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"The Misty Mermaid"
July 31st, 2017

Dogasu @ 00:36 JST -- This week's comparison between the Japanese version and the English version of Pocket Monsters is "The Misty Mermaid," and episode about how her sisters' poor planning led Kasumi having to join a water ballet for some reason!


This episode also had a large number of digital paint edits so I've compiled them all on their own page here.


Next week will be special as it will mark the halfway point of this little #Kanto2017 project I've been doing these last few months. Can't believe we're already at this point!


Japanese Box Office Performance, Week Two
July 25th, 2017

Dogasu @ 06:53 JST -- What a differece a week makes!


In its second weekend in theaters, from July 22nd to July 23rd, Pocket Monsters the Movie "I Choose You!" came in at fourth place. The Japanese debut of Despicable Me 3 took the top spot while GIntama and Pirates of the Carribean Dead Men Tell No Tales kept the number two and three spots, respectively.

The 20th Pocket Monsters movie was seen by 212,000 people and made an additional 258,000,000 yen over the weekend. This is about half of what it brought in the previous week.

Here's the full line-up:

Rank	Last Week	Title	Distributor	No. of Theaters	Weeks in Theaters
1	NEW	Despicable Me 3	Toho Towa	359	1
2	2	Gintama	Warner Bros. Movies	334	2
3	3	Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell no Tales	Disney	365	4
4	1	Pocket Monsters The Movie "I Choose You!"	Toho	364	2
5	4	Cars 3	Disney	345	2
6	5	Mary and the Witch's Flower	Toho	365	3
7	6	Shinobi no Kuni	Toho	332	4
8	NEW	Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection	Sochiku	73	1
9	NEW	Beautiful Word Beautiful World	Aniplex	286	1
10	7	No Game No Life -Zero-	Kadokawa Animation	61	2

Source:  Eiga.com

Pocket Monsters The Movie "I Choose You!" is the 20th Pokemon movie and is now playing in Japan. An English release has not been announced at this time.


"Beach Blank-Out Blastoise" is the bomb!
July 23rd, 2017

Dogasu @ 12:43 JST -- We continue our way through episodes that have never been covered on this site before with a look at the differences between the Japanese and English versions of "Beach Blank-Out Blastoise."


Next week I'll take a look at "The Misty Mermaid," the episode that, to me, is easily the ugliest episode in the series.


Japanese Box Office Performance, Week One
July 19th, 2017

Dogasu @ 07:25 JST -- The numbers are in and Pocket Monsters the Movie "I Choose You!" is the number one movie in Japan!


According to entertainment news site Eiga.com, the movie brought in 436,000 people in its first two days and earned 516 million yen. This is a 59.3% increase from what its predecessor, Pokémon the movie XY&Z "Volcanion and the Tricky Magearna," made in its opening two days last summer. The last Pocket Monsters movie to debut at number one is 2014's Pokémon the movie XY "The Cocoon of Destruction and Diancie".

Rounding out the Top Three is the live-action Gintama movie at number two and Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell no Tales at number three.

Here's the full line-up:

Rank	Last Week	Title	Distributor	No. of Theaters	Weeks in Theaters
1	NEW	Pocket Monsters The Movie "I Choose You!"	Toho	362	1
2	NEW	Gintama	Warner Bros. Movies	334	1
3	1	Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell no Tales	Disney	365	3
4	NEW	Cars 3	Disney	345	1
5	2	Mary and the Witch's Flower	Toho	365	2
6	3	Shinobi no Kuni	Toho	332	3
7	NEW	No Game No Life -Zero-	Kadokawa Animation	61	1
8	4	My Older Brother is Too Overprotective and it's Distressing!	Sochiku	251	3
9	NEW	Saban's Power Rangers	Toho	283	1
10	5	The Twenty-Two Year Confession: I Am the Killer	Warner Bros. Movies	328	6

Source:  Eiga.com

Pocket Monsters The Movie "I Choose You!" is the 20th Pokemon movie and is now playing in Japan. An English release has not been announced at this time.


