Pokémon movie coming out in theater? Definitely interesting to see, right? My wife and I had the opportunity to see this one on its premiere date yesterday. Movie only played in 2 smaller movie chains in Indonesia, so we have limited choices to see this one and we ultimately chose to see it in CGV Grand Indonesia. Now let us move on to the movie.
Brief Story Line
Movie started with the story of how Ash/Satoshi (voiced by Rica Matsumoto) came to encounter his first pocket monster (Pokémon) named Pikachu (Ikue Ōtani) and became such good friends. After their first adventure, Ash and Pikachu saw a legendary pokémon called Ho-Oh, flying through the sky and dropped its feather which was picked up by Ash. Ash vowed that he would one day fight against Ho-Oh. Later on Ash and Pikachu would go on travelling to compete with other pokémon trainers so Ash could become the world number one trainer.
During his adventures, Ash met with a fellow trainer named Verity/Makoto (Shiori Sato) who had with her a Piplup pokémon and also Sorrel/Souji (Kanata Hongō) who was together with a Lucario pokémon. They would soon become quite good friends and travel together to find and capture other legendary pokémon such as Entei, Suicune and so on. Of all the pokémon trainers, there would be one who later on became Ash' most fierce competition named Cross ( Ryōta Ōsaka) with his Incineroar pokémon.
While Ash, Verity and Sorrel were having their adventures, there was a group of bad people who would do various bad deeds in order to capture legendary pokémons named Rocket team consisting of Jessie, James and a meowth pokémon. So how would Ash, Verity and Sorrel's adventures continue? Would Ash be able to reach his goal to be the ultimate trainer and also find the legendary Ho-Oh? And could they shake off the tail from Rocket team? Find them all in this anime adventure movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I personally am not one of those people who have seen pokémon movies or series countless times. I may have seen once or twice of their episodes on TV so I did not have memorable moments from those platforms. I did however got to know about pokémon creatures or various items related to them such as the Pokéball, Pokémon Center and so on from the game Pokémon Go which was soooo popular last year (my wife and I were some of the early players, though we stopped playing it after just few months). That's why when I saw this movie, I was able to relate to the pokémon creatures such as the Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Charmander, Pinsir etc, or the evolution that happened to some of them which made both of us felt so fun watching it.
Apart from the fun feeling of seeing the pokémon fights during the competition of pokémon trainers, the attraction of this movie was definitely the very cute Pikachu and its voice that was so adorable. The lovely relationship between Pikachu and Ash was also very nice to see, especially during the climax scene which had made my wife felt quite emotional as well. However, the other two characters, Verity and Sorrel seemed not to be too memorable. And from what I understand, they did not resonate with the fans of pokémon either since they were additional characters created specifically for this movie.
From a neutral perspective like my wife and I, we were quite entertained with the movie, but there might be some complains from the fanatic fans of pokémon. Those of you who only knew about pokémon after playing the Pokémon Go game, would probably be able to enjoy the movie more, but those who do not know anything about pokémon, probably would not be able to relate to the movie. When I saw the title of the movie in Japanese during the beginning scene, there was a number 20 in it. I found out from the internet that this was the 20th pokémon movie since it was first introduced back in 1989 (wow it's almost 30 years old now).
My personal sense of the movie was it seemed to be really having an aura of movie for kids. So I think the movie would be really suitable for kids, especially if they had been playing pokémon game in any type of platforms. The animation of this movie was good with lots of colorful scenes. There was a nice song during the end credit scene, where a lot of characters were shown also here. As a animated movie, it was quite a fun experience. Though I think it is a rather specific genre and in general, might not appeal to huge crowds outside Japan where it was a major hit there.
If you are a fan of pokémon, you can watch this one and enjoy it, even with only 1 main character from its previous movies/TV series. But if you are not a fan, then maybe it's not such a fantastic idea to see this. The choice is yours.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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