Pokemon the First Movie Discussion & Review | Anime Watch Club
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Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Anime Watch Club, a bi-weekly group discussion and review. We're the hosts of the Why You Say Anime podcast. Nominate and vote on shows that we haven't seen or shows that hopefully lead to a great discussion. On today's episode, the trainers of the Why You Say Anime podcast will be reviewing the 1998 anime movie, Pokemon, the first movie. Let's take a trip down memory lane in honor of reliving our childhoods. Nice opening question. Gentlemen, when you were a young lad, what was your favorite Pokemon then? And what was your favorite Pokemon now? Let's start with Jay.

oh yeah my favorite pokemon then was blazykin favorite pokemon still blazy kid he rocks all time classic love that guy hell yeah yeah how about you yeah so when i was younger my favorite pokemon was a toss-up between pigshu and eevee but now it's litten because i like that that's pretty good how about you miles

Yeah, so when I was a little kid going to this movie, dragging my parents to bring me and my friends, my favorite Pokemon was Mewtwo. I love Mewtwo. Mewtwo is still my favorite Pokemon. I got my Mewtwo stuff, got my Mewtwo cards. I love me some Mewtwo.

I've been showing your Pokemon pocket collection of Mewtwo stuff shaking my head. Yeah, was a big fan of this movie as a child because I love Mewtwo so much and seeing him get some some screen time was was really cool. So that's that's what's up. And Pat, you get one today.

Oh, I'm so honored. So yeah, growing up the first, I guess I did see this movie when I was little, but I was like three years old when I watched it for three or four years old. So I barely remember it. But my first favorite Pokemon.

was my boy, Umbreon. Great podcast content right here. But look at this little dude just chilling here. And it's mainly because the first, what really got me hooked on Pokemon was the Pokemon Colosseum video game on GameCube. My parents rented it from Blockbuster, which for the youngins that are listening, used to rent video games from there. But yeah, so I used, I rented it for seven days and my parents saw it. I loved it so much that they literally bought it from the Blockbuster somehow. I still have a box of

for pokemon coliseum and it says on it in my dad's handwriting um do not return purchased or whatever like on it it says so that's a fun little uh easter egg from my childhood i suppose but now i got ocarina of time i rented it so many times that my parents just bought it from the blockbuster yeah there you go uh

yeah my parents just took the initiative i guess with it but now i would have to say my favorite over time he has just grown on me so much it is a side duck i would say side duck or slow poke but yeah so that's basically it on my end i've loved pokemon i've loved it for a long time uh pete who's your favorite pokemon yeah uh growing up i always liked fat pokemon i'm not the biggest pokemon guy but i like big cuddly pokemon so dragonite and snorlax were my favorite and i

i'm still i'm still gonna go with dragonite especially with the upcoming that anime short where he's like delivering mail thing going on i think i'm gonna fall in love with him again so i think right now he's one of my favorites too as you can see so i want simone's favorites yeah

He goes so fast. And like, isn't the Pokedex entry kind of based off of the original one, at least based off of the movie in some way to like, you see him like going at supersonic speeds over the water or something like that. And yeah. And the whole point that you can like circumvent the globe and like, well, yeah, he can get, yeah, but it would be the movie based on the sprite because,

green and red came out in 1995 so it didn't fake news it's not this everything came from this movie everything even the show that predates this movie yes where they you know get all the gym badges that they mentioned yes yeah no obviously yeah based on the game which god bless this game right oh my god pokemon we love pokemon

All right, yeah, let's get into it. So yeah, once again, the Pokemon, the first movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back. This aired back in 1998, done by Studio OLM, who have done almost every Pokemon property other than the newest stuff, I believe, correct? And by newest stuff, I mean like the Pokemon Resort or whatever it was called and the Dragonite Show, correct? Are they doing generations? Like the...

The newest anime show with Liko is the lead. I thought we had this Pokemon horizon before I was just, I was just sitting there. I just checked. They do. They also do that. Yeah. So they do a lot of the mainline Pokemon stuff. They also do a, a girl's golf anime, apparently that I've never heard of. So yeah,

Interesting. And obviously Apothecary Diaries, most recently, probably out of their biggest hits category. And Odd Taxi. Yeah, they fucking slump. They're unironically my favorite studio. They just have bangers. And then also...

And also summertime rendering. Yeah. Yeah. Sad. The golf one was the one I told you about, Pat, where she only has a three iron. Oh, is that that one? Oh, my God. That's such a ridiculous premise. I mean, I guess you can putt with a three iron pretty well, but like.

How do you get out of a bunker? I guess that that'd probably be, I hope they address that in the first episode because I don't know how they don't. Do they not? Okay. That's tough. Well, basically the three iron is like really flat. Like each iron, the higher the number, the more loft you get, which allows you to like get air under the ball. Would you say only having a three iron is like having one type of Pokemon on your team? It makes you less versatile. Like if you only had water types or something like that.

I suppose so. It'd almost be worse because you'd have to use it.

You'd have to, you'd have to, well, no, no, it is basically the same thing. That is a good, really good segue. Wow. But anyways, that girls golf anime back to that. Yeah, that was our show. No. Okay. Yeah. Let's get a, Oh, they did do Pokemon origin by the way. So there we go. Oh, well, um, the goats apparently. Uh, yeah, let's get into discussions about this movie, uh, themes of Pokemon. Okay.

There we go. As I was adding this to the spreadsheet, I genuinely thought to myself, the genre should be Pokemon. It is such a ubiquitous thing, but I do think it's a little interesting we're talking about it on this, because it's almost...

I don't know, bigger than anime, if that makes sense. I don't know what you guys think about that, but like that was sort of a thing that I thought of. It is such a common, every generation of person I know about, you know, I have Gen Z or older Gen Alpha people at work and we talk about Pokemon together. It is just a cultural touchstone, universal across the world. It is insane how massive it is. Yeah. My dad loves Pokemon.

loves pokey man and loves to say it like that just to piss my brother and i off and and my mom also loves it but she tries a little harder and says the right name you know so like it's uh it really influenced so many people's lives it's it's it's hard to touch exactly how massive of a brand it is uh for sure i think that's a good point we should talk about that later i think

Jay had a thing he wanted to write off the rip start with something right? First impressions? Yeah that's what I was thinking. That's so true. You know there was this thing that I was trying to do there. I apologize. I am sick. I am very tired. You know that thing you've done every episode for four years?

You know what, Pete? I do. I am aware. Let's do first impressions. All right. Yeah, guys, let's talk about our first impressions for the girls golf anime. Miles, why don't you start? Yeah, it wasn't Birdie Wing, so I gave it a one. Yeah. So this movie, I was interested to see how much I would like it after, you know, it's been almost 30 years, almost 30 years, 30 years. Fuck.

