Pokémon Chronicles: A Family That Battles Together Stays Together! (aka The Reports Of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated)

Let's talk about one facet of the Pokémon anime that seldom gets much attention: the blink-and-you'll-miss-it spin-off series Pokémon Chronicles, which received its belated US debut in mid-2006, having already run in the UK and Canada the previous year. Chronicles was comprised predominantly of a series of specials, or "Side Stories", which initially aired as part of the Weekly Pokémon Broadcasting Station slot in Japan between December 2002 and September 2004, and were designed to give viewers an occasional reprieve from reruns. The attraction of "Side Stories" was in getting to see the kinds of adventures that took place wherever the series' regular protagonist Ash (aka Satoshi) was not, with the spotlight regularly shifting between members of the cast who had, up until now, been regulated to supporting duties. If you were one of those fans who was sore about Misty being booted from the series proper (Pokéshippers, mostly), then "Side Stories" gave you a bit of a peace offering. Maybe you were curious as to what Tracey's new life looked like after settling down in Pallet Town as Oak's assistant (if so, then you sad bastard) or what kind of nefarious schemes Butch and Cassidy got up to when they weren't antagonising their ostensible teammates Jessie and James (as it turned out, and for all of their posturing, they weren't really accomplishing very much more than Jessie and James). Jessie and James themselves were the focus of a couple of Side Stories, and we also had a small collection of mini-adventures following an ill-fated alliance between Meowth and the alley-dwelling Pokémon previously featured in the Pikachu short Pikachu & Pichu. The one constant is that Ash was never the star of the show, although his name came up frequently enough. When 4Kids collated the full run of "Side Stories" specials into Chronicles, they took the opportunity to throw in a few additional peripheral Pokémon stories they hadn't yet gotten round to dubbing, including a handful of seasonal Pikachu shorts and The Legend of Thunder! TV movie (here broken down into three separate installments). The result was an uneven grab bag of tangential Pokémon material - easy enough to ignore, but to do so would have been your loss entirely. (Well, maybe.)

Plus, how's this for a dubious honor -  Pokémon Chronicles was the very first thing I ever researched on Wikipedia, back when I'd randomly discovered the series in the summer of '05 and was frantically trying to dredge up some kind of context for the thing's existence. In those days, I had stopped watching the main anime some years prior and hadn't given the franchise much of a thought in the interim, but one afternoon I happened to blunder into a scene from "Putting The Air Back In Aerodactyl!" whilst channel surfing, and was intrigued by the unusual combination of characters: Gary Oak, Ash's former rival, and Tracey, Ash's former travelling companion, facing off against Butch and Cassidy, the Rocket duo whose major distinguishing feature was that they weren't Jessie and James. My bemused curiosity was enough to keep my fingers safely off the buttons on my remote, and lucky me, an entire Pokémon Chronicles marathon happened to playing on Toonami, enabling me to waste hours on this strangely compelling nonsense. Such is the desperation of an undergrad stuck at home during the tediously long summer recess, and the lengths to which they'll go to fill in three months' worth of empty space. As we've established, there wasn't exactly a great deal going on at the local multiplex that year to divert me.

I find Pokémon Chronicles a fascinating series, in concept, in part because the basic idea resembles a premise the production crew behind The Simpsons had been kicking around for some time, but which never got off the ground - the Tales From Springfield spin-off series, which would have offered a glimpse into the private lives of numerous Springfieldians, demonstrating that not everything in their universe need revolve around the Simpson family (think the "22 Short Films About Springfield" episode, except the stories would have run on a little longer). Like Chronicles, the focus would have shifted with each installment, so that different characters would get their turn in the protagonist seat every week. Given the scope of the series' supporting cast, it was a promising idea, albeit one that was never likely to happen while the main series was still in production. Still, Pokémon Chronicles largely demonstrates what I suspect Tales From Springfield might ultimately have borne out too, had it materialised - namely, that supporting players don't always thrive when subjected to the sweaty, gruelling conditions of the focal spotlight. Many shrivel up and perish then and there. A persistent bugbear of Chronicles is that the majority of featured characters just aren't strong enough to be capable of carrying their own 20-minute narratives. It's not that Ash was an amazingly rich or well-developed character either, but there was a compelling enough story to be had from his chosen occupation of travelling the various corners of the Pokémon globe and challenging Gym Leaders, especially since it mirrored the trajectory of the core series of games, making it easy enough for the viewer to project themselves into Ash's shoes. By comparison, most of the heads in the Chronicles roster weren't leading interesting enough existences that would justify their extended focus. The strongest installments, bar none, are the two starring Jessie and James, who weren't exactly strangers to the limelight at this stage. The Meowth adventures are certainly cute, and the stories centred on Misty are fair enough, I suppose. Tracey, who was frankly already pallid enough as a supporting character, absolutely doesn't benefit from being the centre of attention, but the dullest protagonist on offer would be Ritchie, who was, by design, an ersatz Ash with no particularly striking personality quirks or flaws of his own (unless you count his propensity for giving his Pokémon cheesy nicknames). It's worth noting that for a couple of the featured protagonists - Ritchie and Casey - Chronicles proved to be the final stop before oblivion; we haven't heard from either of them since (according to Bulbapedia). Which, given the developmental dead ends they appear at at here, is not surprising. One of the more appealing aspects of Chronicles, for me, was the generous amount of screen-time given to Butch and Cassidy, who had featured only sparingly in the main series, but were here upgraded to go-to antagonists - I can attribute my investment in that Chronicles marathon in no small way to their tendency to keep popping up all over it. Even so, and loathed though I am to admit it, they also don't have a whole lot going for them as characters outside of their vitriolic rivalry with Jessie and James - it's probably not a coincidence that their strongest turn is in "Training Daze", the only Chronicles episode to pit them against Jessie and James, proving that they're at their best when used as foils. You could say that, overall, I'd consider Chronicles to be more of an interesting series than I would a successful one. Nevertheless, it remains a guilty pleasure of mine.

