I have to say that this was not *too* bad... I give it a 75% overall, perhaps a bit high. However, it *did* have some problems..
First of all, we tackle Pikachu's Rescue Adventures (which sounds like a GREAT title for a spinoff show. Rescue Rangers, anyone?) Anyway.. well.. I found the story to be very simple (good) but ..well... boring (bad). This short has a lot of questions to be answered, but never will be, in the same sense that.. say.. watching Scooby Doo will also make you go "huh, well, why are they....? Why would someone do that..? How is that possible? Oh never mind!" The same with the Pokemon short. I mean, overall, it was cute - no doubt - but I thought Pikachu's Vacation was at least amusing. The only laughs I got from this was from making snide side-comments. Sorry :-) I would give this, as a standalone grade... 40% The animation was only of video-release quality.. with some rather crappy "moving cel" effects that had little-to-no animation on them at all.
OK, now we have The Power Of One movie. Animation: This was OK.. It's not the best anime you've ever seen - heck, the first episode of Tenchi Muyo on Cartoon Network was better animated, and that was only released on straight-to-video... never as a movie. But, there were times where it had that typical anime action that I love so much. The 3D CGI animation was very nice, and the blending of 2D cel with 3D backgrounds was pretty good - it was effective. I liked the 3D CGI versions of the 3 Legendary Birds for the scanner readout. You'd think that they could get a much higher budget for this cartoon, since it's made everyone involved sooo much money.. but.. oh well ::shrugs shoulders:: Greed rules... and if you can get away with OAV-quality animation and still make 60 million.. hey... Nintendo's not complaining.
Characters: They had something going with Misty's jealousy over Ash.. but they didn't do anything about it. Ash nearly drowns.. we ALL expected her to give him mouth-to-mouth... but... alas. I suppose they thought it would have been a bad idea to show what amounts to a 10-year-old and a 14-year-old kissing. The evil dood, Lawrence III, is a nicely Neutral character.. he's sorta evil.. but not malevolenty so.. although he IS willing to let the whole world go to pot just so he can have a perfect collection of Pokemon. I liked this self-incrimination part of the story. However, Lawrence III is completely WASTED as a plot device... and as such the movie scores low. Overall, he was a COMPLETELY USELESS character, that could have been replaced with another plot concerning itself with a natural disaster or suchlike - and would have resulted in perhaps a more Indiana Jones-type movie of exploration to try to save the world.
Story: Well... it was good... but it felt like I was watching two movies. One movie was about Lawrence III wanting to capture all the Legendary Birds to flush the Marine King out, and being thwarted by Ash and Friends... and the other movie was about Ash and Friends trying to save the world due to impending ecological meltdown, because the 3 Legendary Birds are fighting each other. Save for a scene where Lawrence III tries to capture Lugia, and a scene where he picks up the Ancient Mew card and vows to start all over... he is missing from the second part of the movie. Isn't he at least a bit p***ed at Ash for sinking his floating city? How about trying to stop Ash from spoiling his plans? No.. he just disappears from being an important antagonist.
As I said before, the movie's main problem is that Lawrence III is a completely useless character. If you're gonna have a collector villain that's even more uncaring about pokemon's feelings, or ecological protection than Giovanni, then USE HIM. Have the battles not only for the 3 Birds, but for the 3 Gems too. Wouldn't a collector like to have the raw power of the birds themselves? Why are you going to let a boy ruin your plans?
Also, the climax of the movie seemed to be an anticlimax. The sinking of the ship was nice.. as was the race to Ice Island and back... but after that - feh. It wasn't as surprising as in the fight with MewTwo, when Ash gets killed - At least surprise us with a kiss from Misty to Ash, maybe. I suppose the jealousy angle was a good surprise - too bad they didn't play it more.
I dunno - if the story had been more unified... rather than being two storylines in one... I think I would have enjoyed it more.
Still, I give it a generous 75%. I'm sure other people may wonder why it's so high... well, I *did* enjoy myself. Even at $9 a ticket, I thought it was alright. I didn't go in expecting anything but Pokemon... and so I got what I wanted.