"Volcanic Panic"
July 18th, 2017

Dogasu @ 07:39 JST -- Better late than never, right? Here's the Episode Comparison for "Volcanic Panic," an episode I've never covered on this site before!


Next week (and by that, I mean a few days from now) I'll be looking at "Beach Blank-Out Blastoise," a so-so episode about turtles on some island somewhere.


Pocket Monsters the Movie "I Choose You!" Review
July 15th, 2017

Dogasu @ 20:02 JST -- About halfway into Pocket Monsters "I Choose You!" I realized something; this movie does not really have much of a plot. I mean it has a bunch of tiny little stories, yes, and there is this general "I wanna meet Houou!" thread throughout the film, but as a single film it fails to tell a cohesive story. It's honestly all over the place.


But let's start at the beginning. Pocket Monsters "I Choose You!" starts off with a beautifully animated retelling of the first episode of the original Pocket Monsters series. I had just rewatched this episode two days earlier thanks to that Rocket-Dan event I went to so I'm pretty confident when I say that large portions of the script for this retelling were lifted directly from the original (so much so, in fact, that Takeshi Shudo gets a co-screenplay credit). Shigeru and Kasumi's parts are skipped over entirely and there are some small changes made here and there (Hanako meets Satoshi inside Orchid's lab by herself instead of outside with a crowd, for example) but that's not anything I didn't already know going into this thing.


Once we get past the opening credits and into the original content is when the movie starts to fall apart. An overall story arc of Satoshi wanting to meet and eventually battle Houou is quickly introduced but is largely ignored for the entire middle part of the film in favor of a bunch of tiny little stories strung together rather haphazardly. Satoshi tries to catch an Entei but fails. Our heroes have to stop an Iwark they accidentally angered from rampaging about the forest. Our heroes find a Hitokage and bring it to a cave to warm it up. Satoshi loses a pokemon battle to Cross and takes it out on his friends before falling asleep and having this weird (but also completely awesome) fantasy sequence about what his life would be like if he wasn't a Pokemon Trainer. We hear Souji's shocking backstory involving a Rentorar who froze to death trying to keep him warm in the snow. We hear Makoto's less sad backstory where her mom is heavily implied to be the Sinnoh Champion Shirona and who apparently has a not all-that-great relationship with her for some reason. Makoto meets Suicune. We see the entirety of Butterfree's storyline despite it not having anything to do with the Houou quest. Etc.


Once Butterfree leaves, it seems like screenplay author Shouji Yonemura realized that, oh yeah, there's this whole Houou story I've gotta wrap up, and so the rest of the movie takes place on this place called Mt. Tensei. But by this point the movie's spent so much time dicking around that this final act feels less like the logical conclusion to a hero's journey and more like a collection of scenes meant to give this movie's special guest voice actors something to do. Cross steals the Rainbow Feather from Satoshi but his heart isn't pure enough or whatever and so Marshadow, who had been following Satoshi around this whole time, is able to swoop in and steal it for itself. Marshadow sucks up the power from Houou's feather and uses it to control the wild pokemon in the area.

A big confusing fight ensues that ends with a repeat of the Onisuzume attack sequence from the first episode retelling. Only this time, instead of Pikachu getting up at the last minute, hopping up on Satoshi's shoulder, and defeating all its attackers with a massive Thunderbolt attack, Pikachu instead just sort of awkwardly stumbles off Satoshi's shoulder and rolls away, allowing its Trainer to get hit by all the pokemon's energy attacks. Womp womp. Satoshi falls over, has Pikachu talk to him for a bit (yeah, it's as stupid as it sounds), he dies, Houou brings him back to life, and then Marshadow just sort of goes away.

