Pokemon EXTRAVAGNAZA! Mega Thread for Movies and Shorts

[Picard]

Hehe, all those wrestler references. And Ash is such a twat as usual. I had this movie on VCD, and I remembered it as pretty good.

[Doru]

Heh, I remember watching this movie on vhs when I had to go with my grandma to work and she rented it for me from the movie store. As I remember it back then it was okay but underwhelming after watching the other four.

[DarkToph]

Pokemon EXTRAVAGANZA! Pokemon Movie 04: Celebi – A Timeless Encounter Sub Review



Rating: 6.5/10

Plot: Yukinari is a young boy who was whisked through time by a Celebi 40 years ago after the legendary Pokemon barely escaped from a Pokemon hunter. He meets Satoshi and the others after his trip ends and wishes to help the Celebi who sent him through time since he fears he could be injured. After healing his wounds, a new threat shows up by the name of Lord Vicious the Mask who wishes to capture Celebi, make him evil and use his powers to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!



Reasons for Rating: I actually don't have much to say on the poster this time. Celebi looks decent, everyone's placement is actually spot-on for a change. Except Pikachu. He seems way too big especially when Satoshi and Yukinari are so damn small. And holy crap, she's a pointless character to begin with but they made Miku so small I actually completely overlooked that she was even there on the first few viewings. Why even include her if she's going to take up a penny's worth of space?

Like usual, I will merely be breaking up the movie into chunks instead of giving another play by play to save space. I decided on fifteen minute chunks for this one since I'll have to be addressing some removed scenes. So without further ado, let's jump into the original Japanese Pokemon movie 04!

15 Minute Mark

Ya know, I find it odd that the Pokemon of the forest never helped Celebi when it was being pursued by the Pokemon hunter. Later, they all gather to bring Celebi back to the lake to heal itself and then later to capture IMM, but they all run away from the Pokemon hunter instead of trying to help....

The old woman is named Towa. She supposedly keeps her name between the two versions, but I cannot confirm that because most sources explaining the English version just call her 'the old woman' and 4Kids never puts the roles of the voice actors next to their names in the credits.

Just to crack this out before we even see him, Deckhand is apparently named Mr. White. What a weird name. Even weirder considering that he's pretty young and most characters that young aren't usually called 'Mr.' in the series. I have no clue if this is his dub name, but we'll have to assume he was just never given one and that the dub adopted the Japanese one as an excuse.

I have to wonder, how did Vicious/IMM (Yes, IMM's Japanese name is Vicious. Much better name AND possible Cowboy Bebop reference....and 4Kids gives us the Iron Masked Marauder.....*sigh*) know that Celebi would be stopping in this time? Or did he not and just got INSANELY lucky. I mean, Celebi could've gone literally anywhen in time, past or future, and leaves no indication as to what era it's heading to.

Holy crap, the Japanese title screen is so much better than the dub's. And 4Kids was doing so well in that department too in the past few movies.

In the opposite extreme in terms of names, Dundee apparently gets no original version name.

Wow, how many times can they remake the same Pokemon theme song in the original? I mean, this version is actually pretty cool, but do they eventually change it? I mean, hell, even dub Digimon which just had slight changes in its lyrics and beat sometimes between the series eventually made entirely new themes.

Okay, here we are at the scene that was replaced before.

We cut to the kids talking to Okido Hakase on the video phone. He holds up a drawing from a book portraying Suicune and asks them if that was the Pokemon they saw. He says yes and Okido says it could've have been a Suicune. He's not smiling as he was in the original, he's not adamant about it being Suicune and Kenji is actually in this shot smiling in the background as Okido's on the phone.

They ask what a Suicune is and Okido says he doesn't know much about it besides the fact that it's a legendary Pokemon. Several people from the background are removed (and the angle is changed a bit) notably Mr. White is behind them as they're on the phone as well in the original but is not there in the dub. We keep it relatively the same for a bit, explaining Suicune's powers and how he's called the North Wind (I find it weird that a Water Pokemon's the north wind....shouldn't that be like a Flying type?) as he's exaggerating some stuff about Suicune to seem cooler with Kenji looking embarrassed in the background, when Betbeton/Muk hugs Okido. Because of this, Okido is the one who bids them goodbye and Kenji bids farewell as well.

If anything, seeing the scene that was cut makes me even madder at 4Kids decision...Why? Because it was basically the exact friggin' same as the dub version in terms of visuals anyway. They changed Okido to be smiling during this scene, got rid of Kenji for whatever reason, painted away the other people in town and Mr. White from the scene, put in another picture of Suicune from the book I guess to illustrate what he meant by water purifying powers, but ultimately what was changed was the dialogue which was changed to 'Oh yeah, that's Suicune. He's totally real! I saw him once! And you were there and you were there and you were there....because spoiler alert, I am Sam.' (Funny thing; Sam's Wiki page makes no mention at all of him being Professor Oak. I honestly hope they didn't miss that fact while watching the dub because I only have so much faith in humanity left.)

So, in essence, 4Kids honestly didn't NEED to drop a damn dime on this scene....They didn't need to do anything to begin with, but now they ultra didn't need to. Be creative with the clips you have and make dialogue changes. You practically changed the entire script of movie 01 and yet you didn't pay the original animators to make special scenes for that! Doesn't your toilet clog a lot with how much money you flush?

If you really needed that smile, why not Mew Mew Power his ass and flip his frown upside down? It'd still be insanely dumb, but it would save a ton of money and manpower.

Half Hour Mark

So I'm guessing that it's a thing in the original that Misty introduces herself as a 'beauty' or something like that. Every time Misty introduces herself in the dub she always says either she wants to be the best Water Pokemon trainer or that she loves Water Pokemon etc.

I find it dumb that the only Pokemon we see Satoshi use in this movie are Bayleef (Yeah, another instance of the English name just being the Japanese name misspelled.) and Pikachu....Considering this is the first Pokemon movie to have a legit human Pokemon trainer villain, it's pretty disappointing.

45 Minute Mark

Oh so Takeshi is just as obvious about the lake thing as Brock was....Okay. Sorry, 4Kids. Really, why would you dip him in the lake in the first place if you didn't think the water would heal him?

Satoshi doesn't explain what a Pokedex (Poke Guide/Zukan) is, nor do they start talking about how much Satoshi knows about the future. His tactless comment about being 'sure glad (he's) not stuck in it like (Yukinari) is' is also not present. Satoshi does say that the sketchbook is like a self-illustrated Poke Guide, but he doesn't take the time out to explain what it is. In addition, the conversation afterward is Satoshi asking Yukinari if he's aspiring to be a Pokemon trainer. Yukinari says he hasn't decided and was actually traveling to help him decide when, and then he trails off. There's a short period of silence before Satoshi finishes Yukinari's sentence and says '….you woke up in the future...' Which is far less severe than a line that basically equates to 'sucks to be you!' Also, I'm nearly certain that the extra line about the Pokedex in the dub was to further poke at Professor Oak.

Ash's dumb pun with the 'Butterfree-Hope you'll be free' line is not present. Satoshi just says he knows he'll get back to his own time. It always feels weird to me watching the original version of a 4Kids production knowing they left the original score in. I can't really explain why, but after making so many SDC's and getting used to constant noise and poppy bullcrap, it's just odd. I know they still inserted their own theme song and end credits song, but still.

I'd also like to point out to everyone that this movie broke the movie tradition of Satoshi tackling and/or punching something incredibly powerful that would obviously kick his ass or hurt him. Closest he gets is climbing the giant robot spider to wrestle the Dark Ball from Vicious. Darn, I really wanted to make that a tradition. Oh well, I can only hope it's in movie 05.

Sure is necessary to make all that wheat CGI. Seriously, you'd think they just discovered CGI when they made this movie. Use it sparingly, it has a better impact that way! Either that or make the whole movie CGI.

Hour Mark

I do appreciate that neither Celebi nor Suicune speak in this movie. I've never had much of a qualm against any of the legendaries speaking, except slightly with Lugia, but it's a welcome change.

I still don't understand how or why Celebi gets dark lightning powers when it's evil....

Oh come on, not even the original gives an explanation as to why Celebi's dying?

End

Hm, I wonder. Is this the first time we've ever seen a dead Pokemon on the show? I mean....it's very unclear in both versions whether Celebi's dead or just near death. You can say it'd be dumb for Celebi, even collectively, to have the power to bring another back to life, but uh yeah, first movie.

That reminds me, Kasumi didn't cry a drop in the first movie when she thought Satoshi was dead, but she sees Celebi dead/dying and out come the waterworks.

Now Takeshi's crying too. A boy you've been friends with for over a year dying and you barely react, a Pokemon you've barely known for a day dying WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!

Oh yeah, since 4Kids kept the soundtrack that means....more lalalalaalaaaaaaaalalala.

We get a scene that was cut in the dub to put the second call with Oak in there. Yukinari wakes up in front of the shrine back in his time, Towa finds him and asks if he's alright and he just says he had a wonderful dream. Yeah, I really don't get why this was removed. In comparison to the scene that was inserted, this is incredibly short to justify cutting it unless they had a serious time limit for some reason and couldn't manage it with their super shiny new scenes.

The ending theme is very gentle and nice to listen to. Such a drastic contrast to the dub's, and much more fitting. Yeah a movie mostly about friendship and the forest and whatnot, so have a big party song at the end with a bunch of record scratches. Makes sense. It's even dumber considering that the last three movies which were far more action-y and fast paced had mostly gentle and slow songs at the end of those in the dub.

Now, you may notice something odd. I didn't raise my rating on this movie at all. You'd think without the inserted scenes and with the actual footage that I'd be happier and give this a better rating...Well, you see there's a tiny problem in this little project of mine. Sometimes, when I rewatch the movie in the subbed version....my opinion lowers on the overall movie.

By all intents and purposes, and I honestly hate saying this, barring the inserted scenes and scene removals, 4Kids did a damn near perfect job on this movie....Perfect by 4Kids standards anyway. They kept the original score (though put in their own OP and ED and the ED does get teethscrapingly grating...) and most of the script barring some minor stuff was kept exactly the same. Like I said, the only thing 4Kids did in terms of changes was get off to their own bank accounts and beat kids in the head with something they honestly didn't even need to know....plus added in a Team Rocket scene which could've been cut to keep the scene with Yukinari—The point is, it's still basically the same movie.

The problem is that, when I rewatch the movie and there's not that many changes....I start noticing bigger flaws in the movie or the flaws I barely took note of before gain more weight.

The Yukinari/Satoshi friendship is still very nice, even with how attached they get to each other, you'd think they kinda had crushes on each other and not friends who have known each other for a day. The villain is still an actual villain, but he's still pretty generic. There's no real reason given as to why he's pursuing Celebi nor how he knew Celebi would be in this time period. While I do give props for showing death, of a Pokemon no less (because according to our crying index, Pokemon are more important than people) there's no real reason given as to why he's dying.

The main problems I have are with the plot outside of the time travel. That really is the better plot in the movie. It's rarer to see someone time travel to your own time and have to deal with that. It's more common for the main characters to time travel themselves. There's quite a bit that they could've done with that, but it's sidetracked by the stuff with Celebi.

Did you read that? I just said that the side plot was better than the main plot and that the main plot gets in the way of the side plot. If that's not a huge problem, I don't know what is.

The stuff with Celebi isn't that bad, but it's ultimately the reason why I believe I found this movie so forgettable. And yes I did say it's because it wasn't as epic of a movie as the others, but this is the part of the movie that is supposed to be epic so there ya go. I actually remembered the parts with Sam just fine, it was the plot with Celebi that fled my mind. It was predictable and made incredibly silly by the ugly CGI monster and spiky wheatball of doom. And there's the fact that the solution was literally the power of friendship.

Though neither version was really preachy about it, the whole thing about the forest being destroyed did stink of an environmentalist message, especially as Celebi's dying. I already talked about how the forest really was the only thing in immediate danger and that was only because Vicious wanted to show off. He might as well have had Celebi make a giant wheat and leaf wang.

It is sometimes welcome to take a break from the world being in immediate danger, but you can still have an epic feel without resorting to 'go green!' Movie 03, again, is a prime example of doing that correctly. The plot was so flimsy they had the villain do that lame reprise when they come out of nowhere to grab the powerful item/creature again and try to merely run away, which is even more predictable because do you really think any movie would end with the villain getting away that stupidly?

In addition, it felt like this movie should've been Yukinari's but Satoshi kept taking the reigns. I know it is his series, but you can't tell me Satoshi was really the forefront of movie 03 or 01, so it can be done.

While I will scold 4Kids three ways from Sunday for those dumb scenes until the end of time, and I, in all honesty, don't want to change the rating on the dub one from what I honestly gave it before. The rating stays as is. That was a roller coaster of an opinion ride that I haven't felt in a while. It's still an enjoyable movie, but there are very significant problems.

But the burning question still remains.....Who did Yukinari grow up to be?!



Recommended Audience: Still talking about death 50+!

[Picard]

Well, at least Ash isn't such a dick in the Japanese version.

[DarkToph]

Well, at least Ash isn't such a dick in the Japanese version.

Satoshi: has 75% less dickish behavior than the leading brand, Ash. And he's 50% more absorbent!

[DarkToph]

Pokemon Extravaganza Shorties! Camp Pikachu Review



Rating: 3/10

Plot: It's the return of the Pichu Bros, and they need help from Pikachu and the gang. They got knocked off of a train that was supposed to be taking them back to their home town, and they have to find their way back.

Reasons for Rating: Well, now we're treading into completely unfamiliar territory. Despite the fact that I've seen Pokemon Heroes a few times, I've never seen the accompanying short, Camp Pikachu.

See, I've only ever seen Pokemon Heroes On Demand, and for some reason the short that went with the movie was never included or offered separately. I never bought the movie on DVD, so Camp Pikachu became an unknown feature to me.

Should be interesting to tackle something I have no knowledge about thusfar so let's dive right in!

We start off with the Pichu Bros., apparently they're becoming a recurring thing in the shorts now, riding on top of a train. The narrator tells us that they're taking the train back to their hometown, but they hit some...hanging bag or something and end up flying back into the forest. This is why you should've purchased a ticket. Damn rail-riding hobos.

They fly into a tree branch that has a Wynaut on it and they all get flung into another direction—again with the flinging Pokemon. Why is this a weird running gag in Pokemon shorts?

We cut to Pikachu, Togepi, Psyduck, Corsola, Cyndaquil, Totodile and Phanpy playing by themselves in the forest. No idea where Ash, Misty and Brock are. Again. I also have no clue where all of the other Pokemon are, nor why none of Brock's Pokemon are present here. Again. They just seem to pick and choose who gets to be in the shorts sometimes.

The Pichu Bros and Wynaut land on Psyduck's head, have a quick reunion with their old pal Pikachu and explain what happened. They need to get to the train station to find another train back to their hometown and we get out disgusting CGI wood title screen.



Be glad you didn't get an animated gif version.

The gang starts their journey and if you ever wanted Pokemon to have a hoedown song, your dream's about to come true!

I seriously can't make heads to tails of this choice....Why a hoedown song? Did they immediately think 'redneck' when they thought of camping? I haven't even seen any camping so far, they're just walking through the woods! I would almost say this song sequence is trippy. It's just...it doesn't seem like something Pokemon would have...The singer saying the word 'Pikachu' in itself is so odd to me. Plus the banjo....I just...I feel weird.

Cut to Meowth and Wobbuffet who seem to be legit camping and are currently on a nature walk. I find it funny that the times when Team Rocket chooses to go on vacation or just not be around are during times when it would be insanely easy to catch Pikachu. They roll down a steep hill together, end scene.

Back with the Pokemon, they play around in a river for a bit with Totodile's Water Gun, we cut to sunset when the Pokemon play with their shadows and then we cut to night time when they have a nice campfire courtesy of Cyndaquil.

One of the Pichu Bros. spots something behind them and goes to investigate with Wynaut to find that it's a Duskull. It scares Pichu for a minute until Wynaut reveals that it's friends with Duskull.

