Once upon a time, a powerful Pokemon was created in a lab. Scientists were trying to use the miracle of cloning to recreate the precursor of all Pokemon, and because Arceus hadn’t been introduced yet, they thought this was Mew. They never quite managed to recreate the adorable psychic cat-fetus, but after accidentally creating countless Dittos, they were finally able to clone a Pokemon close enough to Mew to justify all the grant money they’d already spent... The one and only(at the time) Mewtwo. Of course, seeing how Mewtwo was not only intelligent, capable of using human speech on a telepathic level, he was also absurdly powerful, and it was only a matter of time before he destroyed the lab, killed his creators, and fled to a far-off island to try and create more Pokemon like himself, an endeavor that also ended catastrophically. Finally, after wiping the memories of all who witnessed his existential crisis, he fled again, this time to an isolated mountain in the Johto region, whose lakes contain water so pure that it has medicinal properties... But with two factions from his past converging on his new sanctuary at once, he may never be able to outrun his fate.

The animation from the Pokemon anime tends to get a bad rap, but has it ever actually been that bad? True, some of the movies employed some highly questionable CGI, and the later shows dove headfirst into some new character and art aesthetics that... Well, I haven’t watched those seasons, but I’m guessing they look better if you take the time to get used to them? I don’t know, from the outside looking in, they look pretty terrible to me. But I will say that I feel like I was way too hard on the animation of the early seasons when I reviewed the first movie. Yeah the series was incredibly cheap looking, but actually going back and revisiting some of it, it’s fine. It was never any kind of visual marvel, but for an anime aimed primarily at young children, it did it’s job more than well enough to pass muster. It was fairly well managed insofar as the fact that cheaper and stiffer animation would be used for dialogue exchanges and certain slapstick gags(which the stilted animation fit pretty damn well) and the savings being passed onto battle scenes, which were also by no means impressive, but they did the job well enough.

The reason I’m talking about the animation in the series again is because today’s subject, Mewtwo Returns, is actually an official entry in the TV series. Registered as a special, so basically it’s an OVA that aired on TV before hitting video, this special didn’t have the budget of your average Pokemon movie, but it clearly did get a modest financial spike compared to the series proper. Not only is this the first Pokemon entity to be entirely digitally colored, giving it a cleaner and brighter veneer than anything that came before it, but because it came out in the middle of the Johto season, the producers had several years of experience and learning to bring to the table in terms of budget management. There’s very little here that wasn’t taken from the series, but what is added is attractive enough. The mountain Mewtwo and the other cloned Pokemon have settled on doesn’t have any particularly visually striking features, but it’s still a cool looking environment. The few new characters are simple in design, but still memorable, with one of them being the strongest memory I had of this special up until my rewatch for this review.

The soundtrack is your standard Pokemon music, sometimes bouncy and jovial and other times exciting depending on the scene, with the only departure being Mewtwo’s appropriately broody and melancholic theme. The English dub is one hell of a nostalgia trip because the entire classic cast was still involved at this point in history, with all of the veteran actors we’ve come to love not yet being swapped out. They’re all well suited to their roles, having played them for years at that point, but there are still a few individual performances that are deserving of mention. First off, Ikue Ohtani plays two different Pikachu, both Ash’s and his clone, and I’ll be damned if she doesn’t make them sound like mutually exclusive characters. Meowth’s clone kept his Japanese voice actor, which was a nice touch, I support all forms of Nya. Ted Lewis was an intimidating Giovanni in the series where he had limited dialogue, but eh, the effect kinda wears off when he gets this big of a spotlight. On an equally unfortunate note, Mewtwo’s voice actor from the first movie retired inbetween projects, and as legendary as Dan Green is, he doesn’t have the edginess or world-weary pain to replicate Jay Goede. Also there are two lines where a threat of death is altered to ‘leave this world,’ they’re almost back to back in the same conversation, and it’s hilarious, but that’s 4Kids for you. At least nobody mentions the shadow realm.

Pokemon is stupid. It’s always been stupid, it will always be stupid, and every single thing it does inevitably finds some way to make it more stupid. From the very first entry in the franchise, it has never made a lick of sense, it’s flawed all the way down to it’s basic concept, and there is nothing it could possibly do to retroactively fix the infinite rat-king of stupid, nonsensical bullshit that has become its foundation. Mind you, this is coming from a guy who grew up with the franchise, was obsessed with it to a disturbing degree for several years, and still collects Bulbasaur merchandise to this day. Pokemon is one of the most essential elements of my childhood, and while I may not have been there for all of it, especially around the middle, I’ve recently found a new appreciation for it in my thirties that I haven’t felt since my late teens. Pokemon is a truly special franchise because no matter how stupid it gets, no matter how little sense it makes, it will always resonate in the hearts of any fan who was fortunate enough to grow up with it.

