Taking place about 65 episodes into the main anime, the 1st pokemon special takes us to a nice pokemon resort where all of the pokemon caught by Ash and his friend can chill and make new friends. Here is our full Pokemon: Pikachu’s Summer Vacation Review!
The Special was released in the Summer 1998 anime season alongside Pokémon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back. Pokemon: Pikachu’s Summer Vacation was animated by OLM and based on the IP and games from Nintendo.
Straight away into the special, it did something for me personally that a lot of kids growing up around the time of the release can relate to if they have seen it before. The intro song Vacation by Vitamine C brought back so many childhood memories from seeing the special (and movie) when I was a kid. The song by itself is just amazing already but accompanied by the visuals and how happy all of the main characters pokemon look makes it just that much better.
Visually it holds up really well, it does look dated, but if you are also going back to some of the older pokemon episodes while watching this, it does look a lot better and has some more movie-like designs to its environment and overall aesthetics.
The story follows Pikachu and some of Ash’s pokemon that come across a group of pokemon, they disturb Togepi and wake it up, and make it cry. To defend Togepi, Pikachu and the rest of Ash’s main pokemon go up against the newly met pokemon under the leadership of Raichu and do some challenges to decide who the better pokemon are. The challenges they do are pretty simple but very fun to see because it does flesh out some of the characteristics of the Pokemon.
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