Back at camp, a stick pokes the scruffy-haired Pichu Bro and he goes off to investigate only to be spooked and chased by Duskull. He chases Pichu into the camp and the other Pichu and Wynaut pop up laughing to reveal it was all a joke. Those silly little rapscallions. Everyone else laughs along with them and we cut to later that night.

It starts downpouring and they're soon approached by a Volbeat who tells them how to stay out of the rain; by using big leaves as umbrellas. Friggin' genius.

Volbeat leads them to a water mill for a dry place to spend the night.

Meowth and Wobbuffet are also stuck in the rain, and they're soon spooked by Duskull as well, causing them to tumble down a hill and into the water wheel. They take shelter in the water mill, which they believe is empty, but the other Pokemon are sleeping upstairs.

Meowth and Wobbuffet accidentally activate the water mill causing all sorts of hijinks and slapstick. During the chaos, Meowth and Wobbuffet get flung out of the water mill, into the water and flung off into the woods.

After more hijinks, Pikachu and Volbeat find the lever and shut off the mill.

The next morning, everyone wakes up and bids farewell to Volbeat and heads off for the train station.

Back with Meowth and Wobbuffet, they take out one cookie as their final food for the trip (Team Rocket is just friggin' awful at managing their damn food supply.) and a Skarmory that appeared earlier grabs the cookie from them. However, Wobbuffet and Meowth grab onto it to get the cookie back and end up flying away on it.

The group finds their way to the train station, but the train is already heading out. They toboggan down the hill on giant leaves and grab a handcar. Wynaut calls a bunch of its Wynaut friends out of nowhere to help them push the car.

Scruffy-haired Pichu makes it onto the train, but the handcar starts losing speed and the other Pichu can't make it on. They try to go faster and Cyndaquil decides to use his Flamethrower off the back of the hand car to make them go faster.



They start catching up but Psyduck gets flung off the car and into the track switcher, which causes the handcar to go up a mountainside that still seems to roughly follow the train's original tracks. While they're on a bridge overlooking the train, Phanpy throws Pichu off towards the train, but all of the Pokemon end up flying off it as well. Totodile realizes that Pichu won't quite make it so he Water Guns him further towards the train.

Pichu reaches the train and reunites with his brother, the other Pokemon fall into a conveniently placed pile of hay, Meowth and Wobbuffet also land on the train, which I guess they needed to do and the Pichi Bros wave goodbye to the gang.

Bottomline: Well, that....certainly was....boring. I mean, it's not awful or even particularly stupid....it's just boring. And despite this short being just as long as the others, I only managed to get two pages worth of story written out. The Pichu Bros need to get on a train, so they go to the train and get on....that's about it. It seems like these shorts are just increasingly becoming more and more of 'watch cute Pokemon be cute, but do really nothing.'

And is anyone else a little pissed that this short is called 'CAMP Pikachu and yet all of a minute and a half involve anything camping related? They had a campfire that they didn't even really do anything at because the Pichu Bros were too busy with Duskull.

Hell, even Pikachu didn't do much in the short, which baffled me. He turned off the water mill with Volbeat, that's about it. Wynaut knew the way to the train station, Cyndaquil made them a fire, Volbeat gave them Leaf-brellas and shelter, Wynaut got its friends to help move the handcar, Cyndaquil made it go faster, Totodile launched Pichu at the end and Pikachu amounted to nothing for a change. Don't get me wrong, that's actually a breath of fresh air, but it's just weird. Camp Pikachu has a severe lack of CAMP and PIKACHU.

And we STILL never found out where Ash and the others are. Pikachu and the others have to be fairly far away from where they were left at this point since it took them over a day to get to the station and they stayed overnight during the journey. Ash and the others are probably basket cases by now.

There wasn't even a big conflict in this one. The first one had Charizard stuck in a pipe, the second one had the storm, the third had the tire fort thing, the fourth had the schizophrenic lawnmower from hell and this one has....nothing. There's mini-conflicts but ultimately nothing.

There wasn't even any funny parts except maybe Wynaut and Wobbuffet going back and forth like Psyduck and Slowpoke did back in the day.

The art and animation, at least for the Pokemon, was a step up, as it usually is, but as usual the backgrounds and CGI suffer for it. The backgrounds look scratchy as hell, like a kid made them most of the time, and the CGI is just ick. Either it looks fake as hell or it looks overly realistic.

The music was weird, too. The concept of a Pokemon Hoedown still baffles me and the execution is awkward. The BG music and end credit music are also forgettable.

Overall, like other shorts, this is probably good for a little kid to watch just to enjoy the cute Pokemon flying everywhere and doing cute things, but everyone else can pass.

Recommended Audience: If you're not conceived yet, you can probably still watch this.

[DarkToph]

Pokemon EXTRAVAGANZA! Pokemon Movie 05 – Pokemon Heroes (Dub) Review



Rating: 4.5/10

Plot: Ash, Misty and Brock are in the beautiful town of Alto Mare partaking in the local traditions, competitions and culture. One of their most beloved legends is that of Latios (with special guest Latias, who wasn't even in the legend) who is known to be the guardian of the town after saving it centuries ago.....or less than 50 years ago depending on if Lorenzo's a vampire or not. Ash is lucky enough to meet a pair of Latias and Latios, but soon discovers that they're in danger from the thieving Team Rocket pair of Annie and Oakley.

Reasons for Rating: I watched this movie quite a few times On Demand back when it was released and I remember enjoying it perfectly fine. Annie and Oakley were fairly interesting, and I like Latias and Latios....

I guess this movie, like 04, just never felt that big to me. Latias and Latios, while I do really like them, don't seem like actual legendaries to me for some reason. I was expecting some movie about Kyogre and Groudon and maybe Rayquaza and yet we got these two. Instead, two of them are made into a special arc in the TV series and the other I believe gets a role in the Destiny Deoxys movie.

To be completely honest, I wasn't even completely aware of the existence of these Pokemon before this movie came out. I played Pokemon Sapphire but didn't know anything about them to my recollection.

I was pretty okay with doing the review until I remembered this excerpt from the Bulbagarden comparison.

“The problem with the Pokémon Heroes dub is that the script is really off. For whatever reason, 4Kids decided to completely throw out the movie's backstory and create their own, which is strange considering how they haven't had any script changes this major since Mewtwo Strikes Back.”

....I'm in for first movie level changes? Ouch.

Well, enough jabber. Let's get into Pokemon movie 05: Enter Super Generic Title Here—I mean, Pokemon Heroes.

(Also, slight swearing warning near the end.)

==========================

Brock murders the narrator again and gives us 'The World of Pokemon' intro that I still don't understand why they do in these movies. Also, it should be noted that this entire sequence is the exact same scene as it was in movie 04. They don't even fix the pajama mistake I mentioned last time.

I find it funny that in this intro Brock calls Ash 'the pride of Pallet Town'. Gary's a better trainer, capturer and battler and I will believe until my dying day that Ash ever winning against Gary is a complete fluke. Technically Ash is actually an awful 'pride of Pallet Town' seeing as how Red, the character Ash is based off of is so much better. He won the Indigo League while two other Pallet Alum, Blue (Gary's inspiration) and Green (who never gets an anime counterpart, which sucks...Also, these names are interchangeable because America and their silly renaming of Green to Blue because that game was never brought into American shores, causing a tad bit confusion when they came out with LeafGreen and not something like WaterBlue.) were second and third place respectively.

…..Sorry, I'm still very bitter.....and ramble-y.

And why do Misty and Brock get no explanation whatsoever? It's just 'and joining them is Misty and yours truly, Brock.' Sadly, this is the last time they can use that opener. This is the last movie that Misty is ever in.

Getting to the actual movie, we see a few pages from an old book and two thieves, Annie and Oakley, talking about it. They talk about how the book explores Latias and Latios as well as a jewel but that the book doesn't get into the really good stuff until the end. I don't know why they're spending time talking about it while they're still in the process of stealing it. Seems like a needless waste of time when you're pressed for it. A security guard at the library they're in nearly spots them, but they get away on cables. The guard finds a single rose in the spot where the book was as well a picture with two lip icons on it, one red and one blue.



They zipline their way back to their car with spy-like music playing and Annie asks what the ending tells about. Oakley says it explains how to control a machine called the Defense Mechanism of Alto Mare. It's pronounced 'Mar' here, but it's spelled 'M-air' so I dunno.

They drive off a cliff, perhaps a nod to Thelma and Louise, but then we see the car instantly transform into a jet and fly away. You guys are really taking the spy thing all the way, huh?

As they fly, Oakley explains that the Defense Mechanism of Alto Mare, really original name btw, is supposedly the most powerful weapon in the world. Annie says she doesn't care about the weapon and all she wants is the jewel from the story, the soul dew.

However, Oakley states that the jewel is needed to operate the machine and then goes on to explain the origins of the name soul dew; it contains the soul of a Latios and looks like a dew drop.

Annie says that while they're on the topic of Pokemon, they have to remember to capture Pokemon for Giovanni and then they head to Alto Mare. Ooh, Team Rocket's actually doing stuff for a change? Also, I'm surprised 4Kids even thinks viewers will remember Giovanni's name at this point. He's such a non-existent character and when he is brought up he's usually just called 'the boss'. 

We get our title screen with the Pokemon logo over water, and they actually go to the trouble of putting the logo's reflection in the water. Fancy~

Then we get the word 'Heroes' in 2 ½D. It looks like it's unfinished. It's flat, obviously, but it's designed in such a way that makes it seem like it was meant to be entirely in 3D CGI. You know how in school you'd make those easy 3D boxes? This is basically that.



Oh yeah baby, I'm making gifs now.

That being said, the animation and colors for the title are pretty good, so I can't fault them too much.

In Alto Mare, Ash and Misty are partaking in a water race where trainers stand on small boat things while their Water Pokemon pull them. Ash is using Totodile while Misty is usin--Corsola? Really? Out of all of your Water Pokemon, you choose the one based on an organism that is basically immobile and the Pokemon itself is known for being so sedentary that people build houses on them? Politoed, Staryu, hell this would've been great for Goldeen, but no you choose Corsola. Whatever.

So the race starts and we get our theme song, Master Quest, and unlike the other movie songs, this is just the actual TV version only extended with more instrumental parts and repeating the chorus a couple times. Booooooooo. You guys have been doing so well with the movie themes, yet you don't even try on this one? Shame!

Pikachu ends up getting knocked off the bridge he's on and lands conveniently on Ash's shoulder. Oh yeah, sorry Messiahchu. We didn't realize you weren't getting attention for more than five seconds.

The race is neck and neck....and neck with Ash, Misty and some dude named Ross with a Wailmer. Nothing much else is going on for a good chunk of this segment. Brock chats up a girl, there's a joke about Team Rocket getting splashed by water from the racers and we see translucent Latias and Latios flying around. Several of them it seems.

Ash ends up wiping out on a corner but is saved by one of the translucent Latias or Latios. If the rest of the movie is any indication, it's probably the Latias we see later. He gets back on his float thing, gets back into the race and is propelled by Latias who suddenly grabs the rope and drags him.

Surprisingly, the race doesn't end when the song does, and it's a race to the finish with Misty and Ross.

Latias is allowing Ash to catch up to Misty and Ross, making me worry that he's going to end up unwittingly cheating to get the win, but Latios grabs the tether as well and sends Ash down the wrong path, eventually throwing them back onto land and then they fall into the water.

Back with Misty and Ross, they're still neck and neck and they cross the finish line at the same time. However, video evidence shows that Misty won by the horns on Corsola. Wow, Misty actually won? Holy crap. I would say this is a nice movie sendoff for her, but she is basically non-existent for the rest of the movie.

Ross congratulates her on her win and offers to show her around Alto Mare. Damn, you're a really good sport.....or he's hitting on her and didn't expect that she'd take her guy friends with her. Either way.

And that medallion looks freakin' awesome.



Ross explains that the symbols on the medallion tell the story of the town, and Misty points out the that symbols look like Pokemon, but he doesn't bother actually telling the story yet. They see statues of Latias and Latios and Ross explains that they're Pokemon that protect the town. No one sees them, but most people believe they're real.

Cut to a flock of Pidgey followed by a little flying gadget that flies by a drill on its head recording everything on the island, including the painfully CGI people down below.

When we get a closer shot, it's even more obvious how ech it is. It's that weird cel-shaded CGI we've seen before. These same people were traditionally animated and drawn a minute ago, so I dunno what they're doing.

We cut to Annie and Oakley watching the video feed with a thermal imager. Annie asks why they haven't seen either Latias or Latios yet if they're the guardians of the town. Oakley says it's difficult because they can take on different shapes, even disguising themselves as humans. The reason they're using the thermal imaging software is because either Pokemon in general or Latias and Latios specifically have lower body temperatures than humans.

They find one of them and leave on their boat. We see Team Rocket about to eat ice cream by the waterway. You'd think they'd eat indoors or further away from the water after last time, but then we wouldn't have this running gag.

After Annie and Oakley splash them with water as they drive by in their boat, Jessie yells that it was Team Rocket. James worries that they saw them and Meowth points out that they're spies for Giovanni and they decide to follow them to somehow make a big break for themselves.

Back with Ash and friends, they bid farewell to Ross and he tells them where to get great food and ice cream. They head off for the ice cream place first, but despite the fact that they're going to get cold desserts and drinks, Pikachu decides to make a pit stop at a rusty fountain to get a drink instead. Pikachu can't turn the tap on, I guess, but a mysterious silent girl turns it on for him and he gets a drink and cools his head.

Ash arrives to come get Pikachu for ice cream, and the girl gets all up in his grill and stares at him while circling him. He just stares in response before she walks away.



She wanders by the river and Annie and Oakley catch up. They confirm that she's Latias and attack her with their Espeon and Ariados. They have custom designed Pokeballs, black with a red lipstick mark for Annie and blue lips for Oakley. Fun how custom Pokeballs really pop up most in movies.

Latias runs and Pikachu, still bathing in the fountain, hears the commotion and runs off. Ash follows after him and I love how he takes the time out to turn off the tap before running after Pikachu. Ash is such an advocate for water conservation.

Latias is cornered and captured in String Shot before Ash catches up and saves her, but Annie and Oakley aren't going to stand for that.

Oakley: “Whatever would we do if he attacked us, Annie?”

Annie: “Espeon, show Oakley what we'd do.”



Ash: “That was a dirty trick!” What trick? That was the most obvious sarcastic set up to an attack I've ever seen. Even if there was no sarcasm, she clearly pointed out that Espeon was going to do something bad. You're just dumb.

Ash decides to fight back and has Pikachu Thunderbolt them. I'm now realizing that Espeon has an awful English voice. Ick.

Ash and Latias run away, and Espeon and Ariados chase after them. During the chase we cut to their view, I suppose, but the shot is too smooth so it's like they're flying through the CGI town. This is made even worse by the fact that, though you can hear Ash panting as he's running, you can't hear his footsteps.

Latias takes the lead when Ash realizes he's lost and she leads him right back to his friends before vanishing.

As Ash reunited with his friends, Annie and Oakley watch over with their little drill camera gadget thing from earlier. They note that Latias isn't with Ash anymore and will be ensuring that it stays that way......Really? You're that intimidated by a ten year old boy with a yellow rat? You really are from Team Rocket.

The gang heads to a museum and Ash gives us this line:

Ash: “Is this a fossil of a Pokemon?”



Ash, sweetie, remember that thing you were captured by a long time ago? That thing that spurred your old Charmeleon's evolution? Looked like a pterodactyl? Similar to that fossil? Come on. You can do it. I believe in younotreally.

Some old guy named Lorenzo who I think is a curator explains that the fossils are more than just fossils, they're the remnants of Pokemon who used to terrorize Alto Mare.

Lorenzo: “One was an Aerodactyl, the other was...”

Misty: “Kabutops?”

Lorenzo: “That's right!”

Wait, Misty remembers Kabutops but Ash doesn't remember Aerodactyl?

Lorenzo introduces the kids to the DMA, the Defense Mechanism of Alto....Mare....It's two words, so doesn't that mean it should be DMAM?—oh whatever.

Brock sees light coming through the stained glass windows and proclaims it's a sign that he'll meet a girl in Alto Mare.......kinda random there.

