Pokemon Movie 18: Ring no Choumajin Hoopa

{{{There are spoilers if you are wondering}}}

Hahaha, now this was another childhood favorite of mine. It was so bad that it was good...
I haven't watched this in years, but I remember how right off the bat ash (or satoshi, i wasn't reading subtitles at the time) and his friends were chilling in a pool, in a desert, literally in the middle of nowhere. I'm not exaggerating, they were the only ones.
All of a sudden they and the water are teleported to hoopa and the person incharge of him (is he a girl? idk). because they (the person) asked for a cup of water. ...
1. they live in this whole ass city and hoopa decided to get water from a desert?????
2. the water is chlorinated

Now ash and his friends are part of the storyline,,.. wooh, yay, mc's are now im the story...

Hoopa shows his powers, makes a bunch of pikachus show up blah, blah, blah and then he turns into a big boi!!!
This is where things are a little blurry in my mind. Baby hoopa turns into a big hoopa, and then there are two hoopas??? I'm not sure how they split exactly, but i'm pretty sure big boi hoopas goal is to capture baby hoopa in order so he can stay alive,,,,???

They gotta fight the big hoopa, a bunch of other legendary pokemon come to help (rayquaza, lugia, latios, latios and a couple more)
Lots of ring/hoops involved. They are used to teleport. And damn, big hoopa is a - s t a l k e r-
Big hoopa is scary. lol
In the end they save the world, the end.

One thing i remember is that I felt as if their lives were in danger. Usually when watching pokemon you're like, "oh yeah, we know there is going to be cliche problems, but in the end everything will be alright."
However, when I was watching this I actually feared for ash and baby hoopa's lives.

Oh, and also. Wasn't one of hoopa's owner (trainers??) the one that went to some cave and made him turn into the big boy. Dumbass.

Solid 8/10, purely out of memory.
Rewatched-3 times

After recently rewatching the whole of Pokemon XYZ, I decided to also re-watch one of my favourite pokemon films to come out, Hoopa and the Clash of Ages. I haven't really seen many reviews posted on mal about this movie and surprisingly enough the positive voices about this film are absent in this scenario, so I'm going express my own viewpoint of the pros and cons, as well as a general idea of what the movies.

(Considering that this is one of my favourite pokemon movies, I apologise in advance if theres bias present on this take)

Story: When you look at how deep the ... iceberg goes down for this circumstance, it doesnt fall very deeply. The plot is pretty simplistic as well to an extent for pokemon standards, Ash stumbles across another mythical pokemon with a somewhat tragic backstory with his friends, and tries to recover it from it's dark self. Not very groundbreaking to be fair, but is that a bad thing? Not at all. Not every story necessarily requires a unique motif to stand out from other media works. The actual events that occur are really enjoyable, such as the character being introduced to Hoopa, how they get to know its past, and the climax of the film, and although I said the plot might seem simplistic, from my perspective it's better than a lot of pokemon movies. The interesting take about the story though is that the original Hoopa has to face off against its shadow, and in order to assist them, they both summon different tyles of legendaries, resulting in a Legendary vs Legendary battle, and I gotta be honest. That was freaking epic, and one of the bigger highlights of the movie. My short problem with it, which applies to the whole movie in general, is that it was a little too short. On average movies are around 1 hour and 30 minutes. This movie was 1 hour and 15 minutes (18 minutes if you count the ending theme song). While it's not a short movie by any means, it could've definitely benefited if it was 10-20 minutes extra. The legendaries fighting one another was great, but in a few instances it also felt short, so it could've been improved dramatically if they gave those fight scenes a few extra minutes, and the story might have been a better experience for some. However overall, despite this pronounced issue, the story aspect is appreciable and deserves a chance.

Art: Art and animation were obvsiouly very good and consistent, and made the fight scenes a lot more exciting than I would expected. Really liked the backgrounds and how it presented Desser city (which aesthetically looked beautiful and probably one of my favourite areas in the series),a and the 3d camera was a great inclusion as well. My small nitpick is that the cgi in a few objects and some pokemon during the legendaries fight looked iffy, but thankfully it wasnt overused.

Sound: While not too memorable, the music was great as well, considering that the XY ost is pretty hype a lot of the times. Some of the exclusive ost from this film have a sort of reggae sound in them, which catches the idea of a few Indian-type similarities portrayed in this movie (Hoopas design, how people used to dress up in the city and keep the city original was crafted), and most importantly the ending theme song SLAPPED and is one of my favourite pokemon themes of all time (English ending song is also pretty nice and has a 90s/2000s feel to it).

Characters: Obviously you have the main gang of the XY series, as well as the inclusion of Hoopa and 3 more characters that took care of Hoopa. Oh, and Team rocket. Yeah those guys. Their addition in the movie was pretty bad overall, and it doesnt help that they were very irrelevant characters in this story overall. But at least we wouldn't have to bother with their nuisance a lot like we usually were in the main series. Speaking of irrelevance, I definitely thought that Serena, Clemont, and Bonnie needed more moments in here. Of course they weren't badly treated like Team Rocket, in fact they were very likeable as always, but they were quite underused to aan extent, but gratefully they played an important role towards the second half trying to revive the bottle, so they weren't useless at all. Moreover, Ash was a very inspirational role model as always, trying to help Hoopa with its general issue of passing through its rings, and had a very sweet moment towards the end. Additionally, the caretakers of Hoopa were great and their backstory with Hoopa was pretty enjoyable as well, especially the fact that they gave Hoopa a new meaning to family, which effectively allowed Hoopa to develop inside. And we've got Hoopa, who is rather a quite disliked by the community with how annoying they found it, and while I dont completely disagree with them, Hoopa wasnt as annoying as they made him out to be, and it wasnt really in your face either. Though I will admit, his childish personality isnt the best to get along with and the team could've done better at positively emphasising his character overall.

Overall: With that said, was Hoopa and the Clash ages a bad movie? Hell fricking no! Sure, it has a few annoying aspects that held it back from being amazing to some peoples perspectives, but I do think those opinions were a little exaggerated to a certain degree, which may have contributed to their blindness of the many pros this film provided. Not to mention, the pros heavily overshadow the cons from my experience of the film, so it dkesnt hold it back from me rating it a high score. It's not a masterpiece by any means, but it sure is an amazing and enjoyable ride.