Anime is usually pretty cool. This is a rare exception though. Pokemon has been well-established as a franchise with cartoons, toys, movies, made-for-TV movies and made for direct-to-DVD movies as understandable only by children. I was briefly involved in the craze for a couple months before I realized the story had nowhere to go. The movie is basically the same. Young Ash and his buddies are invited by the pokemon Mewtwo to a tournament to fight other Pokemon. On the way there are really, really awful jokes about vikings and inane fight scenes. I gotta tell you something funny, I actually saw this movie in the theater back in 1999, and I remember kids being so bored they constantly got up to go get snacks during the most "exciting" parts of the movie. During the so called finale where clones of the pokemon fight each other I'm totally confused. The pokemon trainers come to a startling conclusion: Fighting is bad(Keep this in mind for later). Then Ash wants to stop the fighting so he runs between two of the pokemon and gets turned to stone. Then the pokemon cry and the tears turn Ash back to normal... WHAT?! You're kidding me. This movie is trying to teach the lesson that if you cry hard enough your loved ones will come back!? Bull! Then finally at the end the memory of Ash and everyone else is erased so the lesson that fighting is bad is basically gone. Isn't this pretty hypocritical? I mean first they acknowledge that fighting is bad, and then they go back to fighting because they have no problem with exploiting these poor creatures. Ironic, and hypocritical. I mean there's no story! It's just about Pokemon fighting and everything learned is erased by your stereotypical deus ex machina. I would expect that lazy plot device in an episode of the show, not a full length movie. Once again, for a kid's movie this is terrible.