Lorenzo tells a story about how the people of Alto Mare were terrorized by an Aerodactyl and a Kabutops who were trained by an evil master to attack people. When this happened, Latios arrived and flooded the town, drowning the evil Pokemon and turning the streets into canals.....

That's real neat and all....but...uh, if Latios flooded the town....wouldn't that kill all the innocent people and Pokemon there too? And how did flooding a town kill an Aerodactyl? They can fly! For that matter, how'd it kill a Kabutops? They're part Water type! They just chose two Pokemon who have no real reason to ever drown to be the victims of a drowning. I'm surprised 4Kids even opted to say that they drowned. That's somewhat dark.

Also, I thought there was some preachiness at some point in time that said no Pokemon is evil, they just have evil trainers. I didn't hear him say the evil trainer was killed by Latios.

He explains that the story and the canals are the reason the town's called Alto Mare as it means high seas. It's also how the DMA(M) got built.

As he's telling more about the weapon, Ash notices a girl who looks suspiciously like the girl he met earlier, only with a hat, drawing up in the balcony.

Ash pursues the girl all over town, but when he finally catches up with her and asks why she disappeared, she says she doesn't know him. Also her voice sounds way too old for her body. She's ten like Ash, right? She sounds like she's 30.

The girl leaves but Ash still decides to follow her through town. We see some Murkrow, who btw also have have awful voices, and Ash gives up on his chase right as he sees her again. It's clear this time that it's Latias since she's now sans hat and art supplies and isn't speaking. She runs off prompting Ash to follow her. We get more 'flying' through the CGI town some more and it's even more distracting because now I can't hear Ash panting.

He's brought to a cool little part of town with a garden lattice and a fountain for the bird Pokemon. Latias suddenly disappears through a portal in a wall, so Ash and Pikachu follow.



They're lead into some cool looking park and continue to follow Latias. When they catch up, Latios springs from a nearby pool and starts attacking Ash while invisible, but Latias steps in to protect him and Latios becomes visible.

The girl from before who looks just like Latias walks up and starts bitching out Ash for attacking Latios. They try to explain, but the girl, Bianca, will have none of it and orders Latios to attack. They're stopped, however, by Lorenzo from earlier. He explains that the other girl is Latias and she just wants to play with her new friends.

Ash starts swinging on the swing with Latias who spooks him by turning into her actual form. Latios also apologizes to Pikachu for attacking it by licking its cheek. Pikachu plays with Latias and Latios while they fly around and Ash decides to ask why Latias looked like Bianca. As we learned earlier, they have the power to change their form, but the reason she chooses to look like Bianca much of the time is because they're best friends.

Latias plays around with Ash by stealing his hat and playing keepaway, but after he retrieves it, Latios decides to use the ability of sight sharing while he dives underwater. It allows Latias to not only see what Latios sees but also allows her to project the images to other people. So we get a neat rail-shooter-esque ride thought Latios' sight, even though it'd be more effective for the audience if they kept Ash and the others out of the shot, but it's still neat either way.

After that, we hear the story of how Lorenzo and Bianca came to know and care for Latias and Latios. They say that Lorenzo has not only known them since they were babies, but also knew their father, Latios, who was the one from the legend who brought water to the town, stopped the ancient Pokemon and created Alto Mare.

Wait, wait, wait, back up the truck. He was there when Alto Mare was formed? The whole event with the....evil....ANCIENT Pokemon? I mean, I guess it's not impossible for ancient Pokemon to live back then because, well, Ash and the others have awakened ancient Pokemon before, but that theory kinda gets squashed when you remember that the Aerodactyl and Kabutops fossils they saw at the museum earlier were the actual fossils. There's no way in hell those Pokemon fossilized in 50 or so years. Maybe if they were killed by lava, but they were drowned.

All of this, the museum, the ancient machine, the legend book, all of it points to stuff that happened a very long-ass time ago. This is made even more apparent by the fact that the story is laid out for us in what seem like ancient tomes carved into stone. Unless Lorenzo is immortal, I think this whole story is complete BS.

Anyway, he also tells us that their father died back then (and despite the fact that they say it 'vanished' Ash does actually say 'die'. Guess the movies have different rules now or something) because he expended all of his power to bring the water to Alto Mare......really? It's a legendary Pokemon and it didn't have the strength to take out two Pokemon without making a martyr of itself? Just because they're ancient Pokemon doesn't mean they're anymore powerful.

In Latios' place, a gem was left behind said to contain its spirit and was named the soul dew. The soul dew was then used to power the DMA(M). Lorenzo also adds that while the soul dew contains the soul of Alto Mare's guardian, it also contains the power to destroy their town if it gets into the wrong hands, thus its location must be kept secret.

Ash agrees to keep the secret when Latias comes up from behind him and tries to give him a ride, but he's too heavy for Latias and drops him. However, he's saved by Latios. Bianca points out that Latias is trying to play with him some more, but he says he can't because he needs to find his friends.

He bids farewell to them and Bianca decides to take him back. However, as we cut out of the park, we see Annie and Oakley's drill camera thinger. Dun Dun Dunnnn.

Later that night, in front of a glowing sapphire moon (this movie is so friggin' blue) Annie and Oakley head off over the rooftops to Latias and Latios' location while Team Rocket tries to follow. We see Lorenzo working in his workshop making a gondola when Espeon enters and knocks him out with its psychic powers.



They enter the park through the secret entrance in Lorenzo's workshop. As Latios and Latias sleep, Latios senses them and goes in to attack. Annie and Oakley start a counteroffensive, but Latios and Latias choose to go invisible. That won't work, however, as ♫ they wear their sunglasses at night, so they can, so they can, see Latios and Latiiiiiaaaaaassssss ♫.

They attack Latios and Latias and in an effort to save Latias from an attack, Latios takes the hit and they capture him in some sort of awful CGI electro-slime net.

Latias is shot down as well, and as they're about to capture her, Latios steps in to save her and tells her to run. She manages to get away, but now Annie and Oakley have Latios as well as the soul dew.

So wait, the soul dew and the DMA(M) are the two things needed to easily destroy the town? Yet, one's in an easily accessible museum and the other's in a park with the access to this place being either an unguarded portal in an easily accessible wall or a door in an old man's workshop. And the tablet which explains, step by freakin' step, how to use the soul dew with the machine is embedded in the floor mere feet away from the dew. You guys SUCK at security. It's almost like you want your town to be destroyed.

The tablet not only explains how to use the soul dew and the machine but also explains that using the machine must be kept as merely a last resort as using it will destroy the soul dew and cause the waters in the city to recede. Annie doesn't want to sacrifice her gem, but Oakley says it's probably a bunch of bull.

Annie and Oakley head to the museum and follow the instructions from the tablet. They lay Latios on a platform—wait, I thought all you needed to make the machine work was a soul dew and the machine. Now you need a live Latios too?

Lorenzo and Bianca, having discovered that the soul dew was missing, arrive at the museum to stop Annie and Oakley but get knocked out by Espeon again. You guys coulda called the cops ya know.....oh right....cops...in Pokemon. Yeah, you're better off on your own.

Oakley uses the soul dew and they marvel in the machine powering up.

Back with Latias, she finds Ash and the others at the local Pokemon Center sleeping. She transforms to her Bianca form, wakes Ash and hugs him in fright.

Ash explains the situation to Misty and Brock and says that the girl before them is actually Latias. They strangely believe him without question, but get instant proof when Latias returns to her Pokemon form.

Latios awakens and uses sight sharing with Latias to show Ash and the others what's going on. Oakley enters the machine, and I'm just now realizing that they never say exactly what the machine is supposed to do. It's a weapon of course, but what powers does it have?

Power 1 – The power to bring fossils back to life as pseudo-zombie Pokemon.



I don't see how that helps defend the town....

Oakley uses the machine to bring Aerodactyl and Kabutops back to life through their fossils to make them fight on their side. It still bothers me that we never learn who this evil trainer was that trained these two. You'd think the legend of the evil person who trained these Pokemon to attack the town would be prominent than the Pokemon themselves.

Oakley commands the two to capture Latias, and Latios ends the sight sharing.

Power 2 – Close off all of the streets, pathways and all exits in town with giant grates.

Uh....Okay, I guess that's a defensive power. But if the danger is in the town, it's just locking the enemy in with you and making it impossible for you to escape from them.

Oakley causes a city-wide lockdown, performing the same function I just mentioned, to trap the citizens within the city as she takes it over.

Ash manages to escape and heads to the museum while Misty and Brock are trapped in the Pokemon Center for the time being.

Ash rides in a gondola to the museum but Aerodactyl attacks Latias. He manages to save Latias for a moment, but she flies off and turns invisible. Aerodactyl comes back with a Hyper Beam to destroy Ash's gondola and nearly drown him, but Latias saves him.

Latias pulls him through the water slowly since she's shown not to have the strength to let him ride on her back, and Ash stops her as they pass some of those little boat things from the race so he can use that instead.

Back with Misty and Brock who somehow managed to find a way out of the Pokemon center, but are still trapped by the grates all over town. They're trying to deliver Ash's other Pokemon to him in case he gets into trouble. Since they can't pass the gate, they open their Pokeballs outside of the gate to let Crobat, Politoed and Corsola deliver them for them.

Oh wait, scratch that, that would've been intelligent. Instead they keep Ash's Pokeballs and just let their Pokemon go off as support for Ash while they try to find a way out. Brock starts climbing the grate which really does highlight a big problem with that power. Some of the grates are inescapable because of what they're covering such as doors and windows, but the ones covering the streets and alleyways have no tops and are designed in such a way that is easily climbable. So...this power's a little dumb. Don't even get me started on the fact that in this town where most people travel by the city's waterways, the power doesn't block off the waterways at all....

Back with Ash and Latias, they're still being pursued by Aerodactyl but now are also being attacked by Kabutops. They crash the little boat thing and nearly get attacked by Kabutops, but Brock and Misty's Pokemon save them. Behold, the only thing Misty and Brock do all movie! No, I'm not kidding. Also, the only thing they do all movie is the one thing they're not even present for. Hooray!

By the way, Latios the legendary Pokemon had to flood the city and sacrifice its life to beat these Pokemon before. Three fairly unimpressive (power-wise) Pokemon from trainers who hardly ever get chances to battle beat them easily. Yay for making sense!

With Annie and Oakley, we learn of the next power of the machine.

Power 3 – Can see all over town like it's covered in hidden cameras.

That's a better defensive power. Leaves few places for the enemy to hide.

Oakley sees Latias coming towards the museum as well as Ash. Bianca and Lorenzo try to change her mind about using the machine, but Oakley's gone a little mad with power.

She uses the machine's next power--

Power 4 - ….Basically Water Bending.



I'm becoming increasingly baffled by this machine. Latios can't do any of these things, yet the machine uses its power and the power of the soul dew, which is just a Latios as well, to achieve these things. What magic is going into this thing? Who actually built it? Just the citizens of Alto Mare? Are they graduates from Hogwarts? Every other weird machine or monster that has appeared in these movies has had a reason behind their powers yet this is completely unexplained.

Anyway, Oakley attacks Ash and Latias with a bunch of tidal waves and traps them in a floating whirlpool in an effort to actually kill them. Holy crap, someone actually tried to murder another person on this show. Though I have noticed that whenever that happens, it's usually through drowning. Weird.

Latias saves the day by blasting the water away with its psychic powers. Because of the broken attack, the DMA(M) starts going haywire.

Ash arrives and saves Bianca and Lorenzo while Latias tries to free Latios from its prison that looks oddly like the prisons from movie 02. Also, this machine was supposedly made with the intentions of trapping a Latios in it and torturing it to uses its powers. Nice, citizens of Alto Mare. Real nice.

Pikachu Thunderbolts the cage, but the lightning gets redirected back at them. Strangely, this does cause the cage to be lowered to ground level though....Wait....it's in Ash's range now.....Could it be?!



YAY! THE EXTREMELY WEIRD MOVIE TROPE OF ASH RAMMING HEADFIRST INTO SOMETHING THAT OBVIOUSLY WON'T BE AFFECTED BY HIS PUNY HUMAN BODY AND THEN BEING THROWN FROM IT AND HURT IS BACK! Whoopee!

And he does it twice. You so silly, Ash.

Latias manages to break the barrier with its own psychic powers and Ash and the others pull Latios out of the cage, which causes the machine to breakdown. Misty and Brock arrive just in time to be useless and Annie reunites with Oakley. They're about to leave, and Annie tries to recover the soul dew, but she finds that it's black. As she touches the soul dew, she is thrown back by an expulsion of energy from the jewel.

The machine starts back up again and traps Annie and Oakley within it. Lorenzo explains that the soul dew's been out of the pool of water it was in for too long and now all the water in the town will dry up. Well, thanks for telling us that could happen. The only thing I heard of like that was the machine using too much of the soul dew's power, which is what I thought was going on.

The water in the town does indeed start receding, but we learn that the real issue isn't the water going away, it's the fact that once it does, the water returns in a giant city-destroying tidal wave—okay, you're just making things up as you go along now! This is truly the dumbest defense machine and mystical gem I've ever seen. Protect the town by using a gem that can't be out of water for more than ten minutes and its use results in the city being destroyed.



The tidal wave comes and does some awful CGI damage to some ruins and Latias and Latios go to combat it. They combine their psychic powers to split the wave and allow the water to gently return to the city.

Because he expelled so much power while being so weak, Latios dies. Wow, he does....he dies! And he doesn't get brought back to life.....Wow, I think that's the first ever legit death Pokemon has ever had on screen.

The water returns to the city, Aerodactyl and Kabutops return to their fossils, the citizens are none the wiser, and Annie and Oakley remain trapped in the machine until cops one day decide to get off their asses and find them.

Back with Ash and the gang, they grab a boat and start looking for Latias and Latios. They manage to find Latias who is saved by some passing Water Pokemon. They retrieve Latias and mourn when she tells them that Latios died to protect the city. As they mourn, Latias' sight sharing activates and they see what Latios is seeing, which is a view of the clouds and the earth from space. It's actually a pretty sad and well-handled scene.

Latios turns into a new soul dew and lands in Bianca's hands. They bring the new soul dew to the pool in the park and welcome a new guardian to Alto Mare.

Ash and the others bid goodbye to Lorenzo. Lorenzo tries to call Bianca down to say goodbye as well, but state that she must've left for the market. In her room, we see her hat on the easel and someone grabbing a drawing she had made.

As Ash and the others drive away on a boat, they see 'Bianca' waving them down. They stop at a dock, and Ash gets out to see what's up. She hands the picture to Ash and we get the big to-do about this movie, Ash's kiss.



The big mystery though is if the girl was Latias or Bianca. Given that Bianca left her hat at home, it's completely possible that it's Bianca and most fans would probably want it that way. But Bianca's a big mouth. She's always talking when she's on screen. Yet she's not making a peep here and suddenly runs off like Latias would do, so I'm inclined to believe it's Latias. I think most people want it to be Bianca because on the very rare occasions that we get anything romantic in this series, we'd like it if it wasn't humanxPokemon.

I'm not even sure why this was thrown in there anyway. If it was Latias then, well, I guess it's kinda cute but a little weird. If it's Bianca then why should we care? She was bitchy for half of her scenes, and it's not like we ever saw any sort of connection between her and Ash. The picture is of Ash and Pikachu so I guess Bianca could've had a thing for Ash, but we don't see any chemistry or decent scenes with them on screen, so blah. She wasn't even really memorable in the least and if you want to go the extra mile, the argument can be made that her character was basically pointless besides to purposely make this confusion.

Ash has had two kisses in the course of the show to this point, both of which he got in movies and both of which were on the cheek, which is why I didn't say this was Ash's first kiss like a lot of people seem to call it. She clearly kissed him on the cheek. It really feels like they're making off like this is his legit first kiss. With the bright background and closeup on the kiss, they're making off like this is a big deal, in spite of the fact that he got a kiss on the cheek by Melody in movie 02. The only reason I can think of for this seeming like his first kiss is that it kinda looks like Ash is kissing her on the cheek a little, but he's really just surprised at the kiss.

