Were all familiar with the timeline of the Pokemon world. Its the modern day and weve spent decades following ten year old Ash Ketchum on his journey to fill out his pokedex and become a pokemon master However forty years ago back when Ash was probably still ten there was another young boy named Sammy who travelled the world drawing sketches of the pokemon he encountered. One day as he was about to explore the forested region hidden behind a giant wooden barrier he received an ominous warning: If you hear the cry of the forests guardian stand very still or shell take you with her into a different time Sam initially planned to follow this rule but when he saw the voice of the forest being assaulted by a poacher he had to step in... Only to get dragged into the future. Now with the help of his new friend Ash can Sam solve the mystery of how to protect both the forest as well as how to return home to his own time? For the most part Pokemon 4Ever looks like your standard entry in the Pokemon series albeit with maybe a slightly higher budget. There are moments that showcase a bunch of different cost cutting techniques but there are also a lot of moments where the animation is fast smooth and kinetic. So basically it looks like the series on a pretty good day at almost its best. There are only really a few interesting things I can say about the visuals of this specific feature. One the CG looks like ass and theres way too much of it for how bad it looks. Guys you didnt need to render two tree branches breaking in 3D. Two in spite of this the environment looks beautiful which is a big plus for a movie whose biggest theme is nature related. Almost all of this film takes place in a forest which is highly detailed and looks consistently alive. Finally weirdly enough 4Kids commissioned the Japanese creators to animate three new scenes for them all of which well discuss later in the review. Much like with the visuals there isnt a lot I can say about the dub because come on its the Pokemon dub. Everyone and their grandmother is familiar with this dub especially in the period BEFORE everybody started getting recast which this movie definitely was but Ill still put in the effort to find some things to comment on. Ashs new friend Sam is played by Tara Jayne another legendary 90s and 2000s voice actor who had played numerous smaller characters throughout the series most notably Richie from the Indigo Plateau and Ashs Bulbasaur so she already had a strong chemistry with Veronica Taylor prior to filming this movie. There are two cast members who have sadly passed away in the over 20 years since this movie came out The first was Maddie Blaustein who famously voiced the character Meowth but was also unrecognizable as the old poacher from the beginning of this movie because thats just how insanely talented she was. The second actor to pass away was Rachel Lillis who sadly died of breast cancer earlier this year and shes well known for voicing Misty and Team Rockets Jessie and while Jigglypuff does have a quick cameo she doesnt have any lines. Misty sadly doesnt have anything to do in this movie like she doesnt call out a single pokemon or anything but Jessie has her share of standout moments at least from a comic relief standpoint. Also while were on the subject of Team Rocket I recently learned the origin of James foppish cadence and it actually has a small similarity to the origin of Pikachus name for Ash Pikapi. Like Ash James original Japanese nameKojiro had three syllables so it was decided early on that in the traditional Team Rocket intro they would have Eric Stuart drag his name out in an exaggerated seductive way to cover all three syllables. Kojiro became Jaaaames. I just thought that would be a cool fact to throw in. Anyway its not a standout dub for any particular reason but whichever version of the Pokemon anime you prefer thats the version Id recommend going with. One quick note on the music most of the soundtrack is the same as the Japanese version with the exception of a really cringey song they added at the end that goes Celebiration or some other stupid shit. So yeah this is the fourth pokemon movie. If anybodys wondering I didnt have any specific reason to skip the third one I just kinda wanted to cover this one now because its my 251st review and Celebi is Pokemon number 251. The title 4Ever was eerily prophetic as this movie came out at a time when the franchise wasnt necessarily guaranteed to last until the end of time which we now are pretty comfortable that it will. At this point from a modern day perspective the curious immortality of the series has become one of its most fascinating and most annoying aspects. Most shows that run for as long as this one has will inevitably find themselves in a pretty tricky situation. A lot of the people who grew up with the show are no longer children and while theres always going to be a comfort in the nostalgia of the past they also want to see the show that grew up alongside of them you know actually grow up but its hard to do that without alienating the new child audiences that need the same simple entertainment their parents had and who dont give two shits about the evolution or continuity of the material. Ultimately the Pokemon franchise would seemingly follow an interesting strategy for this: While the games would grow up adopting more complex mechanics and exploring more mature social issues the anime would cater more to children sort of evolving itself into an episodic series wearing the clever disguise of a continuous series following Ashs journey as he goes through every new region that the games introduced never really developing outside of catching new pokemon and visiting new locations in order to better advertise the most recently added content in a never ending cycle of purgatory. Through it all Ash never ages just like how Bart and Lisa Simpson never age despite celebrating the same holidays over and over again. Much like The Simpsons Pokemon is stuck in a stasis where doing the same shit on repeat without taking any risks is simply the safe and financially secure option. I loved Orange Islands for example but theyre never going to try anything THAT far out of the box again. I was a teenager in the nineties so I got into the series when it was just hitting the states and I can say from personal experience that its very easy to approach it with a sense of tunnel vision towards its failure to live up to your expectations as a grown fan. Hell the reason it took me so long to watch this movieAside from Miramax taking over distribution rights from Warner Bros and generally botching the theaterical run was because it came out when I was entering an extremely cynical period of my life and I just hated how the title of the movie was a really lazy pun on the number 4. Shrek also did the fucking 4Ever joke but with an After at the end. Now that Im a lot older though Ive made efforts to keep a wider audience in mind