Raichu, The Mouse Pokémon. If the electrical sacks become excessively charged, Raichu plants its tail in the ground and discharges. Scorched patches of ground will be found near it's nest. It exudes a weak electrical charge from all over its body that makes it take on a slight glow in darkness. It searches for electricity by planting its tail in the ground. If it stores too much electricity, its behavior turns aggressive. To avoid this, it occasionally discharges excess energy and calms itself down. Its electric charges can reach even 100,000 volts. Careless contact can cause even an Indian elephant to faint. Its long tail serves as a ground to protect itself from its own high-voltage power.

Battle Moveset

A Good Moveset for Raichu would have to be this:

Attacks:

Focus Punch
Thunderbolt
Substitute / Hidden Power [Ice / Grass] / Surf
Encore

Items Attached:

Leftovers

Preferred Nature:

Hasty

Strategy Using Raichu

Encore-Punch Raichu is a personal favourite and not particularly difficult to pull off. Encore is always a generally cool move, especially when you have a speed stat like Raichu’s. Encore anything slower while it uses a stat up move and then feel free to repeatedly attack it while it can’t do anything. Even if you Encore a defensive stat up critical hits are inevitable and will eventually occur. It’s also possible to find situations such as Substituting on an incoming Thunder Wave and then Encoring it as well as Encoring stuff like Celebi’s Recover (and Celebi generally switches into Raichu a lot) to give a free switch to your Celebi counter. You can also Encore opposing Substitutes (like Jolteon’s for example) then set up one of your own while they are forced to repeat the move without any effect.

The rest of the set is standard Skarm-Bliss counter stuff. You’re guarantied to have problems with stuff like Claydol, Celebi, Swampert and bulky Ground types like Donphan so trying out Hidden Power Ice/Grass or Surf over Sub is workable, although you lose the advantage of being able to Encore statuses.

EV Corner:

EVs: 252 Atk / 150 Spd / 108 SAtk
Hasty Nature (+Spd, -Def)

Pretty simple stuff, enough speed to outrun Adamant Salamence, Modest Zapdos etc, max attack for Focus Punch and rest in Special Attack.

Other Optional Sets:

Raichu @ Leftovers/Petaya Berry
Trait: Static
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 6 SDef
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Thunderbolt
- Wish / Substitute
- Thunder Wave / Charm / Protect / Substitute / Light Screen
- Hidden Power [Ice / Grass]

Raichu isn’t much of a special sweeper but it can be done. Wish allows it to out-stall non-TWave Blissey and can generally help out the rest of the team while Sub activates the Petaya. Thunder Wave can hit sweepers on the switch and Charm allows you to stall versus Snorlax (although crits are inevitable but it allows you to freely switch to a Snorlax counter when it’s attack is down) as well as mess up an incoming Choice Bander. Protect/Substitute allows you to scout opposing CBers as well as act like a Recover when used with Wish. Light Screen helps versus Regice although it’s a particularly commonly seen Special Wall.

Raichu @ Salac Berry
Trait: Static
EVs: 252 Atk / 112 Spd / 146 SAtk
Lonely Nature (+Atk, -Def)
- Reversal
- Substitute
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice / Grass] / Surf / Focus Punch

Reversal-chu, very unexpected and somewhat effective, although its Reversal is rather weak and won’t get past anything with any particular bulk. Second special attack to go with TBolt helps take out some physical walls and Focus Punch can keep your opponent guessing while giving you a move if you end up wit ha free Sub. Generally impossible to pull off in OU since Tyranitar is everywhere and using it on an OU team is a gamble as to whether your opponent has Tyranitar or not but do-able in UU.

Raichu @ Choice Band
Trait: Static
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spd / 6 SAtk
Lonely Nature (+Atk, -Def)
- Focus Punch
- Surf / Hidden Power [Ice / Grass / Bug]
- Thunderbolt
- Quick Attack

The only real reason to use this is for the Choice band boost to Focus Punch (which’ll generally surprise anything switching in) and for KOing weakened Jolteon’s with CB Quick Attack. Surprise factor only since most things can CB better than Raichu. HP Bug could be given a try as it’s a nasty surprise for Celebi.

Strategy Against Raichu

Claydol counters it if it hasn’t got Surf/Hidden Power, same for any Defensive Ground type. Swampert counters it if it hasn’t got Hidden Power Grass. Celebi counters it if it hasn’t got Hidden power Ice, same goes for Salamence and Dragonite and every Grass/Poison type in the game. For Raichu’s without Focus Punch/Reversal: Regice, Snorlax, Blissey and Umbreon all happily wall it, although each one can be out-stalled with the right move set (although Umbreon can trap it and BP off to another counter while Raichu is stuck in play). Anything faster with Earthquake generally counters Raichu and its defences are severely lacking (and that isn’t helped by it needing to run a minus Defense nature when using Focus punch) and it’s resistances are few so most offence will hurt it. Stuff like Alakazam and Espeon can freely set up Calm Minds on it when it doesn’t carry Encore since even with a critical hit Raichu struggles to do damage and both have a means of immediate self recovery.

Plenty of stuff counters Raichu but Raichu can generally work around most of its problems with the surprise factor of it’s move pool, however it can’t work around all of its counters in one move set.

Contest Moveset

A good Contest Moveset for Raichu would have to be this for the Cool Contest best with Lonely, Adament, Naughty or Brave Nature:

Attacks:

Thunderbolt
Rain dance
Thunderwave
Hyper beam

Items Attached:

Red Scarf

Strategy Using Raichu

If you do the attacks in this following order you should have very few problems; 001st - Rain dance, 2nd - Thunderbolt/Thunderwave, 3rd - Rain dance, 4th - Thunderbolt/thunderwave, 5th - Hyper beam

Locations in Games

Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald Evolve Pikachu Colosseum/XD Trade from RSEFRLG Fire Red/Leaf Green Evolve Pikachu

Animé Appearences

Raichu has had a few Animé Appearences. First it was used by Lt. Surge in his Gym Battle Against Ash. After that, it was one of the Pokémon Pikachu & Co. were against in the Pokémon Park. After that one was used in the "Pokémon in Love" movie. One was also used in one of the Stage Shows in the Orange Island. After that it was used to herd some Mareep. The rest are cameos Episode 14: Electric Shock Showdown! Short 1: Pikachu's Summer Vacation Episode 71: Lights, Camera, Quacktion! Episode 92: Stage Fight! Episode 141: Mild 'n' Wooly! Chronicles 1-3: Legend of Thunder! Episode 244: As Clear As Crystal! Episode 367: Lessons in Lilycove!