The second of the ‘Pikachu’ shorts is short, sweet and to the point. It opens with the gang stopping off to rest after a long day hiking in the mountains of Johto, when disaster strikes! As Togepi accidentally rolls away down a hill, unable to stop, causing Pikachu and the gang to give chase to try and save her! Only! It gets worse!! Because at the bottom of the hill is a huge sink hole, and the gang, STILL unable to stop, end up tumbling down it and into a positive pokemon paradise!

Housed inside a massive tree, WAVES of pokemon from all walks of life are having a ball! But theres no time to dawdle now! We have a togepi to save! So the gang head into the tree, meet a very friendly Elekid who offers to help them, but when they find Togepi, theres a problem…It turns out that she’s fallen into a nest of Exeggcute, and because Togepi is egg shaped, they think shes one of them, and get VERY defensive of her. What follows then is a mission to try and calm the Exeggcute, rescue Togepi and get back to Ash and co before they realise they’re gone!…Oh and Meowth is in this…for some reason.

Once again we have another pretty simple, but quite effective little short film here. rather than it being a series of Vignettes intercut with trippy visuals this time, this feels instead like a single coherent story with a three act structure that I think holds up pretty well. There are some issues here, I still dont really fully know why Meowth is in this one, he doesnt interact with the main story, and seemingly is only there to…well…be meowth.

But that aside, this doesnt waste time, has a good pace, does what it needs to do, and then gets out of there. The art style is decent, theres a couple continuity flubs on the English dub (a Polywhirl is mistaken for a Polywrath…) But nothing i’d get my flaming torch for.

Basically, if you enjoyed ‘Pikachus Vacation’ or you have a love of cutesy animal driven movies, you’ll probably really quite enjoy this one too. Its not trying to be the smartest movie in the room. Its just trying to tell a simple story effectively for a younger audience. and I think it pretty much achieves that with vigour.

Another instance where, personally? I preferred the short film over the main feature!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pokemon-pikachus-rescue-adventure/