In summary, ooOOOoooohhhh kissy! Mwah mwa mwah! 

They drive away from Alto Mare and we start getting our ending songs, which are just two snippets of songs found on Totally Pokemon, a CD I actually have. Yay me! And two from 2BA Master, a CD I don't have and never will own on principle because of that insanely stupid title. Just write it out, guys, stop trying to be 'hip'.

The first is a slower remake of the song 'You and Me and Pokemon', which I actually enjoy better than the original. Next is 'Pikachu (I Choose You!)' which is more catchy than anything. It's also not remixed for the movie. Next, we get 'The Time Has Come (Pikachu's Goodbye)' a song they're going to keep milking apparently. Finally, we get 'My Best Friends' even though it would've been better to end on 'The Time Has Come (Pikachu's Goodbye)' considering the death and all, but I guess ending on a lighter note's fine.

In terms of the scenes behind the credits, we have Ash and the others leaving on the boat (They never mention why they were even there, It looks really far out of their way to be a stop on his Johto journey) and seeing a few Latias and Latios flying through the air, confirming what I thought earlier in seeing numerous Latias and Latios flying around during the race instead of just two, which just begs the question of where the hell were you lazy sumbitches when Latios was dying and the town was nearly destroyed? Some guardians you are.

We also see a shot I never noticed before. We see Annie and Oakley getting captured by the cops in a picture that looks like brown comic book inking and then we see Annie and Oakley in prison reading a book about ancient treasures. However, on the right page we see Lawrence the Third and his ship thing. What a weird cameo. A villain who was basically there to get a plot going and was ignored most of the time gets a random spot in a book they're reading. What's he even in there for? Why isn't IMM in there? He was a better criminal.



Other than that we see the usual shots of Ash and the others camping and traveling, Team Rocket following them, Bianca drawing and that's pretty much it. The End.

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{

So, how did this movie fare for me?....It was a lot worse than I remember it being. Annie and Oakley aren't as good villains as I remember them being. Annie's basically a non-villain as she more preoccupied with pretty stuff than power, and Oakley's your average 'gets drunk on power and nearly gets destroyed by it' bad guy. While it was one of her more tolerable performances, Oakley being voiced by Lisa Ortiz didn't help. And I find it a bit weird that they basically murdered a Pokemon and are treated like comic relief villains.

The story is stupid and makes no sense most of the time. The big machine is given no adequate explanation beyond it's a big mysterious machine with magic powers that regular people made.

I really like Latias and Latios. They're seemingly pretty weak for legendaries, especially if they couldn't beat two measly Pokemon without self-sacrifice, but I always liked their character designs and their personalities were likable.

One of my biggest disappointments was the lack of Misty, Brock and hell even Team Rocket. The only thing Misty did the entire movie was win a race that didn't even matter. I thought they'd do something with her awesome medallion, but nope. It was in one shot then forgotten. Brock did absolutely NOTHING during the whole movie except get a couple jokes. Sure, they let their Pokemon out to help Ash with Aerodactyl and Kabutops but they do one attack and are gone from the rest of the movie.

Brock and Misty's little mission to get Ash his Pokeballs wasn't even needed. He never used any other Pokemon besides Pikachu and Totodile this entire movie, and I don't even think they showed them returning the Pokeballs to Ash.

Team Rocket was even worse. They did 100% pure nothing. They didn't even talk to Ash and co. or Annie and Oakley. They got splashed with water, failed at following Annie and Oakley on the rooftops and that was it. They basically vanished from the movie after that only appearing in reaction shots to what the machine was doing with little dialogue, and we don't see them again until the end credits where we see them following Ash and the others like normal.

The visuals of Alto Mare were the best things to say about this movie because the city was incredibly designed and well-detailed. The whole city is a big rip off of Venice, and they even throw in some Italian words to push this further, but it's still really nice. The overall art and animation was back and forth. Some of the CGI was a huge step up from what they've been doing especially in regards to the CGI shots of the city, but some shots almost seemed unfinished they were so bad.

Not to mention that the colors are just wrong during most of the movie. It feels way too dark a lot of the time (not in the night scenes, for obvious reasons) and like the comparison said, it's almost like some scenes have a blue filter over them. It really tarnishes a good visual experience.

The animation and art of the characters is bumped up as it usually is, though.

Music-wise, they kept the original soundtrack besides the ending and beginning theme, and the original soundtrack is quite nice and builds a good atmosphere for the town. It was really disappointing that the beginning theme wasn't remixed in any way since I've really been enjoying most of the remixes. I find it especially weird that this wasn't remixed when 'You and Me and Pokemon' was remixed for the ending.

Extending the TV version like they did just seems lazy. The ending songs, while I enjoy them, also just seem like a big plug for their other CD's instead of trying to make legit ending songs for an actual movie soundtrack. Like why is 'Pikachu (I Choose You)' mixed in there? They were also a little bit too short for my taste as well. It's like they wanted to compact as many songs as humanly possible in there, though admittedly the first movie had a fairly similar problem.

Bottomline: I really don't understand how Dogasu can say this is their favorite movie of the five so far. Everyone has their own views, I suppose, and they may have been talking about the supposedly drastically different subbed version. It's an okay movie at its core for me.

The stakes, like I mentioned, aren't that high, even though a Poke-death does take place. And I'm not denying that the death scene wasn't sad or impacting. It was. However, it just didn't hook me in very well. There are too many characters doing nothing, side characters getting more impact than they deserve, story issues etc. And this also works on that whole trope of repeating a legend over and over and then have the legend either come true or be repeated. Nothing's really that surprising or interesting when everything is laid out for you that much. I can't even remember why I watched it so often when I was younger. Maybe I enjoyed Latias too much back then. My rating is mostly for Latios and Latias, the art of the town and the death scene.

Now what does the original have to offer?

Recommended Audience: Several mentions of death and one on-screen death, though not graphic. 5+

[Picard]

I've never watched this movie, but there were a lot of human x Pokemon stuff thanks to this one, Gardevoir aside.

[DarkToph]

Pokemon EXTRAVAGANZA! Pokemon Movie 05: The Guardians of Altomare/Guardian Gods of the City of Water; Latias and Latios.



Rating: 7/10

Plot: Satoshi, Kasumi and Takeshi are on an island called Altomare where they treasure the heroes of their local legend, Latias and Latios. Satoshi is lucky enough to see them after saving a Latias from the thieves Zanner and Lion, but they still have plenty of plans in store for the pair. Plans that could involve the destruction of the town.

Reasons for Rating: Now THAT is a much better poster, Japan. That is eye-catching, detailed, well organized, contains scenes from the actual movie and just looks great. If I would complain about anything, it's the lack of Kasumi, Takeshi and Team Rocket, but seeing as how they're basically not a part of the movie, I can't damn it too much.

There's also this poster, which is more complex



That is actually pretty good too, and Kasumi and Takeshi are included this time as well. Plus there's the awesome soul dew center piece. My problems are the slight nitpick that Satoshi wasn't wearing his vest or regular pants in the race, Kasumi was wearing a life jacket (wait, the Water Pokemon trainer's wearing a flotation device but not Satoshi? Weird) and the odder issue with wtf Takeshi is even doing there. That shot, to my recollection, is not in the movie, though his role really is just gushing over girls. It's a shame, it's like they wanted to include him but realized he did absolutely nothing the entire movie. They would've been better off using stock pictures to be honest.

Alright, well, since we may be dealing with first movie level changes according to Dogasu, I'm going to go through the movie step by step again. I'll try to glance over scenes whenever possible to avoid unnecessary text walls. Here we go!

The 'World of Pokemon' opener starts us off even though it seems faster and like it's missing a couple scenes in contrast to the original. For example, this version doesn't include the further shot of Satoshi in Okido's lab, and it includes scenes from the first episode with Satoshi and Pikachu running from the flock of Onisuzume/Spearow and the classic battle between Iwark and Gangar from stock Pokemon League footage.

Our movie actually starts off with....me wondering if I put the right movie on—oh man it is the first movie all over again!





Alright, alright....deep breaths, everyone. I'm sure we'll be fine.

We start off with some pretty cool looking construction-paper cut-out-like animation of the town of Altomare, and yeah in the Japanese version Altomare is one word and two in the dub. I don't get why, but I'll bet it's because the Italian translation is two words...

A female narrator starts explaining that back in the ancient days of Altomare, an elderly couple found two children, a boy and a girl, injured and washed up on the beach. They took the children in and cared for their injuries. As the children were recovering, a gigantic monster that looks like a huge cloud made of dark gears appeared and.....wait, dark gears?....Black Gears?! Someone call the Digidestined, looks like Devimon's up to his old tricks again!

The monster took over and quickly started destroying the town. The elderly couple tried to shield the children from the monster's attack, but were startled when the children started transforming. The children became the Infinite Pokemon, Latios and Latias. Together, they called upon their other Latios and Latias friends to defeat the darkness with what seems to be the power of the Heart Drop (the soul dew in the dub).

As we cut out to the shots of the book actually seen in the dub, we learn that peace returned to the island, and the two Latios and Latias who were cared for by the elderly couple started frequently visiting the city of Altomare to ensure that the peaceful state remained.

The book is held by two thieves, Zanner and Lion, Annie and Oakley respectively in the dub, and they run off before they're caught stealing the book. Also, according to the Wiki, they're sisters in both versions, but I don't recall hearing them ever say that in the dub.

In the car, Zanner points out that the story is just a legend, but Lion says there's plenty of evidence to support that the story is real, and not only that but there's also a hidden secret in the book that leads to something much better than the jewel. They ride off and then fly off on Barbie's magic dream jet/convertible and head towards Altomare.

We get our title screen and it beats out the 4Kids one. They just did a better job with the jet transition and the tidal wave effect. Plus the actual title itself looks like FINISHED CGI.



For comparison's sake, I made a gif of the dub movie's title sequence too.



We cut to the start of the race and learn that it's actually Altomare's Summer Festival and this is just a water race for the festival as opposed to the actual race being the big event, the Tour de Alto Mare; and I'm just now realizing that 4Kids was probably referencing the Tour de France with that.....you know, the FRENCH BICYCLE race? France, Italy? They're both foreign, who cares? Bicycles, boats? They're both modes of transportation, who cares?

The race begins and we get our theme song which is just another remix of the same Mezase Pokemon Master song we've heard every single movie so far. Guys, it's a fine song, but change is good. As much as I love the original Pokemon theme song, even that would get old after hearing it for so long. Variety is the spice of life, people.

As for how this remix fares....it's okay. It's pretty poppy for my tastes. They remove the Pokemon sounds, so that's something.

Everything's fine and dandy throughout the race, except we don't hear Takeshi talking to that girl when he's on the bridge. Not a big surprise, even though I don't get why they'd leave it alone in movie 02 and 03 and yet add dialogue again here.

Satoshi wipes out, gets saved by Latias and then pulled by Latias and we cut to Kasumi and the other guy vying for first place. Believe it or not, 4Kids almost left his name intact. He's Rossi in the original and Ross in the dub.

Satoshi catches up, but gets diverted when Latios skews him off course and he crashes. Meanwhile Kasumi pulls out the win.

Rossi offers a ride in his boat to celebrate, and the gang heads off with him on his gondola. Kasumi marvels at her medallion, but there's nothing stating that the symbols tell the story of Altomare. In fact, now that I really look at it, the only symbols are Latios and Latias. How is that a 'story'?

Kasumi asks what the statues of Latios and Latias are and Rossi basically just gives the cliffnotes version of the legend. And now it makes perfect sense why Latios and Latias are both on the statues instead of just a Latios like the dub legend states.

Anyway, cut to Zanner and Lion's little camera thing and the icky CGI people below. They explain the same thing about how Latios and Latias can disguise themselves as humans so they're scanning the people. Latios and Latias have lower body temperatures than people, so the thermal imaging quickly spots Latias.

As they pursue Latias on their boat, they splash Team Rocket and Kojiro instantly recognizes them as two of the top thieves ever. Yup, another change between the two versions is that Zanner and Lion are merely great thieves, not spies for Team Rocket, not members of Team Rocket at all. I don't have any clue as to why 4Kids changed that. The comparison states that it was big rumor that the two were part of Team Rocket before the movie even came out, but that's not really an excuse seeing as how they eventually got and translated the damn script themselves. Unless they started writing the dub script before the movie even came out, which I wouldn't put it past them.

Sucks, actually. While they don't do a whole lot, I like when Team Rocket actually does villainous organization things. Like how I liked Vicious in movie 04. Though I'd prefer if one day the whole organization got off their asses and did something big and movie-worthy for once. All I remember is them taking over the St. Anne and a few things Butch and Cassidy did. They're a pathetic organization....

They get basically the same idea as the dub, only they want to outwit and beat them at thieving not follow them and try to learn from them.

Back with Satoshi and the others, Rossi bids them farewell and tells them of a great crepe shop, not an ice cream shop and seafood place like the dub. Surprisingly, the 'ciao' is also present in the dub, and I feel weird about that for some reason.

The gang runs off for some crepe-y goodness while Pikachu goes off to a fountain. Latias, in human disguise, turns on the faucet for him and Pikachu starts drinking and cooling off. Satoshi arrives and thanks Latias for turning on the water for Pikachu. Latias gets in his face, circles him and runs off.

Latias continues her stroll until Zanner and Lion spot her, out her as Latias and pursue her. Pikachu hears the fuss and runs off, prompting Satoshi to follow, and Zanner and Lion catch Latias. Satoshi to the rescue, but Zanner sends out Elfie/Espeon to attack Satoshi.

Satoshi counters with Pikachu's electricity and runs off with Latias while Ariados and Elfie pursue.

They run through the town giving us that 'flying' shot, but it's slightly helped by the inclusion of footsteps. It's still way too smooth to be running, though.

Satoshi gets a bit lost, and Latias leads him back to Kasumi and Takeshi before mysteriously disappearing.

Satoshi reunites with Kasumi and Takeshi and they head off to some temple. Oh, it's a temple and not a museum. I guess that makes more sense considering the only things I saw there were the two fossils and the machine.

Zanner and Lion spy on them with their little robot and Lion says he won't get away, which I guess means she doesn't want to keep Latias and him apart like the dub said.

At the temple, Satoshi and the others see the fossils of Ptera/Aerodactyl and Kabutops. As expected with the different backstory, there's no mention whatsoever about these two nearly destroying the city. In fact, they're not even the only fossils at the temple supposedly. I'm not exactly sure why they're there, but there ya go.

They're brought to the machine and Takeshi says his pointless and confusing line about finding a girlfriend in the city all because he saw stained glass.

As we cut to an outer shot, the old man explains that in ancient times the temple that they're currently in and a neighboring building called the Sun Tower were built for Latias and Latios as an expression of the people's gratitude for them saving the city. The machine was also seemingly built for the sake of peace, but no one knows how to operate it.

Satoshi sees what he thinks is the girl from before and takes chase. When he finally catches up, he asks the girl why she ran away but she just asks what he's talking about and walks away.

The chase continues, but he gets lost and gives up right as they spot Latias, who drags them through town some more until they reach the portal.

They go through the portal, find themselves in a park and find Latias yet again, but Latios springs up out of the water and attacks Satoshi and Pikachu. The assault is halted by Latias and Kanon/Bianca soon shows up to see what the fuss is about. Kanon hears Satoshi's story about how he followed Latias into the park, but she finds it suspicious and sics Latios on him. He's instantly stopped by Vongole/Lorenzo, however.

Everything's sorted out and they start playing together, and we cut to Kanon and Vongole talking to Satoshi about how they protect the secret garden as a sanctuary for when Latios and Latias come to visit the island. Wait, that just raises more plot holes in the dub. The city was supposedly just a regular land-based city before the evil trainer and his Kabutops and Aerodactyl attacked and then it became flooded with water that Latios delivered. Unless Latios made a damn OCEAN when it defeated Kabutops and Aerodactyl...in which case, why is Latios not a Water Pokemon?

They also explain that the Latios and Latias before them are indeed brother and sister with Latios being the older brother.

