Pokemon Giratina and the Sky Warrior (2008)

Plot: Shortly after the events of The Rise of Darkrai, the hedgehog-like legendary Pokémon, Shaymin is drawn into a battle between Dialga and Giratina, who drags both Shaymin and Dialga into the Reverse World. Shaymin uses her powers to escape through a portal back to the normal world giving Dialga the oppertunity to follow after he disables Giratina's ability to venture to Earth. Shaymin finds itself in a seaside town and comes across Ash and his friends and tells them that she needs to go to the Forest Garden so that it can migrate with the other Shaymin. But things get complicated when Giratina is trying to find a way to capture Shaymin so that it can enter Earth and a mad scientist named Zero appears to have other plans for the Reverse World.

So as I said in my review for Pokemon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea, I thought that movie was going to be the one that's going to be the first of big dull dud that I come across among the Pokemon films. But it turns out I had to wait two more films before actually found the first big dud. Not to say there aren't some kind of nice things about this movie, but when comparing to any of the other films - even Pokemon 4Ever, it didn't do a thing for me at all.

Let me start off with the minor good stuff about the movie. First off Shaymin was a slightly better character than I thought she would be. When it was getting stuck in the midst of a fight between Dialga and Giratina, I thought she was going to be another innocent cute sea Pokemon like with Celebi, Jirachi and Manaphy. But it turns out that Shaymin it's actually a bit of a pompous, self-centered jerk. When it started talking, it acted like it's the most important thing ever and is completely full of it itself whenever something good happens, claiming it's all her doing. However, it gets boring really fast. It doesn't have much of a relationship with the other characters apart from arguing with Ash but eventually time becoming friends, and sort of favoring Dawn because she's the loving female character, but without the emotional attachment that comes with it like with May and Manaphy.

The fact that this all ties into the last film is actually very interesting. According to Il Neige, this is technically the second part of the Diamond and Peal/Sinnoh trilogy, and the film after this, Arceus and the Jewel of Life, is basically part 3. So I hope they make good use of that when it comes to bringing up Giratina, Dialga and Palkia. That being said however, the events of The Rise of Darkrai are only briefly mentioned, making the movie feel insignificant as a part of a trilogy in the long run.

So how is this film worse than Pokemon 4Ever? Well I think Il Neige put it best that it feels like there's a bunch of random ideas that don't add up well together. For example, I would declare that the villain, Zero feels like he's even worse than the Iron Mask Marauder if he didn't have some interesting quirks. He isn't trying to take over the world so much as he has his crazy belief that he must destroy the world in order to save the Reverse World and it drives him mad. I'll even technically give him points for being the first Pokemon villain to have a passion for committing genocide. But aside from that, there was nothing really unique about him at all. Honestly he sounded more like a mixture of some of the past villains like having a big ship used for capturing Pokemon like Lawrence III or having an evil laugh the Iron Mask Marauder and so on and so forth. Besides, his symbol is literally a zero. I know this is meant for kids and everything, but that's just sounds silly even for Pokmeon. The idea of the reverse world is kind of a neat idea, but it feels like it was there just for the fun of watching characters like Dawn and Ash moon walk in certain areas where there is no gravity.

But the main reason why I like this movie less then Pokemon 4Ever is that I didn't care about what happening. Celebi may be nothing but cuteness, but at some point, even I cared about what was happening compared to Shaymin. Its personality was different like I said, but even with that, I did not care for whether or not it was going to reach its goal. There's also this professor guy who took Zero as his apprentice, and that sounds interesting on paper, but I didn't really care about him either. There's even a random cameo of the legendary Pokemon Regigigas, which... I guess is neat if you're a Diamond and Pearl fan, but even then it didn't really contribute much. Even Giratina who has a unique yet intimidating design, was not as interesting as he could have been. I think what I'm basically trying to say is that this movie does look like something that should spark my interest in the same way as any of the other films regardless of what I thought about them. But it all comes down to whether or not I was interesting in what was happening, and in the end I though it was dull.

And that's my review for Pokemon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior. It has some interesting ideas such as the villain's goal or having a cute Pokemon that's actually a jerk, but its execution is clunky to a point that I didn't care about what was happening in the film even though I had a feeling I should.

Rating: 25%