Pokémon:  The First Movie

Pikachu’s Vacation

Pokémon seen:  

Pikachu, Togepi, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Pidgeotto, Staryu, Goldeen, Vulpix, 
Geodude, Psyduck, Onix, Zubat, Charizard, Bellsprout, Cubone, Raichu, 
Snubbull, Marill, Horsea, Tentacool, Seaking, Wartortle, Poliwrath, Kingler, 
Dewgong, Slowbro, Shellder, Golduck, Blastoise, Seadra, Poliwag, Tentacruel, 
Krabby, Slowpoke, Vaporeon, Starmie, Poliwhirl, Magikarp, Cloyster, Seel, 
Primeape, Chansey, Jigglypuff, Farfetch’d, Omastar, Abra, Oddish, Magnemite, 
Beedrill, Vileplume, Koffing, Drowsee, Lapras, Lickitung, Butterfree, 
Clefairy, Paras, Charmander, Venonat, Gloom, Nidoqueen, Nidoran Female, 
Pidgeot, Clefable, Weepinbell, Doduo, Eevee, Electrode, Charmeleon, 
Kangaskhan, Nidorina, Victreebel, Ponyta, Arbok, Snorlax, Exeggutor, 
Growlithe, Ninetales, Pinsir, Parasect, Hitmonchan, Nidoran Male, Tangela, 
Ekans, Sandslash, Voltorb, Hitmonlee, Mr Mime, Diglett, Dugtrio, Weezing, 
Meowth, Mankey, Raticate

Story:  

Pikachu and the Pokémon visit a park for Pokémon only, and Pikachu’s to look 
after Togepi.  
Pikachu and Ash’s Pokémon get into a rivalry against another group of Pokémon, 
and compete in various events.  
Pikachu and Raichu get together and charge through the park, hurting Team 
Rocket’s Pokémon, and enraging Charizard, who aims to cause trouble back, but 
gets its head stuck in a playground pipe.  
Pikachu leads the party in pulling him out, but their number is too low, and 
Pikachu must plead to their rivals for help, they agree (although the Cubone 
takes a while to decide since it’s stubborn), and together, they manage to 
free Charizard.  
The Pokémon work together to fix what was broken and enjoy the remainder of 
their time in the park together.  

My favourite Event:  

Pikachu and Raichu running together, and ploughing down everything and every 
Pokémon in their path.  

Things I’d like to point out:  

There’s a possible error in that when all the Pokémon rush past Pikachu, 
Psyduck steps over it and its voice is heard as if far away and with the 
others in the distance, but then Psyduck is standing behind Pikachu with the 
others and Togepi, unless it was stupid enough to run in a circle I’m pretty 
sure this is an animator’s error.  

When the Electrode rolls in at the start of the swimming match, the Primeape 
in the background has slight colour errors; it has the features of a Primeape, 
but the colouring of its similar looking pre-evolution Mankey.  

When Electrode is about to explode, Koffing looks bigger than it was a moment 
ago, as big as the huge Electrode, it looks doubtful that it was meant to have 
risen and therefore was closer to the bird’s eye view of the camera.  

The Pokémon seen in the background during the race are one step down from a 
looping background, they’re arranged differently and not in a repeating order 
but each different kind of Pokémon looks the same as the next, from the 
Weepinbell with big eyes to the open armed Snorlax to the surprised looking 
Electrode.  

The second and third time the hot-air balloon is shown, a closer look at the 
Jigglypuff inside shows that it appears to be holding a pen, making it the 
Jigglypuff from the series rather than a trainers’ one (unless other 
Jigglypuff in general are in the habit of carrying around marker pens).  
I’m not sure if it’s the same one that gets stomped on by Pikachu and Raichu a 
little later but I wouldn’t mind if it was.  

What do you know? Jigglypuff can sing a different tune, in the in-between 
scene, there’s a sole Jigglypuff among the others with closed happy eyes; 
could it be the one from the series?  