I've been watching with Cooper sometimes before bed. We watched some Pokemon together. And so I've gotten a sense of like how the anime would like hold up. And I have a pretty good time. It's, you know, I mean, it's not, you know, fucking Casablanca or anything, but I think it's a general fun time. It's definitely a show for kids. And this movie is definitely like a kid's movie, but I think it was, I had, I had a good time. Nonetheless, I think that,

The nostalgia factor definitely helps. I think that it has like a nice message. There are some parts of it that are written in a way that I think is like kind of funny from a, like a more adult standpoint that maybe I wouldn't have picked up when I was like seven, where they just sort of like say the plot and like, like some lady comes out of nowhere. You've never seen her before. You'll never see her again. She's like one time, like,

fucking Noah's Ark happened. And then the Pokemon cried and the tears brought everyone back to life. And it's like, why is the Harbor master talking about this? I don't know, but that mattered that came back. It was a little circular. So, um, I don't know. I had a good time. What I recommended. I think if this is something you've watched before, I don't think it's something that will be ruined by watching it again. Um,

I think it's a fun little nostalgia trip. And if you're like me, you have a kid, you know, it's definitely something you can enjoy with your, with your children together. That isn't watching cars for the 700th time. Those are my thoughts. Cars. Nice. God, I'm getting flashbacks to being explained to be the plot of cars for 45 minutes, like a month ago. Oh my God.

Ka-chow, ka-chow, ka-chow. Cat, why don't you go next? Oh, man. Shockingly, I am probably the only... I am the only one out of us five that has not seen this movie. I was not a Pokemon kid growing up. I just really liked... Yeah. I was more into Hot Wheel of Accelerators, honestly. But...

Yeah, probably why I'm a car head now. But I had a lot of fun with this anime. I will agree, it's definitely not something that you normally... That is inherently super high quality. But it is definitely something that you can have fun with. Regardless of whether you have nostalgia for it or not. And yeah, I would definitely recommend this to... Honestly, pretty much everybody. Because it's not really a...

You don't have to be super into anime to know what Pokemon is, and this appeals to pretty much everybody. Fair enough. Makes sense, makes sense. Jay, what about you? Yeah, I had watched this pretty much when it first came out. I was a big Pokemon kid growing up. I started in the second generation, I want to say, because I was a little too young to catch the original generation. But, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, this held up pretty well for me. I mean, I've seen this about a billion times at this point. Like, not recently, but throughout my childhood, more or less. And, yeah, I mean, it's great. The music is pretty solid in it. The animation, I think, like, while it's old, it's aged pretty well. Especially, like, when it...

like in terms of color palettes and stuff it definitely still has that like very hand-drawn feel to it that a lot of things from that time have which i you know if you listen to this podcast before when we review stuff from the 90s that's always like the primary thing that i personally appreciate about 80s and 90s anime is the good like background art and colors used and

and this is no exception to that. Would I recommend this for people? Yeah, definitely. I mean, like, this is a classic. I don't think you should go in expecting it to be, like, high cinema or anything like that or anything, like, super heady, but, like, it's pretty fun, and if you know somebody who was never really into Pokemon when they were younger, like Cat, I think that this would be, like, a pretty fun thing to show them to kind of, like...

introduce them to that like obviously i know kat knows a little bit about pokemon nowadays but like i would be interested to see about somebody who just doesn't know about pokemon at all watching this because i remember my mom used to love watching the pokemon movies with me and she just from the visuals and she doesn't i mean she knows pikachu and maybe like charizard that's it you know so yeah i would recommend this

I like your your point about the animation. Like, I don't know if like all of it holds up. It definitely like looks old. But I do agree completely that the color palettes and the hand drawn look and like a lot of like it has still really high peaks, you know, like in the animation. I like that. That comment. That's good. Pete, what about you?

yeah i thought this would be like a hundred percent of nostalgia trip uh this was the first movie i've ever cried to this was the first movie i was ever invited by a friend to go to the movie theater with so there's like a lot of like memory shout to vincent invited me to this movie when i was seven that's my homie right there and i was blown away by this movie i i forgot i'm like jay i've seen it once

And I have forgotten almost everything about this movie, except for like towards the end. I didn't realize how funny this movie was. I didn't realize how ridiculous this movie was. This was, I'm going to say it, fantastic. I would absolutely recommend it. I kind of wish I had a kid because this is 100% the first movie I would show to my kid. This was so much fun. Like an absolute blast. If I was seven to like four to eight,

Something like that. I don't know. A kid range. I would love to showcase this movie to a kid. Fantastic. Recommend it to everybody. It was a blast. I don't know if the sub was as funny as the dub, but the dub was low-key one of the funniest things I've seen all year. So, yes. Two thumbs up from me.

I don't remember the dub at all for my watching of it. So yeah, obviously, like I said earlier, I watched this when I was a kid, but I'm sure it was funny because Brock's dub in particular, right, is hilarious. I have to say though, so I watched this subbed with the intention of getting a new experience and I

The sub is really funny, too. Like the quick quips from Jesse and James and Meowth or Nyanchi, I believe is what his name is in Japanese.

was really, really quick and well-timed and they fired them out. I almost prefer Meowth's voice in the sub as well. Yonsu. Yonsu. His banter back and forth with the Meowth clone was good. It almost felt like a different way to watch Pokemon from the usual...

The mouth's move and just old animation where the mouth and the dubs, they didn't really try very hard to make them line up. I thought it was really interesting. It did annoy me when they started calling Squirtle and Blastoise and Charizard, freaking whatever they called them in the sub. It almost made me turn it off.

Lizard is Charizard. I know that one. Yes, that one. That one. I remember. I can't even remember them off. Like Rhyhorn is like something horn instead. It's like it's just so weird. This is all I guess like for this almost feels more like a closing thoughts than impressions. I'm sorry. But like I truly did have fun with it and I would recommend it.

If you're trying to get someone into Pokemon or to just show them the general gist of it, or like you said, like if you had a child, this is a great thing to get them into Pokemon with. I don't think critically this movie really does a lot, but I also don't think it's like offensive in any way or bad. It's just...

kids movie so you know there's not much to do there so yeah i think that's five recommends right off the board and a uh and a cat two cats in frame right now for the audio listeners pete you added one last point here oh no i was just gonna say like i think you mentioned uh pat with like the dialogue or maybe it's miles with like something that you catch on when you're like an adult and not a kid i know my brother talks about this all the time with his kids when he watches bluey that they just like throw in like

random adult things that the kids aren't going to catch on but like in the first instance where it's like ash is just like being a lazy bum and then some dude comes up and fight and then missy's like

you got dassey in this she'd say this but she said she's like you got dassey this motherfucker like you ain't gonna help me clean up but you'll go fight this random punk like i was like it set the tone immediately and i was i was hooked from the start so shout out to like the dialogue because it's like it's not good but it's super fun yeah so in the sub that that dialogue was oh i'm so tired i can't like i need to eat i have no energy or whatever and then

The guy comes up to fight him and he goes, oh, but I always have energy for a Pokemon battle. And it's like, yeah, he basically says, like, I can't work. And then he goes to do a Pokemon battle. And he's like, you just said you can't do any work. He's like, no, this is fun. And that scene is like one cool for a few reasons. So you get Don fan in that scene, which is like, I think the fourth Johto fight.

we get to see on screen. I remember being super excited that as a kid. So you see Ho-Oh in episode one of the anime. You see Togepi...

as Misty has it as a Pokemon and then before this movie we didn't watch this but there was a Pikachu's Vacation short mini film we should have had to watch that man those were classics Meryl was in that Meryl yeah yes she's in the next one and then Don Phan is in this and that was like he just randomly has that and I remember thinking that was like the coolest thing which was like me is that the one where Charizard gets stuck

Something I don't remember. I haven't seen them since I was 10. They're bangers. I didn't realize Meryl was Johto. It never occurred to me. I always thought it was Hoenn just because that's where I actually encountered like in Pokemon. Okay. Yeah. So I guess like general Pokemon like that. Yeah. So Meryl is only a 0.1% encounter in Dark Cave unless there's a swarm happening in Gold and Silver. It's a fun game.

