Taking place about 65 episodes into the main anime, the 1st Pokemon movie takes us on an adventure invited by a mysterious Pokemon master claiming to be the best Pokemon Master in the world. Here is our full Pokémon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back Review!
The movie was released in the Summer 1998 anime season alongside Pokemon: Pikachu’s Summer Vacation. Pokémon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back was animated by OLM and based on the IP and games from Nintendo.
In Pokémon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back we go on an adventure where we start with the birth of Mewtwo and see his reasoning on why he is going to do the evil things he is doing in the movie. Something I never knew and was confused about while watching this movie again after about 10 years, this is mainly because it got added later on to extend the time of the movie. So there are multiple versions of the movie currently out with 1 of them being fully remade in 3D, but this review is about the original version with some of the extended scenes.
When Ash gets invited to an island by the mysterious best Pokemon master of the world, he comes across his 1st challenge that was created, Nature. While Team Rocket gave him a bit of a boost to start, the small boat capsized and they are left on their own to make their way to the island and meet up with everyone invited (and some who are not…).
Team Rocket is actually made bearable this time. After watching the 1st season of the original Pokemon series I started to get more and more annoyed by the 3 villains, but due to their minor roles and not much interaction, it made for some better scenes overall.
Pretty early on it becomes clear that nothing is what it seems and it has all been set up by Mewtwo and someone who he controlled to help him. His plan to clone Pokemon seems to work out great as the clones of the final evolutions of the 3 classic starter Pokemon defeat the real Pokemon without any problems, but of course, Villians don’t win and that is the case for this movie as well.
While there are some scenes that are kinda grim for a “kids” movie, it still hits the same emotional beats as it did over 20 years ago when it first aired with some really moving scenes with Ash, Pikachu, and even some of the new friends made along the way. This same scene that made this movie stand out and made Pokemon feel special 20 years ago, still is one of the most impactful movie scenes I’ve ever seen.
Visually, I have mixed feelings about the movie, mainly due to some parts being added in the version I watched that don’t match the original release that makes some scenes look amazing but also makes the original scenes that come after/before looking a lot worse than they actually are. This was really clear after watching the 1st 20 minutes of the movie that is all content that was created and added later into the movie and made the intro feel more dragged out and worse for wear.
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