In the second swimming race background are added Koffing which not only look 
strange in their large size, but their expression is that of a Weezing.  

94 Pokémon in the equivalent of a normal Pokémon episode, it was hard work 
noting them all down so I hope someone appreciates it.  

Mewtwo Strikes Back

Pokémon seen:  

Mankey, Mew, Butterfree, Mewtwo, Persian, Onix, Tauros, Alakazam, Magneton, 
Nidoking, Arcanine, Pikachu, Togepi, Bulbasaur, Donphan, Machamp, Squirtle, 
Pinsir, Venomoth, Golem, Meowth, Fearow, Dragonite, Raticate, Kingler, 
Venonat, Electabuzz, Caterpie, Poliwhirl, Nidorino, Sandshrew, Growlithe, 
Weedle, Spearow, Oddish, Vileplume, Bellsprout, Ekans, Raichu, Slowpoke, 
Drowzee, Horsea, Pidgeot, Gyarados, Dewgong, Staryu, Weezing, Wigglytuff, 
Vulpix, Psyduck, Scyther, Hitmonlee, Venusaur, Sandslash, Rhyhorn, Nidoqueen, 
Golduck, Tentacruel, Vaporeon, Seadra, Blastoise, Ninetales, Rapidash

Story:  

A Mew Fossil is discovered in ancient ruins by scientists (in the field of 
cloning) funded by Giovanni, who is only interested in the creation of an 
enhanced replica of Mew.  
The result is Mewtwo, the most powerful Pokémon in the world, who upon 
learning that he is no more than an experiment, destroys the scientists and 
the laboratory.  
Giovanni arrives soon after and persuades Mewtwo to work with him to help 
control his powers.  
Mewtwo does several deeds for the Rockets after he is given special mechanical 
armour to focus his powers, he tests his strength against several of 
Giovanni’s Gym challengers and assists in capturing many Pokémon, but he’s not 
satisfied and wants to know his purpose.  
Giovanni claims that Mewtwo’s purpose is to serve him, but Mewtwo objects, 
destroys Giovanni’s base, and leaves.  
He returns to his birthplace and decides that he’ll find his purpose, and 
destroy all those that oppose him.  
After another Pokémon Battle, Ash receives an invitation to New Island from 
the world’s greatest Pokémon Trainer, but Team Rocket catches on to this.  
Mewtwo is this trainer, and deliberately causes a storm so that the ferry to 
the New Island will be cancelled, and only the best trainers will brace the 
storm and reach him.  
Ash and the others reach the port and hear of the storm, and of a legend of a 
similar storm that wiped out all but a few Pokémon, and that the remaining 
Pokémon’s tears restored the lives lost.  
The Pokémon Centre is closed down due to the Nurse Joy’s disappearance, so 
most trainers back down as there’d be nowhere to heal if their Pokémon got 
hurt.  
Some of the trainers head there anyway and brace the storm with their Pokémon, 
and Ash is eager to do the same.  
Team Rocket pose as Vikings and ferry them across, but their identities are 
soon revealed and everyone is sunk by a tidal wave.  
Ash and the others survive and reach New Island, with Team Rocket not far 
behind.  
They are greeted my Mewtwo’s servant who is recognised as Nurse Joy, but she 
dismisses this accusation (but is restored to herself shortly after).  
Only three other trainers made it to the island, and everyone is asked to 
release their Pokémon before Mewtwo’s arrival.  
The trainers are outraged that the so-called Master Trainer is a Pokémon, one 
attacks, the other attempts to catch Mewtwo, but they both fail.  
Meanwhile, Team Rocket stumbles across the cloning room, and learn a little 
about Mewtwo.  
Ash challenges Mewtwo, and he awakens his three cloned evolved starter Pokémon 
to fight.  
Between Ash and the three trainers, they have a Venusaur, Blastoise and 
Charizard to try and beat Mewtwo’s copies, but the copies are enhanced, 
Bruteroot loses to Mewtwo’s Venusaur, and Shellshocker to Blastoise, finally, 
Ash’s Charizard takes a fall, and Mewtwo wins.  
His prize is all the Pokémon and special Pokéballs swarm and steal every 
Pokémon available to make enhanced clones from their DNA.  
Ash goes after the Pokéballs after losing Pikachu, and his sheer determination 
beats Mewtwo’s machine and gets Pikachu back.  
The clones start hatching and Ash’s interference destroys the cloning machine 
and frees all the original Pokémon.  
Mewtwo is about to expel the remaining trainers into his storm that will 
destroy the world, when Ash arrives with the originals, it’s not enough, and 
Ash faces certain death... but Mew appears and saves his life.  
Mewtwo immediately attacks his counterpart, wanting to prove his strength 
against it.  
Mew fights back, and provokes Mewtwo into neutralising all the Pokémon’s 
special abilities to prove his clones are superior, and so a harsh Pokémon war 
begins.  
As Ash climbs back into the stadium, the Pokémon battle their clones and 
Mewtwo 
and Mew fight it out, Pikachu is the only one who refuses to fight.  
All the Pokémon tire of fighting, except the two Psychic Pokémon, and Ash runs 
headlong between them to stop the fight, but is caught between the two’s 
attacks.  
The result makes Ash’s body turn to stone, and nothing seems to undo it, 
Pikachu cries for Ash, as do many of the other Pokémon, and miraculously (like 
the legend suggested), their tears restore Ash to normal.  
Mewtwo realises his beliefs were wrong, and only when the Pokémon and clones 
put their differences aside did he realise that.  
He decides to take the clones with him far away, and erases the event from the 
trainers’ and Pokémon’s minds...  
Everyone is back to before they left for New Island, Joy is her normal self, 
and the storm disappears.  
Ash, Misty and Brock are confused why they’re here, but none-the-less, they 
continue their journey...  

