Episode Stats:

Japanese Mini-Movie 2:  "Pikachuu Tankentai"

(Pikachu's Exploration Party)

American Mini-Movie 2:  "Pikachu's Rescue Adventure"
Japanese Air Date:  July 17th, 1999
American Air Date:  July 21st, 2000

Satoshi-tachi decide to stop so that they can nap under the sun, and Pikachu-tachi quickly find an adventure.  Togepi, following a flock of Ledyba, falls down into a giant valley and gets separated from the other pokemon.  Pikachu and the others follow and are led around the valley by an Elekid.  After a dance performance by the Kireihana, Pikachu-tachi find Togepi in a Tama-Tama nest, safe and sound.  Suddenly, a violent storm brews, and everyone has to hang onto the tree branches to avoid being sucked away!  Pikachu and Elekid use their electric attacks to ward off the oncoming lightning while everyone pulls together to help each other through the storm.  After the storm's over, Pikachu-tachi part ways with their new friends and arrive at the spot where Satoshi-tachi were napping, just in time to see them wake up.

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Thoughts
I really don't like this mini-movie as much as the first mini-movie.  For one thing, the animation's pretty bad--there's no excuse for having trees move the way they do during the storm sequence when you have as big a budget as the animators did.  Besides, the fire looks really fake.  And the story's pretty standard--the pokemon work together to survive a big catastrophe.  This time the big catastrophe was a huge storm, though one has to wonder how Satoshi, Kasumi, and Kenji managed to sleep through the whole thing.

Overall, "Pikachu's Rescue Adventure" fared better than "Pikachu's Summer Vacation" edit-wise.  A lot of the alterations made to the first mini-movie were made to this one as well, so at least 4Kids is consistent (hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?).  Unfortunately, 4Kids still seems to have difficulties with the narrators of these things...

All the new pokemon (Ledyba, Elekid, and Ho-Ho) keep their Japanese voices.

Music Edit
The music for this one is replaced with American-made music, just like "Pikachu's Summer Vacation."  Hey, at least they're consistent.  Luckily for us, 4Kids doesn't add a random insert song like they did last time, so that already makes this mini-movie better. 

Added footage--8 sec.
Right after the "Pikachu the Movie" animation pops up before the movie begins, 4Kids adds a little "Pokemon the Movie 2000" title screen, I guess to make sure that we understand the movie's started.  Whatever...

Dialogue Edit
Remember how 4Kids messed up the narrator of the first mini-movie?  Changing the kind, motherly voice into a soulless Pokédex?  Well, 4Kids did something equally bad this go around--they eliminated the narrator entirely.  While the Japanese version has the lady cheering on the pokemon and worrying about how everything will turn out, the dub has...nothing.  There's just a lot of  dead space, which is very uncharacteristic of a company who spends a lot of time making sure that there's always music in the background during the TV series.  It really makes the short less interesting, as well as a bit confusing--Elekid is introduced in the original by the narrator, while in the dub we're just supposed to know who it is.  What is it about the narrators that 4Kids has issues with?!?

Dialogue Edit
To make up for the lack of a narrator, 4Kids added a bunch of pokemon calls throughout the short.  For example, they add a "Pika!" during Pikachu's close-up right before the short's title screen shows up.  And then later, during the Kireihana dance, 4Kids have all the pokemon say their names as they jump out of the water.  It's really stupid-sounding when you watch it and a lot more interesting without the calls being thrown at you.

Music Edit
Like with the last short, the ending credits for this mini-movie was cut out.  It`s a shame, because we got to see some really good fan-art during the Japanese ending.  The first bit consisted of the winners of a design contest for the ANA Pokemon Jet '99 (there's an actual airline in Japan that has pokemon characters decorate their jets) and then the second half has random fanart.  It's really quite good, and it's unfortunate that Americans never got to see it.  4Kids went for the whole "let's not confuse the parents into thinking 'Pokemon the Movie 2000' is only 20 minutes long" route, so the ending had to be cut.

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