Plot: Team Rocket has made a new base in a canyon, and they are throwing a party there for Giovanni to impress him. Jessie and James leave Meowth in charge while they go invite Giovanni. Meowth uses this time to rehearse his music and dance number with three captive maraca-playing Whismur. He forces them and the Team Rocket alum to dance using a magic baton…..In a world with sentient serial killer lawnmowers, please refrain from laughing.
Pikachu and some of the other Pokemon stumble upon this and try to save Whismur, but the power of dance is too much to resist.
Breakdown: Ladies and gentlemen, the last short to accompany a Pokemon movie….for a long while anyway. I think they might have started doing it again, I’m not certain.
They continued to make shorts throughout the years, but this was the last short to be included with a Pokemon movie. I don’t know why they ended this trend as I thought it was pretty nice to have these shorts alongside the movies, but what can you do?
Like the last one, I have no prior knowledge or experience involving this short. Pokemon Movie 06 was the first Pokemon movie that I only just caught on TV when it played on Cartoon Network. This was probably due to the fact that the movie came out right at that moment in time when I really didn’t care much for Pokemon anymore because it was the post-Misty days. I was more into Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh and whatever I could get my hands on with Toonami and Adult Swim.
While I did keep watching Pokemon off and on, I was bitter because Misty was gone, and I didn’t take to May much. I especially didn’t like Max, which may make the rewatch of the movie annoying….But I digress. What awaits us in this short? Hopefully a DDR contest.
As always, the link to Dogasu’s Backpack’s comparison can be found here.
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Lotad, Pikachu, Torchic, Mudkip and Treecko are playing around in a tree as Meowth narrates over them. He muses over their frivolity and says he wishes he could be that way, but music recently ruined his life.
I still have no idea why A) These Pokemon are wandering around in the woods alone with no sign of their Trainers and B) why it’s only these five Pokemon. I don’t know their rosters at this point well enough to list off everyone who’s missing, but considering there’s only five here, they’re likely missing a lot. Ash’s Pokemon are Pikachu and Treecko, Brock’s are Lotad and Mudkip, while May’s is merely Torchic.
The Pokemon all get flung through the air by springing on the awful CGI tree branch because we’re really vying for ‘Pokemon flinging’ to be an Olympic sport.
I love how Treecko won’t get out of his laid back pose as they’re flung through the air. Such a bad ass.
They continue falling after the ground breaks below them and they all slam into a boulder. No worries, though, because they slam through it and leave marks behind in the exact shape of their bodies like Looney Tunes.
The horrendous CGI rock falls apart – seriously guys, just draw it. It’s a rock.
They look up and see some fort embedded into the cliffside. It’s decorated to look like dice for whatever reason.
Narration from Meowth says it’s Team Rocket’s new headquarters and they were about to show it off to Giovanni when his story began. A base? What the hell do you guys need a base for? You travel all the time because you follow DumbAsh and the superfriends to get Pikachu. More importantly, why would Giovanni be happy that you’re wasting funds on building a clubhouse?
They’re preparing a big party for their boss at the base, complete with an ice sculpture of Giovanni. Jessie and James, who remain mostly out of frame in line with the usual ‘no humans’ law of the shorts, depart to retrieve Giovanni and leave Meowth in charge. He takes this opportunity to rehearse with the band, a trio of Whismur that play maracas.
He leads them with some stick that he says can control all Pokemon, forcing them to dance easil–WAIT…you guys have a stick that controls Pokemon…..and you think it’s more impressive to show Giovanni…..a fort painted like dice…….It’s really no wonder how much you guys fail.
We get our opener which is really forgettable and not really the most dancey or catchy song ever. There’s a noticeable lack of….well, music, and Meowth is the one singing….
One interesting aspect is, it’s almost like they knew this was going to be the last movie short because they show the Pokemon dancing in the main locations of all of the previous shorts. We get the Pokemon sign from the park in Pikachu’s Summer Vacation, the giant tree from Pikachu’s Rescue Adventure, the tire fort from Pikachu and Pichu, the mansion from Pikachu’s Pikaboo, and the train from Camp Pikachu.