My favourite Quotes:  

Mewtwo:  “I was not born a Pokémon, I was created.  And my creators have used 
and betrayed me, so, I stand alone!”  

Harbour Manager:  “Some trainers have no fear; to them this is just one more 
challenge.  They follow their hearts.  That is what sets them apart and will 
make them Pokémon Masters.”  

Mewtwo:  “I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant.  It 
is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.”  

Ash:  “Mewtwo, where are you going?”  
Mewtwo:  “Where my heart can learn what yours knows so well.”  

When this takes place:  

The prologue suggests that Mewtwo’s birth took place before the Viridian Gym 
Battle, while Mewtwo’s beating of Gary’s Pokémon occurred in “The Battle of 
The Badge”.  
Mewtwo appeared again in “It’s Mr. Mime Time”, and the destruction of 
Giovanni’s base happened in “Showdown at the Po-ké Corrall”.  
In my opinion, the remainder of the story occurs before the Pokémon League 
episodes and “Bad to the Bone”, since straight after the League, Pidgeotto 
evolves, and it has yet to do that at the time of the mini-movie, and 
presumably the feature movie too (they pretty much happen closely together).  

Things I’d like to point out:  

Just to clarify, I’m not including the introduction to the Pokémon world 
(narrated by Brock) extra that is on the DVD in this guide, solely because 
it’s used more than once among the Pokémon films.  

Just a mention that I’ve added “The Story of Mewtwo’s Origin” before going 
into “Mewtwo Strikes Back” since it’s really part of the story (The DVD made 
them two separate features but I remember that the VHS version put them 
together).  

For the first time, The Boss’s real name is revealed as Giovanni (though 
players of the game would know that), it’s not revealed to the good guys or 
Team Rocket however and not even mentioned in the series until a lot later.  

If this is the only Mewtwo, then the series has made mistakes in suggesting 
Mewtwo is a rare Pokémon or that it even exists at the times before this movie 
storyline took place (check “Mystery At The Lighthouse”).  