Chronicles opened with its serialised version of Legend of Thunder, and was followed by one of the winter Pikachu specials, comprising the two mini-stories "Delibird's Dilemma" and "Snorlax Snowman". For now, I'm going to skip over those and go straight to the first of the actual Side Stories, "A Family That Battles Together Stays Together!" As a disclaimer, I should clarify that I don't intend to focus too extensively on the differences between the original Japanese and the English dub. If you're interested in that angle of Chronicles, then this site can help you out. For the most part, I'm going to attempt to swallow the 4Kids dubs on their own terms, although there are occasions where it will prove impossible not to comment on the disparities - particularly with this episode, in which we witnessed an ostensibly minor plot detail the dub had misrepresented some years ago hilariously come back with a vengeance to rip them a new one.

"A Family That Battles Together Stays Together!" was the only Chronicles episode centred on Brock (or Takeshi, as he's known in his native tongue), who was at this point still travelling with Ash and otherwise too close to the main action. This story takes place during a small window at the start of the Pokémon Advanced saga when he and Ash had temporarily parted ways so that Brock could pay a visit to his family in Pewter City. If you were following the anime from the beginning, then you'll recall how, as depicted in his introductory episode, "Showdown in Pewter City", Brock was once the Leader of the Pewter Gym, which specialises in Rock type Pokémon. Brock was unsatisfied with the Gym Leader's life, for he had aspirations of venturing into the world and schooling himself in becoming a Pokémon Breeder (this does not mean what you think it means), but was hindered by familial obligation; not only was he responsible for the Gym, but he was also the primary caregiver to his numerous younger siblings. His absent father, Flint, finally returned to him at the end of the episode, taking charge of the family and the Gym, and enabling Brock to pursue his own goals. In this story, Brock returns home to find that he might have made a grievous error of judgement in assuming that his father could handle his respective duties as patriarch and Gym Leader. Flint's life has been thrown into disarray by none other than Brock's mother, Lola, who has since rejoined the family, and desecrated the once-proud Pewter Gym by with her tasteless decorating style and by converting the Gym floor into a playground for her team of Water type Pokémon - which as any novice trainer could tell you, don't make the best of bedfellows for Rock types. Flint's reluctance to uphold the Gym's core Rock-loving values comes as a heavy blow to Brock. It's doubly distressing to Forrest, the oldest of Brock's siblings, who had ambitions of becoming the Pewter Gym Leader himself one day, but now can't wait to hit the road and blow this joint.

Back in 2005, I wasn't so well-versed in the differences between the original Japanese and the 4Kids dub of Pokémon (I knew about the "banned" episodes and, like everybody else, I'd enjoyed a giggle at 4Kids' attempts to pass onigiri off as "jelly donuts", but that was the extent of it). So when I read the synopsis for this episode, I remember thinking, "Huh? Didn't Brock's mother, like...die?" That is indeed what we were told in the English dub of "Showdown in Pewter City". In Flint's own self-deprecating words: "His good-for-nothing father left the family to become a Pokémon trainer and they never heard from him again. Brock's heart-broken mother tried her best to hold things together but sadly she passed away." Turns out, the dub had taken a few liberties with that second statement. In the original Japanese, Lola was as much a deadbeat as Flint - she up and abandoned her family when the going got rough. We can only speculate as to why 4Kids insisted on rewriting this particular portion of Brock's backstory, although presumably they found a scenario in which both parents had willfully neglected their children to be more distasteful than one where a parent left the picture through no fault of their own. They might also not have liked that Lola remains unaccounted for by the end of that episode, meaning that, while Flint ultimately returns and takes responsibility for his family, she gets off scot-free. They would have gotten away with it too, if the crew behind "Side Stories" hadn't decided that it might be fun to do an episode in which we finally got to meet Brock's mother, exposing 4Kids' filthy little lie to the western world. Now 4Kids found themselves painted into something of a corner; if they were to dub this episode, they had to accommodate the fact that it revolved prominently around a character they had already taken it upon themselves to kill off in their own continuity. And to be honest, if they were really that committed to said continuity, whoever designed Lola had given them a very obvious and easy way out - since she looks little like her children, who all take after Flint, it might have been entirely feasible to tweak the script, incorporating some dialogue establishing that Flint had remarried and Lola was Brock's new stepmother. 4Kids decided not to go that route, however; they allowed Lola to maintain her status as Brock's biological mother and handled their self-inflicted continuity error by not addressing it at all. Maybe they figured it was better not to keep on entangling themselves in a web of invention, lest it ended up backfiring again later on down the line (if so, then too bad they didn't apply that same mindset to the rest of Chronicles, where multiple characters claim to own Pokémon they don't actually have in the original continuity). Maybe it happened long enough ago that they no longer cared or even remembered what once had been said. To be totally fair to 4Kids, as gratuitous as their earlier fabrication was, and as brazen as it was for them to ignore the matter altogether, it's not as though continuity was the biggest priority for the Japanese original either, as we'll discover when we get to the "Training Daze" episode.

