Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions

Zoroark: Master of Illusions is a big comercial for the next generation of Pocket Monsters and a big celebratory party for Zoroark, Pokemon's new mascot. Unlike Lucario's film before it, which was an ambitious attempt at a grand adventure, Zoroark's film is mostly content with keeping itself inside one unremarkable town. Everything lies in execution, though, so lets analyze the film. The most notable thing that sold the film to the audience is the titular star, Zoroark. Being a furry bipedal creature with an elongated face and no legendary status, Zoroark has a few more-than-passing similarities with Lucario, the star of the eight Pokemon film. Personalitywise, the two are nothing like each other. As for their role in their respective pictures, the two share no similarities. Thus, we can lay to rest any accusations of plagiarism. The main plot is pretty weak. It hinges on the personalities of Zoroark and the main villain to keep us interested. Zoroark performs his job with good marks. He's nice to watch, menacing and his powers give us enough eye candy to enjoy most of his shenanigans. Kodai, on the other hand is a mixed bag. After witnessing terrible villains such as Marauder or Zero in previous Pokemon films, it's hard hate Kodai much. He often falls flat and his incredible wealth is a bit hard to believe, but at least it's some kind of an explanation for his high tech gadgets. Ash and company feel like simple audience stand-ins in this one. Their job is to watch, comment and keep up with Zoroark. They're given some interesting dialogue and a few funny quips as Zorua, Zoroark's child, plays with them. This keeps them from getting annoying and keeps the dialogue fresh. Throughout the film we're introduced to a few additional supporting characters and they're used efficiently, albeit conservatively. Soundtrack is uninspired and while the art design is nice to look at, it lacks an outstanding location or two. The location of the final showdown is underwhelming, as well. These two form the biggest crime this film committed - it felt uninspired. When a film you're making focuses on a singular Pokemon star, it's understandable to put the plot and other characters in the backseat, but the presentation should still matter. As a hype piece for Zoroark, this film did well. As a stand alone Pokemon adventure, it barely passes. Zorua & Zoroark are always present and as the only characters who are given constant care in the writing/animation department, they continuously save the film. There are a few moderately fun battles, but generally the film feels like it could have been much more. Underwhelming.

Another good Pokémon movie. While Zorua bordered to annoying and still managing to be really entertaining too with its transformations, Celebi's role seemed kind of insignificant even though it was important. Zoroark was a bit hard to grasp, although still interesting. The plot was quite effective, the art was good, and the presence of Legendary Beasts (Raikou, Entei and Suicune) definitely rocked. This was the first time Unova Pokémon were introduced. It was kept vague, though, which is nice seeing as Ash's story is not taking him to Unova just yet. The villain, Kodai with a fading ability to see his own future, was somewhat interesting, but the restof the new characters were left a little thin: none were overwhelmingly deep or momentous. They did their thing, served their purpose, and kept the story moving. All things considered, the plot was solid and entertaining, didn't fail too badly at anything, and the movie was thoroughly enjoyable.

Over all, I was underwhelmed. I'm a huge Pokemon fan but I was never really into the anime. It was always so childish, and I thought they could do so much more. However, the producers totally step it up in every way when making the movies. The story is about Zoroark and how it is both a good guy and a bad guy. The sound and artwork is pretty good, but the story is too bland in my opinion and they are always making lame plot twists that could have been more interesting. The Pokemon battles left me bored, and the new characters were boring as well.I did not enjoy this very much, and I thought it was a horrible way to promote the 5th generation of Pokemon. More importantly, it didn't leave me with that feeling of nostalgia that the early Pokemon movies did. I'm not saying that you shouldn't watch this, but I'm warning you not to have high expectations as this movie is incomparable to Pokemon 2000 or Pokemon Heroes.

Ash and friends reappear in yet another Pokemon movie, but still retain their usual bad qualities. Story: Absolutely dreadful. They featured Pokemon that were going to be the main focus of the film, yet only one of them was of any importance. The story was very underdevloped and was never fully explained very well. Art: The effects for attacks were pretty good in terms of showing off. The Pokemon designs aren't too bad either, but still nothing too fancy. Character: Pretty much no character development is made much. They throw in all the new characters that shown up in the movie and they just do much exceptwatch Ash and friends deal with everything. As for the feature Pokemon, there was pretty much no reason for them to even be included in the film and can just be easily replaced by anything. Enjoyment: Nothing noteworthy. Just simple attacks in pretty much every scene and no actual battling. And every other scene just involves story development that is just simply boring to even watch. There should be no reason to ever watch this movie, unless you're a die-hard Pokemon fan. Bad story, no good character development and action scenes without much of the action.