Another day, another Pikachu short. And arguably this one’s the most incoherent to date.

For a starters, there’s no setup for this one. Ash Misty and Brock are just…missing seemingly. And for some reason (fanservice) the Pichu brothers are back! They’re riding a train for some reason when they accidentally fall off and into the surrounding woodland. Where they meet our regular pokemon hero’s who…for SOME reason are just chilling in the middle of LITERALLY nowhere.

The gang decide to help the Pichu brothers catch another train to help them reach their destination, and with the help of a comically strange Wynaut, a Vulbeat and a Duskull, the gang will cross land, river and sky to get the brothers back on track!

Right from the top the title ‘Camp Pilachu’ really doesn’t suit this short. I hear that title, and I’m thinking maybe the guys go to a special pokemon camp and have a fun weekend doing camp activities. But this quite literally is just the gang wandering in the woods for 20 minutes in an *admittedly* cute and charming kind of way…but that’s about it.

It’s nice to see that by the first ‘Hoen’ film in the franchise they’ve finally managed to make the makeup of the team predominantly Johto sourced. But I have to find it funny that they only got to that point AFTER the Johto movies had formally ended…

As for the new Hoen editions. Wynaut is a fun character, but I got nothing out of Vulbeat or Duskull…

Once again Meowth and Wobbuffet seemingly do absolutely NOTHING here and are once again, completely underused leading to another wasted opportunity.

I think the animation is arguably some of the best since the first Pichu brothers short…but that isn’t really saying anything given that was only 1 or 2 shorts ago…its nice, colourful, vibrant and engaging. But it feels like they’ve toned things down across the board to the point that these are now only for the very youngest children…

The soundtracks quite the improvement over the last film though…even if ‘country Jamboree’ vibes feel a bit off for me personally.

In some ways, this film just maintains the line of quality from the last short, in others it underperforms. But I think by a hairs breadth I prefer this to the last one. It may be less complex and even more basic. But I think it does a great job of being a palette cleanser ahead of the main event!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/camp-pikachu/