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Reviews
Poketto monsutâ (1997)
A Series that has been beaten into the ground, an endless advertisement for the games, and has lost any of its former charm.
This Series is exactly what happens when you repeat the same idea ad infinitum to the point where no one really likes it very much anymore, but diehard Pokemon fans and people who only check it our sporadically.
It's the **same thing** literally every single Saga, often times with a different paint of color or slight tweaks to it: for the first 19 or so seasons, Ash gets all 8 badges, loses the League, gets a new female companion after every 4-5 seasons or so for eyecandy, and Team Rocket stalk him for a Pikachu for 25 seasons. There is no progression, real progression, characters never accomplish their goals either at the end of the day and they change them up randomly.
Additionally, the English dub for it gets worse over time, to the point where it was a dub that used to keep a lot of the Japanese score but now may replace all of it come Gen 9- and it was one of the better dubs of the late 1990s/early 2000s in regards to it being made for TV, but now, it has some of the absolute worst voice acting I've ever heard after the VA change, still has censorship to this day, and the intros go from 1 min power ballads to like 29 sec YouTube AMV rejects in quality.
In short, if you value your time, don't waste it on this blatant advertisement for the games as it's a perpetual loop of failures and disappointments. And the dub has gone way, way downhill over the years, whatever merits this Series had in the earliest years have been absolutely tarnished and this show became an ad for games, nothing more.
Gekijôban Poketto Monsutâ Adobansu Jenerêshon: Myû to hadô no yûsha Rukario (2005)
Still the Best Pokemon Movie To Date
What can I say that hasn't been said?
The dub's fantastic, especially Veronica Taylor's Ash and Eric Stuart's Brock are at their best in their final outing, 4Kids (now dead, however whose studio is now going by KonamiCross/4KMedia) kept the entire Japanese OST for their final film, and the script adaption is mostly pretty good as well as faithful. The voice acting is worlds ahead of anything you'll hear after this film, and the plot is genuinely interesting with a whole palace and feeling of betrayal thing. When Lucario ends up dying and Sir Aaron mourns his sacrifice not being known by the Pokemon until then, you have to cry a bit.
Gekijouban Poketto monsutâ: koko (2020)
The Series is still plagued by a dub that rewrites the script for no reason, and has subpar voice acting.
TPCi has had 15 years with this show by now, and yet, there are still rewrites in the dub of this film that would make me cringe. The voice acting is still below average, as well.
I'd give its original Japanese Version a 7/10 because Koko is a legitimately interesting film, but the dub is still hard on the ears after all this time (particularly, Natochenny as Ash still grates honestly, Ash no longer sounds very boyish and very effeminate instead, more like a teenage girl than a 10 year old boy) and that brings it down several notches.
It's just a re-hash of Movie 3, but done in a jungle setting advertising another Pokemon, Zarude. That's it. It's uncreative, which loses it points for that alone, but the dub while not at its all time worst still cannot seem to have competent voice acting.