I never played Gold and Silver. All the JoJo games are bad. Don't worry. Kat, they're great, but that's fine. Kat, you haven't seen anime or how much Pokemon anime have you seen? Like,

You haven't seen any anime. I've been on this podcast for four years, but I'll be dead if I've watched one of them. Honestly, you've been really impressed. I've been impressed with your ability to not, but like still make points and stuff. However, I guess what I was saying is like, is this the first Pokemon anime experience you have? Or is it you started later? I'm just curious.

So this is probably my first Pokemon anime experience that I've had that hasn't been...

tweeted like a uh like an american cartoon so like every time i've seen uh pokemon beforehand uh it's always been oh it's pokemon i'm gonna watch this for 30 minutes and then i'm gonna watch uh chowder or whatever the fuck you know so this is the first time i've actually been like oh okay i'm gonna sit down and watch pokemon and i actually got the story of pokemon instead of you know

Oh, a bunch of cool monsters that I don't know the name of. Oh, that's Charizard. Oh, I know Pikachu. Pikachu's in the zeitgeist of American culture. Yeah, that type of thing. Okay, that cool. That makes sense. I was going to ask, like, what was, I guess, like, people who wouldn't have any nostalgia for this, like,

The first scene is just throws you into something for no reason. It is. It means nothing, but it's neat. And it's neat if you like Pokemon, but like, if, if you don't, I'm curious how that would be. You know what I mean? So like, what was your thoughts there on that first scene? And I guess Pete too, cause you've seen this before, but you're not really a Pokemon guy. So I want your thoughts after cats. So like, for me, it was,

It was like, hmm. So this is how a Pokemon battle goes in the show. Like, because I've played SoulSilver. Okay. But that's probably that. And I think I played, no, I played Scarlet Violet, I think. Most recent ones? No, one of the most recent ones. Was it Sun and Moon? Because you like Litten?

Maybe. Okay. I don't think it was... Oh, no, it was 3D. So, yeah. Or Legends Arceus, maybe? Legends Arceus, I think it was, yeah. Legends Arceus is a banger. Good choice. So, the thing about watching it and being like, oh, so that's interesting. Oh, so that's how that works. It's like...

I feel like if I had never seen Pokemon or if I had just intentionally ignored Pokemon, this would probably be like, huh, well, that's cool. It's like a shounen anime. It's like a battle shounen. In fact, it's very similar. It's a battle shounen.

But like that, that's, that's probably how I would feel if I didn't know anything about Pokemon, but like, yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty fun, but it's like, I definitely wouldn't want to watch like several, like tens of seasons of this.

You know? Yeah. Well, too bad. That's winning. Our next one is all of Pokemon every single episode. Pete, what were your thoughts there? So you said you had forgotten a lot about this. You didn't, you don't, have you played any of the Pokemon games? Red. Okay, cool, cool, cool. TCG pocket.

uh okay cool definitely don't overanalyze this movie because like even though i don't know shit about pokemon uh squirrel beat like a champ with a bubble i was like all right this is pikachu thunderbolts the golem it's a yeah like i i'm not i i don't know what weakness is our strengths or whatever in pokemon but i know that shouldn't work like so it's like yeah i mean i was like whatever like it doesn't it doesn't matter it's for seven year olds and

It was fun. Like, I don't care. Like, I'm not here for the immense world building. I'm here for Minnesota Viking jokes and Ash punching Pokemon. Like, it was fun. Like, it doesn't matter. Wait, so it wasn't just a Viking joke? It was a Minnesota Viking? They say Minnesota Vikings in the dub. They say Vikings mostly live in Minnesota now, I think, is the... Yes. So...

Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying they don't for clarification because I don't know what the sub joke is. They don't literally say Minnesota Vikings is it is a Minnesota Viking jokes. You're correct. But since we were translating to no, that's about I get where you're coming. I do think they actually make the same joke. I'm jumping out a window over here. I bet.

Yeah. Trying to help clarify for pet. Yeah. But yeah. All right. I guess we kind of jumped the gun here in some way, but those are our first impressions still at the end of the day, especially the question related to Kat and Pete there. So yeah, let's jump into our spoiler heavy. Watch out for spoilers going forward on the Pokemon movie one release.

Not one, sorry, zero one. U2 strikes back. Jay, you had the first talking point that you wanted to lead us off. Okay. I'm actually going to make two talking points because I want to get this in there, but I didn't want to be a dickhead and interrupt at some point. I think that this would be if aliens...

like kidnapped you and were like show us a movie to convince us not to blow up the planet i think that this would be a great one to do that with if it was like specifically like an anime movie or something like or if they were like we're going to erase the concept of anime unless you show us a great film like i think that this would be one where they would just have a good time be like all right you're good like the wicker man with nicholas cage yeah but

I was thinking about what the like kind of whole like greater message of this movie is. And I think I've come up with it.

so they create the strongest pokemon right at the beginning right they say it and mewtwo is basically a god with what he can do like he has got the ability to manipulate the weather just by going like this with his hand like low hand uh he can speak telekinetically to like every or telepathically to like every trainer in the world at once he can like

turn people into like mindless slaves. He can create life from nothing that like all the technology he's able to understand that sort of thing. And then the trans just like, oh yeah, no, we're going to go square up. I think that the premise of this movie is that if God is real and alive, then we have an obligation to either kill him or enslave him. What are your thoughts? That's just the Bible.

that makes pikachu jesus too right because like pikachu just it makes me you too jesus no no pikachu turns the other cheek like constantly he's getting slapped okay sorry yeah okay me too is jesus from passion of the christ to crucify this um yeah i think that

The only issue with that possible theming is that God invites them to fight specifically. So God wasn't really hunted in this case as much as he saw what he hath created and frowned and threw down the gauntlet and was like, I want to do this again. Let's see if we can improve this.

on all I'm going to make Pokemon I mean if God wasn't a coward IRL then he would do that but he hides in his little cloud because he's scared of me

That's also the message of Spy Kids 2. Shout out Socks. I love this one. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I will say, like, I guess to completely subvert the joke you're making, the point of this is, like, kind of nice, right? Like, it is a good little message for a kids movie about

you know, not judging groups like blanketly, not fighting without trying to understand each other first and everything. Like, I think there's, there's some value in all of that. Um, yeah. I mean, everybody loves the, like, you know, Mewtwo's big speech where he says like the circumstances of your birth don't matter. You know, I would probably also think the circumstances of my birth didn't matter if I was born a genetically perfect monster capable of creating life from nothing. Uh, yeah.

from birth uh having a high tier understanding of my own psychic powers just from the get-go i would probably also think that the circumstances of someone's birth didn't matter at all specifically my own not judging other people but you know i i have to mention that's a dub only thing as well i i triple checked that that line was not or that whole like circumstances you're like