But since we've summoned the continuity police, the events of "Showdown" are recounted in this episode, and it seems like everyone has a hazy recollection as to what actually went on therein. They certainly didn't demonstrate that type advantage isn't the be-all end-all of battling prowess in the way that Brock is suggesting here:

Brock: Do you remember Ash? He's a friend of mine who once beat my Onix with his Pikachu, an Electric type Pokémon.

Flint: Wow, how'd he do that?

 

If you remember how the gym battle in "Showdown" went, Pikachu technically didn't beat Onix. Ash had "supercharged" Pikachu in advance by hooking him up to an old water turbine, rendering his electrical discharge insanely potent, but Onix nevertheless managed to maintain the edge. The gym's sprinklers were then inadvertently activated, weakening Onix, and Ash withdrew from the battle because he felt that this tipped things unfairly in his favour. Brock awarded him the gym badge anyway because he deemed the sportsmanship Ash had demonstrated to be as worthy as any victory (which is all well and good, but it did set an unfortunate precedent for the rest of Kanto, where Ash earned only three of his eight gym battles the conventional way). What's more is that Flint was heavily involved in the events of said episode - he had a direct hand in helping Ash to bulk up Pikachu's power - so his amnesia on the matter is a little eye-rolling.

The other thing that leaps out to me about "Family" is that there is potentially quite a misogynistic subtext to this story. I mean, it's not exactly subtle, is it? Brock spends the episode attempting to get his spineless father to man up and reclaim his gym from a female usurper who has refashioned the gym with a more overtly feminine motif. I get that the idea here is more about Brock once again having to compensate for the short-comings of both parents and their persistent failure to take responsibility for the family and its assets, even when they're fully present and on the scene, while also setting up Forrest to become Brock's successor; it is, nevertheless, unfortunate that the main conflict should come down to a dispute for dominance between the story's only significant female character and the three most prominent male figures in the family. With that in mind, the title 4Kids picked for their dub of the episode is honestly kind of bemusing, given that the outcome of this scenario doesn't exactly involve the family discovering strength in unity. The conflict is entirely internal, and any motion toward compromise is posited as expressly unacceptable - Brock and Forrest are appalled when, midway through the story, Flint and Lola announce plans to rebrand the Pewter Gym as a dual-type gym catering to both Rock and Water types. Brock isn't prepared to let those filthy Water mons befoul the sanctity of his all-Rock gym, so he challenges Lola to a battle to settle this once and for all. When his Onix manages to defeat Lola's Mantine, despite the type disadvantage, the only recourse for her Water Pokémon, in Brock's words, is to "pack their bags and find another lake." "Family" is not a story that celebrates change or diversity of any variety, just the preservation of the same old order, and that's a surprisingly straight-laced message to my ears. It has me questioning just how adequately things have been resolved when, shortly after being ordered to shut up and keep her watery inclinations out of the family business, Lola is seen cheerfully waving goodbye to Brock with all the others, apparently not in the least bit perturbed by an ending that requires her to completely toe the line. I guess it bothers me that the final outcome boils down to simply neutralising Lola and stripping her of all her jurisdiction, rather than finding some alternate use for her talents as a Water type trainer (thus affirming all Pokémon paths as valid and worthwhile). Again, this is an episode that seems hyperallergic to the very notion of compromise. Oh, but Brock restored Forrest's faith in Rock types, so I guess we're all good.

Brock's issue with Flint and Lola's proposed Rock/Water Gym is that Water Pokémon tend to prefer an aquatic-based battling field, whereas Rock Pokémon prefer a solid terrain on which to stand. Rock types do not, by nature, tend to be good swimmers, as we saw in the first act when Flint's Golem went up against Lola's Marill and required resuscitation. Brock has questions as to how the Rock half of the Pewter Gym could be expected to function, and this is a perfectly valid concern. I do, however, have three musings on the matter:

1. Pokémon with the dual Rock/Water typing do exist, and have done so since Generation I - at this point in the series, we already had Omastar, Kabutops, Corsola and Relicanth. Not the most common of dual typings, but still, it's not exactly accurate to claim that Rock and Water are inherently incompatible.
2. I don't suppose splitting or rotating the field would have been an option? I mean, we had seen flexible battling fields elsewhere in the Pokémon world, although I think mainly in leagues/championships. Maybe Pewter Gym just doesn't have the budget for that kind of thing.
   
3. There's an odd scene where Flint and Lola unveil their new, improved Rock/Water Gym signage, which we see being held up by Flint's Golem and Lola's Blastoise. The two Pokémon promptly collapse, which Brock points to as evidence of the doomed typing union, given that "they can't even hold up a sign together." The collapse itself occurs off-camera, making it unclear why it happened and what this specific mishap really has to do with one Pokémon being Water and the other being Rock. Flint insists that "They can learn", but naturally Brock isn't prepared to explore what that learning might look like. Really, why shouldn't Blastoise and Golem at least be capable of figuring out how to hold up a sign together? What exactly is the problem here?
   

