Review of Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! (2017) by Theflashbat — 12 Nov 2017

Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! is an amazing movie with interesting characters, decent music, stunning visuals with an objective that keep the movie moving. The movie, despite many people’s beliefs, is not just a retelling of the original anime, on the contrary, the movie is its own movie with similar elements but overall does not end up feeling anything like the original anime. The movie also has very emotional sections that hit there mark beautifully because of the more serious tone it takes, for example, the Luxray scene was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen, Pikachu thunderbolt near the end was filled with so much sadness and anger and it hit me in the feels and Charmander getting rejected hit harder than the original ever did. The music does its job but never caught my eye although the beautiful piano redo of the original theme song and the original track at the end is amazing. The two companions although not fully explored adds a lot to the story even if the backstories are vague, this although to some people may be frustrating it makes me want to learn about these characters and gets me intrigued for a sequel. The character cross is an amazing rival/ villain reminding me a lot of a more dark and serious Paul, I believe this is one of the strongest characters as his lack of emotion creates an unsettling vibe. The main character Ash is… well…. Ash nothing really changes. His the same old reckless kind of stupid Ash although Charizard obeys him which I actually appreciate as in the original anime it was more annoying than funny. Team Rocket does not do much but when they are on screen it leaves some comedy relief although still, they did not do much. The visuals clearly take inspiration from the sun and moon anime which makes sense as it is in that generation but this leaves a few weird movements but nothing that really takes you out of the immersion plus everything else is amazing from the battles to most of the other general movement, making the visuals stunning.

The plot although simple does keep the movie from feeling pointless even if it is a little weak but just like the anime and games this movie focuses on the journey rather than the destination.

On to the bad stuff which there is very little of, the start of the movie although some people found it the best I thought it was slow and boring although that is because I have seen that episode countless times, the movie started to pick up steam after the intro credits however.

Caterpie was pointless and did not add anything to the story and did not hit any emotional strings as it had about 1 minute of overall screen time therefore not hitting the mark at all.

Pikachu talking was cringy and made no sense as Pikachu did not want to go in its ball before Ash befriended him, it would have just been fine and better to add subtitles, although this last about 5 seconds which really isn’t very much therefore not something to get worked up about. In conclusion, although the movie has some hiccups that stops it from getting a perfect 10 these do not hinder the overall experience, making an amazing movie that has one of the most emotional credits I have ever seen.