‘Jirachi’ the wishmaker’ is the 2nd of the ‘Hoen’ era Pokemon films and this one really feels like its well and truely bedded in to the era after ‘Pokemon Heroes’ kind of half’n’half’d its way out of Johto.

The plot see’s Ash, Brock, May and Max pausing their adventures in Hoen to take in a once in a millenium astrological event. A mysterious Comet which can be seen passing by earth for 7 days every 1000 years is imminantly due, and the gang have decided they want to catch it.

Conveniently at the same time, a circus has pulled into town, and while taking in the sights and sounds, they end up in the company of Butler and Dianne. A travelling Magician and Assistant with a strange new addition to their team. a mysterious meterorite with otherworldly powers, that seemingly has a STRONG interest in Max.

After the show, the gang catch up with the magicians and its revealed that Meteor isnt in fact just a lump of rock. But is in fact a legendary Pokemon from outer space called ‘Jirachi’. Jirachi is rumoured to only appear when the comet thats planned to pass by earth appears. and for the 7 days the comet is around, Jirachi will befriend someone and grant their every hearts desire.

Naturally, on the first night of the Comet, Jirachi appears and befriends Max, and after many shenanigans, they form a very strong bond. However, everything isnt quite as it seems and Butler may indeed have had alterior motives for the Star shaped pokemon…Alterior Motives that could lead to the ressurection of the ancient guardian of fire ‘Groudon!’

This one? I really actually quite enjoyed. I’ve been saying since the start of my journey through all of these Pokemon movies that the main thing I want to see when I watch a Pokemon film is an idea that was too grand for the TV show, being realised with a modest budget and given the time it needs to tell the story well. And I think this one actually achieves that brief pretty nicely.

The plot zips by at around 81 minutes long, the pacings pretty solid with just a couple of instances of padding that I noticed in the second act, the act structuring itself is decently paced out, with acts 1 and 3 being near perfectly balanced, with an ever so slightly extended middle act tying this all together.

The characters all seem to work quite well with each other and theres a decent contrast between our regular players, and the villains of the piece, with Team Rocket here getting their first meaty involvement in one of these films for the first time since ‘Pokemon 4ever’ Butler is incredibly campy, but I kind of live for the melodrama with his performance and felt like he had a really solid arc in this. and our main gang of Ash, Brock, May and Max are all largely likeable, and its nice to see the entire gang ACTUALLY get pretty decent utilization after so many of these films have just picked one or two of the gang to be main players and relegated the rest of the team to just cheering from the sidelines.

This script felt like a coherent and functioning production that ACTUALLY bothered to use its cast to as full a potential it could muster, the pacing was solid, the tone was nicely hammy with some genuinely compelling moments. In fact, there were only 3 things I didnt like in this:

1 – May repeatedly sings a lullaby in this, and Its awful. It seems WAY out of character, it sounds bad to me and it just felt a bit awkward and clunky…I wasnt a fan.

2 – Jirachi itself is just…a bit weird, it sounds like a baby and at times borders on SUPER annoying…I dunno, In the games and pokedex entries it seems a bit cooler…in this film, its a bit lame, even if it does enable some of the better aspects of this films plot.

and 3 – a GLARING plothole in the 3rd act (spoilers here so skip this paragraph to avoid) But IN the 3rd act, Butler successfully manages to ressurect Groudon, only to find that its some kind of Groudon/Kyogre/Deoxys/Space…hybrid thingie and it goes on the rampage. Jirachi is a pokemon that can grant ANY wish. Why didnt ANY of the gang there, just…wish that this abomination pokemon dissapear…or wish it to be teleported into space? Jirachi is shown that it can teleport basically anything pretty easily…After a while I thought that maybe there was limitations on Jirachis ability to teleport large objects…But the final scene LITERALLY has Jirachi LAUNCH this giant lizard pokemon into space to hit the comet. Which just left me wondering why on earth it let this thing destroy a TON of the landscape, absorb several pokemons energy and nearly kill all of its friends…I know its just a show and I should really just relax. But its plotholes like that that keep me awake at night.

On the art direction and cine front, its a bit of a trade off honestly…on the one hand, I dont think this films as pretty as ‘Pokemon Heroes’, the detailed pseudo ‘Ghibli’ level of details is massively rowed back on here to the point that, for the post part it just feels a bit like a widescreen version of the TV series at the time. BUT! in exchange for that intense lack of detail, we instead get some of the best intigration of CG that the series has had to date. its been toned down massively and blended much more seamlessly into the existing art style, which results in a really visually impressive film for this series so far, and a very pretty one at that! (seriously, the fairground sequences are quite lovely!)

Performance wise, I had no issues here The longtime players are still going strong here and the recent additions of Veronica Taylors ‘May’ and Amy Birnbaums ‘Max’ are welcome and a nice change of pace from the norm. But EASILY stealing the show is Wayne Grayson as ‘Butler’ he’s hammy, melodramatic, campy…All the good things a magician could want! I loved him in this and I had to chuckle every time he delivered an epic ‘DIANNNE!’ line.

And the score…well, its kinda sorta okay. the strange hybrid of more orchestral driven scoring thats in line with the TV anime, and the now INCREASINGLY dated late 90s/early 2000s J-pop dubbed into english is really starting to creak a bit at this point. they’ve been doing this since 1998 and this thing released in the UK in 2006, 3 YEARS after it came out in Japan…It does the job I guess, and I didnt expressly hate any of it. But, at this point it feels about 3 years past its prime, and im hoping they’ll begin to branch out into other sounds and styles in the next couple of movies.

On the whole? This is probably the best Pokemon movie i’ve seen so far on my journey through all of them. While i’d stop short of saying its ‘brilliant’ it did pretty much everything I want a pokemon movie to do and even threw a few things in I didnt consider. That being said, it does still have some drawbacks. but I think i’d put it about on Par with ‘Pokemon 3: The Movie’ as being one of the more consistently and coherently produced Pokemon films. If your looking to cherrypick the best, this one would almost certainly be on my list.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pokemon-jirachi-wish-maker/