Time to Choose Whether or Not to Watch Pokemon The Movie: I Choose You!

How many of you watched the Pokemon anime as kids and how many of you were excited when it was announced that there would be a reboot film titled "Pokemon The Movie: I Choose You!" that would even get a limited theatrical run? If you were a longtime fan of the series than you might've been as excited as I was upon hearing the first announcement and might've thought that this would be just the kind of reboot the long-running series needed. Well, thanks to our friends at VIZ Media, who sent us the movie on DVD, we finally got a chance to check it out and see if it meets these high expectations!

Let's get something out of the way first, "Pokemon The Movie: I Choose You!" was never meant to be a faithful retelling of the first season of the Pokemon anime which I'll admit was something I first assumed when I heard its announcement. Even though it was released to coincide with the show's twentieth anniversary, it largely has its own story to tell. The real question is whether it did that well or not. With all this said, the viewers who came directly from watching and loving the show can be forgiven for thinking the entire movie will be one big love letter to those early days. The movie does seem to want to fool the viewer at first though as the first twenty minutes or so seem to exist to fulfill all the fans' dreams. In this opening we get a pretty much accurate retelling of the first episode from Ash Ketchum waking up late only to learn that his journey to be the greatest Pokemon Master has been thwarted by the fact that the three starter pokemon (Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle) have already been claimed. Professor Oak gives Ash another option though and while the Pikachu proves to be a handful of a pokemon, he and Ash eventually learn to become an unstoppable team after Ash proves himself to Pikachu. Right when we're settling into the movie and are about to get to the new stuff, another wave of nostalgia hits as the show's original, iconic theme song kicks into gear. I defy any fan of the show to not immediately start singing along and getting hyped up when this part plays. If only the momentum could've kept up with this powerful opening...

I've already mentioned that "Pokemon The Movie: I Choose You!" isn't meant to be a total retelling, but I got the feeling after watching it that someone should've told that to the producers. The movie seems to move back and forth between shoehorning elements from the show and trying its hardest to separate itself from those elements and tell its own story. Let's take a look at those shoehorned in elements first. There are two big plot points that could have been taken out of this movie entirely and it probably would've benefited greatly from the absence of distractions. Without spoiling anything I'm referring to the pointless inclusion of Team Rocket (who literally never actually interact with the main plot) and the "Bye Bye Butterfree" plot cycle. The latter of which is an especially odd addition as it does nothing to the movie and only serves to slow down the movie's progression to its climax. Team Rocket seemed to be nothing more than a nod to the old show and used up valuable screen time for bits that were more cringeworthy than nostalgic. Now let's talk about things that weren't included. There is no Misty and Brock, in their place we get Verity and Sorrel who bring a piplup and lucario to the pokemon roster respectively. While I wasn't particularly surprised by the exclusion of Brock and Misty , I did think it was somewhat a slap in the face to the viewers that the story made it a point to jump straight to the third gym just to be sure that we wouldn't even get a chance to SEE them. Also, I understand that this movie comes with the assumption that the viewer is at least somewhat familiar with Pokemon in general, but it seemed especially unwelcoming to those new to the franchise as many plot points and easter eggs most likely went over many viewer's heads.

​With all the nostalgia out of the way, let's move onto the actual plot of this movie. At the end of the first part of the story Ash and Pikachu are visited by Ho-oh, the legendary pokemon, just like in the first episode of the anime. Ho-oh bestows a rainbow feather to Ash and the crux of the plot is for Ash to seek out Ho-oh again and to fulfill his quest to assume his role as the "Rainbow Hero". I mentioned Verity and Sorrel earlier, but to elaborate a bit more on them, they both join Ash when all three attempt to hunt down yet another legendary pokemon named Entei. After failing to capture Entei, the trio splits and Ash and Verity come across a Charmander who was abandoned by his trainer. (This echoes an episode of the original anime.) This trainer is named Cross, and he serves as one of the movie's primary antagonists. The other main antagonist is the pokemon Marshadow, who serves as a sort of watcher for those on the journey to find Ho-oh and proves to be quite powerful by the end. Many battles ensue and Ash's strength as a trainer is shown through both his strong bond with Pikachu as well as bringing both Caterpie and Charmander to the full evolutionary stages. The plot tries its hardest to be important, but even as I try to write it out here I realize how thin it is. Besides Entei we also see Raikou and Suicune, two other legendary pokemon. Though a nice touch to the story, neither of them play into the movie's plot beyond their cameo appearances. The only other character I haven't mentioned is Bonji, who is yet another character who could've been written out of the story with no perceived negative effect.

I want to go on about the plot more here, but I'll leave this section by reiterating that it is sadly this movie's biggest weakness. Even though much of the plot is original, it feels like several episodes of the anime were edited down and released in a movie form. There is very little character development besides Ash and Pikachu and most of the supporting cast come off as hollow and two dimensional. I try to keep reviews spoiler-free, so I won't mention anything like that here, but the ending proved to be as weak as the middle and there is one point that destroyed any vestige of this being an okay movie in my mind. I'll get to that in a second, but even without this part I felt that the end of the movie was almost a write-the-plot-by-numbers ending and even though it gave a conclusion to all the plot threads, it was not a satisfying ending. it almost felt as if they'd written themselves into a very boring corner so besides one big surprise, which I completely hated, it was both weak and predictable. Now, I'm going to go into a big spoiler section so skip to the bottom a bit to see the rest of this review.

