Just ‘cause a lot of people don’t know and the question pops up a lot.

The manga known as Pokemon Special is serialized simultaneously in two or three magazines at a time, with different magazines covering different parts of same on-going story.

One magazine starts at point A, the next at point B, and the next at point C, and all will go on until A reaches B, B reaches C, and C reaches a point D which will be covered in magazine No. 1 when point A is over.

In other words, Pokemon Special is the only manga in which its creator can’t write and release in its intended order until the official volumes come out.

Confusing? Hell yes.

Incidentally, this is why you can’t find the HGSS arc. It ran in the magazines in awhile, no one scanned it except some Chinese scanlation group that only got one of the two magazines it ran in, then it was shuffled aside to make room for the BW arc. We’re going to have to wait at least a year for it to come out in volume format. The Platinum arc, which never finished its magazine run, is currently running in the volumes with no news of when volume 40 is coming out. This volume will contain entirely new content that never ran in the magazines and the last time this happened (volume 29), we had to wait for a near year.

Also, the current scanlator who translates the BW arc only gets one out of the three magazines it runs in, which is why it seems that some parts are missing. Before you ask why he doesn’t get them all, each magazine costs about 25 bucks. And said magazines mostly cover toy advertisements and such rather than being an all-manga magazine, like Shonen Jump. You’ll have to read the Viz mini-volumes to see it all.

The more you know!