That line was not even close to that in the, in the, or rather in the sub, he kind of just goes, Oh, I realized some, like it was so bland. It was like,

completely different. It's so bland that I'm forgetting it. That's how bad it was. Well, not bad, but you know what I mean. Different it was. I went back and re-listened to it. I could probably pull it up. Like the Errors of My Ways or something like that? Yeah, something like that. It was so...

not as sick as what the dub did in any way it was kind of and mu is just sitting there like nodding along like yeah yeah you're you're a bit of a japanese version mu says to mutu that he is superior to him and that the clone should be wiped from existence

Does it? Yes. That's a completely different movie. Yeah, it is. That's a different vibe. That's crazy. Oh my God. I have to digest that. Digest it while I ask. The first 20 minutes of this movie are really chaotic, are they not? I remember I was like, I don't even remember these first 20 minutes with like

the like well i like i remember him bursting out of the um the the uh what's it goddamn called from star wars the

Aptic tank? No. Oh, yeah. But like that thing or whatever. Oh, no, you're thinking of the thing Luke's in. And yeah, the healing, the healing thing, like you burst out of that. I remember that. I don't remember the the freaking floating around with other AI or like brain, you know, recreations or consciousnesses. I don't remember that at all. I don't remember a little baby Mewtwo. I don't remember anything.

Or I didn't, I should say. I didn't remember any of that. It was what it was, right? Like, it was a little baby. I'm imagining the rapper, Lil Baby. Oh, no! That should be in our thumbnail. Yeah, that would be really funny, especially out of context. Maybe racist. Maybe we don't do that. It has to make sense. It's fine. Yeah, oh, yeah, you got me there. I'll put my stamp of approval on the baby's butt.

Oh, no. No, that duh baby. Sorry. Sorry. Wrong baby. Wrong baby. Little baby is the one people like. The baby is me too. I don't know why I'm laughing so much. Because of the baby car.

But yeah, so like that first part of the movie is like kind of dark. Is it not? You guys like feel the same way I did. It was it was so dark. And then like everyone just dies. And Mewtwo's like, well, time to end humanity. Like it was very dark.

Just different from the tone that I remember the movie having, at least initially. I don't know. How did you guys feel? I guess. And here's the thing, too. Like, I saw the movie when I was so little that I barely remember it versus you guys were like 20 at that time. Right. Like, yeah. Yeah. You know, so. So I don't know. Maybe I'm just too young for nostalgia there. But I was reading something about it, too, not being part of the original theatrical release, but then when it got re-released in theaters. Yeah.

I remember it being I mean, what I mean, I remembered him being made in the lab. I remember him training with Giovanni. I remember all of that stuff, right? Because that stuff becomes like relatively integral to like Kanto Pokemon lore with like Mr. Fuji and everything. So I don't know. I mean, I remembered the sort of tone that it would have that professor who clones him is Mr. Fuji.

Oh. Yeah. I didn't get that from the movie. His name was Professor Fuji. They said it in the subtitle. I thought he was just a random character that gets killed off. Fair enough. And also, I just forget that he was in... I haven't played Pokemon Red in so long. Fire Red in so long. I just remember him saying, I, every single time. Yeah, that too. He's on screen.

But yeah, I mean, I don't know. I guess it had about the tone that I remembered it having, but I was also a massive fan of it as a child, and so...

you know did a lot of stuff i don't know like pete did he hit your you said you don't remember anything so no i i mean i was watching i was like oh this is just astro boy gone wrong i was like oh this is lit like i completely i didn't i like i remember like how mutu was created i was like oh he's a clone of mu oh that's how he got his name like that's how out of touch i am with oh come on so yeah this is a big uh refresher for my old brain

That's interesting. Yeah, I guess I just grew up playing Pokemon more than I did watching it. I just never was able to get it on my TV. Like, I guess I just got home from school too late or something. I don't know.

Saturday mornings on CW 1030 I was always playing sports because I'm not a fucking nerd during that time I'm sorry no I'm kidding I'm kidding I probably was always playing sports Saturday mornings it's like the prime time unfortunately

Yeah, it's called a VCR. Record. If you were a real one, you would have done it. You would have recorded. I would have bought a VCR for my family at six years old. What were you out there doing, Pat? You weren't making any money for the family. Yeah, no, I wish I... We had the VHS tapes or whatever, right? Used to record with those. I probably do have...

one Pokemon movie on VHS over here behind me. Do you remember the Saturday lineup that they had for people who watched it regularly? Did anybody watch it regularly on Saturday?

yeah okay it was like fighting foodons into like monster rancher or whatever it's called into i remember monster rancher into yugioh or something like that i remember watching a bit of yugioh yeah ultimate muscle slash yeah ultimate muscle yes yeah depending when you were doing it um megabots would be on it around that time um digimon used to be on it around that time too yeah um just slammer just

I watched Digimon more than I watched Pokemon at that point. Banger after banger. I also hate to admit that I also watched more Code Lyoko than I did Pokemon. Oh my god, that just was a fucking flashback and a half. Code Lyoko was also for me because it was on at like 4pm so I'd get home from school and be able to watch it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'd get home from baseball and watch it. Jesus Christ.

I had completely partitioned this from my memory and it's going right back I wish I didn't remember it honestly Code Lyoko is like anime Caillou for me the German show right? French that's why you like Radiant so much I like Radiant a lot I don't like Code Lyoko they're not the same

I don't like Code Lyoko anymore. I've learned where its origin is. That's too bad. Jay, what did you think about the initial tone? Was it darker than you remembered? No, not really. I mean, to be honest with you, I think that they... I was reading into some of the differences between the Japanese, like the dub and the sub for Pokemon, and it's basically a completely different movie because 4Kids wanted to Americanize it.

That's why Mew is cute in this version, whereas in the Japanese version, Mew just thinks all the clones are inferior and need to be wiped out, basically. And Mewtwo is less of a supervillain in the sub. He's more of just a confused Pokemon that wants to find out what's going on.

I'll send you the source that I'm reading in the chat. Yeah, because that's how it starts out. Like, he's... Like, I don't know if you guys... If it's the same in dub, but, like, that first, like, 20, 30 minutes, he doesn't have, like, an evil bone in him. He's just confused, and then he gets kind of angry that he gets abused by Giovanni, obviously, and then...

Like goes from like being kind of angry to just full on like murder or not murder, but you know, like I'm going to get revenge against humanity at like kind of not out of nowhere. Cause obviously again, it's, it's implied. Yeah.

yeah it's implied he suffered a lot of abuse but I just don't remember you know like it felt like a very jarring switch I don't know and it's not to say that like kids shows can't have darker themes or things that happen in them by any means I was I just remember being like damn like these consciousnesses are self-aware and then they fade away to death you know like it's kind of sad like very sad

From my point of view, like, at the beginning when we're looking at Mewtwo, because I also watch this stuff, there was...

He seemed confused at first, and then when they didn't really answer his question and just were kind of confused about his question, about, like, who is my mother, who is my father, who created me, it was a god. Like, they weren't answering, and he just got more and more angry from, like, more and more frustrated. Like, he was a child that was trying to understand the world around him and got frustrated when nothing was answering it clearly. And...

