“According to them, the Japanese original does not distinguish clearly enough between the good guys and the bad. “The people at Warner also gave us some hassle over the script,” Masakazu wrote. According to the Pokemon movie’s producer Kubo Masakazu – as quoted on – American distributor Warner Bros was concerned about the Japanese film’s lack of a distinct villain.
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In the original Japanese version of the movie released in 1998, meanwhile, Mewtwo is a far less straightforwardly villainous character indeed, the Japanese cut contained an entire opening sequence which better explained Mewtwo’s history and motivation.
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Ash, Pikachu and his friends – plus a selection of Pokemon trainers – arrive at the island ready for the competition, where Mewtwo reveals that he wants to clone the trainers’ Pokemon and take over the world. A genetically-engineered pocket monster named Mewtwo escapes from its creators’ clutches, builds a new lab on a remote island and decides to throw its own Pokemon tournament. The basic plot behind Pokemon remains the same between the Japanese and US versions: it’s an odd mix of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bruce Lee vehicle Enter The Dragon. But there was one criticism which turned up repeatedly in the film’s more hostile reviews: its prominent theme that fighting is futile and immoral. To anyone less steeped in Pokemon lore, the movie probably looked baffling. The Pokemon movie was, to be fair, an adventure film aimed squarely at the legion fans who’d already played the videogames, collected the trading cards and watched the animated series on TV. Yet unlike Spirited Away, Ghost In The Shell, Akira or most of the other cross-over anime success stories from the far east, the Pokemon movie was hardly met with critical acclaim most writers dismissed it as forgettable nonsense aimed at selling merchandise to the under-10s.
Katsuhiro Otomo’s seminal Akira? It didn’t even crack the top 20.Īs you’ve probably gathered from the headline above, Japan’s most financially successful animated export was Pokemon: The First Movie, released in 1999 to a huge opening weekend.
Unsettling cyberpunk masterpiece Ghost In The Shell? Not even close. What’s the all-time highest-grossing anime movie at the American box-office? Hayao Miyazaki’s acclaimed Spirited Away? Nope.
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