by Jayden Leggett, Editor
Join Ash on his ongoing journey to “find the truths hidden within us all” with these “two” new movies, Pokemon The Movie: Black & Pokemon The Movie: White. Adults need not apply.
Ash and his pals have made their way to the Eindoak Town, where the Harvest Festival is about to begin. Naturally, the naive and cocky Ash enters the 1-on-1 Pokemon battle tournament, thinking his cutesy little Pokemon can take on the behemoths of his various opponents. However, before his opponents’ combatants completely destroy Ash’s fighters, a mysterious Pokemon named Victini appears and secretly super-charges the powers of Ash’s Pokemon, with incredible enemy-crushing results.
The discovery of Victini causes Damon (a resident of Eindoak) to attempt to forcibly use Victini’s powers to relocate their castle and kingdom back to its original resting place, leaving Ash and the gang with the immense challenge of defeating Damon and his legendary dragon Pokemon before Victini’s life force becomes fully drained…
As I mentioned earlier, this is really a show aimed at the younger audience. The storyline and Damon’s motivations for restoring his kingdom to its former glory presented the perfect moral-heavy right-versus-wrong themes that are essential to any children’s movies of this nature. Being a Pokemon title, the script is full of cheesy dialogue and cutesy slapstick antics, matched with competent voice acting and music with lyrics that would otherwise be vomit-inducing were it not clearly aimed for the little ones.
Character animation is competent without being spectacular, but the CG effects and detailed environments add a much appreciated boost in the visual quality. Although not many fights happen, the Pokemon battles were quite entertaining when they occurred, and were animated much better than the regular dialogue-heavy scenarios.
The one major flaw that really bothered me was the fact that this wasn’t really two different movies, but rather one-and-a-quarter different movies at most. Apart from the very opening scene where it is either a village in a desert or a settlement in icy terrain being saved from a natural disaster (depending on which version of the movie you watch), the only real difference in the plot, visuals, dialogue or anything is basically which legendary Pokemon Damon has under his command, Reshiram (the white one) or Zekrom (the black one). Other very minor differences are present, but again are only really in the forms of different Pokemon performing the exact same actions and attacks as their alternate movie-universe counterparts.
If you don’t have a deep passion for all things anime or Pokemon, odds are that you will already be dismissing Pokemon The Movie: Black/White. However, if you are more than just a casual fan of the Pokemon franchise, then this flick will be a sure thing. Likewise, if you are looking for a movie suitable for young children then you could do much worse than this one. Besides, it definitely doesn’t look like the world of Pokemon is in danger of disappearing anytime soon, so you might as well succumb to its cutesy charm.
ComicsOnline recommends Australian and New Zealand residents purchase their copy of Pokemon The Movie: Black/White from one of the retailers listed on the Beyond Home Entertainment website or directly from the JB Hi-Fi online store.
ComicsOnline gives Pokemon The Movie: Black/White 3 out of 5 macarons laced with Pokemon crack.
As an extra special treat, ComicsOnline and Beyond Home Entertainment are giving two Australian residents the chance to win their own copy of Pokemon The Movie: Black/White on DVD. For your chance to win, simply head over to our Facebook page and answer the following question:
If you were a Pokemon, which one would you be and why?
The most creative and entertaining answers will have the best chance at winning. Post your answers by Friday the 21st of June.
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