After that, we get bad CGI dice (what is with the dice? Am I missing something?) and our title screen.
The song soon ends, and Meowth gushes over his baton, imagining that Giovanni will be really impressed with it. I would say this makes my earlier poke moot, but he says he’ll be impressed with how it can make Pokemon dance, not how it would help……take over the world and everything. At least easily steal every Pokemon you see.
They continue to rehearse while we cut to the main group heading towards Duke Devlin’s wet dream.
Meowth and the others lock up the Whismur in a cage and Meowth says this:
Meowth: “You three wisenheimers….” Wisenheimers?! Wisenheimers?! My great-grandpa wouldn’t even use that in serious conversation. How old are you?
Pikachu and the others spy on Meowth and the Team Rocket Pokemon in the base as they walk away from the cage to get something to eat. They fall through the window after they leave because I guess Lotad’s another comic relief clumsy Pokemon.
They discover that the Whismur have been taken captive by Team Rocket, and they use Pikachu’s lightning, Torchic’s fire and Mudkip’s water to blow the lock off the cage………..which is entirely unnecessary seeing as how the only lock on that cage is an easily accessible lever that one of them would just need to push…..but why do that when you can make explosions while trying to perform a covert operation?
The Pokemon hide as Meowth and the others investigate the noise. They discover the Whismur are missing and Meowth commands the others to find them. In the process, they knock Meowth over, causing him to drop his magic baton thing, sending it flying to the barrel that Treecko is hiding in and suddenly activates.
It plays music, and all of the Pokemon dance uncontrollably…wait….so…that stick really is only good for making Pokemon dance? What a dumb invention. I would take back my earlier comment, but if it can control these Pokemon to a degree, surely it can be reprogrammed to control them in other ways. But whatever, it will likely see the fate of the Dark Balls in ‘just forget it exists-land.’
I do love that Treecko’s doing everything in his power to not dance. I forgot how much I love that little guy.
During the dance, a Loudred that has been sleeping outside shows up to do some disco moves. Well thank god. Now someone do the macarena.
Treecko, in his efforts to avoid dancing, falls over, causing the baton to shut off.
Everyone stops dancing, and Meowth notices Pikachu and the others. They attack, but Pikachu and the others knock them all down with the barrels. And when that’s over they play a version of
Not even kidding.
A chase ensues, and the Team Rocket gang chases the Pika gang to the balcony. Pikachu tries to Thunderbolt them, but Wobbuffet Reflects it back, nearly knocking Mudkip off the tower. Treecko uses the baton to try and save Mudkip, and, in the process, it accidentally activates the stick, making everyone dance.
Mudkip is saved and joins the dancing. Their dancing, however, is causing the balcony to collapse and even makes the horrible CGI tower do a terribly animated fall into the river below. Well, at least we’re destroying most of this eye abusive CGI….
They’re about to dance off of the balcony and suddenly switch to a tango, making them walk onto a more sturdy part of the building while the barfy CGI balcony also breaks and falls.
They deactivate the stick again and start the chase back up.
They run into the party room and destroy it with the final blow being Cacnea using Pin Missile all over the room. This results in him destroying three pinata/party balls which revealed three banners with poorly drawn pictures of Giovanni on them…..Okay you got me, that was funny.
So they’re destroying the base when Giovanni’s supposed to show up for a party eh? I smell sitcom-level shenanigans!
Meowth gets up and accidentally hits the baton again. He hits a button which changes it to hula mode, causing everyone to hula while covered in flowers.
It’s deactivated again rather quickly since one of the pinata/party balls falls on Meowth. They run off again, and I’m gonna take a moment to mention that whenever they end these dance sequences, they focus on the Loudred for a bit. Just long enough to be awkward, because much of the time he’s just staring with his giant mouth agape or he’s quietly saying his name. It’s unsettling.