Like, I feel like I feel like at that point that was kind of like a different type of evil that was like inside of it or not necessarily inside of him. But like those different type of evil that was showing itself. And it's kind of like that evil that you get when you're babysitting a two year old. So that's a moral of the story is that two year olds are horrible, horrible people.

fair enough yeah we don't like two-year-olds around here apparently um like i don't know what to say to that you know miles what are your thoughts on two-year-olds yeah i can't say i'm a big fan currently um i think that they sort of keep me up a lot at night and also pee on me it's just not great that's tough yeah i do that to myself

I don't know what's going on in my brain. I think I've had a long day. Those long smite sessions. Sometimes you just can't get off. I get you, man. Yeah, no. I mean, if the game's going and the team's not pausing, you know. You were born with the clutch gene, not the go to the bathroom in the toilet gene. I understand. Yeah.

I just need my piss bucket or whatever. Was that from the Battlefield Friends or whatever? The catheter? No, that's the real life application, but I don't know. Maybe that was too niche of a reference. Never mind. Wild Ages?

no okay sorry no that's not a very niche go back to your corner of the internet i'll go back to mine but then we come back to this pokemon corner and talk about this show a little bit more than what we have i think then which what i find interesting is that this is like basically the first thing where some of us have watched a dub and some of us have watched a sub and it is like

caused confusion. It was Pokemon the first movie. That's what did it. That was finally... But it actually matters too, though. Because like what Jay shared, that link, maybe Trent can put in the description. It does matter. It changes the movie a lot. It seems like... I thought it would have just been like the jokes might have been more localized or whatever. Yeah. Like Brock is a little more...

creepy by the way he's so down yeah he's and like he's in the american one he's down bad from what i remember in this one he's like actually like pervertedly weird he's like he says um like the first time he meets a nurse joy like news joy as she's like being uh mind control she's like who is that potty like it's like bro what

Well, that's in that's in this, too. I mean, if he recognizes he's like, wait, she's familiar. She looks familiar. And it's like, yeah, that's how she looks like. So I thought it was so funny. That was funny. But and then but at the end of the movie in particular, he's like, oh, man, the nurse joy and the officer Jenny and the the boat captain, whatever she was, I guess, Harvard Harborhead, whatever.

they're all just dolls or like they're all just so cute like how can they all be so cute like it's just something like that like an old man at a park would say not like you know

A protagonist. A 12-year-old. Well, he's a little older. Brock is like 18 or something. Oh, is he? Oh. He's older, yeah. I just assumed he was a kid. No, he's older. Well, they're all working adults, so maybe it makes it a little bit better, but I don't know. Brock is 15. 15, sorry. But he's older than, like, Misty and Ash are, who are 13 or whatever. He's thrown into the, you know, he has, like, to take care of his kids or his younger siblings because his dad is...

Koga? No. No, his dad's name is Flint. He sells rocks. That's what he is. Yeah, sorry. Really, he sells rocks. His name is Flint, and he sells rocks. He sells rocks, and it sucks. You having no Pokemon knowledge and models is like that to me? Dude, Pokemon is fucking brilliant. It is. Pokemon is the funniest anime I've ever seen. It is.

It has a lot of like genuinely. Yeah. His name is Flint. He has a son named Brock. He left his family to sell rocks. That's literally what he does. Yeah. Because they have the and he's in Pewter City, right? Isn't that? Yeah, he's in Pewter City and he takes the time to help Ash train, even though he's a fucking deadbeat.

deadbeat it's really bad it came out in 98 this is anime in the year 98 100% it wins every award it wins everything this is brilliant shit oh wait Pete if you watch the remake of this or like the next Mute 2 movie or whatever Brock says I took this frying pan and turned it into a drying pan and then he puts it over his head um

he also calls a uh he also calls a uh a nori roll a jelly donut yeah they do call them donuts as part of the localization yeah um whoever wrote this give him a raise double it and then cut it this is really he got fired from four kids no one's four kids now no he was the former one

It's funny to me because we're talking about this Pokemon movie as being so nostalgic and it got me thinking more about my experience with Pokemon. And I think that the reason we're not talking specifically about the movie so much is

Just because there really isn't a lot of depth or nuance to what happens. But there's so little nuance to it that I feel like this is a good conversation about the movie too. But anyways, my nostalgic movie for me at least, maybe it's why I'm biased towards Lucario as well, but the Lucario movie was the movie I went to see in TV.

movie that i remember getting really excited and hyped up about i'm thinking more about it and it's like it's almost the same plot in in terms of the movie like maybe it's just like the nature of kids movies but uh i don't know i'd be curious here like what what is it what is your most nuanced take on this movie let's let's do that i don't know what would you guys have anybody most nuanced

Yeah, I have not nuanced takes on this. Like, when... I guess, like, I can go later, because, like, the climax when Ash just tries to punch Mewtwo, I think is... So good. That is, like, something I did not remember and I thought was absolutely fucking insane. Like, I knew he got turned to stone, but, like...

You know, I don't know. At the end of the day, maybe someone could find some nuance here. And I'm reading through these changes, and maybe there's more nuance with Mew being some sort of supremacist. But...

I don't know. It was just sort of like a fun thing. Like, as you said, we're not talking about the plot a lot because they go to the island. Mewtwo shows off his powerful clones. They fight each other. And then at the end of the day, they learn about friendship through Ash's sacrifice. And like, that's the that's the whole movie. And they cry him back to life, literally. Yes. So silly. It's foreshadowed. It is. It is. It is.

One thing I, my nuanced take on this, Mewtwo went through all the trouble of putting like a battlefield out there, but then his original plan wasn't even to make them battle, right? It was just to abduct the Pokemon and then like use them to make clones. Like he doesn't,

He calls the trainers there for a battle, which of course is like the red herring to get them there, or the bait or the trap. But then he shows them the battlefield and everyone's like, oh, we're going to Pokemon battle there? And he's like, no, I'm just going to deploy a bunch of Pokeballs and steal your Pokemon. That's what he does. So it's like, why did he go through the trouble of building the arena if they weren't going to fight on it? They do end up fighting on it too after they get broken out or whatever, but like...

Why did he build it in the first place? You know, he wanted to make the clones fight the originals from what I understand the whole time. The trainers, he didn't really care about the trainers in the original movie. The trainers were a means to an end to get DNA to make the clones. So the clones could fight the originals because then the, they don't mention this in the dub, but in the sub, they mentioned that you only need like three hairs to,

To make a clone. Yeah. You don't need to like kill the Pokemon to make clones. Obviously you don't because we saw that. But like it's just to get the clones to fight because he wants to fight Mew himself to see if he is stronger than Mew and thus more worthy of living and having a purpose in life. Yeah. It wasn't just that they mentioned it. It's that like Meowth lost three of his hairs and it became the other Meowth.

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, but I do think the battlefield's there to like, I think probably in Mewtwo's mind, he imagined sort of more of like a one on one like Charizard clone fights Charizard as opposed to like everyone all of a sudden just starts fighting at once. Like what happened? Like it was just like a fucking melee there for a minute. And then like they all died too. They all got like really tired and Pikachu rockied his way to victory.

just by taking hits to the face and having an insane amount of stamina. Just turn the other cheek. Every time. Until the other Pikachu fainted from hitting him so much. Well, the other Pikachu used Struggle and he won. Good reference, Pat. That was a good one. Thanks, Pat. How does this have a 7.66 on Mal? I mean, I guess I answered my own question with like... Nostalgia. I'll tell you why when we get to our rating.