Latias steals Satoshi's hat and playfully teases him while Latios starts sight sharing, called Dream Projection in the original (though, to be honest, sight sharing is a more logical name) before diving underwater.

After that's over, we're brought back to the secret garden where we catch the tail-end of the legend of Latios and Latias and they solidify that these are not the same Latias and Latios from the legend nor are they the direct children of the one/ones responsible for it, they're their ANCESTORS.

They explain the stuff about the Heart Drop being used in conjunction with the device from before even stating that the many Latios and Latias helped them build it, which explains how it's all magical and stuff.

Satoshi is tasked with keeping the garden and the Heart Drop a secret, he agrees, and Latias and Latios try to play some more. He politely declines as he says he needs to get back to his friends, but promises to come back and play later.

They exit out the door in Vongole's gondola workshop while Zanner and Lion's camera captures images of Latias and Latios in the garden, and Kanon escorts him to the Pokemon center.

Meanwhile, back with Team Rocket, they see Zanner and Lion roof-hopping, try to follow them and fail. And thus ends their kinda-sorta-ish-maybe-a-little-okay-not-really subplot.

Zanner and Lion knock out Vongole again and break into the secret garden. Latios and Latias try to fight the intruders, but they ultimately fail. Latios is captured, but manages to let Latias escape.

By the way, Latios and Latias sound awful in both versions. In the dub, they have higher-pitched squeals, and in the original, Latias has a high-pitched squeal while Latios constantly sounds like he's saying 'Wha-hoo!' It's not unbearable but it is annoying.

Zanner and Lion steal the Heart Drop and Lion scans the tablets on the floor to figure out how to use the Heart Drop in conjunction with the machine. It's here where we learn the not-stupid explanation of what happens later in the movie.

The tablet warns that the Heart Drop should not be used for evil. If it is, the Heart Drop will be defiled and will vanish alongside the island. Basically it was a warning to the villagers saying that as long as they're responsible with the Heart Drop and the machine, their land will forever be protected, but if they decide to use the powers they've been given for evil nothing but destruction will follow. Much better explanation than 'Oh yeah, if the Soul Dew is used at all, or if it's kept out of its water tank for more than 15 minutes, our protected land will be wiped out by a tidal wave caused by the thing we used to protect ourselves.'

I still say that secret garden has the worst security measures ever. They don't even have a lock on that damn entrance in Vongole's workshop. Town-destroying jewel, the instructions on how to use it right next to it and two legendary Pokemon sitting right there and you can't be arsed to buy a damn padlock. Does Altomare have no hardware store?

Zanner and Lion head to the temple to use the Heart Drop with the machine, Vongole and Kanon arrive only to get knocked out, and they start the machine.

Meanwhile, Latias goes back to Satoshi in the Pokemon center, and Takeshi and Kasumi are made privy to the situation. Latios uses Dream Projection to show Latias, Satoshi, Takeshi and Kasumi what's going on.

Lion starts controlling the machine, revives the Ptera and Kabutops fossils to have them do her bidding, and sets up grates to block all exits and entrances, except, as I mentioned, the damn waterways, while Satoshi escapes the Pokemon Center with Pikachu before they're trapped as well.

Satoshi grabs a boat and heads to the temple, but Ptera attacks them, destroying their boat and nearly drowning Satoshi. Latias saves him and they grab one of the boat things I still can't identify to continue traveling.

Back with Takeshi and Kasumi, still trapped by the grates, they let out Crobat, Sunnygo/Corsola (Sunnygo?....That sounds really weird. And I keep thinking of Sunny D. I know it has actual meaning; the word Sunny mixed with sango (coral) but still, weird.) and Nyoromo/Politoed to help Satoshi.

Nyoromo has an incredibly cute and goofy Japanese voice, by the way.

So they valiantly go off to help Satoshi, ashamed of the fact that their combined strength can supposedly not support the weight of Satoshi's monster balls and belt. If only monster balls weren't made of dark matter!

Kasumi and Takeshi's Pokemon help Satoshi take down Kabutops and he heads back off towards the temple.

Lion, spying on them with the machine, realizes that Kabutops and Ptera failed, so she uses her waterbending to create a water spout that ensnares Latias and Satoshi. However, Latias uses her psychic powers to break the water.

This results in the machine going haywire while Satoshi, Pikachu and Latias try to free Kanon, Vongole and Latios, meaning I get to watch Satoshi the human battering ram again! Hahaha, he's so hilariously stupid.

They eventually do get Latios out, and the machine shuts down. Everyone's okay, even if Latios is worse for wear. Kasumi and Takeshi arrive because they exist, and Zanner retrieves the Heart Drop.

However, it's completely tainted by evil and expels a huge burst of energy when she tries to remove it. Zanner and Lion both fall into the machine as it powers back up again and spins them right round baby. Right round. Like a record, baby. Right round round round.

The legend starts coming true as the water starts receding into a giant town-destroying tidal wave. Latias and Latios realize that they can't depend on any of the other Latios and Latias who are around to come in and help, because that would just save the life of one of their kind and everything. The Celebi from movie 04, you are not. So they head towards the wave and use their psychic power to disperse the water in a harmless manner across the town again.

Latios dies due to expending too much energy and bids farewell to Latias.

The effects of the machine start to disappear over town, and Satoshi and the others head out into the water to find Latias. They find her being rescued by some Water Pokemon and are soon made aware of Latios' fate.

Latias' dream projection activates and Latios shows them his view of the clouds and the earth from space (or maybe it's heaven now that I think about it) and Latios either makes a new Heart Drop or becomes one, it's not entirely clear. In this version, the Latias and Latios who gave the initial Heart Drop just had one, no one died for it that I know of, but they keep saying 'Latios' to the new Heart Drop so *shrug*

Satoshi and the others are leaving the city, so they bid farewell to Vongole. They want to say goodbye to Kanon as well, but she seems to have stepped out for a second. Also, this shot lends more credence to the theory that it was Latias in the end and not Kanon. There's really no reason why Kanon/Bianca wouldn't have responded when being called numerous times unless she was Latias and couldn't speak. Not only that, but you'd think Kanon would hear that Satoshi and the others are leaving and ask out the window that they wait for a second while she gets the picture to give to Satoshi.

Satoshi and the others leave until they realize 'Kanon' is following them. They stop, she hands Satoshi a  rolled up drawing, puts her lips to his face and runs off.

Satoshi opens the paper to see a drawing of him and Pikachu and they depart from the island once again, seeing a bunch of Latias and Latios on their way out, segueing us into the end credits. The end song in Japanese is 'You Are Not Alone' by coba & Kazufumi Miyazawa. I really like this song. It has a great melody, wonderful singing and the instruments being used fit in wonderfully with the setting. It's probably my favorite Pokemon end theme so far, movie wise anyway.

HOWEVER, if I have one complaint it's that the opening is a little too peppy to really fit the tone of the final couple of shots. 4Kids' little CD mashup may have been random, but they did purposely start off with a nice slow song.

And during the end credits we see Zanner and Lion in prison, Vongole fixing up the machine or temple, Kanon drawing and Satoshi and the others traveling some more. The end.

=======================

Okay, so that was actually a lot better than the dub, mostly because it actually *gasp* MADE SENSE!

I mean, I know I've mentioned that 4Kids, oddly enough, sometimes changes stuff to make it worse than it actually is to create drama and tension, but I still can't get over the fact that their revised story just involves so much death and murder. Kabutops and Aerodactyl get forcibly drowned, probably alongside the unnamed evil trainer, the citizens are left with the worry that their town will be destroyed and everyone will be killed if a ball accidentally dries out, and Latios from the legend dies while sacrificing himself for the town. The original story was perfectly fine and very sweet yet they made it so dark and terrible for no real reason.

Think about that. Let it sink in. The company that is so scared of death that it's basically became a meme to replace 'death' with 'the shadow realm' or something, PURPOSELY ADDED IN MUCH MORE DEATH TO THE MOVIE. I can't even begin to comprehend that.

What I really find problematic is I cannot in any way justify why they changed it. I mean, the whole thing with Mewtwo way back when, they probably changed that just to make it a more clearcut struggle of good vs. evil. Can't make Mewtwo too sympathetic and all until his redemption. Plus, I have a feeling they were really trying to shoehorn in a 'violence is bad and we don't condone it' message to the parents of the world who were outraged at Pokemon for the violence and 'cockfighting'.

However, I can't understand why the original story wasn't good enough. If it was really because the art style for the story part upset them for whatever reason then it's still not justified. They repeat the story without the special construction-paper animation, so they could just parrot the story without showing the opener. I see nothing wrong with any part of the original story to warrant changing so it's really just boggling my mind.

It's boggled even further by the fact that most of the movie besides that is left completely alone for the most part. Some minor changes, but nothing that major.

Bottomline: It's much better than the dub.....but I'm still not all that into it. I love Latias and Latios, Kanon's made to be more tolerable than Bianca, the story here actually makes sense, the death scene with Latios is on par with or better than the dub's, the town is probably the best location Pokemon has had to date, the music's great and very fitting for the location, but the plot is still predictable from practically the first scene with the only real shock being Latios' death. The giant tidal wave, once it's actually explained why it's happening in a way that's not out of the blue and dumb, makes for a pretty good scene as well. I can better understand why this is Dogasu's favorite Pokemon movie thusfar a little better, but it's still nothing that special to me.

Recommended Audience: I'll actually lower the rating for the original merely on principle that 4Kids added death. 3+

[Picard]

The whole disguising themselves as humans thing really went into the next level with Rule 34.

[DarkToph]

I'm almost certain you can find a human form of any Pokemon in existence on Deviant Art. And I'm even more certain half of those pictures are naked.

[DarkToph]

Pokemon EXTRAVAGANZA SHORTIES! Gotta Dance!



Rating: 6/10

Plot: Team Rocket has made a new base in a canyon, and they are making a party there for Giovanni so he can be super impressed. Jessie and James leave Meowth in charge while they go invite Giovanni, and Meowth uses this time to rehearse his music and dance number with three captive maraca playing Whismur. He forces them and the Team Rocket alum to dance using a magic baton.....In a world with sentient serial killer lawnmowers, please refrain from laughing.

Pikachu and some of the other Pokemon stumble upon this and try to save Whismur, but the power of dance is too much to resist.

Reasons for Rating: Ladies and gentlemen, the last short to accompany a Pokemon movie.

They continued to make shorts throughout the years, but this was the last short to be included with a Pokemon movie. I don't know why they ended this trend as I thought it was pretty nice to have these shorts alongside the movies, but what can you do?

Like the last one, I have no prior knowledge or experience involving this short. Pokemon movie 06 was the first Pokemon movie that I only just caught on TV when it played on Cartoon Network. This was probably due to the fact that the movie came out right at that time when I really didn't care much for Pokemon anymore because it was the post-Misty days. I was more into Digimon, Yugioh and whatever I could get my hands on with Toonami and Adult Swim.

I was bitter because Misty was gone, and I didn't take to May much. I especially didn't like Max, which may make the rewatch of the movie annoying....But I digress. What awaits us in this short? Hopefully a DDR contest.

===========================================

We see Lotad, Pikachu, Torchic, Mudkip and Treecko playing around in a tree as Meowth narrates over them. He muses over their frivolity and says he wishes he could be that way, but music recently ruined his life. I still have no idea why A) These Pokemon are wandering around in the woods alone with no sign of their trainers and B) why it's only these five Pokemon. I don't know their rosters at this point well enough to list off everyone who's missing, but considering there's only five here, they're likely missing around 15+ Pokemon between them. Ash's Pokemon are Pikachu and Treecko, Brock's are Lotad and Mudkip while May's is merely Torchic.

The Pokemon all get flung through the air by springing on the awful CGI tree branch because we're really vying for 'Pokemon flinging' to be an Olympic sport.

I love how Treecko won't get out of his laid back pose as they're flung through the air. Such a bad ass.

They continue falling after the ground breaks below them and they all slam into a boulder. No worries, though, because they slam through it and leave marks behind in the exact shape of their bodies like Looney Tunes.



The horrendous CGI rock falls apart---seriously guys, just friggin' draw it. It's a ROCK.

They look up and see some fort embedded into the cliffside. It's decorated to look like dice for whatever reason and narration from Meowth says it's Team Rocket's new headquarters and they were about to show it to Giovanni when his story began. A base? What the hell do you guys need a base for? You travel all the time because you follow DumbAsh and the superfriends to get Messiahchu. More importantly why would Giovanni be happy that you're wasting funds on building a clubhouse?

They're preparing a big party at the base, complete with an ice sculpture of Giovanni, to impress their boss. Jessie and James, who remain mostly out of frame in line with the usual 'no humans' law of the shorts, leave to retrieve Giovanni and leave Meowth in charge. He takes this opportunity to rehearse the band, a trio of Whismur playing maracas.

He leads them with some stick that he says can control all Pokemon, forcing them to dance easily......Wait...you guys have a stick that controls Pokemon.....and you think it's more impressive to show Giovanni.....a fort painted like dice.......It's really no wonder how much you guys fail.

We get our opener which is really forgettable and not really the most dancey or catchy song ever. There's a noticeable lack of....well, music and Meowth is the one singing....

One interesting aspect is, it's almost like they knew this was going to be the last movie short because they show the Pokemon dancing in the main locations of all of the previous shorts. We get the Pokemon sign from the park in Pikachu's Summer Vacation, the giant tree from Pikachu's Rescue Adventure, the tire fort from Pikachu and Pichu, the mansion from Pikachu's Pika-boo, and the train from Camp Pikachu.

After that, we get bad CGI dice (what is with the dice? Am I missing something?) and our title screen. Despite the English dubbing, I am working from the Japanese footage, so I don't know what the title screen animation is like. I did track down a still of it, though.



The Japanese one, however, is just meh. The CGI text bounces and looks rough, but not that terrible considering what we've gotten so far.

The song soon ends, and Meowth gushes over his baton, imagining that Giovanni will be really impressed with it. I would say this makes my earlier poke moot, but he says he'll be impressed with how it can make Pokemon dance, not how it would help......take over the world and everything. At least easily steal every Pokemon you see.

They continue to rehearse while we cut to the main group heading towards Duke Devlin's wet dream.

Meowth and the others lock up the Whismur in a cage and Meowth says this:

Meowth: “You three wisenheimers....” Wisenheimers?! Wisenheimers?! My great-grandpa wouldn't even use that in serious conversation....that's probably because he's dead, but still how old are you ancient bastards?

How are the Whismur 'wisenheimers' anyway? For those of you who don't know and/or are under the age of 90, a wisenheimer is someone who acts arrogantly or makes sarcastic comments. These Whismur have done nothing but shake and worry when they're not under the baton's control. Are the guys at 4Kids really so lame that they can't even properly use slang that is the closest to their age range?

I'm not exaggerating the age of that word either. Look it up; the first known use of 'wisenheimer' in that definition is 1904.

Pikachu and the others spy on Meowth and the Team Rocket Pokemon in the base as they walk away from the cage to get something to eat. They fall through the window after they leave because I guess Lotad's another comic relief clumsy Pokemon.

They discover that the Whismur have been taken captive by Team Rocket, and they use Pikachu's lightning, Torchic's fire and Mudkip's water to blow the lock off the cage...........which is entirely unnecessary seeing as how the only lock on that cage is an easily accessible lever that one of them would just need to push.....but why do that when you can make explosions while trying to perform a covert operation?

The Pokemon hide as Meowth and the others investigate the noise. They discover the missing Whismur and Meowth commands the others to find them. In the process, they knock Meowth over, causing him to drop his magic baton thing, sending it flying to the barrel that Treecko is hiding in and suddenly activates.

It plays music and all of the Pokemon dance uncontrollably...wait....so...that stick really is only good for making Pokemon dance? What a dumb invention. I would take back my earlier comment, but if it can control these Pokemon to a degree, surely it can be reprogrammed to control them in other ways. But whatever, it will likely see the fate of the dark balls in 'just forget it exists-land.'

I do love that Treecko's doing everything in his power to not dance. I forgot how much I love that little guy.

During the dance, a Loudred that has been sleeping outside shows up to do some disco moves. Well thank god. Now someone do the macarena.