while reviewing anime that might not have been for me so Im going to try to approach this film with more of an open mind than I did for the previous entries. Ive already gone back and changed my score for the second movie my personal favorite so Im already on this path and theres nothing left to lose so how well does Pokemon 4Ever hold up? And I mean aside from the dirty booty CG animation. Well first off it starts out pretty well. I appreciate that this movie opens with a pretty generous explanation of what Pokemon actually is for any tots whose parents bought them this movie as a piece of shovelware. So if this happens to be a kids introduction to Pokemon its not a bad one. Throughout the film but especially in the opening narration were shown a very impressive range of wild pokemon just living their lives from the most basic first route babies to a fucking Porygon who I cant believe they were legally allowed to add after that whole seizure incident got it blacklisted from any future anime appearances. I also really like the fact that the poacher is going after Celebi with a Scyther and a Houndoom since bug/flying and dark/fire are two deadly combinations for a grass/psychic Celebi and you dont see that kind of attention paid to type advantages in the series very often. The girl guarding the forest is basically just an exposition mouthpiece but seeing Sams interactions with Celebi as they ultimately rescue each other is fairly exciting. From there we jump to the future where a lot seems to be happening at once. We switch to a new villain as we see the now much older poacher from the opening accosted in his cabin full of surprisingly uncensored beer bottles by a really bland and generic Team Rocket villain who has a stupid looking mask and a dumb name no matter what language you speak... Vicious in Japanese and The Iron Masked Marauder in English. He wants to know where the poacher fought Celebi forty years ago which means he either knows how long Celebis time jump was or hes just benefitting from an extremely lucky coincidence. He also has a special pokeball that turns pokemon evil which is stupid because any pokemon you catch is automatically loyal and willing to do your bidding meaning if youre evil the Pokemon will automatically be evil as well. It also automatically raises a Pokemons abilities and stats to their maximum sure why not it sounds like a more reliable cheattraining method than glitchfarming rare candies. In another story thread Ash struggles to beat a middlestage water pokemon with his highly experienced electric Pikachusee? but thats not the movies fault the series is like that too. They spot Suicune on a boat trip and tell Professor Oak about it through a video call which interestingly uses a handful of original animation shots commissioned by 4Kids to drop a few clues for what was supposed to be a really subtle plot twist later on in the film. Im not going to criticize them for assuming their audience would be too stupid to figure out the twist on their own for reasons well get to later but it would have been a lot more efficient to just alter the dub a little... But then they wouldnt have been able to edit out the cameos of Tracey and Muk? Also Ash has in fact seen Suicune before he should not have had to ask Oak about it. Not long after this Ash and his friends enter the forest and meet Sam and in my opinion this is where the film hits its stride. The interactions between Ash Sam and Celebi are adorable fun and full of whimsy and while you wouldnt be incorrect to call it filler the filler is easily the highlight of the movie. There is some action going on which is fine I particularly liked seeing Bayleef in battle after all this time but to see a sequence of Ash and Sam swimming with Celebi transitioning to a flying scene faster than you can say Pines of Rome is enchanting as hell. Seeing them bond in a field of freshly evolved Butterfree is heartwarming and the way the other wild pokemon are used throughout the story it really goes a long way in selling the idea that Celebi is an important part of this ecosystem and its inhabitants will do whatever it takes to save and protect her. Theres a long portion of this movie that I could see some viewers calling boring fluff but Id be equally willing to believe there are a lot of people out there who vibe with that fluff myself included. On the other hand you have the Team Rocket side of things and its not all bad... Theres another scene around the middle of the movie that 4Kids commissioned and its nothing but a couple of minutes of Jessie James and Meowth being clown shoes. You could look at this sequence and call it pointless or a blatant waste of money and you wouldnt be wrong but personally I think it actually offers a necessary tweak to the pacing breaking up all of the whimsical fluff just enough to keep it from becoming tedious but thats just my take. Also I dont want to give away any too specific spoilers but there are SOME cool moments that result from Mr. Marauder encountering our heroes even if everything about him and his plans can only be described as generic uninspired and stupid. As far as oneshot Team Rocket villains go hes no Domino. Damn it do I miss Domino. The movie wraps up theres one more commissioned scene right at the end that tries to make the twist more obvious but come on it was already spoiled two years prior in the second movie. So how is the fourth pokemon movie? Well despite the fact that I came in with rock bottom expectations I liked it. Like a lot. Not every pokemon movie has to have some huge apocalyptic threat going on. Out of the Pokemon movies that Ive seen this one is probably the smallest in scale and the lightest in terms of stakes but its also kind of adorable and it knows how to tell a story that relies primarily on emotion without resorting to forced conflict or overblown melancholy. Its far from perfect but I cant really see any problems with it that arent generally common to the rest of the franchise. Sure Sam pulls out a windup steampunk pokeball thats never explained and conflicts with a lot of what we know about Pokemon lore but guess what? The bad guy in the second movie owned a fucking Pokemon trading card. Explain THAT shit. I havent seen a ton of Pokemon movies but I think its fair to call this my second favorite. Its charming and I was both entertained and engaged enough that I had an easy time turning my brain off through the worst of its stupid bullshit which lets be real every Pokemon project has SOME stupid bullshit. The twist at the end is genuinely really cool and reframes a lot of what youve seen with the franchise up to that point even if its pretty obvious to anybody whos seen the second movie. I cant guarantee youll have the same experience in fact most of you would probably just find it boring and stupid but I really like it. Its a seventy minute movie that moves pretty quickly so what do you have to lose? I give Pokemon 4Ever a 6/10