Ranked #1616

Pokemon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions

So here we go again, with yet another movie to promote the famous franchise of Pokemon and entertain us by throwing random villains, powerful Pokemon and some explosions. Being those the primary objectives, Phantom Ruler Zoroark actually does a decent job. As a matter of fact, no matter how hard you try, it's impossible to see a single attempt of making a movie which sustains itself; all for the sake of advertisement. So why bother writing a review? Exactly because of this uncompromised environment, allowing the viewer to simply erase everything in his mind and enjoy an equally uncompromised experience.

Quality-wise, the movie holds the tradition and invests on eye candy visuals to grasp attention — since this job isn't very suitable to the plot or characters, but we'll talk about these latter. Fluid animation and CGI effects are elements essential in order to build some exciting action scenes, which absolutely cannot be removed of a Pokemon movie. The character design... well, it's the same as always: generic and childish, but it's part of the franchise's style, so you can't avoid it. The sound? Oh, yes, there is sound. It's not like Pokemon's voice actors lack emotion, though that's precisely the case of the soundtrack, but probably the lame ones are the characters themselves. Not even Wakamoto Norio could do something to help if he wanted.

Speaking of characters, that's a somewhat difficult to analyse item in the franchise's movies: you can't discuss about the protagonists because their development happens in the original series, since the movie is merely another adventure, but you can't simply discard them. Nevertheless, what doesn't change is the fact that characters serve, amongst other purposes, as means to get the viewer's empathy or hate. Phantom Ruler Zoroark fails at both, whether at the good or the bad side.

Let's start with the villain perspective for a change: a one-sided dude who wants power at all cost despite any consequences. Oh, we've never seen this type before, right? The interesting part is that he really doesn't give the vibes of a big bad guy many times. I mean, he is bad all right, but who is he against? The three legendary dogs, Celebi, Zoroark and Zorua. The previous two don't seem much of a threat, but have you ever tried to mess with a son in front of the mother? Don't even try, as that's definitely not a good idea. And his ability doesn't help too much because he can see an immutable future, meaning no one can change it.

As for heroes, you have Ash, his usual gang and a couple of random guys. This time there isn't even a back story or something, they are simply pawns used to face the villain. Actually, facing the villain isn't really their jobs; instead, all they do during the whole movie is: distract enemies, help setting traps and other minor chores. The rest us up to Zoroark, Raikou, Entei, Suicune and Celebi. Look, Director-san, Writer-san, no one is saying that Ash needs to be a legendary hero destined to save the world in every single movie (I don't even like him), but c'mon, he is the freaking main character!

Surprisingly, the narrative is pretty good for a Pokemon movie. Of course, this whole time travels/future stuff has been explored many times, twice just in Pokemon movies, but the plot flows well enough. Little by little the pieces come along: first there is a problem, then our heroes try to solve it, while at the same time we have a cunning villain making his moves and the legendary dogs trio observing the situation. Eventually the good guys figure out the villain's plan and use his own scheme to defeat him. A pretty straight forward approach, but it works.

Anyway, the main question remains: "Should I watch this?", to which I can answer with another interrogation: "Well, why not?". Phantom Ruler Zoroark is overall a nice family movie, although teenagers who are not fans may want to skip this, offering mindless fun with cute, likable and innocent monsters fighting against an evil ambitious man. Just think how many moral lessons the parents will be able to elaborate! ... Not really an exciting thought, but there is some good amount of action scenes for those with a fare for adrenaline. As for the fans who withstood every single movie until now, one more shouldn't hurt. read more

Quite honestly, I was very surprised by this movie. I've always felt that Pokemon had some untapped potential and would probably remain that way due to how they go about making the anime for 700 episodes. However, with this movie I felt like they may have actually tapped that source a bit, and what resulted was a highly entertaining movie that has probably become my favorite of all of them (and I've seen all of them, too).

The MAL synopsis is actually a bit misleading. For example, we know exactly why Zoroark is unleashing its fury upon Crown City: to save Zorua, whom Zoroark believes to be held prisoner by Kodai, and so Zoroark is being forced to do whatever Kodai says. It is why Kodai is doing these things that remain a mystery until further notice.

Meanwhile, Ash and co. come upon the escaped Zorua, befriend it, and decide to help it find Zoroark. This, essentially, is the main focus, alongside eventually helping Celebi and attempting to prevent the same disaster from twenty years ago from happening to Crown City again. While the time travel aspects of the story aren't really anything new, even for Pokemon, I felt it was still quite well-done in its execution. Zorua and Zoroark's ability to create illusions was used very well throughout the movie (with the possible exception of "I can't fly"), giving it actual purpose instead of having it exist more as a gimmick, which would not have been very surprising. Kodai also wasn't some totally useless villain. He really takes advantage of his ability to see the future to predict outcomes and get what he wants, making the threats feel very real. Needless to say, I was hooked on this movie's story pretty early on and I stayed that way until the very end.

As far as characters go, another thing I like about this movie is that they didn't put all the focus on Ash. Granted he's the main character, but it was refreshing to see them really focus on the relationship between Zorua and Zoroark and make it almost so that they're the protagonists instead. This is cool because they can freely develop characters that don't have a hundreds upon hundreds of episodes long series to get their development in, and they take advantage of that here. The two of them have a connection akin to a mother and her child, and this is shown very well and quite often throughout the movie as it essentially drives the entire plot.

However, fans of Team Rocket may be disappointed. They were here, but they could have been cut out and the movie would not have been any different. I'm pretty sure they didn't even interact with anyone except each other. Suicune, Raikou, and Entei, while they did technically fulfill their purpose, also probably could have been used more, since they were pretty important to the history of Crown City. And then Celebi was amazingly weak. Any Pokemon fan knows that it's among the worst of the legendaries, but it's still a legendary. How does a Shuppet take it down with a single Psychic? Oh well, the anime's logic has never followed the game completely anyway ("FINISH IT OFF WITH FALSE SWIPE" - quote not from this movie), so I guess that can be written off. Still weak, though, as a plot device, anyway, since even the anime usually agrees that legendary Pokemon are supposed to be a cut above in terms of strength.

So, is this recommendation worthy? To a Pokemon fan, I would give a definite yes. If you enjoy the other movies and/or the anime series at all, I think you'd definitely enjoy this. It would also probably be a good family movie. Teenage, non-fan audiences may get a bit lost, though, since, like other Pokemon movies, it does occasionally assume the viewer has certain knowledge of the Pokemon universe that people who don't play it or watch regularly may not pick up on, but they aren't really plot-essential either. The often cheesy voice-acting can also be a turn off at times. In the end, this is still a kid's movie, and a pretty good one at that. read more