You can see where this is going. They get chased, Meowth gets flung in the air, the baton falls on Wobbuffet’s head and they start dancing again.
The baton gets flung up again and gets stuck in some sand, for some reason causing it to short out. They make three quick cuts to Treecko, who’s still doing his damnedest to not dance, and I guess since the stick shorted out, he can’t take it anymore and goes dance crazy.
They keep dancing and dancing and dancing….I actually think they repeat animation shots a few times with the excuse that it goes with the music, roughly. They also speed up a shot.
They have to keep switching from speeding up to slowing down and we crescendo as the baton explodes.
Everyone stops dancing, but now Loudred is going nuts and attacking the Pokemon with a pipe. He corners them in a room, Seviper tries to attack, but is interrupted by Loudred’s pipe which breaks an important column in the base. The base rumbles and seems like it’s going to fall, but doesn’t. However, Lotad, a Pokemon I don’t remember being quite this irritating, sneezes, causing the whole place to come crumbling down.
Well, they’re dead.
Nah, of course they’re not. They’re just riding such a terrible looking CGI wooden platform that made my sides hurt from laughing at it.
This is just insanely crappy CGI, and it’s horribly integrated with the traditional animation. I don’t know why the CGI integration just keeps getting worse.
Their platform breaks in two, sending Pikachu and the others flying one way and Meowth and the others in another. Pikachu and friends are about to crash into a cliffside when Lotad decides not to be annoying for a change and Water Guns them away from it, allowing them to land safely.
Meowth and the others end up back in the now destroyed base and as it crumbles even further. We get another
It wasn’t funny the first time, stop it.
The end!
….Hey wait, what about Giovanni? That was a great set up for more sad trombone-y goodness.
Granted, I can’t imagine Giovanni would’ve bothered humoring these idiots anyway.
Also, that Loudred seriously wasn’t related to those Whismur? Why was it there then?
The credits again include those cute little fan art drawings of Pokemon. They also have Pikachu doing his impressions of the featured Pokemon, which I admittedly think is really funny. Then we have the Pokemon just doing random things.
Bottom Line: Well that was….something. What a random short. Pikachu and the others save some Whismur from Team Rocket and we get what is essentially a 20 minute long chase scene with really long dance sequences intertwined and then they destroy the place and fly away. That’s it.
The art and animation, like always, get a bump up in this short, except for the awful CGI integration.
The music, shockingly, is pretty poor for a short centered around dancing. The main song is completely forgettable and definitely not up to the catchy ear worm standards of 4Kids. I would dance to a lot of 4Kids songs and this is one I wouldn’t tap a toe to.
While I will admit that the short had its entertaining moments, such as Pikachu’s impressions, Treecko’s desire to avoid dancing as much as possible and some of the dances, there’s a lot wrong with it.
There’s so much padding. It’s almost like this short is nothing but padding, which, admittedly, is what most of these shorts are by default. The chase is padding, and the dancing, while being the focal part of the short, is basically just padding. It’s pointless dancing for the sake of ‘oh how funny! Pokemon dancing!’ It is entertaining a few times, and it made me smile once or twice, but it really gets old.
The sequences with Loudred were also pointless. They were causing enough destruction as it was, he didn’t need to be here. And those times when they lingered on him after a dance were just awkward.
Some of the ‘jokes’ like Lotad’s sneeze have poor timing, and I am forever perplexed as to how and why Meowth had a magic ‘force Pokemon to dance’ stick.
It’s probably the funniest short since the first one, but it’s too long for this non-existent story, very repetitive and, to be honest, poorly directed.
Well, we end the movie shorts on a mediocre note, but there’s still more shorts to cover! I just have to pick them out by my own discretion now. What will come for Movie 07?! Find out when it happens!
Recommended Audience: You need to ask? E for everyone!
Final notes:
………WHAT WAS UP WITH THE DICE!?
WHAT DID DICE HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? I DON’T GET IT!…….DICE!
Short 7: Pikachu’s Summer Festival
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The Anime Madhouse 