SPOILER SECTION

Okay, I'm usually one who can review almost anything and not worry about spoilers, but there was one scene towards the end that took me completely out of the movie and single-handedly ruined the decent experience I had had up until this point: Pikachu TALKED. Yes that's right, Pikachu had a line of dialogue in this. Now let's look at this from a couple different angles. First, is the fact that barring special circumstances in certain pokemon, pokemon as a whole do not speak anything beyond their names. Now I'm no purist, that's not the part that bothered me, there is more. Second, and probably the part that took me out of the movie entirely, was the fact that Pikachu had a quite distinctive female voice. I just said I'm not a purist, but you can tell by Pikachu's tail that it is indeed a male and the voice was very jarring on the character. Let's look beyond that for a minute though. The scene where Pikachu spoke saw both Ash and Pikachu lying side-by-side injured, with Ash holding Pikachu in his arms, and when Pikachu's feminine voice states that he always wants to be with him I had to stop everything for a minute and make sure I just saw that right. I'm not even exaggerating. There are reactions and articles about this online, but I had somehow missed these and this came to me as a total surprise. I'm not even joking when I say that the entire seen even had a romantic edge to it and I was both confused and disturbed while being generally upset. This confusing whirl of reactions aside, I was completely pulled away from the movie and everything before it was ruined and whatever came after it couldn't salvage it.

Now that I got that out let me talk about the next big grievance with this scene. IT'S NEVER ACKNOWLEDGED AGAIN. I could've maybe swallowed some Pokemon lore excuse regarding special powers from Marshadow or Ho-oh, or even just a really strong trainer bond, but none of the characters mention it after this. Ash never questions what happened and we're left to believe that when one's pokemon starts speaking to them they're just supposed to accept it. Now I'm going to have to go into every new piece of Pokemon media wondering if Pikachu is going to randomly have cringe-worthy dialogue again or not and I'm not exactly happy about that. This might sound like I'm taking this small scene too far, but I assure you if you watch it you'll see what I mean. Maybe it won't upset you as much as it did me, but there's no way you won't feel everything grind to a halt and suddenly begin questioning everything you know about Pokemon after watching it.

END OF SPOILER SECTION

I would talk a bit about the physical release and the special features, but my review copy didn't come with any of the latter and the DVD copy I received from VIZ Media does not lend well to judging a movie's transfer. I will say that the character designs all look great and everything is colorful. Sound-wise there isn't anything to go crazy over in the soundtrack, but fans might lose it when the original Pokemon theme comes on. Unfortunately the ending theme isn't nearly as memorable or iconic. Speaking of that ending theme for a second here, it's actually here of all places that you get to see all the classic Pokemon anime characters you probably know and love and I thought it was almost mean-spirited to show them in passing scenes while actively leaving them out of the movie's main story. Voice acting is a very mixed bag, I'm not sure how much of the original cast is here, but this isn't the "original" Veronica Taylor Ash and just about all the other returning characters seem like sound-alikes. One of my main complaints about English dubs isn't so much the quality of them, but the lack of consistency between releases and it's on full display here. These issues with the sound aren't deal breakers of course, but they're worth a mention.

So the final question here is whether or not "Pokemon: I Choose You!" is worth your time or not. If it wasn't for the one movie-spoiling scene at the end I would say that it's a must-see for Pokemon fans. As it stands that's a hard crowd to recommend this too as they're the ones most likely to have everything ruined for them by seeing it. It also doesn't really work as a standalone movie so it's even harder to recommend from that angle. We usually give media releases a letter grade and everything running up to the final battle scream "B-" to me, but the closing scene definitely knocks it down a bit. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you go in knowing this movie isn't actually the nostalgia trip it seems at first, you're probably going to enjoy it, until that final scene... If you come in just wanting a good movie then maybe, just maybe, you'll find some enjoyment here and instead of cringing hard at the final scene you'll laugh. Either way, chances are you knew whether or not you wanted to watch it once you saw the name.

-Nestor

For more on "Pokemon The Movie: I Choose You":
www.viz.com/watch/movie/product/pokemon-movie-video/13181

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OVERALL RATING: C-

Pros:
+Some parts scratched the nostalgia itch just right.
+The Pikachu/Ash dynamic couldn't have been stronger in parts.
+The Charmander character arc was well executed.
+Pretty much the entire first twenty minutes.

Cons:
-Supporting cast seemed superfluous to the plot.
-Weak overarching plot.
-Some nostalgic elements, like Team Rocket, didn't need to be there.
-The English VA cast seemed to be made up of sound-alikes.
-That ONE SCENE that ruined everything...

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Note: This item was provided to us by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This fact does not affect the outcome of the review in any way.