Oh, God. You're muted. I wanted to hear about this, though, because like, what did you like love about this movie? Like if like it's, you know, let's hear it. So I'm just a fan of shows that don't try to be something it's not. And they set the tone of what it's presenting immediately. This show, this movie, sorry.

did not try to be spirited away it did not try to be you know a pic it's not trying to be toy story or something like that like it's not trying to be like these juggernaut uh child like movies it's just trying to have fun and it did that the entire film like i was never bored uh the only question i had was when they were getting to the island and there was like

32 minutes left of the movie, I'm like, how the fuck are they gonna wrap this up? Like, pacing aside, like, I was just in trance the entire film. Like, it was...

I felt like I was doing drugs a little bit, like a little bit. There was only 30 minutes left in the movie. That's how fast the rest of that happened. Yeah, it's it's just Christ. I think when they get on the boat, it's like at like the 50, like one minute or something like that. It took them. It took them 25 minutes just to get to showing ash like after the.

yeah the whole mewtwo opening sequence and everything else like that first battle is after the first like 25 minutes or 30 minutes of the it's very interestingly paced like there's only like three sets technically i guess four if you include them on the boat um which by the way mute uh meowth being like the front piece is so fucking funny the uh whatever they call that the

wearing like the full like siren garb or whatever yeah it's so funny they they really did a lot of good physical humor in this movie i think which not always the case in anime i feel like you know i do have to say i thought it was like i thought it was kind of

morbidly funny when we spent like what 20 minutes or at least 15 minutes hearing the professor go i i i over and over again only to only for him to die like a dog like that that that's just wow like it

That feels like, oh yeah, you get caught up in your obsession and all of a sudden you lose everything because you created a monster. Yeah, getting mauled to death by an animal would suck. I agree, Kat.

Great nuance take there, Jay. Jay has had some top tier takes on this whole thing. Yeah, I was like, oh, this movie is really fun. Jay, you should fight God. I'm like, oh my God, I did not get that at all. We should kill God. Yeah, exactly. I said we could kill and or enslave him. True. My apologies. There was a second part that I left out.

I was too busy laughing at Psyduck slapping the other Psyduck. They both freak out or whatever. It's like, oh my god, this is Martin Scorsese wrote a movie after this. I wish I could write this. I have some good news, Pete. You probably could have. I finally found the Lucario movie. Pokemon movie 8. Lucario and the mystery of

I remember Ash had the most...

Did it fade out? It cut out after the mystery. The mystery of Mew. Oh. Yes. I thought it was the mystery of Aura for some reason. I'll link it. I love editing. Trent, why don't you put up the poster from Mal? You can see how dripped out, absolutely dripped out Ash and Pikachu are on the poster along with the main extra helper.

that that movie is the one that i was talking about earlier that's like just nostalgic as hell for me i caught i i went as lucario for halloween that year like that's how you were calling me a nerd earlier and the audacity i'm pulling a mystery right now the audacity i was seven i was seven years old yeah i dressed up as a pokemon it was sick i i loved it i was

this is the one where the beginning of it is literally showing people going to war with pokemon yes weapons of war yes this is five pokemon movies too far from one last one i watched was the entei one which was three that's a good one too i remember that one the requesa one's really good i remember that deoxys yeah but yeah this one's like all about like this uh

like learning to use or like this is literally about aura maxing and it was way ahead of its time it was 20 years ahead of its time i gotta say man i kind of want to watch this now oh man i do too honestly i love lagaria we get nominated next time yeah we can go from pokemon movie one to pokemon movie eight and honestly it won't well man yeah

What if we all just nominate a Pokemon movie next time? Misty gets replaced by the much superior... It's gonna be... No, it's not May. It's 4. No, it's Lucario. It's May, buddy. It's May, buddy. It's May, I promise you. I'm not kidding. So they used to do a lot of thing in the Pokemon movies where a lot of the times the movies would be a generation ahead of where we were at in the States.

but it doesn't make sense it is Mei or Haruka yes Haruka the princess of Hoenn is the main other than Lucario that sure is Mei that's pretty crazy look at that should be Don's way fucking better which one would you date Miles since you're so curious about this their children good answer Jay right answer Jay thank you

Thank you, Jay. We can say Nurse Joy. That's fine. Nurse Joy's an adult. She has a job. Yeah. Not that children don't in this universe, but they all do. Jay, you wanted to talk about the iconic Mewtwo line, which is a lie. It's a lie, yeah. Let me pull up the dub again. I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are. Can we...

Just talking about the fact that Mewtwo was saying this after he like lured a bunch of children onto his island to steal their shit and the dub was going to kill the entire planet. Like, so I don't know. Mewtwo is just a hypocrite. Do you guys agree? Yes or no? Like, I fuck with him. Don't get me wrong. Okay, well, I'll say he's not a hypocrite because he says, I see now.

Right? So he's acknowledging that he was the big old dumb dumb before. Oh, so he's being Christian about it. He's accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and so his stones have been washed away clean. Or Ash. Ash comes back to life. He didn't die. He didn't die is the thing. They talk about that on that page as well. In all the source books in the original Japanese, they just say he got turned to stone and then came back, but didn't actually die.

You guys want to hear the regular line? Okay, what's the Japanese line? It is like, I see now, or...

or you and I are Pokemon that already exist in the world, in this world. And Mew kind of nods at him. It says it may be for the best that nobody knows of this incident. And that's it. Like, that's literally all. And then they like memory. They, they men in black. Oh, yeah. He does that too. He does memory wipe everyone in the dub, but it's after that line. After that. Exactly. There was no line of that in the, in the, in the sub at all. There's just not there. Like, yeah.

There's not enough voice lines either. It's not like the sub I'm watching is faulty or anything. There's literally no talking. What's cool about Mewtwo is his mouth never moves, so you can just make him say whatever the fuck you want if you have the rights to the dub. Legalize nuclear bombs. He made a mushroom cloud at one point, so he'd probably be cool with it. Awesome speech you're holding. I gotta say, I don't know if this is just my bias or whatever, but like,

Why does Ash sacrificing himself make him realize that he and Mew are both just Pokemon?

I have no idea. Like, in the... Like, why did he come to that realization in the sub? Because, like, in this, he's like, oh, like, the human isn't bad. I see that, like, this is good. Like, your way of living is fine. Like, I'm going to go be by myself, but, like, it's chill that you guys do this. Yeah, so I guess I can answer. In the sub, it didn't really feel like it was... Like, they do say that, oh, he wanted to create clones of Pokemon that are stronger and faster or whatever and prove that he was doing it. But, like...

In the sub, it felt a lot more like he was just... I don't know, what you guys are saying, the whole circumstances of a birth or whatever. It didn't feel as motivated by what Ash did as much as it was just seeing all the Pokemon come together to...

care about a human being. It felt more like it was humans versus Pokemon in his eyes in the sub than it did, at least in the dub. Like he almost like, well, he's cloning Pokemon to like create an army. I'm pretty sure is his idea here. I'm pretty sure to like to wipe out the humans or to take out the humans. He kind of like hints at that or that he wants, like he feels that Pokemon are all subservient

trainers and that it doesn't go the other way you know that like that i it's it was so hard to follow like again the dub maybe the dub spells it out more clearly into like language that's easier for me as an english-speaking american to understand maybe that's like the whole purpose of it but uh i i did the this is maybe why i came off more cynically though than than maybe some of us did

other than my natural tendency to be cynical. The plot didn't make any sense in the sub at all. And the motivations of Mewtwo made no sense through most of the movie. And his realization makes no sense at the end as well in the sub. Maybe they filtered some of the more darker themes for just the theatrical release to make it a little more kid-friendly.