If it sounds as though I'm coming down harshly on "Family", I should confess that, while I'm not exactly wild about everything is ultimately resolved, this is definitely one of the better installments of Chronicles on entertainment value alone. Because, let's face it, as conflicts in the Pokémon anime go, this is an especially inane one, and Brock's indignation at what his parents are doing to the Pewter Gym plays just fine when taken as a bit of over the top melodrama. Forrest likewise gets some hilariously overblown dialogue ("Look at Golem wobbling! It's like watching my future crumble before my eyes!" he hollers on observing his father's poor performance in his match against Lola), and Flint and Lola may be horrible parents, but they do make for very enjoyable characters (they're much more fun than Ritchie, any day). If there's a downside to all this japery, it's that the episode's efforts to introduce a note of seriousness in the third act inevitably ring hollow. Brock has a personal heart-to-heart with Forrest, who finally gets to talk about his own ambitions, his disillusionment in his parents, and the second thoughts he's been having about the path in life he had, up until now, been intent on pursuing. Forrest's dilemma hinges on his trepidation that, having watching his father's Pokémon suffer repeatedly at the hands of his mother's, it would perhaps be a mistake to focus his training career on Rock type Pokémon, feeling that they're invariably fated to lose to Waters. Naturally, if this is Forrest's attitude then he's setting himself up for a lifetime of perpetual dissatisfaction, because the whole idea with Pokémon is that every type is strong and weak to something. Rather than point out this simple fact of existence, Brock assures him that he'll show him the true power of a Rock type during his battle with Lola. Forrest's concerns feel as lightweight as anything else in this scenario, and yet I can't help but feel that there was potential for a little legitimate emotion between the two brothers, given the poignancy of their mutual backstory. Here we have two young people who've figured out early on that they can't depend on their parents and have been tasked with taking on responsibilities prematurely - firstly, in Brock's devotion to his family, and now in Forrest's sense of obligation toward his family's gym. Occasionally, you can see shades of that legitimacy puncturing through, such as when Forrest talks about how eager he now is to leave Pewter City and develop on his own terms. There was a much more serious family drama to be mined from this particular group of characters, I'm sure, but then serious drama was never really the Pokémon anime's forte.

"Family" is such a light and easily-digested affair from beginning to end that the darker spots in this family's history are by and large downplayed. If you came to this episode without first having seen "Showdown in Pewter City", then you might be spared a lot of unnecessary confusion regarding Lola's presence among the living, but would you have picked up that Brock and siblings had, in the past, been subject a period of all-out parental abandonment? Here, Brock isn't in the least bit surprised to find Lola at the Gym, and their dialogue would indicate that she's been around for at least two of his prior visits, whenever we're to assume they took place (I suppose he might have been able to squeeze in a couple of quick trips to Pewter City during that brief window where he was staying with Ash's mother). Flint and Lola's respective chunks of absence without leave are not explicitly acknowledged; there's a scene where Lola assures Flint that, despite her fickle track record for dabbling in various hobbies and passtimes that are swiftly abandoned, the one area where her interest has never wavered is with regards to him, and I have to wonder how their period of separation factors into that. At one point, Flint and Lola go off on an incredibly drawn-out tangent about how the spark of romantic attraction was first ignited between the two of them (as I understand it, this reminiscence is exclusive to the dub; in the Japanese original, they were discussing the future of the gym), and it's possibly just my own gutter-lurking imagination at work here, but I'm going to accuse 4Kids of implementing this change simply so that they could crowbar in as much highly suspect Pokémon-related innuendo as possible. The way you commanded Graveller, it gave me goosebumps indeed.

The other glaring 4Kids alteration on which I can't possibly avoid commenting involves the fate of the Pokémon team Brock has on hand when arriving at Pewter City. One of the main purposes of this episode was to provide a handy exit arc for most of said team so that he could begin Hoenn with a near-clean slate (much like Ash, who had ditched all of his Pokémon except Pikachu with the beginning of Advanced - it was one way of avoiding the mistake made during the interminable Johto era, which had the main characters bring across the same teams they'd been using in the previous series, only to then have to deal with the fact that they were, nearly all of them, redundant). Here, the dub retains the part where Brock suggests that Onix remain at the Pewter Gym with Forrest so that he begin training toward becoming its new Leader, but curiously omits a sequence where he also leaves his Geodude and Crobat in the care of Forrest. Why, I have no idea, since it creates yet another dub-exclusive plot-hole, when Brock shows up in Hoenn with only his Forretress. Was it excised due to simple time restrictions?

Another one-off special centred on Brock and his family aired in Japan in early 2011, where Forrest battles Nurse Joy's Latias and is officially recognised as the leader of the Pewter Gym, and we see that Lola's Marill has assumed a new niche as the family pet. We're still waiting for The Pokemon Company International's English-language dub of that one, although I personally am not holding my breath.

