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3rd time i rewatched this (throughout the years) and i just noticed that Cynthia cameo.
The Piplup trainer is from Twin Leaf Town = Sinnoh. She browses through her phone during the night at the suicune part. Shows an image of a mom. (Looks like cynthia , blond hair twirl hair near neck. Only cynthia has that.) And then she tells Ash and the other kid that her mom is a famous Pokemon trainer. her mom= from sinnoh and the only famous person who matches is Cynthia. This version of cynthia has a Emploeon and maybe doesn't care for her child, maybe that's why she left to have a journey? The Piplup girl says that "nothing she does is good enough for her" while being down.
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Marshadow Z-move was showcased. You can tell because of the glow and in games its the same animation as the movie. Pretty cool that it can use it without a crystal or a trainer. Looks like it gets tired after use , recoil.
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I want the ash from anime SM to like meet this ash from i choose you through some weird dimension hop with Ultra worm hole. lol.
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Also ash died in this movie. He died. When the pokemon were about to blast him he was like
you gotta go though me , I'm gana be the best pokemon master!!!!! Gahh!!
The pokemon who were charging up their beams was like : "OK " .. " IDC "
*gets blasted and dies*
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During the movie they released Ash Cap Pikachu event for the games Sun&Moon. I guess the part where ash died and drops his hat onto his pikas head is a reference for the event giveaway.
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Honestly its all that bullies fault. Marshadow wouldn't have done all that if he didnt go bully mode and took the wing and turned it dark. Its his fault. Attempted murder.
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the old guy who guided ash to the mountain looked like RED from games. (his hat) , definitely not him tho. Looks like him but not him. Maybe there's ton of those hats in the shops for 2$. They're fishing hats.
Show Rate Meter Guide - (5 Great _ 4 Good _ 3 Fine _ 2 Not Good _ 1 Bad).(dismal are sometimes needed)
[Story] - 3.5
[Art/Animation] - 4.5
[Sound/Music] - 3.5
[M-Character] - 3.5
[S-Character] - 3
[Enjoyment] - 3.5
[Overall] - 3.5
I think I cried first time watching this film in DUB this is my second time but I chose to see it SUB this time and it had a different type of hit form me. the retelling of Ash's story start out great but hits a point were it became less interesting, the Animation quality is the best thing about this film. Makoto & Souji had a few good moments but I think they needed to bring someone we already known in the past anime or films. The many Pokémon they could have added for Ash I'm a bit happy that Butterfree was picked, but then seeing that they remade the goodbye Butterfree story was a bit of a why! was sad to see that happened again. Charmander story I wished they pick someone else in stead of a Aloha trainer I did not like that Aloha kid much at all. I have to say Marshadow is just fking Evil never seeing another level of evil like that for a Pokémon. I Like the opening moment with the battle seeing the Guy and Girl form the Frist Movie, and the ending credits' with the callback to the other films and Pokémon, also Ash's gang of friends form all his journey, gen 1 to gen 7 was just a nice touch.
I can't even with this movie. There is SO much wrong I could write a thesis.
1) It's an insult to the OG Pokemon eps it blatantly rips off and fucks up. It takes episode 1 and speedruns, badly I might add, through while making it worse. It takes movie 1 and copies off it (musically and certain peaks) while making it worse. There is literally nothing this movie does better than maybe battles.
2) Speaking of battles, they're eh. The biggest problem is they're obviously more to be flashy and "ooo, ahhh" than anything else. While the OG had its problems with battles, they were at least creative. These battles aren't; they're very much by the numbers with the same moves being used over and over without any consideration to the environment or opportunity. Literally, Satoshi's like "save up your power and we'll do it in one shot!" it was basically just a DBZ beam struggle (lol anything they ripped off). Wow. Much cool. Or that they had Cross use damage to increase the power of his gaogaen's power and proceed to not have him do it again.
Am I saying OG did it better when it actually had battles? Yes.
3) It very obviously takes many of the emotional peaks from other eps and movies but it doesn't bother to earn any of them. Not one. It's obvious this movie wanted to use these peaks to manipulate the emotions of older fans using their memories and nostalgia to do the job for them. If you aren't a total damn simp, these scenes do nothing. Not even the "my pokemon froze to save me" scene (lol). See, Butterfree. We barely see the darn thing and they dared to have a Moment about it leaving? What purpose does this scene serve? Satoshi didn't use it past getting Hitokage! (Much like OG), Butterfree would have been forgotten and no one would have noticed halfway through the movie. This waste of time that could have been better put to, I don't know, building the characters is instead wasted on an attempt to choke out emotions from older fans.
4) Nuke every single character. None of them are worth saving. Makoto is basically Johto!Kasumi. Souji is basically a post-Kanto!Takeshi. Satoshi is an OOC fanfic character of himself. Rocket Gang Trio ARE POINTLESS. Cross is fanfic tier of villain (and basically another Minaki/Eusine). Bonji is basically Professor Ookido. All of these roles could have just been filled by these old characters or nixed because nothing about the new ones do anything of note, anything that defines them differently, that couldn't be filled by existing characters. Why do they exist? Because it's a reboot? So?
Satoshi has turned into such a cliche shounen MC that his original self would be embarrassed. He's now Shounen Hero #13198, another character that wouldn't be remembered if it wasn't for the fact they wear the skin of better written versions of that character. Let's be honest. If he didn't wear Satoshi's face, would ANYONE would remember him?
5) The Legendaries are pointless. What do Entei, Suikun and Raikou do other than make a cameo? That's right. Nothing.
6) The built-up to the battle with Houou using the bgm from the movie... Ah, cliche "don't show the results". Of course.
7) It's a badly written Chosen One trope. "Satoshi was Chosen by Houou!" Looked like Houou shat the feather out of his ass by complete accident to me. And what did Satoshi do exactly to suddenly earn it? Protect Pikachu from Onisuzume? How do we know if Houou even saw that? I know the backstory of Houou, but the problem is the movie doesn't really go into it and do something with that plotline (that Johto hinted at, btw). It just told to us and bam it happens. There's no real build-up.
And that's the scrub. This movie has zero build-up. It does things it thinks older fans would like and things that would entertain younger kids without any real effort to make it work. Another "reboot" that requires the watcher to have seen older stuff (and have attachment to it, no less) for most of scenes to actually have impact while asking them to pretend it's unrelated. Utter garbage.
I thought this was a really good movie. This reimagining of the early days of the anime was really good. It was all well crafted adn none of it fell rushed to fit on the screen. I also thought it was neat at the end when we got to see baron Alberto fromthe Darkrai movie for about 0.4 secibds XD.
That first scene with Ash and Pikachu will always hit hard, one of the best opening scenes in anime for me, loved seeing it with the new animation even if it was shorter.
This movie is a lot of nostalgia scenes though and I have no idea why Team Rocket was in this movie considering they would just show up and blast away after 2 lines.
The emotional scenes still hit despite Ash yet again somehow getting revived (which is something I can look past), something I can't was Pikachu speaking, that just felt odd and out of place. - Even if it was something Ash was imagining or felt so connected with Pikachu it could hear it's feelings.
Also they showed a hint of Verity's relationship with her mother but then didn't really do anything with it after mentioning it once.
Despite it's problems it was a really enjoyable movie, animation and audio design were fantastic.