Because I know, isn't the Pokemon manga insane? Well, yeah. It's pretty crazy. But it's different. I mean, the Elite Four all commit genocide. That's what I'm saying. It's crazy. So is the original thought for Pokemon somewhere in the middle between baby mode, this, and genociding Elite Four members? And is that where it was meant to be?

And that's why this movie ended up more towards the baby mode that of the mom, you know, like, is that maybe what happened? I just, I don't know. Maybe I, maybe I just kind of was distracted by looking at all the cool Pokemon and old art in this one. Uh, when I should have been paying attention to the subtitles more, we'll never know. I'll nominate it again. Uh, okay. Um,

Do we have anything else we want to discuss or do we want to final thoughts this? Mew is a little shit in this movie, isn't he? He's at least we didn't get that from the dub and he's just a cute little cat who likes peace in the dub. Yeah, well, he's just like an antic. He's he's up to like like just antics throughout the movie. It's not even that he's like floating behind people and stuff and like teasing them and everything. He's a troll. He's a troll and it's fun. Mew's a really cool Pokemon.

He is very, very cool. I also, yeah, again, Jesse, James, and Meowth. Or Neonth, Nearth, Neothu. I can't do it. The three of them, their dialogue back and forth was quality throughout. Like, they really, really, really funny. I love Pokemon. Man, Pokemon is so sick. Can we actually just do Pokemon for, like, the next, like, ten weeks? Like, that would be so much fun. The next ten weeks will, well...

We have a, we have a previously scheduled thing. Um, but we'll watch the, we'll just overwrite the Pokemon movie. If people want it, they can vote for it. If people want it, they should vote for it. And you get wonderful conversations like this, that totally were all about the anime that we watched. Um,

Yeah, I guess we move on to closing thoughts. So, Miles, what were your closing thoughts and final score for Pokemon? The first movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back.

Yeah, I had a fun time. I gave this an eight. It's something like nostalgia for sure. However, it's what I'm nostalgic for. What do you do? Quick trivia question for everyone. What was there were four possible promo cards you could get when you went to Pokemon the first movie Mewtwo Strikes Back in theaters. I guess exactly Pete might know this. I was just saying none of us were alive for that. That's not fair, but fair enough. Go ahead. You could get a Pikachu portal.

No. Fucking idiot. It's Polly Whirl or Wrath, one of the two. I know that. It isn't. No. You get a Mewtwo. You could get a Dragonite. You could get the Pikachu as you mentioned. The Dragonite has the satchel on it too from the movie. Oh, that's cute. Wait, can I get this final guess here? So if it's in theme with that...

It's not. It's completely random. I don't even know if it's in the fucking game. Sorry, I was thinking of the gold cards they had. There was a Poliwhirl for that. Yes, from Burger King. Yeah, dude, remember the Pokeballs you could get? Yeah! I had a Mewtwo and a Poliwhirl from that one. Yeah, I mean, I don't know why there was a Poliwhirl, though. It's such a random... They've tried to push Poliwhirl really hard as a mascot.

Why? Because he's Poliwhirl. He fucking rocks. He's a middle stage. I don't know. It seems random. Is the final Pokemon flying Pikachu? No. Damn. It's actually Agumon from Digimon. Crazy. Yeah, it was crazy. No, it is Electabuzz for some reason. Electabuzz is the flying wasp? The lightning wasp? Nope. It's just a cat thing. It's like an electric cat cheetah.

It's chubby. Oh, no, that's one. Isn't it? It's the one that Giovanni has right next to him, right? Oh, no, that's a Persian, dude. That's Persian. That's a cat. Oh, the creator of the Pokemon franchise, his favorite Pokemon is Poliwhirl, by the way. That's why. Oh, and who's Gengar's favorite Pokemon? I thought that was like, that must be another Ken Sugimori or something. Yeah, but Satoshi Tajiri, I believe, is the creator, and his favorite is Poliwhirl.

Okay. Anyways, that's my final thoughts. My final thoughts were trivia question about which four promo cards you could have gotten. And you only own one of them.

I only own one of them. That's too bad. Back out the window I go. There were so many of them. A great 10 Electabuzz is only $98. Yeah, that's because it's a fucking Electabuzz. Look up the great 10 Dragonite or Mewtwo.

But there's also they're not expensive, like just to buy. Like I bought them you to a couple of months ago for like $14. Ray 10 Dragonite 343. Still not as much as I thought I would. 343 grand. No, $343. There's so many of them. Like think about how many people went to that movie. And like you can still buy steeled ones. I actually have like a grade 10. This man. Fuck it.

somewhere i have i don't know i have like a strip of film from this movie that i got in like i think like this movie was fucking everywhere it was insane yeah it was make sense pokemon man hell yeah all right uh cat what about you yeah this oh oh we're at the final thoughts i forgot about it we were talking about random stuff um so uh yeah i really enjoy this movie uh

One thing I will say is that the music just felt really, really atmospheric, except for the one time where they first started the... When they first started the...

like the Pokeballs go, like Mewtwo's Pokeballs going after all the other Pokemon. And it was like, kind of like, oh, this is a fun little thing when everybody's really getting traumatized. There were some times where the music just kind of fell off. There's a music question I need to ask. So during the clone scene,

When they're fighting each other. When they first start fighting each other, this sort of like, I don't know, like light R&B song comes on about like, like, brother, my brother. What do they play in the sub-

They play like orchestral like battle music. Yeah, they do. We get some like, I don't know, boys to men knockoff singing about like fighting each other and like how that's bad. What about the ending theme? What do you guys get? Because we got some random like Japanese song where they're singing like la la la la la. Simon Garfunkel.

Like, it's very, very random. It was not like a Pokemon theme. I think we just got the Pokemon theme. We got a remix of it, didn't we? Yeah, yeah. You get a remix of it. And we got a remix of it at the beginning, too, when Ash was fighting the pirate guy. Anyway. Sorry, continue. But I just remembered that song and knew that would not be in the Japanese version. Yeah, so I...

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. It's definitely something that I can't give it super critical points because it's a kid's show and it's not the greatest. Pointing out the animation, there's this one moment where Ash is leading the charge with all of these Pokemon behind him. That's the same moment where he just runs up and punches Mewtwo when there's a ton of Pokemon that are also angry that are coming after him.

It definitely feels like it was under dated because there were so many Pokemon behind them. And then immediately after that scene, it goes back to the normal shading and the normal look. Yeah, there was some definite quality drops at times, but that doesn't matter when you're having fun. And fun is the main thing I like in my shows. And that fun earns it an eight.

All right. Voice actress for Meowth. The subs literally has done almost nothing other than Meowth for the past like 20 something years. I guess they did Shaman King and My Hero Academia, but they look like irrelevant characters in like minor roles. So that's pretty funny, I think, to build an entire career off of being Meowth. That's pretty cool. Jay, what about you? What was your final thoughts and score?