Apparently a technical mistake, Machamp appears from its Pokéball, and then it 
repeats itself by appearing straight afterwards.  
After that, Squirtle’s appearance feels like half of it wasn’t seen because of 
the Machamp stealing its screen time.  
This occurs on the English video and DVD, I’m not sure about America though, 
and quite frankly, I can’t remember if this occurred in the cinema.  

Pikachu’s Electric attack should NOT have worked against Golem, no matter how 
high a level it is, this problem could have easily been fixed by not putting a 
random Ground-type in simply to be beaten by Pikachu.  

When Team Rocket blocks Dragonite with a frying pan and look at Ash’s 
invitation, why doesn’t it do anything, I mean, Team Rocket peers down at the 
letter as if Dragonite’s not even there.  
If it was working for Mewtwo, surely it should have made a swift attempt to 
retrieve the letter it lost.  
Speaking of which, is Dragonite a clone Pokémon or would it have been subject 
to the same fate as the rest of the world even though it did a job for 
Mewtwo?  

The Joy twist was sneaky, most people assumed that Brock said the Joy on the 
poster looked familiar, because there are many Joys in the world, when the 
answer was right in our face; Mewtwo’s assistant is the missing Joy.  

When Gyarados appears from the water, there’s a colour error as its lips are 
coloured blue like the rest of its body, I’m surprised it wasn’t pointed out 
more when seen on a cinema screen.  

If you look carefully, there’s a forth unnamed trainer that aimed to go to New 
Island who had a Fearow.  
But since we don’t see her again, it’s safe to assume that she didn’t make it, 
and probably got herself or her Fearow hurt.  
I wonder if Mewtwo fixed that by wiping the whole incident from existence.  

Ash vaguely refers to the Minnesota Vikings football team as if they are real 
Vikings, though this joke is likely to only be in the English dubbing it’s 
another real life location mentioned in Pokémon.  

Surely the invitation in Ash’s jacket pocket would have either fell out in the 
swim through the storm, or got so wet that it wouldn’t activate.  

The trainer wearing red makes a mistake and calls his Pidgeot Pidgeotto.  
I know the names might be similar, but every child that knows anything about 
Pokémon will have noticed this mistake right away.  

A recent thought, Misty and Brock get into Mewtwo’s place by tagging along 
with Ash, they do this sort of thing quite a lot in the series, especially in 
Pokémon Gyms.  

Ash, Misty and Brock plainly go against Mewtwo’s orders to release all their 
Pokémon, Ash doesn’t bring out his Charizard or Pidgeotto, Misty only brings 
out Psyduck and hides Togepi, and Brock only releases Vulpix.  

The trainer in turquoise previously claimed that all his Pokémon were Water-
types, but as we see later, he plainly owns a Nidoqueen which is a 
Poison/Ground-type (it’s capable of learning Water attacks but that’s not the 
point).  

After Gyarados attacks, its trainer’s Nidoqueen has changed purple, very much 
like the colour of a Nidoking.  

There’s an obvious reference from Team Rocket to the ‘Who’s That Pokémon?’ 
section of the TV series.  

Mewtwo apparently trained a Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle to their final 
forms, and then cloned them.  
How much training did he do? As he’s obviously managed to evolve them 
excessively quickly.  
Also, whatever happened to the originals, did Mewtwo just discard them or 
their Pokéballs?  
I’ve heard it’s explained in full in Mewtwo’s Origin which is apparently 
available on one of the other movie DVDs but I have yet to see it.  

If Mewtwo despises humans and their Pokémon, shouldn’t he think differently 
about Charizard?  
The reason being, he claimed that Charizard was poorly trained, and we know it 
doesn’t really like Ash nowadays.  
Shouldn’t that have at least got Mewtwo thinking about sparing it, or was he 
that determined to wipe out all Pokémon and people without exception and only 
allow cloned Pokémon to live on?  

