png)[![enter
image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N6u3q.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N6u3q.png)[![enter
image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qHKhe.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qHKhe.png)

We see that as soon Sabrina is "glowing blue" with her psychic power, Abra is
glowing too and evolving. it might even imply she _used_ her psychic to make
it evolve (which is like Memor-X answer).


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