Satoshi then challenges Houou to a battle. But! The movie is getting close to the end of its runtime at this point so instead of showing us the actual battle it cuts away to a scene of Satoshi bringing his Pikachu into a Pokemon Center after the fact. Later, Souji and Makoto go off on their own, there's some narration about how the journey will continue, and then BAM! The end.


As a stand-alone movie it's all over the place but what about as a love letter to the franchise's 20th anniversary? Sorry, but it kind of drops the ball there too. I don't care one bit about Kasumi and Takeshi being absent from this film but I also don't really think them being here would have fixed much of anything either. It just would have been Satoshi, Kasumi, and Takeshi in this hot mess of a movie instead of Satoshi, Sinnoh remake kid 1 and Sinnoh remake kid 2. But Erika's here, so that's something...right? (laughs nervously) The other 20th anniversary nods include the soundtrack being about 85% old Kanto tracks, a bunch of blink-and-you'll-miss-them Easter eggs scattered throughout the film, and a montage of old characters during the end credits.

I left the theater feeling the most unsatisfied I'd ever felt after watching one of these movies. Is this a good movie? No. But is it a bad movie? Ehh...I wouldn't really say that either. It is a weird movie, though, and it's definitely the kind of film you need to watch for yourself to appreciate just how truly effed up it is.

Some other stray thoughts:

• This was my tenth time seeing a new Pocket Monsters film in Japanese theaters, you guys! And this time, the number of people lining up to see the newest Pokemon film was way more than usual. It'll be interesting to see what those first week box office numbers look like.
  
• The nostalgic music placement for the first episode retelling in this film is more or less the same as the original episode with one glaring exception: "Tears, After the Cloudy Weather," the song that plays when Satoshi stands up to the Onisuzume in the first episode, is replaced by a remix of 1999-2001-M08, a piece of Jouto background music! Like, what the hell? (luckily, "Tears, After the Cloudy Weather" is brought in later in the film).
  
• Marshadow definitely feels like it was thrown into this thing as an afterthought. Bonjii doesn't do much either.
• There's this one Purin Trainer in this film whose character design looks totally different from everyone else, so much so that I wonder if she's meant to be some Japanese celebrity or a reference to something I'm unaware of.
  
• Cross' Gaogaen shoots off its Flamethrower attack from its crotch instead of its mouth, and it is exactly as wrong-looking as it sounds.
  
• Here are the nods to the past I noticed: Two of the Trainers from Mewtwo Strikes Back show up in the movie's cold opening. There's a map of the Isshu region in Dr. Orchid's lab. Kikuko of the Four Heavenly Emperors is a schoolteacher during Satoshi's real world fantasy sequence. The Yadoking of Earthia Island and the side characters from the Victini movie show up during a montage right before the end credits.
• Speaking of the ending credits montage Takeshi has this kind of disappointed look on his face while Kasumi has this annoyed look on her face as if to say "ugh, don't put us in this thing." I honestly laughed out loud.
• The teaser for next year's film was just text against a black background that said "It has been decided that the newest movie will come out Summer 2018!" (劇場版最新作2018年夏公開決定！). There wasn't any animation to go along with hit.
  

Let me know if there's anything else you want to know about this movie!

Pocket Monsters The Movie "I Choose You!" is the 20th Pokemon movie and is now playing in Japan. An English release has not been announced at this time.


The Rocket-Dan's big announcement is...pretty much what I expected
July 14th, 2017

Dogasu @ 07:41 JST -- Last night the "Emergency Meeting" event being sponsored by the Rocket-Dan was held at the United Cinemas Toyosu here in Tokyo. I'll be posting a full write-up of the event in the next few days but for now I wanted to post about the "big announcement" made during this event.

And that is...that a real, life-sized Nyarth balloon has been created and will be going around Japan over the next few months. Video clips of the balloon flying over the Japanese countryside (including one with a person in a Nyarth costume riding in the basket) were shown on the theater's big screen during the big announcement.