Treecko, in his efforts to avoid dancing, falls over causing the baton to shut off.

Everyone stops dancing and Meowth notices Pikachu and the others. They attack, but Pikachu and the others knock them all down with the barrels. And when that's over they play a version of



Not even kidding.

A chase ensues and the Team Rocket gang chases the Pika gang to the balcony. Pikachu tries to Thunderbolt them but Wobbuffet Reflects it back, nearly knocking Mudkip off the tower. Treecko uses the baton to try and save Mudkip and in the process, it accidentally activates the stick, making everyone dance.

Mudkip is saved and joins the dancing. Their dancing, however, is causing the balcony to collapse and even makes the horrible CGI tower do a terribly animated fall into the river below. Well, at least we're destroying most of this eye abusive CGI....



They're about to dance off of the balcony and suddenly switch to a tango, making them walk onto a more sturdy part of the building while the barfy CGI balcony also breaks and falls.

They deactivate the stick again and start the chase back up.

They run into the party room and destroy it with the final blow being Cacnea using Pin Missile all over the room, resulting in him destroying three pinata/party balls which revealed three banners with poorly drawn pictures of Giovanni on them.....okay you got me, that was funny.

So they're destroying the base when Giovanni's supposed to show up for a party eh? I smell sitcom-level shenanigans!

Meowth gets up and accidentally hits the baton again. He additionally hits a button which changes it to hula mode, causing everyone to hula while covered in flowers.

It's deactivated again rather quickly since one of the pinata/party balls falls on Meowth. They run off again, and I'm gonna mention at this point that whenever they end these dance sequences....they focus on the Loudred for a bit....Just long enough to be awkward because much of the time he's just staring with his giant mouth agape or he's quietly saying his name. It's unsettling sometimes.

Anyway, you can see where this is going. They get chased, Meowth gets flung in the air, the baton falls on Wobbuffet's head and they start dancing again.

The baton gets flung up again and gets stuck in some sand, for some reason causing it to short out. They make three quick cuts to Treecko, who's been doing his damnedest to not dance this entire time, and I guess since the stick shorted out, he can't take it anymore and goes dance crazy.

They keep dancing and dancing and dancing....I actually think they repeat animation shots a few times with the excuse that it goes with the music, roughly. They also speed up a shot.

They have to keep switching from speeding up to slowing down and we crescendo as the baton explodes.

Everyone stops dancing, but now Loudred is going nuts and attacking the Pokemon with a pipe. He corners them in a room, Seviper tries to attack, but is interrupted by Loudred's pipe which breaks an important column in the base. The base rumbles and seems like it's going to fall, but doesn't. However, Lotad, a Pokemon I don't remember being quite this irritating, sneezes causing the whole place to come crumbling down.

Well, they're dead.









Nah, of course they're not. They're just riding such a terrible looking CGI wooden platform that my sides hurt from laughing at it.





Seriously, this is some crappy CGI and it's just horribly integrated with the traditional animation. The guys at OLM just keep getting worse and worse at this. Please, either go back to training or save my eyes and stop using CGI where it's not necessary.

Their platform breaks in two sending Pikachu and the others flying one way and Meowth and the others in another. Pikachu and friends are about to crash into a cliffside when Lotad decides not to be annoying for a change and Water Guns them away from it, allowing them to land safely.

Meowth and the others end up back in the now destroyed base and as it crumbles even further, we get another



It wasn't funny the first time, stop it.

The end!....Hey wait, what about Giovanni? That was a great set up for more sad trombone-y goodness.

Granted, I can't imagine Giovanni would've bothered humoring these idiots anyway.

Also, that Loudred seriously wasn't related to those Whismur? Why was it there then?

Like I said, the end, with those cute little fan art drawings of Pokemon. They also have Pikachu doing his impressions of the featured Pokemon, which I admittedly think is really funny. Then we have the Pokemon just doing random things.

An after-credits scene? Ooh maybe they'll tie in Pokemon to the Marvel movie universe!

Nah it's just them bidding farewell to the Whismur....something they could've done before the end credits, but whatever.

====================================

Bottomline: Well that was....something. What a random short. Pikachu and the others save some Whismur from Team Rocket and we get what is essentially a 20 minute long chase scene with really long dance sequences intertwined and then they destroy the place and fly away. That's it.

The art and animation, like always, get a bump up in this short. Except for the AWFUL TERRIBLE EW CGI.

The music, shockingly, is pretty poor for an episode centered around dancing. The main song is completely forgettable and definitely not up to the catchy ear worm standards of 4Kids. I would dance to a lot of 4Kids songs and this is one I wouldn't tap a toe to.

While I will admit that the short had its entertaining moments such as Pikachu's impressions, Treecko's desire to avoid dancing as much as possible and some of the dances, there's a lot wrong with it. There's so much padding. It's almost like this short is nothing but padding. The chase is padding and the dancing, while being the focal part of the short, is basically just padding. It's pointless dancing for the sake of 'oh how funny; Pokemon dancing!' It is entertaining a few times, and it made me smile once or twice, but it really gets old.

The sequences with Loudred were also pointless. They were causing enough destruction as it was, he didn't need to be here. And those times when they lingered on him after a dance were just awkward.

Some of the 'jokes' like Lotad's sneeze have poor timing, and I am forever perplexed as to how and why Meowth had a magic 'force Pokemon to dance' stick.

It's probably the funniest short since the first one, but it's too long for this non-existent story, very repetitive and, to be honest, poorly directed.

Well, we end the movie shorts on a mediocre note, but there's still more shorts to cover! I just have to pick them out by my own discretion now. What will come for movie 07?! Find out when it happens!

Recommended Audience: You need to ask? E for everyone!

Final notes:

…......WHAT WAS UP WITH THE DICE!? WHAT DID DICE HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? I DON'T GET IT!.......DICE!

[DarkToph]

Pokemon EXTRAVAGANZA! Movie 06: Jirachi – Wishmaker Review



Rating: 7.5/10

Plot: Every 1000 years, the Millennium Comet is visible from earth for seven days. Ash, May, Brock and Max visit a festival meant to celebrate the Millennium Comet. While enjoying a magic show, they meet the Great Butler and his assistant Diane who give Max a crystal that contains the wish-granting legendary Pokemon, Jirachi, as he's the one Jirachi has chosen to befriend in order to emerge from his slumber. They become fast friends, but it soon becomes apparent that Butler had malicious motives for giving Jirachi to Max. He wants to use Jirachi's power and the comet to power a machine to clone a Groudon as revenge against Team Magma, the organization he used to work for.

=======================================

I uhhh don't really know if there's anything I can say here. Like I said in my Gotta Dance review, I only caught this movie on TV once or twice. I really wasn't keen on getting into it for a few reasons;

1) Was still bitter about Misty leaving.

2) This movie's main character is Max. Ugh.

3) Despite liking him, I wasn't the biggest fan of Jirachi.

I still watched it when it aired on Cartoon Network and I don't remember entirely all that happens. I was either watching something else while watching that movie the first time or I just wasn't paying good attention.

The poster is really good yet again. I sorta wonder why only the starters and Pikachu are on it, but no biggie. Looks fantastic otherwise.

I'm actually a bit nervous for this review because Bulbagarden's comparison (found here (http://dogasu.bulbagarden.net/comparisons/movies/mov_ag01.html)) says that the movie script is so drastically changed that it's on par with fifth movie's alterations. At least they didn't say first movie changes, but still. Hm.

Let's get on with the show then, shall we?

=====================================

Since Misty is now gone, we need to make a new 'World of Pokemon' opener, but this one's a bit different....and awesome.

This 'World of Pokemon' opener moreso focuses on the legendaries and the Pokemon lore as a whole. The thing that's really cool about it, though, is the fact that they showcase each of the Legendaries that have been spotlighted in all of the previous movies and in the TV show. They even show Ho-Oh first because technically that was the first ever legendary to appear in the show.

They show Ho-oh, Mewtwo who is strangely wearing a huge scarf, Lugia, Entei, Celebi, Latias and Latios (though it must be a different Latios) and Kyogre....who must've appeared in the show before this I guess. Each of their shots are just so cool, too. Entei's and Lugia's in particular look amazing.

Cut to a Pokemon battle in a stadium and holy crap, those are different Pokeballs!



Man, it's so rare to see different Pokeballs in this show. What's that black one? It's kickass!.....Wow, I think this is the most excited I've gotten during any of these movie reviews and I'm only at the World of Pokemon opener. Hopefully this is a good omen.

Oh my god, the person throwing them is Ruby!



I'm so unreasonably happy right now!

The narrator continues on saying that Pokemon are sometimes used in battles alongside Pokemon trainers, and Pokemon and humans live together in peace and harmony. However, there are some evil people who want to use the strongest Pokemon for their own malicious means, such as Team Magma's pursuit of Groudon.

Cut to a cave where two people find a big crystal that supposedly holds the key to granting their strongest desire.

Now we're with Ash and friends, further explaining their stories. Well, Ash's dream of being a Pokemon master anyway. The narrator doesn't even bless the others with names just 'friends with hopes and dreams of their own.'

Also, you think I'm joking when I call him Messiahchu!?



Since when is Pikachu so fast that he doesn't break surface tension? I don't even think he's using Agility!

The narration keeps going with basically saying dreams are great, but be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. Sure didn't see that moral coming.

We get our title screen and.....really good CGI?.....What the hell were the good CGI guys doing when Gotta Dance was being made?

Ash and the others are walking around in the middle of the night looking for some festival that is meant to celebrate the Millennium Comet, a huge event since the comet only appears for seven nights once every 1000 years.

They reach the place where the festival is supposed to be, but find it to be a completely empty field. They take a break to eat and soon after fall asleep until they're awoken by the festival workers setting up.

The credits are playing over this.....

But....but.....but what about the theme song? They started not including the theme songs in the movies? That's like a sin or something isn't it? Outside of the awesome World of Pokemon opener, it makes the opening really lackluster.

Wow, even the CGI trucks look really good; seriously where the hell were you animators in the short?

We see our main CotM (Characters of the Movie) and antagonists, basically, Butler the magician and his assistant, Diane, using cute tricks with balloons to make crates and tents suddenly appear and assemble. The place ends up looking good, but I don't think that assembly montage was 'opener-worthy.'

Cut to the daytime where Ash, May, Max and Brock are having fun at the festival and we see Team Rocket throwing fliers for the Great Butler's magic show. Way to litter, guys. I really never understood why people thought that was a good way to advertise. Yes, it's exposure but it's also really annoying.

Ash and the others find one on the ground and decide to go to his show.

Now the Bulbagarden comparison does make a note about this poster. There's Japanese text at the bottom of the title that is basically the exact Japanese translation of the English words, The Great Butler's Magic Show. In the dub, they erase this text, which isn't anything new by far. This is 4Kids. However, it is a new thing for the movies, because, outside of titles and credits, the text has been left alone in the movies.

They explain how this paint edit in particular is dumb because they left half the Japanese theme song to this movie completely untranslated, which is very much a rarity for them. They also have the full Japanese song and the Japanese title card available on the DVD, so it's yet another 'missing the forest for the trees' moment for 4Kids. Maybe they're just so used to removing this stuff that they did it on instinct.

What I'm more focused on is the sloppiness of this edit. If there's one thing I can always (backhandedly) compliment 4Kids for is that, when it comes to the editing involved in their changes, they're pretty good about whitewashing nearly every trace of the fact that they changed it. While their text replacements leave much to be desired most of the time, they're pretty good when it comes to removals. They're so good that there have been numerous times when I've tried to catch a screencap of the painted shot and it just goes by so quickly that it's either incredibly difficult or close to impossible to get it.

What they do may be stupid, but they did get pretty damn good at it; usually anyway. Nelvana and DiC also do similar edits sometimes and they suck at it for the most part. I remember those edits that Cartoon Network would make on Yu Yu Hakusho to censor blood and middle fingers and they were HORRIBLE at it. Colors never matched, the paint would shake very distractingly and it just looked awful. I can think of several instances where their paint and editing is off, but 4Kids was basically the best in the business at what they did. I've probably missed minute details that they've edited away in my SDCs simply because I don't have hawk eyes or the patience to go through episodes frame by frame.

The shots of Team Rocket throwing the fliers is perfect. You can't tell a damn thing was changed. Then when they show a close up shot of one of the fliers on the ground, there's one frame that they neglected to change.

What's worse is that, in addition to erasing the text, they seem to have moved the shot a bit, making the screen jump when it cuts to that shot.

This is the frame they neglected to paint:


This is the frame post-paint:


Granted, their 'after' shot is a little better because they made the G visible, but that's still no excuse. This is such sloppy editing from 4Kids that I'd actually say I'm disappointed in them. They rarely ever miss frames, and editing mistakes that make the screen jump are a once-in-a-blue-moon deal with them.

The reason I brought up Team Rocket throwing the painted fliers is the fact that those are numerous, much smaller posters being thrown through the air. Meaning you have way more things to paint that are constantly moving and changing angles. That's a very hard and time consuming paint edit that they did perfectly.

This is a mostly static shot, up close. There's no reason for this. For shame 4Kids' editing staff. For shame.

….Last thing about this poster, I promise.....shouldn't it be 'Welcome to THE Great Butler's Magic Show?'

Cut to the magic show where magic happens. Butler is wowing the audience with his magic and he makes Diane and the stone they found earlier in the cave appear in a puff of fire and smoke. The stone is CGI and on its own looks fantastic. Diane is traditionally animated. So yeah, it still looks wonky when they try to meld the two in one shot and make the CGI move with the regular animation. It just doesn't look right.

Max starts hearing a voice emanating from the stone talking about wishes and the comet, so he rushes the stage like a crazy person. Ash soon joins him to bring him back to his seat, but Butler and Diane decide to use them as volunteers in their act instead.

I'm gonna stop right there and explain why I don't like the fact that Max is technically the protagonist of this movie.

I don't much care for Max as a character. I find him to be a little annoying know-it-all. He does love Pokemon, yes, and he definitely has a passion for training. But the fact of the matter is that he's annoying to me because of his attitude and the vibe he gives off. Even his voice irks me.

There's also little point in him being there. On the episodes that do follow him, they mostly just focus on the bare basics in terms of the spirit and technical aspects of Pokemon training, which makes sense considering Max is too young to be a trainer, but it's boring to watch unless you're just that new to the franchise.

If it is to help welcome in newbies who may be getting in on the new generation....Hi, we have May for that don't we? Isn't she supposed to fill the newbie role? I know she becomes a coordinator later, but my point still stands. Plus, he seems to be pretty booksmart in regards to Pokemon, so it's a little contradictory.

Other than that, his episodes mostly center around his childishness, which also makes sense because child, but that doesn't make it any better to watch.

Speaking of not being a trainer....Max isn't a trainer. Thus what he does is basically nothing in episodes that don't center around him. He basically takes a seat as yet another Ash Companion who is there to be there and not much else.

I guess I understand why Max is the main character in this movie, because it's cuter to have a younger kid being best friends with a cute Pokemon over the older kids. Plus the other kids have Pokemon they treasure and Max doesn't get to actually 'have' a Pokemon often. Still, couldn't they have just as easily used a new CotM? They did it in movie 04. Max will be gone from the franchise entirely in....what two or three years? And I will say it makes me stew a bit that who I consider to be the second most useless Ash companion (three guesses who the first is) gets a movie basically to himself but Brock and Misty never did and this really never happens again as Ash or a CotM takes over in practically every other movie.

I won't say Max doesn't grow over time. He does mature and gets slightly less annoying to my recollection. However, we will never see the fruits of this labor. The last we see of Max is him back at his dad's gym still working on becoming a trainer some day and I will bet everything I own that we will never see that day. He's barely made a cameo since his departure and in order to actually see him as a legit trainer, we'd need to hop ahead three years to make him ten, and Pokemon just doesn't age people. They may change their character designs a bit, but no aging. Worse yet is the horrible idea of making Ash 13! *gasp*

So, yeah, I don't remember him being quite a big annoyance in this movie, but I'm still not looking forward to an hour and a half of Max spotlight.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Ash and Max are set to perform the trick of 'the burning box' which requires them to escape from a box before it bursts into flames. May bitches about not being in the show and Brock does the same because he wants some of Diane's booty.