Yeah, I mean, it's the first Pokemon movie. I've seen this so many times. So, like, my final thoughts are basically the same as, like, my previous thoughts before. It's a good movie. It's solid. If you like Pokemon, I mean, you've definitely seen this before, I assume, if you like Pokemon. If you don't like Pokemon or weren't never really into it, this is a good, like, introduction to that. You know, there's not a ton of, like...

It's just a good jumping in point, really. Like, look at, like, Pete or Kat, two people who weren't really Pokemon kids. They loved this shit. Pete probably loves this the most out of anybody, and he's, like, the least Pokemon-inclined person here by a lot. Roo! Yeah.

I think that I want to give this a watch in the sub, honestly, because from what I understand, people actually really like that ending song that you had mentioned, Pat. It's ranked as one of the best pieces ever composed for the series. So I'm interested in seeing that because I've never seen it before. And I'm just curious what the general vibe is like as well, because it seems like there is obviously some pretty major differences due to four kids meddling. Shocker, I know.

yeah i think the meddling for kids did make like i always think they get a bad rap meddling when it's like you're expecting like american kids to understand the nuance of like something that a japanese kid would understand too like i agree there's something like the jelly roll thing like that's just dumb there's debt or jelly donut they have some hits and some misses yeah exactly yeah like that's how i feel i just always feel like people focus so much on

but i do get what you're saying and i the music too to be clear too yeah i was not i liked the song it just i was like what is like a small counterpoint though for the like defending four kids thing one thing you have to realize is that they're not doing the american dub for pokemon they're doing the english dub which means that other countries that get the english dub like you know australia

The UK, a lot of places, like a lot of Western European countries would just have the English dub as well on some channels, I assume. So like a lot of these references that they make for Americans are going over the heads of like a large portion of the audience for the dub, actually, like the Minnesota Vikings thing.

I imagine like Australian and UK viewers were like, what the fuck? What does that have to do with anything? Like, I don't know. The world revolves around us. So like, I guess that's true. We do. You got me there. Manifest destiny, et cetera. But basically what I'm trying to say is I would recommend this very strongly, but I would probably say, honestly, uh, watch both of them and see which one you prefer. Um, cause I think that they're very different experiences. I gave this a seven out of 10.

Seven out of 10. All right, Pete, what about you? My rating has no bounds. I have shows that are thought provoking discussions where we spent countless hours talking. We got shows like perfect blue, free red, full Malcolm is brotherhood. Then I have shows like laid back and laid back where the, if you look at my mouth, they are all the same rating, but I,

It doesn't matter because like it's all the same to me if I'm enjoying what I'm watching. And I enjoyed the living hell out of this movie. This was so much fun. Like, I don't care if the dialogue was written by middle schoolers. I don't care if the plot holes had more than Swiss. It doesn't. It's irrelevant. I had an absolute blast watching the show.

I'm giving Pokemon the first movie a 10 out of 10. Let's fucking go. What a winner. This movie was awesome. I loved it. I have some good news for you about the entire show then. If you liked this general energy, just watch the dub. You know what else is crazy about this? I have no interest in watching any more Pokemon. Yeah.

you can just never topple this and you can't get any better exactly like i've already reached the top like why do i want to fall down the hill like let's let's call it a day the top is number eight but yeah you're pretty close you're you're only one movie away so i guess i'll never know unless it wins yeah well we'll see we'll see time to call uh to rally the troops you know

I guess my closing thoughts would just be, I love Pokemon. Thank you, creators of Pokemon, for making this thing exist, this IP, this brand. It is so wonderful. I interact with it every single day of my life in some way, whether that's playing Pokemon Go or talking to my little brother, who is even more obsessed with it than I am about it, because he'll ask me questions all the time, or I'll hear him playing Pokemon.

Or I'll hear him playing Pokemon in the living room. Or YouTubers I watch will use Pokemon route music as their intro or outro music on YouTube. And it makes me think and be nostalgic towards it. I cannot express enough how much I love Pokemon. And that this movie, although I don't remember it as clearly as others, I do still remember seeing Mewtwo for the first time when I was little and

whoa he looks weird and still thinking he was cool but thinking he was very weird looking and creepy and this movie just hit in so many different ways and I really enjoyed watching it 7 out of 10 and I think that that's pretty fair I'm trying my best to not use nostalgia glasses on this

So 7 out of 10. That brings our average score to around an 8.0 dot. So a little bit higher than the MAL rating of a 7.66. I think that's a pretty fair rating for this movie. Pretty enjoyable. And yeah, I guess that wraps up our Pokemon, the first movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back. You, Miles, you have what we're watching next. I do. Yeah.

So in third place, earning its first legacy point, we have Citrus. Woo! In second place, earning its first legacy point, we have Kokoro Connect. Ooh. And in first place, earning its zero-eth, because it doesn't need any legacy points, we have Link Click.

Damn. Three, I guess. Let's go. So, luckily for me, I started watching two over the last couple weeks. I was wondering why you were watching it. I was like, I have a good idea. That's why. Though I did start before any votes really came in, just because I knew that it would win sooner or later. And it was sooner. Much sooner, yes. But yeah, that's what we'll be watching on March 10th. So...

Yeah, get started. I mean, it's six episodes, too, so it'll be super easy to watch nice and quickly. We're going back to China for this episode. That'll be fun. I love Linklake. Oh, man. I actually am really excited to watch this. So, yeah, that's what we're watching. And we have a special watch club after that that we'll be not needing to nominate for. So...

uh so yeah you guys are just gonna have to sit and wonder and ponder what we have cooked up oh we can tell people it's not a surprise no it's an april fool it's an april fool surprise it's not a surprise it's a surprise don't spoil the surprise pete all right i guess if you have ears or eyes you know what we're doing no you don't because it's a surprise for watch club uh yeah no obviously we

doing but i'm not gonna say it so that's all for watching discord and stuff like hey all right here it's fine a wrestling podcast ultimate spin zone it is here's an ultimate spin zone if you want to find out what we're joining discord or you can hear pat if you want to hear what we're watching or come to our discord sorry pat you were fading

What the fuck? I literally was talking straight into my mic without moving my head or changing my mind. Talk like that. Perfect. I can't yell all day long. I'm sorry. But yeah, we'll figure it out someday. One of these days, the microphone will just stop. Stop working, especially it only seems to happen at the end of the episode. I don't get it. You're perfect now. No, wonderful. I love technology and it's.

it's you know all this stuff yeah you can yeah the irish rage is coming through right now so uh yeah let's end this episode before i get a little too angry uh save that anger for next week's episode

oh yes good lord what are we doing pete because that wraps up watch club thanks for listening yeah if you want to support us the best way to do so like comment subscribe leave a review on whatever platform you're watching or listening to us on or give me a bunch of money uh next week we are doing our fancy football punishment episode so we will be watching all the shows we were assigned and hating our lives for watching it except for maybe miles i think

his show is like fine yeah it was fine six out of ten little spoiler show but uh unfortunately i got the lolly basketball show preston got the the gotcha musketeer show i'm super intrigued to hear what that show is even about uh and what everyone else got we have a special guest uh tyler's gonna be joining us so thank you so much for listening and we're gonna see you next time peace