Finally, something else I should probably specify, lest anybody feels the need to point it out, is that I am aware that, in Takeshi Shudō's novelisation of the anime, it's implied that Flint might not actually be the biological father to most of Lola's children, and that she went through a whole succession of partners who kept knocking her up and running. I am not, for the life of me, prepared to accept Shudō's novel as canon, however. I mean, look at those children. Look at Flint. Life would just get too weird.

Let's Review The Soundtrack To Pokémon The First Movie (aka I Was Prepared For Trouble, But Not For This)

When Pokemania gripped the West in the dying embers of the 20th century, the then-callow Japanese import swiftly gathered infamy for being totally irresistible to kids and beyond incomprehensible to adults. Certainly, no addition to the Pokémon canon emphasised this division more than Pokémon The First Movie, the American treatment of the anime's premier big screen outing, released in theatres in late 1999. This was the first real occasion on which a significant number of non-converts were forced to sit down and watch a Pokémon adventure from beginning to end and, as soon became apparent, it wasn't the most agreeable way they could have popped their Poké cherries. For years, Pokémon continued to be something the adult crowd simply didn't get, but after the movie I couldn't help but notice that the discourse shifted from one of general bemusement to outright resentment.

Among other things, parents were unpleasantly surprised to discover that Pokémon The First Movie was actually a double bill, a practice all but dead in the US - despite Quentin Tarantino's valiant efforts to re-establish it in the late 2000s - but still pretty standard in Japan, particularly for children's pictures. The first film on offer was the 20 minute Pikachu's Vacation, a head-spinning fluff piece centred on the cuter Pokémon that might have been palatable had it been about 15 minutes shorter. The juicier part of the package, and what most fans had come to see, was Mewtwo Strikes Back, which promised to go up close and personal with what was (at the time) the biggest and baddest monster of the lot, the titular Mewtwo. A fiendishly powerful, genetically engineered Psychic-type Pokémon resembling a bipedal Sphynx cat, Two entered the world "For Science!", briefly finding himself under the control of local crime lord Giovanni, before going rogue, blowing up a building or two and retreating to a secluded island to get to work on nurturing his own team of cloned Pokémon. (Note: Pokémon, like Care Bears, are best regarded as androgynous, at least for the purposes of this film, which came about before genders were implemented into the games' mechanics - but since Mewtwo was given such a distinctly masculine voice, courtesy of Philip Bartlett (or Jay Goede, as I believe he's actually called), I intuitively see him as a male). Some time later, he lures a group of specially selected trainers to the island, with the intention of harvesting their Pokémon's DNA and using it against them. Meanwhile, the source of Mewtwo's own corrupted DNA, the elusive, kittenish Mew, has arrived there under its own steam, edging toward an inevitable confrontation between original and clone.

(I sure hope you didn't get your hopes up about that so-called "Pokémon Match of All-Time", incidentally. When Mew and Mewtwo finally do come to blows, all they do is slam into one another a few times in cheerful-looking rainbow-coloured bubbles.)

Pokémon The First Movie proved a hit with Pokemaniacs the world over, but was critically reviled and secured a lasting reputation among parents who were dragged along for the ride as one of the worst and most confusing children's pictures of all time. Myself, I have to admit that while, going in, I was absolutely stoked to be getting a big screen Pokémon adventure, my sympathies have always been with those parents. I did not particularly enjoy the actual watching of Pokémon The First Movie. To me, it was awkward, leaden and above all, not much fun. The most entertaining part of the experience was this little kid who insisted on loudly name-checking each Pokémon as it appeared on screen, but got at least a third of them wrong (mind you, so did the movie itself - there were a few incredulous murmurs during that one moment where a trainer addresses his Pidgeot as "Pidgeotto"). I was a lot more satisfied with Pokémon The Movie 2000, which, obnoxious title aside (by the time it came out in the UK the year 2000 was nearly over and most people were sick of seeing that number arbitrarily plastered across everything) was more in line with what I'd expected from a Pokémon feature; nothing groundbreaking, but a cheesy adventure story made to a somewhat bigger scope than the anime. It also fared marginally better with critics (but only marginally), although box office receipts told a different story. At the time, it was easy to dismiss Pokémon as a passing fad that would be all but forgotten in a couple of years, and from a western perspective (I can't speak for the situation in Japan) that certainly seemed to be the way things were headed at the dawn of the new millennium - each theatrical film made significantly less money than the one before it (to the point where they eventually stopped exhibiting them in theatres altogether), the toys were increasingly becoming bargain bin fodder, and the anime had few loyalists by late 2001. Nevertheless, the franchise would endure - not only is Pokémon still alive and kicking in 2022, but is now regarded as a quintessential part of millennial nostalgia. 