They start the trick and decide to make it more interesting by, instead of using flames, using a Dusclops' Hyper Beam as the thing that will destroy the box.

Meowth: “They're stuck in a dark place with impending doom and no way out. That sounds like my life.”

Wow, that's...kind of dark, 4Kids.

The Hyper Beam goes off and the bottom of the box falls out at the last second, sending Max and Ash under the stage. The Hyper Beam looks weird in this movie; it charges blue and then looks like fire when shot instead of the yellow beam we know and love.

They continue to ride under the auditorium and pop up back in the audience.



As they take the applause, Team Rocket ditches their clown outfits and nabs Pikachu as well as Butler and Diane's Mightyena and Kirlia.

Butler defeats them with Dusclops, Pikachu lends a hand and Dusclops sends them blasting off.

Once the show concludes, Butler tells them that the rock is supposedly housing the sleeping wish-granting legendary Pokemon Jirachi. He only awakens once every 1000 years and in order to awaken he needs two things; 1) The Millennium Comet needs to be visible and 2) He needs to find a friend.

We'll be right back with Care Bears: Wish-Maker in a moment, but man that is some crazy coinky-dink. Jirachi can only be awoken when the Millennium comet comes around, which it only does once per 1000 years. How convenient that they happened to find it right as the comet's set to come in that very night.

They realize that Max is the one Jirachi has chosen to be its friend, and additionally his 'wish-maker' if what Jirachi said earlier is any indication....No criteria needed, it probably could've talked to anyone or everyone in the audience, but there ya go. So Butler hands the rock over to Max since he has the best chance of awakening Jirachi.

Later that night, Ash and the others enjoy the festival some more. May decides to buy a wishing star, which looks kinda like a dreamcatcher. The cashier says that the wishing star is a neat little contraption with which you use in conjunction with the seven days of the comet. On each day of the comet, you fold down one of the points and make a wish. When the final day is done, your wish will come true.

They watch the fireworks and of course there's a Pikachu one and of course it's the biggest one.

They also show a Psyduck, Treecko, Lotad, Torchic, Beautifly and Mudkip.....wow, that was just a big collection of random Pokemon Ash and his friends have owned. Huh.

Can I take the time out to step back and show how crazy Max seems right now? He's hearing voices only he can hear and he's carrying around a rock, cuddling it and treating it like it's alive. I, you and the Ash gang know or believe there's a Pokemon in there....but no one else does! I'm surprised more people aren't staring at the kid giving hugs to the giant purple rock. And I can't be the only one who thinks it'd be funny if it ended up to be just Butler yanking the kid's chain or Ash and the others humoring him until the guys in white show up to take Max away.

How is Max dealing with lugging that rock around this whole time, anyway? It's really quite big to be carrying around like a teddy bear.

They see the Millennium Comet, May makes her wish and Max falls asleep. May pats his head and Max mutters for his mommy. Aw. That is kinda cute......Though I am concerned that now it's perfectly fine for children at the age of seven to be traveling around the world with a bunch of other kids.



May starts I suppose I'll call it humming even though she's moreso going 'doodododdodododo' and another note Bulbagarden made was that they left in May/Haruka's original Japanese voice for this song......which I find baffling. Is Veronica Taylor really that bad at singing that she can't pull off a 'doodododododdooododo' song in her female voice? I'm not really complaining, I'm just curious.

May explains that the song is a lullaby their mother would 'sing' to them and as she 'sings', the rock glows and we cut to the woods where a green light is flowing through everything. It looks exactly like Celebi's time travel effects actually. An Absol views this and runs towards the rock I presume.

Jirachi emerges and I will say that Jirachi is very cute.....Not as cute as Mew, maybe on par with Celebi. And that they selected an equally cute voice for the little guy.

Diane arrives somehow knowing what happened and tells the kids they can sleep in their bus for the night. Remember kids, if a carny you barely know says you can sleep in their bus, it's A-Okay!

Diane then runs off to tell Butler who happily receives the news, revealing that he has big plans for the little star—Evil plans! Muahahahaha!! He doesn't have the voice to pull this off but MUAHAHAHAHAH!

Back with the kids, Max wants to test out Jirachi's wish-granting powers. So, being a kid, he wishes for a bunch of candy.

Jirachi's tags glow and he floats up in the air, but nothing happens.

Max: “There's no such thing as someone being able to grant wishes! I knew it!”

See, this is the kind of crap that makes me dislike this kid. Also, when the hell did you ever say that? You've been believing each and every thing about this situation since the instant you heard Jirachi's voice. If you didn't, you wouldn't have snuggled with a rock for the past six hours. Little brat.

Jirachi's wish-granting abilities start working and candy starts popping up all over the bus. I don't know when crackers and cheese became candy.....but I like cheese, so I'll allow this.

However, it seems that Jirachi works on the laws of equivalent exchange because we then cut to the vendors at the festival having their candy and foodstuffs disappearing.

Once Max's wish has been granted, the others fight over who gets the next wish, even going so far as to play tug-of-war with poor Jirachi until they burst out the back door of the bus.

Diane and Butler arrive and explain that Jirachi grants wishes, but the hitch is, like I said, he really just teleports things that you wish for. He doesn't make them from thin air.....So....Jirachi's a kidnapping and theft machine. Kinda takes away from the mysticism of this legendary doesn't it? That also means there's a crapton of wishes you simply can't make because of this fine print. This is the least impressive legendary ever.

I mean, at least they're giving rules and restrictions to how this magic works, which is more than I can say for a lot of magic things in kid shows....but when something is a wish-granting machine, you kinda just accept that it grants wishes. The fact that it just steals things makes him a really....lame legendary.

May flips her lid after discovering what Jirachi did and demands him to 'get rid of the problem' which prompts Jirachi to transport May into the pile of candy. I uh....don't get it? I mean, May's the problem? Because she's yelling? Or did Max find her to be the problem at the moment and Jirachi was only obeying him? I dunno. Also, how does putting her mere feet away into the candy pile 'solve the problem'?

Jirachi, exhausted from 'granting wishes' goes to sleep, but Butler assures Max that he won't return to hibernation until the comet leaves at the end of the week. Meanwhile, the kids are doomed to bringing back the candy themselves.

The next morning, Max is watching Jirachi sleep......Which is kinda creepy, but since Pokemon are technically animals I suppose it's no different than watching a pet sleep.

Max and Jirachi go off to play while Ash and the others prepare for the show. Apparently, Ash and Brock are clowns now while May's a stagehand. I have no clue why, but I guess it'd be fun.



Jirachi starts causing trouble as it steals Max's glasses and coaxes him to chase him while Max is trying to help May keep a big lighting tower from falling over. The tower falls on May, causing a mess and she blames Jirachi, even if that was equal parts Jirachi and Max's fault. Max could've stayed and still helped. He doesn't need his glasses to push a tower up.

Max gets his glasses back and surprisingly isn't mad at Jirachi for nearly causing severe harm to his sister. The Absol from earlier appears and starts attacking Max with Butler noting that Absol only appears in front of humans when a great tragedy is about to occur.

May tries to stave off Absol with Torchic, but has no effect. Ash tries Pikachu and does a little more, but still doesn't faze Absol much. Jirachi says Absol is there for him and he uses his teleportation powers to teleport Pikachu and Torchic to the roof of the tent.

Despite the fact that Jirachi just said a second ago that Absol was there for him, Absol suddenly directs his attention to Ash and the others and charges toward them. However, Butler triggers a trap door in the stage that sends Absol to a cage and puts him to sleep using Kirlia's Hypnosis.

Jirachi then falls asleep again for some reason. He sleeps for 1000 years at a time. Does he really need to nod off after doing the littlest thing?

The second night is over, we can hear Jirachi snoring in his sleep through telepathy for some reason, and May heads out to use her wishing star again. When she's done, she spots Butler walking away from the bus where the kids are sleeping. He's kidnapped Jirachi and put him in the weird device things he has in his stage. Diane tells Butler that Absol is trying to bring Jirachi back to Forina where he originates and that they should let him go back to where he belongs, but Butler ignores her.



He activates the machine, which causes Jirachi pain, and claims that when Jirachi sees the comet with his 'true eye' his ultimate wish will come true.

He holds up a glass container with a fossil within it and we get a flashback. Butler actually used to work for Team Magma as a scientist. He was presenting the council of Team Magma with the fossil, which was from a Groudon, claiming that he would create an actual Groudon from it before their eyes. He fails, claiming he needs a better power source, and is fired from Team Magma as a result. He reclaimed his fossil and vowed that he would make a real Groudon no matter what.

The flashback ends and Butler prepares the machine. He forces Jirachi into opening his true eye with Dusclops' Psychic, and a beam of light bursts from the eye towards the comet only to return and crash into the stage.

Max and the others arrive and try to protect the wounded Jirachi. Diane pleads with Butler to stop. He claims he's doing it for her, she says she doesn't want this and then Butler shoves Diane out of the way to get Jirachi before Max escapes with him.

'I'm doing this for you, Diane! <333 Now get out da way, bitch, dey be takin' mah 'rachi.'

The gang escapes, and before Butler can pursue them Absol escapes from his cage, attacks them and runs off.

They continue to escape in Butler's bus and Mightyena somehow catches up and places a tracker on it.

Diane explains Butler's backstory again and we actually hear Butler's legit evil laugh which itself is laughable.

May: “Groudon?”

Brock: “Isn't that the legendary Pokemon rumored to incredible powers?”

No no, it's the one legendary Pokemon on planet earth that does not have incredible powers. Oh wait, no, that's Jirachi!



The only thing we really get from this that we may not have already known is that it's not Jirachi's power that Butler is using. He's merely used as a channel to take power from the comet and use its power instead. So yeah, Jirachi's one major talent really is to take things that don't belong to him. It's just disappointing.

So far we've had Mewtwo, who could do a gigantic list of things with his psychic powers from building a laboratory from scratch, perfecting the cloning process or making a WORLD ENDING STORM.

Moltres, Articuno and Zapdos who basically control the entire ecosystem of the world; plus Lugia who keeps them in line.

Unown who create their own legit realities from scratch.

Celebi who can heal wounds and travel through time as well as psychically make gigantic grass monsters.

Latias and Latios who have neat sight sharing abilities and the ability to transform or become invisible.

Then we have Jirachi; the thief. He's supposed to be a wish-granting Pokemon; that's not outside of the realm of believability for this show. Why is he so seemingly blasé compared to the other legends?

The group decides to head to Forina to bring Jirachi back home.....which is...understandable but a dumb plan. Even if Butler didn't put the tracker on them, do they really think Forina is the place to go? That's where Butler found him, Absol's been trying to bring him back and Diane suggested that they should bring him back earlier. Do they really think he's pounding his head going 'where could they possibly have gone!?'

It's night three, May makes her wish, Jirachi telepathically snores and May and Diane have a chit-chat. She explains that she's known Butler since they were kids, and she always knew they'd be together. We get a pretty nicely done flashback with everything in warm colors and the kid versions of Diane and Butler in silhouette, which I find to be pretty cool. Butler's practicing magic on her and after calling him great, he dons the name 'The Great Butler', which is good for his magician career and if he ever decides to become a butler.



The flashback ends, and Diane laments how much Butler has changed since the good ol' days. She can only hope that he'll return to normal once the comet leaves.

The next day, their journey continues. I want to point out that there's a shot during the 'next day' montage where they get stuck in the mud and even Jirachi is helping push the bus out but Pikachu's just chillin' behind them. Messiahchu is above this menial labor!

Night four and day five go by with May and Max seeming increasingly worried and down.

As we reach night five, May makes her wish and points out that there's only two more nights left, which upsets Max and makes him run off.

Ash joins him and explains that, while Jirachi may go away, they'll always be friends forever, because true friendship lasts no matter if you see them or not. He gives an example by saying he had to say goodbye to a friend and he misses her everyday while making some awkward facial expressions, but he says he knows they remain friends and will always be such. Ladies and gentlemen, the last known AAML poke. I believe anyway.

Too bad this is a dub-exclusive line. Funny how, even after she's gone, 4Kids still wants to keep the spirit alive. I miss her too, man. *sniff* I miss her too.

Day six and the gang arrive at Forina. Ah, it's beautiful. The landscape is crisp. The Altaria are singing. The Tropius are eating the slightly better modeled CGI fruit from the slightly better animated CGI branches. Truly a paradise.

Night six, May makes her wish, Max goes to bed and May hums her lullaby again.

Day seven; judgment day—Er I mean, the last day with Jirachi. The gang is lead by Absol into the cave where Jirachi usually sleeps. Once night falls, he is beckoned towards the comet, but Max pleads for him to grant his wish of staying by his side. However, Jirachi can't escape the comet's call and floats up to open his true eye in preparation for the absorption of the comet's energy and his 1000 year hibernation.

Diane explains that Jirachi collects this energy not only for itself but also for the sake of the land around it. While he sleeps, the land of Forina feeds off the energy to grow and thrive.

As Jirachi is about to collect the energy, mechanisms appear from the cave walls and trap Jirachi in a ball of light. It's Butler, if that wasn't obvious, and after one of the most overused jokes in villain history and trapping the gang in a purple lightning cage, he starts his preparations to gather the energy himself.

The process starts, and Pikachu tries to break through the cage to no avail. Hey Ash, aren't you gonna run head first into it, thinking you're the Hulk or something?

*doesn't*

….Wha....eh....Why are you being smart and mature in this movie!? I demand you cease this nonsense at once!

Absol and a Flygon from Forina come to destroy the mechanisms creating the cage, and Flygon gives Ash and Max a ride to Butler's giant platform thinger.

Butler's revival of Groudon is going smoothly, but Ash and Max arrive to save the day. Butler reveals that he has a friggin' Salamence and commences aerial battle with them......Awesome! I haven't seen an aerial battle since Movie 03.

Ash sends Max and Pikachu off to stop the machine and save Jirachi while he distracts Butler in the air. Now you're being logical? Who are you!?

They do so, the process stops and the gang manages to escape Butler's evil clutches and even Jirachi's perfectly fine now. May and Max even have a little moment. Awww.

Despite the process being interrupted, a Groudon is emerging from where the energy was being displaced. And it looks AWESOME.

Seriously, I love Groudon's design anyway, but this 'shadow' Groudon or 'clone' Groudon whatever looks fantastic. It looks like it's actually made of legit lava with green (and later blue) neon shining through it. It's especially great right before it's fully formed. I kinda wish they have kept it more black to be honest, but this is good too.



Butler's initially ecstatic for the creation of the Groudon but when he realizes that he used his crest of courage for selfish means and caused a dark digivolution of him, he is shocked and appalled.

They realize that, in a polar opposite manner of Jirachi who feeds the land with energy from the comet, the clone Groudon is actually sucking up energy from the land, causing the plants to die.

Absol tries to attack the Groudon in vain, and Groudon fires back, and holy crap it looks even better when it's attacking! I love this thing!

Anyway, Groudon's not only attacking Absol, he absorbs him into his body. The spikes on his back start to grow and change into neat little blue gooey tendrils to absorb all the other Pokemon of Forina.

Butler lands near the group and Diane asks if there's anything he can do to stop Groudon, but he is without ideas.

Team Rocket gets absorbed next...Oh yeah, Team Rocket. I forgot to mention them. Yeah, they've been popping up now and then for the past half hour to just make a quick comment and then go away.

Butler stares in horror at his creation and is about to be absorbed when Diane jumps in to save him and gets absorbed instead.

May and Brock get absorbed next and just as Max and Ash are about to get absorbed, Jirachi teleports them away.

Butler, changed in his ways in the wake of Groudon's destruction, helps out the boys and warns them that the Groudon is after Jirachi's energy. Butler and his Salamence do everything in their power to keep the tendrils away from the boys, but one gets through the defenses and tries to grab the boys only to be stopped by Flygon.