First of all, we tackle Pikachu's Rescue Adventures (which sounds like a GREAT title for a spinoff show. Rescue Rangers, anyone?) Anyway.. well.. I found the story to be very simple (good) but ..well... boring (bad). This short has a lot of questions to be answered, but never will be, in the same sense that.. say.. watching Scooby Doo will also make you go "huh, well, why are they....? Why would someone do that..? How is that possible? Oh never mind!" The same with the Pokemon short. I mean, overall, it was cute - no doubt - but I thought Pikachu's Vacation was at least amusing. The only laughs I got from this was from making snide side-comments. Sorry :-) I would give this, as a standalone grade... 40% The animation was only of video-release quality.. with some rather crappy "moving cel" effects that had little-to-no animation on them at all.
OK, now we have The Power Of One movie. Animation: This was OK.. It's not the best anime you've ever seen - heck, the first episode of Tenchi Muyo on Cartoon Network was better animated, and that was only released on straight-to-video... never as a movie. But, there were times where it had that typical anime action that I love so much. The 3D CGI animation was very nice, and the blending of 2D cel with 3D backgrounds was pretty good - it was effective. I liked the 3D CGI versions of the 3 Legendary Birds for the scanner readout. You'd think that they could get a much higher budget for this cartoon, since it's made everyone involved sooo much money.. but.. oh well ::shrugs shoulders:: Greed rules... and if you can get away with OAV-quality animation and still make 60 million.. hey... Nintendo's not complaining.
Characters: They had something going with Misty's jealousy over Ash.. but they didn't do anything about it. Ash nearly drowns.. we ALL expected her to give him mouth-to-mouth... but... alas. I suppose they thought it would have been a bad idea to show what amounts to a 10-year-old and a 14-year-old kissing. The evil dood, Lawrence III, is a nicely Neutral character.. he's sorta evil.. but not malevolenty so.. although he IS willing to let the whole world go to pot just so he can have a perfect collection of Pokemon. I liked this self-incrimination part of the story. However, Lawrence III is completely WASTED as a plot device... and as such the movie scores low. Overall, he was a COMPLETELY USELESS character, that could have been replaced with another plot concerning itself with a natural disaster or suchlike - and would have resulted in perhaps a more Indiana Jones-type movie of exploration to try to save the world.
Story: Well... it was good... but it felt like I was watching two movies. One movie was about Lawrence III wanting to capture all the Legendary Birds to flush the Marine King out, and being thwarted by Ash and Friends... and the other movie was about Ash and Friends trying to save the world due to impending ecological meltdown, because the 3 Legendary Birds are fighting each other. Save for a scene where Lawrence III tries to capture Lugia, and a scene where he picks up the Ancient Mew card and vows to start all over... he is missing from the second part of the movie. Isn't he at least a bit p***ed at Ash for sinking his floating city? How about trying to stop Ash from spoiling his plans? No.. he just disappears from being an important antagonist.
As I said before, the movie's main problem is that Lawrence III is a completely useless character. If you're gonna have a collector villain that's even more uncaring about pokemon's feelings, or ecological protection than Giovanni, then USE HIM. Have the battles not only for the 3 Birds, but for the 3 Gems too. Wouldn't a collector like to have the raw power of the birds themselves? Why are you going to let a boy ruin your plans?
Also, the climax of the movie seemed to be an anticlimax. The sinking of the ship was nice.. as was the race to Ice Island and back... but after that - feh. It wasn't as surprising as in the fight with MewTwo, when Ash gets killed - At least surprise us with a kiss from Misty to Ash, maybe. I suppose the jealousy angle was a good surprise - too bad they didn't play it more.
I dunno - if the story had been more unified... rather than being two storylines in one... I think I would have enjoyed it more.
Still, I give it a generous 75%. I'm sure other people may wonder why it's so high... well, I *did* enjoy myself. Even at $9 a ticket, I thought it was alright. I didn't go in expecting anything but Pokemon... and so I got what I wanted.