A beneficiary of this bolstered goodwill has been Pokémon The First Movie, currently a fondly-remembered childhood classic for those who'd subjected their nonplussed parents to it back in 1999. Ask numerous old school Pokemaniacs, and they'll tell you that it's the best of the Pokémon movies, though I've a sneaking suspicion that a number of these devotees are privileging it for being The First and haven't actually kept up with the many Pokémon features that followed. I myself have only seen a slim minority, but of that sample, I certainly wouldn't rate Mewtwo Strikes Back above the likes of 2000 and Heroes. Then again, it's not as though I've been in a rush to revisit it since that awkward theatrical screening I attended at the turn of the millennium - for the longest time, my opinions of the film were based predominantly on the listless first impressions I'd formed as a teenager. I only recently made the effort to get properly reacquainted, just to see if it would play any better to my nostalgic adult sensibilities and...for the most part, it doesn't. The last eight minutes or so I quite enjoyed - there is some delectable cheese to be had from Ash's "death", his Pokémon tears-enabled resurrection (puts me strongly in mind of the "We care!" sequence from The Care Bears Movie II), and Mewtwo's abrupt eleventh hour change of heart. But everything leading up to that is so fucking drab, despite Team Rocket's valorous attempts to sneak in a little levity with their comically wonky Scandinavian accents. Even at a skimpy 75 minutes, it drags on for way too long.

What did leap out to me more on this particular viewing is what a jarring experience the film is sonically. See, when I say that this was only my first time revisiting Pokémon The First Movie, I should be clear that I am referring strictly to the English dub; I saw a subbed version of the Japanese original some time during my uni days, and while I couldn't vouch for the accuracy of the subtitles themselves, the film certainly sounded much more coherent. Nowadays, it's common knowledge among western Pokemon buffs that the version of Mewtwo Strikes Back they received (courtesy of media company 4Kids) was a poor representation of what audiences in its native Japan had seen. The most egregious alterations, from a narrative perspective, are that the English-speaking Mewtwo was given loftier, more overtly murderous ambitions that put him better in line with your archetypal Hollywood villain (in the Japanese original, Mewtwo was less concerned with genocide and world domination than with demonstrating - to himself, as much as anyone else - that his Frankenstein genesis didn't make him inherently inferior), while the moral of the story was changed significantly to impart the message that "fighting is wrong" - a message which, as many critics were quick to point out, was just about the last one this particular franchise was qualified to be making. No less impactful were the various soundtrack switcheroos, with the English dub having a lot of teen-orientated pop shoehorned in, sometimes in truly baffling places, purely for the purposes of compiling a tie-in album they could flog to the same crowds who'd lined up for cheap Pokémon freebies in their Kids Club meals. The resulting soundtrack has very little sense behind it other than synergy - of the total sixteen tracks, exactly half are featured in the film itself, and while the cover brazenly claims that the remaining eight were "inspired by the motion picture", if there was a Pokémon influence on any aspect of their production, I'll eat my hat. The first track, the "Pokemon Theme" performed by Billy Crawford, is the only place in the entire compilation where you'll actually hear the word "Pokémon". It's also one of the few tracks where you'll find even the vaguest references to what the franchise is about - ie: capturing, battling and exploration. The rest are mostly either soppy love ballads or would-be party anthems - which goes along with the territory of teen pop, sure, but what does any of it have to do with a story about a vindictive mutant Sphynx cat searching for its place in a culture dominated by inoffensive cockfighting?

The most positive thing to be said for the Pokémon The First Movie soundtrack is that, on its own, it does make for quite a nice little time capsule of the pop music scene back in 1999. There are a few obscurities here and there, but overall the round-up of names is fairly impressive - Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, *NSYNC, Billie Piper, B*Witched, an ex-Spice Girl and a Backstreet Boy's kid brother - so if you like that sort of thing I'd imagine this would be quite the nostalgia trip for you. As a companion piece to a film about "oddly unpleasant creatures" (in the words of Halliwell's Film Guide), it is, at best, bemusing and, at worst, a textbook example of how arbitrarily-placed pop music can seriously undercut whatever emotional gravitas your flick has been carefully germinating. As noted, a total of eight tracks from the album are heard throughout the film. The "Pokémon Theme" is obviously there, and that one gets a free pass. Two of the insert songs, "Vacation" by Vitamin C and "Catch Me If You Can" by Angela, occur during the Pikachu's Vacation segment and, besides the "Pokemon Theme", are the least harmful of the lot (it's already a fluff piece; a couple of frothy pop numbers aren't going to hurt it any). There's one insert song during the main Mewtwo Strikes Back Feature, "Brother My Brother" by Blessed Union of Souls, and its inclusion is really quite odious. The remaining four are messily jammed into the end-credits sequence, meaning that there's barely enough time for each song to get going before another abruptly takes its place. This whole practice of trying to tag as many tracks from your tie-in album as possible into the closing credits was hardly unique to Pokémon The First Movie - The Rugrats Movie followed the exact same formula just a year prior. The transitioning between the truncated tracks at the end of The Rugrats Movie was much more skilfully done, however, with none of the awkward fade-outs and slapdash tonal clashes that the Pokémon The First Movie end credits are littered with (Christina Aguilera isn't even allowed to get all the way through the chorus before they chop her). In subsequent Pokémon features, the end credits typically serve as epilogues to the main conflict, allowing various supporting character arcs and smaller narrative threads to get tied up. Mewtwo Strikes Back has little to offer visually besides a selection of generic travelling scenes with Ash, Misty, Brock and Pikachu, followed by a short reappearance from Mew at the very end, although in the Japanese original these were accompanied by a (single) melancholic track, "Kaze to Issho ni", giving them an unexpectedly haunting quality in their simplicity. Needless to say, this same effect is not preserved in the English dub. Additionally, whereas the final appearance of Mew had, if I recall correctly, originally synced with the closing notes of "Kaze to Issho ni", here it's just a random add-on; rather than attempt to align it with M2M's talk of marital prospects, the English dub reprises the instrumental theme associated with the character throughout the film.