Luckily, it seems that Mewtwo overlooked Togepi when Misty hid it away, 
probably because Togepi is still a baby, and for the writers to include it in 
the fight would just be wrong.  

When Ash takes the plunge, the first thing he does is put his cap back on, 
then he goes after the Pokéball with Pikachu, where are his priorities?! The 
cap might be able to be replaced, but Pikachu sure can’t.  

Team Rocket don’t know their Pokémon, they think the Scyther silhouette is an 
Alakazam.  
Meowth’s even worse, a Sandslash is right in front of him, all curled up, but 
he thinks it’s a Sandshrew.  

When all the clones are created from the captured Pokéballs, another 
Charizard, Blastoise and Venusaur aren’t created, probably since Mewtwo 
already has clones of them.  
Does that mean Mewtwo only wants one clone of each kind of Pokémon and no 
doubles?  

If Mewtwo truly shut down the special abilities of all the Pokémon, how come 
Pikachu’s clone sparks electricity from its cheeks before it fights?  

It’s been claimed that the defensive stances in the Super Smash Bros games 
(which include Pikachu and Jigglypuff as selectable characters) are like the 
protective psychic bubbles Mewtwo and Mew use, they look similar but I’m 
pretty sure the other mentioned Pokémon and a host of Nintendo characters 
aren’t psychics.  

I know Ash wanted the battle to stop, but running in between two psychic 
blasts:  Is he suicidal?!  
I’ve seen a great deal of animes, and the true result of an attack like that 
to a normal boy would be messy to say the least.  

All of the Pokémon cry out for Ash except Mewtwo and Mew, Mewtwo I can 
understand, he has a lot of hatred for the world, and probably doesn’t have it 
in him to cry for someone.  
But what about Mew, it’s half the reason Ash was trapped in the crossfire, but 
it just sits there without shedding a tear.  

During the tears sequence and in many other scenes of the movie, the English 
translation has a lot more music than the Japanese version ever had (some 
scenes including this one had no music).  
According to the DVD commentary, people responsible for the Japanese version 
who saw this version were moved to tears from a storyline that were fully 
aware of because of the additional music that helped convey the mood.  

Mewtwo may be a powerful psychic, but what he did was extraordinary:  Not just 
the memory thing, but erasing the whole incident, the reconstruction of the 
island, and going back to a certain point in time.  
I thought the time-travelling powers were supposed to be unique to a certain 
rare green Pokémon.  

Lots of people probably thought about this (the writers too as they went on to 
keep this in mind).  
Mewtwo probably destroyed the scientists that created him, but Giovanni 
survived when he destroyed the base and wasn’t wiped of his memories, 
therefore, Giovanni would probably try to control Mewtwo again, “Mewtwo’s 
Return” proves just that.  

Cameos in Pokémon Journey:  

Shed loads, for one thing, the parents of the Screwloose Brothers died when 
Mewtwo blew up the lab, that’s what made them so full of hate, and why they 
joined the Rockets, in order to someday find Mewtwo and enslave him as 
vengeance, check out Chapter 49 for the dramatic result when Tetsubo, Emily 
and Abby go up against the top cat himself.  

Mewtwo’s wrongdoings for the Rockets probably had him do more than just beat 
challengers and capture a herd of Tauros.  
In Chapter 41, Tetsubo’s Nidoking and Emily’s Nidorina discuss their past, and 
although vague, Mewtwo swept through their home and the rest of their family 
were captured by Rockets.  

Mewtwo and Mew appear in “Memories Lost”, when Mewtwo punishes a certain 
Rhyhorn for hurting Abigail and then not even caring, by forcing it to protect 
her because Mewtwo can’t retrieve her memories.  

Giovanni refers to Mewtwo in Chapter 26 when he tries to have the president of 
Silph Co build a Master Ball specifically for Mewtwo.  

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