It’s been nearly three years since I last touched the Pokemon Anime and a lot have changed. However, I don’t intend to go back to watching Pokemon since I want to spend time watching good Anime. I felt that the Pokemon Anime was going into the pool of mediocrity because it took them several years to have the show in wide screen and there is so many filler episodes… It’s just as bad as the worst offender of filler episode, which I will not name.
I have been holding off this review since I was busy on other things like college and working on programming projects that I completely forgot about it. Since I have the time, I will review it in my view after watching several good (and bad) Anime.
Short Summary
Zero thinks that people in the real world is destroying the Distortion World (the same world that the player goes into in Pokemon Platinum. In the Japanese version, they call it the “Reverse World”). Shaymin accidently goes into this world in the beginning when Dialga and Giratina were fighting each other. Shaymin sucks up this purple toxic cloud and uses Seed Flare and Dialga and Shaymin gets pulled out of the Distortion World. Satoshi, Hikari and Takeshi discovers Shaymin that was eating the pancakes. After Shaymin was taken to the Pokemon Center, it talked and wanted to go to the field of flowers. Shaymin gets captured by Team Rocket and then they and also Satoshi and Hikari and their Pokemon gets sucked into the Distortion World. Shaymin was scared of Giratina because it taughtGiratina wanted to eat it. Mugen Graceland, a person who studies about the Distortion World leads them out. After they got back to the real world, they were reunited by Takeshi. However, Team Rocket gets trapped in that world since they were too late.
Throughout the show, Zero chases Satoshi, Hikari and Takeshi down for Shaymin so he can use Shaymin’s Seed Flare to release Giratina. Zero wanted to copy all its powers with his weird ship that Mugen developed, but scrapped after Mugen found out that it would sacrifice Giratina. Mugen thwarts Zero’s plans and he escaped along with Hikari and Satoshi that was helping him. Giratina gets healed by Shaymin. However, Zero was in a different ship and he goes into the distortion world to destroy the glaciers inside it to bring it down in the real world. Satoshi, Giratina and Shayminin its sky form successfully defeated Zero and his ship was put in ice. Shaymin leaves the next day and says goodbye to Satoshi, Hikari and Takeshi and yeah… thats the end of the whole movie.
General Thoughts
There is so many Pokemon movies that it’s nearly impossible to know which one is which. Although its nice to see a Shaymin and a Giratina in the Anime, the formula is pretty stale. Most of these Pokemon Movies use the same formula over and over again that for a Pokemon Fan to watch all 12 movies, it gets disappointing. If you don’t know, most of these movies uses the same good vs bad guy and appearance of legendary Pokemon that it gets very old pretty quickly. Sure, there was a few exceptions, but it remains true for most of the Pokemon Movies. They haven’t really changed that much or given something exciting for a Pokemon fan who watched the last 10 movies. Unlike the video games, the Anime seems to be losing its touch and running out of ideas. These movies will definitely work for the children or new fans of Pokemon, but for ones who are veterans or watched several different good Anime would probably be disappointed. They could be more original, but I guess they don’t want to stop using the formula that is proven to work.
The animation in Pokemon Movies seems to be top notch as they use a lot of computer generated effects and such to make things look appealing. However, the art style of the people seems to be a bit out of place because I’m used to the art style that is used in other anime I watch which is close to the traditional style. Besides from that, the animation studio did a good job with the animation.
The movie’s music wasn’t special because some of the background songs sounded that they were from the Anime. The best music I have heard from all the Pokemon movies is Movie 8 and 9 and that was several years ago.
Overall, I found myself thinking that this movie is pretty cliched and average. Surely it’s slightly better than the Clannad movie that Toei managed to mess up, but that is an overstatement. My tastes changed in the last two years of watching other types of Anime and discovering that its better than Pokemon. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the movie, except it’s showing its age and really need fresh and new ideas to bruise it up. It’s not a bad movie, but I just think that the production team of these Pokemon movies needs to come up with a better story and better art style so it will appeal to a veteran Pokemon fan.
After watching this, I guess I will stick to the Pokemon Games since they still fun and very enjoyable to play…
One last note: Shaymin is really cute, except when it’s being a spoiled brat.
Verdict
7.2/10
As someone who’s seen all 12 movies, I agree that they recycle many of the same cliches – evil doer tries to capture legendary pokemon, small cute legendary pokemon are cute, big legendary pokemon beat the crap out of each other, etc,. There are better Pokemon movies than this one, but it’s not the worst.
I found Shaymin’s bratty attitude to be a bit annoying and its talking ability to be out of place since it’s not even a Psychic pokemon.
Would you like a bratty Shaymin eat your food in real life? I guess not, but if you have many of them… it will probably stop global warming or even solve that BP oil spill in the gulf… :p