They hop on Flygon and try to get away underground, but the tendrils continue to follow. As they inch closer and closer, Jirachi teleports them yet again. They meet back up with Butler in the air and he tells the boys that he has an idea. They can drain the energy from Groudon if they can get Jirachi back on his machine and reverse the polarity. Ah yet another problem solved by reversing the polarity. Job well done, science!

Ash initially doesn't trust Butler, but after seeing his grief at losing Diane, he seems to start changing his tune. Butler's Salamence is grabbed by Groudon and Butler falls, but is saved by Jirachi by teleporting Salamence below him.

Which just leads to me question....Jirachi's one major power is teleporting anything he wants right? Then why doesn't he teleport everyone who is inside Groudon back to where they belong?

Also, why isn't Jirachi getting exhausted? A couple days ago he was going comatose from teleporting one or two things. It's been teleporting things all over the place tonight and he still seems fine, even in spite of being drained by Butler's machine.

Jirachi says that Butler can't be all bad because he loves Diane and that further encourages Ash and Max to go through with the plan. I feel like this past page has been kinda redundant.

Butler wants the boys to distract Groudon since he's intent on catching Jirachi while he tries to get the machine running.

The plan commences, but Butler accidentally drops the Groudon fossil from the platform only to be caught in a pretty cool shot by Ash as they fly on Flygon.

Apparently flipping the fossil's container around reverses the polarity...Uh...kay, and they place Jirachi back on the machine. The only thing left to do is to flip the final switch, but as Butler's about to do so, the platform starts to fall some more, causing him to slip off.

As Butler hangs on by a thread and Flygon and Salamence are absorbed, Ash channels his inner movie protagonist and pulls the switch. Jirachi starts draining the power from Groudon and putting it back into the land, but Groudon tries to stop his efforts by trying to absorb Jirachi with his tendrils. Butler stands in his way and gets absorbed.

Jirachi's efforts are successful and we get another really cool shot of Jirachi making another pseudo-comet, the light explodes in midair and creates a star shower as the Pokemon and everyone else reappear safe and sound.



Jirachi floats back down to Max's arms and thanks Max for making his wishes come true. Giving him a friend. Awwwwwwwwwwww.

Jirachi asks for one more wish to be granted by Max; he wants Max to sing him the lullaby before he goes off to sleep once more.

Max and everyone else agrees to grant Jirachi his wish. They start sing—Hahahahahaha....ahahaha....hahahahaha....oooohhh....Oh Brock my boy....Please stop. You're killin' me. Oh God.

Brock sounds awful when he's doing this song. He sounds unbelievably bored, like he just got done filing his taxes. And I know for a fact that Eric Stuart can sing. He's got a couple of songs on 4Kids' soundtracks that are actually good....AND HE'S A LEGIT SINGER. He's the lead singer of his own band. Man, maybe slow soft songs just aren't his thing.

For the record, Veronica Taylor is doing the 'singing' voice of Ash. I guess her voice isn't good enough to sing as a girl but okay to sing as a guy.

And I know this scene is supposed to be really sad and sweet, and for the most part it is, but the fact that this song is literally just 'Dododooododododdodoooododdodooo' makes it seem a little bit on the silly side. Was it really too difficult to give this song lyrics?

Jirachi thanks them all and goes back into hibernation. He reverts to his crystal form and merges back into the earth, causing it to glow.

Max bids farewell to Jirachi and says he'll always be in his heart. Great, now you have to pay Phil Collins' royalties. Way to go, Max.

After a weird scene with Team Rocket, we cut to the next day where we learn that Butler and Diane are going to stay in Forina because as long as they're together nothing else matters. Uh, you guys don't want to be magicians anymore? That thing you've been your whole lives? What do you intend on doing in Forina? Eh, whatever you guys want I suppose.

May congratulates Diane in getting her wish and then freaks out because she forgot to make her final wish on her wishing star. She says it doesn't matter because everyone has to make their own dreams come true (Shh, don't tell Disney). They're about to get a ride back to town with Butler and Diane when Max hears Jirachi's voice yet again telling him they'll be friends forever.



Jirachi! It is way past your bedtime, mister! You go to sleep right now or I won't make you pancakes for breakfast in 3015!

Is that a picture of an ouroboros, btw?

Max smiles and returns to the bus as our movie ends.

The end credits start and the song is pretty nice.....hey....wait, this sounds familiar....Do...dodoooodododo—It's the lullaby! It has lyrics!? Then why not sing the song in the movie!? Aw, forget it.

Now....I'm unsure about posting this since it might just be my copy, but since I distinctly remember this also happening when I watched it on TV, I'm going to say I'm not the only one who has experienced this.

During the end credits, May gets hungry, collapses to the ground and complains. A truck drives up and as we see the surprised faces of the group, the shot jars REALLY drastically to the left after about one or two frames. The exact same thing happens in the next shot of the truck driving down the road. The shots are perfectly fine in the original version.

Visuals:

First few frames (Group shot):



Rest of Shot (Group shot):



First frames (Truck shot):



Rest of shot (Truck Shot):



I have only one theory as to why this might be. See, there's one thing that Dogasu commonly brings up in the movie comparisons: the fact that all of the movies never get widescreen releases despite the source being released in widescreen.

This has caused several issues across the movies, most notably in movie 01 and 02 where people would be cropped out of shots or shots would jarringly shift to get another character who starts talking into frame.

This is the shot in the original Japanese version:



See how everyone's in the shot and how, at best, only May, Max and Ash make it fully into the shot in the dub? I think this was a SERIOUSLY SLOPPY effort to get everyone's reactions into frame. When the shot returns to the truck, the focus must've still been kept to the left for a frame or two and then they corrected it to be centered, making it jar there.

I don't really get why this was needed to be attempted anyway. So Brock's not in the shot. Who cares? I'd rather have Brock cropped out of a completely pointless end credits scene than have the footage jar all over the place like it was edited by Edward Scissorhands on crystal meth. This isn't like in the first movie where they basically had to move the shot suddenly to get Brock into frame because he had a line and needed to be on-screen after someone on the other side of the screen said their line. There is no point here.

Now that I think about it, the earlier cut that jarred the screen also fixed the positioning, so I'm guessing the standard format cut off parts of the poster (IE, the G I mentioned), forcing them to move the shot when it got to the close up. So it likely wasn't because of particularly sloppy editing due to painting off the Japanese text and moreso really sloppy editing due to cropping that occurred between versions.

The rest of the scenes are the group stargazing and pointing out Pokemon-based constellations and yup, the rest of this song is indeed in Japanese. I have to say, Bra-freakin-vo on whoever chose the woman to sing the English version of the ending song because she sounds almost exactly like the original singer.

We also get some shots of the group walking, a nice cameo by a good chunk of the group's Pokemon at the beach, them enjoying some of the same fireworks from earlier (the exact same ones) and finally them staring off into the sunset at the movie ends.

================================

Bottomline: You probably already got this, but....I kinda loved this movie. Surprisingly, to be honest, because I just didn't remember giving this movie much credit back when I first watched it, but now that I've sat down and watched it again, this is probably the second best Pokemon movie so far.

Practically everything about it works very well. The relationship between Max and Jirachi is genuine, and their departure was saddening and well handled. The May and Max moments were pretty heartwarming. Ash was actually pretty cool to watch for a change. Butler was a legit villain with a backstory, a non-stupid, but admittedly cliché, motivation and something to humanize him. Granted, his voice does not work, but what can you do? Max wasn't that annoying here. He was actually pretty sweet most of the time. He has his moments here and there, but they can be overlooked.

Team Rocket's part was basically pointless from start to finish, but since they didn't affect anything and barely had any screentime I can't complain too much. Speaking of which, outside of hitting on girls, Brock was also totally non-existent here again.

The clone Groudon was AWESOME......But he is one of the bigger problems in the movie mostly because they never explain in the least how this thing was made. Why was the cloning process corrupted into making this shadow Groudon? Was it just because not enough energy was fed into it or are we really going with my dark digivolution theory of using power for selfish means creates evil?

I may rag on Jirachi being a pretty lame legendary (mostly because practically every Psychic type can teleport things and him being a non-wish-granting wish-granting Pokemon is just really disappointing. The fact that he can channel energy from the Millennium Comet is really the only thing he has going for him.) but I will admit, he can be pretty damn cool when the situation calls for it. That finale was simply fantastic.

Story-wise, you can easily compare this with movie 04. That movie tried to combine action with soft and genuine moments of friendship, growth and reflection but the fourth movie pretty much failed. The conflict with Sam being 'stuck' in the present was a non-plot point as Celebi could've sent him back whenever he wanted. The conflict of Jirachi's impending 1000 year hibernation was very real and completely unavoidable.

The Sam and Ash friendship was pretty nice and genuine, but I think it was a bit too hammy. I think they overplayed the connection between the two, almost to the point where they seemed to have romantic connections with each other. In terms of him crying over him leaving as well as everyone else doing so was also over the top for someone who A) Isn't dying and B) could easily be seen again in their time if they thought to research who it was in the present.

The connection between Sam and Celebi is okay, but they didn't focus on it enough. Like I said, it felt like Ash kept taking the spotlight away from what seemed to be their story and slowly it started to be more like Ash was meant to have the connection with Celebi and not Sam.

The relationship between Max and Jirachi is a bit forced at first, downright creepy when Jirachi is a rock, but the way I see it is that Max views Jirachi as kinda his first Pokemon. As a non-trainer, but an aspiring one, he has no Pokemon of his own to care for, yet he really loves Pokemon. So it's not that far out there that he'd be that excited to have Jirachi choose him as his friend.

Additionally, the small bits with May and Max were well done as they have a very realistic relationship here. They fight, they make pokes at each other, but in the end they still love each other and aren't afraid to show it when the situation calls for it.

I didn't quite understand why May kept getting so angry with Jirachi, though.

Ash's role in this movie was damn near perfect. He was the smartest and most mature I've ever seen him, even better than movie 03, and he never seemed to take the spotlight away from Max and Jirachi's story. He obviously got focus and in the end had his little hero moment, but they had just the right amount of focus on him and Pikachu.

Ash's role in movie 04 overstepped his bounds. There were so many times where I felt Ash was stepping on Sam and Celebi's toes and taking the story from them. Plus he was pretty annoying and dumb in that movie.

Butler is the first villain that I would actually say is good outside of Mewtwo. He's fleshed out, has a story, has a human connection and has a believable reason for turning to the side of good at the end. He wants Jirachi for a legit reason, he wants to create Groudon for a legit reason, and everything he does has a purpose. He was a scientist bent on revenge who created a monster in place of his dream. He realized his mistake, he paid for it, and he helped fix it. Even Diane was well-used as a character, though she's a bit too passive for my tastes.

The Iron Masked Marauder may have been the first villain in these movies who was a legit villain, again outside of Mewtwo, but he was really cliché. He has no backstory, he wasn't fleshed out outside of he works for Team Rocket and wants Celebi's powers to take over Team Rocket and rule the world. We never learn why he's specifically targeting Celebi nor why he's destroying the forest. He never changes, he never grows and even the reveal of who/what was behind the mask was lame because it was nothing.

Lawrence the Third was complete nothing outside of a collector and Annie and Oakley were just thieves who, like IMM, wanted Latios and Latias merely for power and to take over the world. Their growth and change was really just giving up on resisting their punishment in the end.

Movie 04's seemingly pointless and cliché, sometimes cheesy and laughably animated, action gets in the way of what could be a heartwarming story of a boy (ACTUALLY) trapped in another time. That's a pretty interesting story. You could also greatly build on his connection with Celebi through a lot of quiet and soft moments, but those were too few and far between amongst the insanity.

This movie had what I think is a pretty nice balance of quiet, genuine moments and action. Plus, the action had a point, didn't seem to be in the way and was completely awesome from start to finish.

This movie is basically everything 04 could've been but wasn't.

Art: The art, animation and CGI are the best I've seen them. The CGI is actually the best of the movies so far I believe edging out movie 03 merely because of the icky Unown. The CGI here does have its spots of poor quality, but they're quick and not very noticeable. I think a lot of this is helped by the fact that much of the CGI is done at night, making imperfections more masked.

Shame on the editors for this movie though. One screen-jarring edit is bad enough, but THREE? And yes, I also don't understand why the hell they went through so many years of releasing the movies in standard format instead of widescreen when the source is widescreen. All it does is make more problems for them. That in itself dropped this movie down a couple of decimal points for me. It was probably fixed in future releases, if there were future releases, but the fact that it seems like this was at least greenlit for release on VHS and/or DVD and TV release once upon a time with these issues intact is enraging to me. Pure laziness.

Music: The music was great, though I do miss the OP. The lack of music at numerous moments was also a welcome change of pace. The ED is really nice, though the in-movie version will never sound not-silly to me. When May does it alone it's not too bad, but when they all did it it was hard to keep focus on the sad Jirachi departure because ech.

All in all, a pretty great movie. Not perfect, but definitely the most I've enjoyed a Pokemon movie since 03, and that's really saying something.

Now for the subbed version. Are you going to make me feel bad for liking the dub version?

Recommended Audience: Nothing that I remember. E for everyone!

[Picard]

Wow, this is a really long review! I've never seen this one, so I can't really relate as much. Speaking of protagonists and Ash stealing the spotlight, I wonder if it would have been better if Nintendo experimented with having a brand new cast for a standalone Pokemon movie, maybe with mild references or a small cameo towards the main Ash team. I mean, the Pokemon world is huge, and Ash doesn't have to be the one saving the world every single time. I guess it'd be too risky a venture, though, since Nintendo's marketing this to kids after all, and they'd expect kids to want to see familiar faces.

On a side note, I'm too used to the dubs for Pokemon, so subs would actually be strange to me.

[DarkToph]

Wow, this is a really long review! I've never seen this one, so I can't really relate as much. Speaking of protagonists and Ash stealing the spotlight, I wonder if it would have been better if Nintendo experimented with having a brand new cast for a standalone Pokemon movie, maybe with mild references or a small cameo towards the main Ash team. I mean, the Pokemon world is huge, and Ash doesn't have to be the one saving the world every single time. I guess it'd be too risky a venture, though, since Nintendo's marketing this to kids after all, and they'd expect kids to want to see familiar faces.

On a side note, I'm too used to the dubs for Pokemon, so subs would actually be strange to me.

Yeah, I still tend to ramble, rant and jabber on. :x That's why I keep trying to put in plenty of screencaps to break things up and make it an easier read.

Actually, in Pokemon Chronicles: The Legend of Thunder, we did actually have different protagonists for a change in Jimmy, Marina and Vincent. However, Pokemon Chronicles as a whole focused on side Pokemon characters like Misty, Tracey and shewhoshallnotbenamed. And Ash did show up a few times if I recall right. However, I will admit that that arc was a damn well-needed breath of fresh air, even with blechCasey. They also had shorts with no Ash such as Pokemon Rangers and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.

I would love to see a side series or movie that focused on someone other than Ash, but those at Pokemon really seem set in their ways. I can't see them ever ditching Ash, even for a movie, because that would mean ditching Messiahchu and they are most certainly not going to do that as he's their mascot. Hell, behind Mario and maybe Link, Pikachu's basically the mascot of Nintendo. They really seem paralyzed with fear over solid change. They can change the art style, change battle mechanics, add new Pokemon, retcon things, but they just are incredibly afraid of changing the overall formula and typical cast. The only way they've gotten better in that regard is giving us Ash companions who have more to do outside of Brock's cooking and on-occasion breeding/nursing and Misty's completely staganation.

I can't really blame them for being afraid either. They have a formula which keeps making them money year after year. If they suddenly decide to change up the show too much, it could mean a blow that they'd never recover from. They'd still have the games, of course, but still.

I was also very much used to the dubs as I grew up on them, and I will say that that makes me biased towards the dub sometimes even with dumb changes and voice actors and such. It was weird for me to see the subbed version at first, but it's fairly easy to adapt to, especially after doing these comparisons. I really wish someone would go back and sub all the old episodes. I watched some of the classic episodes subbed and only got to about episode 11. No one's subbed passed that point, I suppose, and the subbing was only picked back up around Diamond and Pearl. The movies are all in sub, if you dig REALLY deep, but I am really interested in watching the original series in Japanese. :X