The Pokémon The First Movie soundtrack is such a rollicking mess in general that I feel compelled to dig through each individual track, just to try and make some sense of what in the name of Sam Hill it's actually doing here. Songs not appearing in the film itself are italicised. (Oh, and incidentally, I am aware that the soundtrack changes in Pokémon The First Movie go way beyond the teen pop inserts; the film was also extensively re-scored for the western market, meaning that you'll hear very different background music in each version. For the purposes of this review, however, I'm only going to be sticking to what was included on the official soundtrack release.)

1. "Pokémon Theme" by Billy Crawford: You all know this one. It's catchy (for better or for worse), it's iconic and inevitably it was going to show up here. As noted above, it's also the only track on here with any genuine Pokémon credentials. Appears soon after the Mewtwo Strikes Back prologue, during Ash's ridiculous battle with the proto-Aqua grunt.
   
2. "Don't Say You Love Me" by M2M: The last of the tracks heard during the closing credits, this was also released as the soundtrack's official single, and really, I couldn't imagine a song less relevant to the plot of Mewtwo Strikes Back, or to the franchise in general. Let's see: "Don't say your heart's in a hurry/It's not like we're gonna get married/Give me, give me some time". To which hastily-forged union is this meant to be referring? Mewtwo and Giovanni?
   
3. "It Was You" by Ashley Ballad feat. So Plush: It becomes something of a running theme that, with a number of these tracks about relationships and the redemptive power thereof, it's not always 100% clear which of the movie's relationships it's supposed to be reflective of. This one is all about the merits having a close friend by your side, so it seems likely that we're intended to take it as a standard friendship song about Ash and Pikachu. It should be noted, however, that outside of the climax of the film, when Pikachu leads the crying that revives the unresponsive Ash, their relationship isn't amazingly front and centre to the plot of Mewtwo Strikes Back. Since the lyrics describe how life has more meaning with the second person, I'd be half-tempted to take it as a reflection of Mewtwo's renewed perspective by the film's conclusion, but for the fact that he doesn't actually stick around to become anyone's friend.
   
4. "We're a Miracle" by Christina Aguilera: Clearly intended as the film's answer to that quintessentially 1990s trend of tacking a rousing power ballad to the end of your feature, a practice that took off with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and just about peaked with Titanic. In general, these ballads tended to be entirely interchangeable and only tenuously linked to the film in question, so it seems churlish to knock Augilera's contribution for following suit. And, to be fair, some of the lyrics do actually fit with the plot specifics of Mewtwo Strikes Back. The references to a passing storm and to a tears-facilitated reunion are fairly generic, sure, but I'll take them over whatever disconnected nonsense is going on in the M2M contribution. This track definitely feels more romantically-inclined than the above Ashley Ballad track, although from a plot perspective it only really works when taken as a commentary on the relationship between Ash and Pikachu, which tickles me. All the same, as these rousing 90s power ballads go, I'd rate "We're a Miracle" as rather a boring one, and I can't say I blame the movie for being in such a rush to get it out of the way and onto the peppier Emma Bunton piece.
   
5. "Soda Pop" by Britney Spears:  This one I can see being included as a sly little wink to Pokémon buffs, as "Soda Pop" was the name given to a healing item in the original Nintendo games. As a bonus, the lyrics mention Fire and Ice, two Pokémon element types. It's still a very tenuous addition to this tracklist, but I guess Britney was too big a name to pass up in 1999.
   
6. "Somewhere Someday" by *NSYNC: As with the Christina Aguilera track, a few generic references to storms and tears keep it from being totally plot-irrelevant. Actually, based on the first verse I was expecting this to tie more heavily into Mewtwo's existential crisis ("And you don't know who you are any more/Let me find what you've been searching for"), only then the vocalist went and addressed the subject of the song as "Girl", and that completely threw me off.  Minus that, and the multiple instances of the word "Baby", and I could have bought this one as being about Giovanni's empty promises to Mewtwo.
   
7. "Get Happy" by B*Witched: This one squanders whatever credibility it might have had on a Pokémon album straight out the gate, when it opens with the lyrics, "Don't be a brontosaurus..." Yo, this is the Pokémon world, and nobody here has a clue what a "brontosaurus" even is (the rejected plot for Movie 3 notwithstanding), so if you're not going to get with the program and substitute "brontosaurus" with "Aerodactyl", you may as well not play at all.
   
8. "(Hey You) Free Up Your Mind" by Emma Bunton: I feel like I'm grasping at straws at here, but the song contains the lyrics, "See me, I had no soul", which might be a reference to Mewtwo's Frankenstein's monster complex. Continues Bunton: "...til I found myself with the rock n roll," and it's not as though the resolution to Mewtwo's conflict was achieved through rock n roll music. So nah, just forget it.
   