When talking about the cost of making the balloon, Shinichirou Miki, the voice of Kojirou, commented that "it really cost a ton of money. If you take a 200 yen Monster Ball and times that by about 100,000..." (めちゃくちゃ金かかっている。200円のモンスターボールが、およそ10万…) before being cut off by his teammates, Megumi Hayashibara (Musashi) and Inuko Inuyama (Nyarth), for giving away such classified information. If we take Mr. Miki's comments literally then that means this balloon cost about 200,000 yen, which is a little under US $2,000.

The balloon was actually on-site at the shopping center before the event started and was going to be blown up for everyone who had gathered around but had to unfortunately be canceled due to strong winds. I took video of this attempt and will be posting it later.

A "new series" called "Pocket Monsters" the Animation Premier 10 (「アニメ『ポケットモンスター』プレミア10) was also announced, but this is just going to be TV-Tokyo airing reruns of select episodes from the original series. The HD remaster of the first episode, which was shown at last night's event, will be the first one broadcast when the series starts on July 23rd.


The Rocket-Dan's Emergency Meeting
July 11th, 2017

Dogasu @ 07:30 JST -- On Thursday, July 13th, a special event is going to be held here in Tokyo that's being advertised as an "Emergency Meeting" being sponsored by the Rocket-Dan (【ロケット団主催】緊急会合).


According to the announcement made on the official website for Pocket Monsters The Movie "I Choose You!," this meeting, which will take place two days before the premiere of the 20th film, "a huge project that will shock the world" (「世界を震撼させる一大プロジェクト」) is going to be announced. The promotional image for the event shows a silhouette of the trio's Nyarth balloon.

A digitally remastered version of the first episode of the original Pocket Monsters series, on which part of this year's movie is based, will also be "screened for the first time ever" (世界初上映) during this event. An HD remaster of the first episode was aired on the variety program Pokemon Smash back in 2012 (Pocketmonsters.net did a great write-up of the episode back when it aired), but that was on TV; this event will mark the first time a digitally remastered version of the episode is officially shown on a movie screen.

The official site also states that Musashi, Kojirou, and Nyarth will attend as well. So I guess that means their voice actors will be there, probably...?

Unfortunately, only 100 people will be able to attend this two-hour event. Those who are interested had to apply using this entry form by July 9th and would receive their invite via e-mail on July 10th. I applied to attend, naturally, and am happy to report that I was one of the 100 people who received an invite!!!!

So! The event starts at 8:00pm JST and ends at 10:00pm JST. My current plan is to attend (obviously!), tweet out whatever this "big announcement" is (plus a lot of fanboy gushing, probably), and then start work on a full write-up of the event that will hopefully be ready to post within a few days.

Is there anything you guys would like me to look out for while I'm there?


"Riddle Me This"
July 8th, 2017

Dogasu @ 05:03 JST -- Riddle me this! What's an episode with so many changes and edits that it's become the blaine of my existence? It's this week's #Kanto2017 entry, "Riddle Me This."


There are a ton of rewrites, cultural cover-ups, digital paint, music edits, and overall shenanigans going on in this one! It's a good thing I had most of this finished before I even started this project because there is absolutely no way I could have finished this comparison in only a week.

And, as usual, there are so many paint edits in this episode that they get an entire page devoted to them.


Next week's #Kanto2017 episode won't be released until Sunday because I'll be spending all day Saturday updating the site with information about Pocket Monsters The Movie "I Choose You!"


"The Breeding Center Secret"
July 2nd, 2017

Dogasu @ 22:49 JST -- Starting off the fourth month of this little #Kanto2017 thing of mine is the revamped comparison for "The Breeding Center Secret."


This episode also had a ton of digital paint in it so be sure to check out the screenshot gallery for this one as well!


Next week's episode is the first part of the two-part Guren Island arc which means there are a lot of rewritten riddles and Japanese cultural cover-ups to look forward to!