9. "Fly With Me" by 98 Degrees: A song with near-identical sentiments to those expressed and the featured *NSYNC track, and copious instances of the term "Girl", which make it similarly confusing as to just how it's intended to fit in with the plot of Mewtwo Strikes Back. Otherwise, my best guess would be that this refers to Mewtwo flying off with Mew at the end of the film. Besides Corey's weathering the storm on the back of "Pidgeotto", I can't think of any other particularly significant instances of two characters flying together, can you?
   
10. "Lullaby" by Mandah: You know, I'm grateful that the producers of this track were considerate enough to slip in a helpful tip-off in the form of a crying Jigglypuff at the opening, otherwise I would probably be speculating that this alluded to Mewtwo and the various ways he asserts his psychic influence throughout the film. I would probably not have guessed that this had anything to do with Jigglypuff, on account of the fact that Jigglypuff is not in Pokémon The First Movie! Well, okay, I think one might have been glimpsed briefly somewhere in the Pikachu's Vacation segment, but the classic Jigglypuff character - the one with the propensity for following Ash and friends around and randomly singing them to sleep, as recounted in this song - is certainly nowhere to be seen. What's more, the lyrics here have a weirdly sexual, borderline threatening vibe that I'm not convinced is terribly becoming for the cutesy Balloon Pokémon - we get yet more disconcerting usage of the term "Baby", although at least here the boot is on the other foot and the subject of the song is identified as "Boy" for a change (since this Jigglypuff identifies as a girl, although I'm not sure if a gender was ever confirmed for the recurring Jiggly in the anime).
    
11. "Vacation" by Vitamin C: As noted, I can't take too much umbrage with the tracks added to the Pikachu's Vacation segment. Besides, musically speaking, I would rate this as by far the most interesting track on the album, which has a lot to do with the "Rumba Guitar" sample at the start, and the pleasingly retro 1960s surf rock vibe that intermittently permeates the song.
    
12. "Making My Way (Any Way That I Can)" by Billie Piper: The future Doctor Who companion chips in with an upbeat ode to the pleasures of journeying and overcoming obstacles. I can see how that fits into the general territory of Pokémon, although I much prefer the "Viridian City" track from The 2.B.A. Master album, which is more-or-less the same thing.
    
13. "Catch Me If You Can" by Angela: This one gets tossed in during the sequence in Pikachu's Vacation where Squirtle and Marrill race one another. It's pretty much the same idea as the above Billie Piper track, with the added bonus that the titular hook also alludes to one of the core objectives of the Pokémon series, which is to catch the little buggers.
    
14. "(Have Some) Fun With The Funk" by Aaron Carter: Err, well, the word "vacation" shows up in the lyrics, which is possibly supposed to pertain to the premise of Pikachu's Vacation. Otherwise, I draw a blank on what this track is doing here -  much to my chagrin, though, I have to admit that it is insanely catchy.
15. "If Only Tears Could Bring You Back" by Midnight Sons: Hurrah, a track with conspicuous plot relevance from the outset. Poignant title aside, I find the song itself a bit of a bland one; it plays like the kind of thing you would expect to find nestled away in one of the filler spots on an album by one of the boy bands of the era, one you'll hastily skip past searching for "Pop" or "Larger Than Life".
    
16. "Brother My Brother" by Blessed Union of Souls: We round things off with the single most controversial item on the tracklist, a cheesy guitar ballad inserted into the English dub during the portion of the story where the original and cloned Pokémon proceed to beat the living shit out of one another. Some fans like this song, and consider it a cozy part of the wider nostalgia package, while others fervently resent the addition on the grounds that it causes the sequence to play out very differently, tonally speaking, to its Japanese equivalent. I would hazard a guess that 4Kids strategically put this song where it is to counteract concerns that the sequence might otherwise have proven too rough for younger viewers - when the clones and originals go at one another, they fight in a very animalistic fashion that looks worlds apart from the fantasy violence that characterises your regular Pokémon battles (which doesn't make the "fighting is wrong" stance of the English dub feel any less flagrantly hypocritical, mind). They snap, snarl, claw and swat at each other...all in all, it's a very harrowing sequence to watch in its original form. I assume the addition of some gentle guitar music was intended to take the sting off, but it does have the effect of pushing things too far in the opposite direction and making a serious moment seem inordinately goofy. Honestly, my gut reaction when I see Pokemon lacerating one another to this music is just to snicker. It doesn't help that the vocalists has to compete with the incredibly loud screaming of the combatants all the while...surely a more sensible approach, if this song had to be there, would be to have muted out all diegetic sound, instead of having them all play out together in a grand chaotic slurry?

What else is there to be said about the Pokémon The First Movie soundtrack, except that it's a baffling product of its time? Something I probably should acknowledge about the picture itself, however, is that there are now even more versions of it out there. So great is the film's nostalgic clout that they went and remade it in 2019, this time in eye-popping 3D animation. I haven't watched the newer take in full, but I did check out the end-credits song for the English dub, "Keep Evolving" by Haven Paschall, and I'll consider it a step-up that they at least picked a track germane to the franchise for this one. I also watched a couple of clips, including one of Mewtwo's sinister Pokémon harvest, and will credit the remake for addressing another issue that stuck out as particularly egregious on my recent rewatch - the way Misty grabs and runs with Togepi but effectively abandons Psyduck to its fate (she reacts after the fact, but still). In this version, she attempts to protect it before it gets abducted, and so much the better.