And to test that theory, I’ve decided to spend my 151’st anime review taking a look at what has to be the single stupidest entry in the Pokemon anime. Granted, I stopped watching the anime a good way into Johto Journeys, and I’m pretty sure there are more movies I haven’t seen then ones I have seen at this point, but no, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a serious contender here. This particular special, a direct sequel to the first movie, goes to some places that I would honestly place right next to the show’s refusal to let Ash turn eleven in terms of sheer non-fuckery. Pokemon in general is stupid, this is Pokemon on fucking drugs, man. That’s not to say there isn’t anything good in it, and we’ll get to that, but there is so much non-stop casual insanity in this one hour-long TV special that I can’t believe more people don’t remember it. Actually, fun fact, you DO remember part of it, believe it or not. You may not have heard of this special by name, but I can guarantee there’s at least one part of it that you’ve seen.

Picture, if you will, Ash, Brock and Misty being caught in the rain. It’s a spot of rotten bad luck, as they’re already running late to catch a bus, but it’s okay. Everything’s cool. Brock doesn’t have to get wet, because he can turn his trusty frying pan... Into a drying pan. Yes, that one meme that you’ve all seen at least once, and have probably made references to all your own, is from this special. Oh, and that’s not even the dumbest moment in this special by far, trust me, it’s only going uphill from there.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, what do I like about this movie? Well, okay, what do I like unironically about this movie? For one thing, I like the fact that it exists. I was extremely hyped for this special when it was announced, I watched it on TV and everything, even though it came out near the end of my love affair with the anime. Even as a kid I never cared for the first movie... The second one was more my jam... So I thought it was pretty boss that a new TV special was going to try and retcon some of it’s bullshit, even if it didn’t do a super great job of it. I like Domino, she’s a really cool character. Also known as The Black Tulip, she’s a high ranking Team Rocket agent who Giovanni sends to scout out the area, so she infiltrates the party, pretends to be ditzy, makes a few lame jokes, cringes at Jessie and James’ antics and sabotages everyone. I’ve always wished they’d bring Domino back like they kept doing with Cassidy and gravel-voice Butch. Still, she’s not the only one-shot Team Rocket member introduced in a movie/special, and she’s way more fun than Vicious was... Ooops, I’m sorry, that’s The Iron Mask Marauder. Yeah, 4Ever was also on some serious substances.

I’ve heard some people complain like “Why did Giovanni send her when he already had photographic proof Mewtwo was there?” And I don’t know, my going theory is that he wanted to make sure Mewtwo was living there and not just sight-seeing. Bulbasaur and Chikorita, literally my two favorite Pokemon, get a handful of nice cameos together. Don’t worry, though, the late Maddie Blaustein still voices the main character Meowth in the dub. There’s a surprising amount of good jokes in this thing. I laughed quite a few times, and not just at the stupid shit. Team Rocket has some funny moments, and there’s a string of gags early on revolving around Misty’s fear of bugs that are pretty damn amusing. Going back to Domino, her comeuppance was pretty funny too. I like what little continuity this special shares with the first movie, what with the two Pikachus communicating via electric shock telepathy, and I’m too lazy to check, but I’m pretty sure the clone Pokemon from the first movie are pretty accurately represented here. And speaking of continuity, a lot of that stupid bullshit I keep mentioning is a holdover from that movie, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Before we get to all that fun stuff, what do I not like? Well, for starters, Mewtwo will not shut the fuck up. He was full of rebellious misanthropic angst in the first movie, but at least he did stuff. His role in this special is to be all tell and no show, pondering over his existence and whether or not he ethically deserves pretty much anything, from the right to live to the right to make decisions for others. Despite the fact that he can understand other Pokemon, he still has to repeat everything they say for the sake of the audience. Why not use subtitles, like in that one early giant-robot-Pokemon episode? He has weirdly little agency for a character whom the special is named after, he’s just trying to protect the status quo while shit goes down around him. Also, it’s worth noting that the pacing in this special isn’t great, it feels a lot longer than it actually is, and that’s saying something for a special that’s only an hour long. The ending resolution is also bullshit, just like the first movie. This is kind of a spoiler, but Mewtwo’s reason for letting people remember the events of the film makes just as little sense as his decision to make everyone forget the events of the first movie.

And now, what you all came here to see, stupid bullshit! Or, as I like to call it, the plot and story, or at least some of the highlights anyway. First off, you’re never given much cause to feel sympathy for the plight of the clones. They’re genetically identical to natural Pokemon, and nobody would notice the difference if they weren’t told. The only exception to this is Charizard, Venusaur and Blastoise, who all have strange markings on them, but like, strange markings are cool. My cat has strange markings, that’s one of the reasons I adopted him. They honestly look cooler than their shiny forms do. Even so, we’re given no examples whatsoever of any of the clones going through any kind of hardship or discrimination, we’re just constantly told by Mewsnooze to feel bad for them. There’s a good variety of Pokemon IN the clone faction, but aside from the clones of Pikachu and Meowth, none of them really do anything special to justify their inclusion in the story, with the sole exception being the fact that they were the clones from the first movie, so they have to be accurately represented here.

The movie starts with Ash, Brock and Misty wanting to take a bus that arrives only once a month, but in an astounding string of coincidences, it leaves today, it’s leaving slightly early, and they just missed it, but oh wait, they have the opportunity to travel with a researcher who happened to arrive that very day with a mole in toe. That’s like Murphy’s martial law right there. There’s hurricane-strength winds blowing around the mountain, but they only factor into two scenes before being forgotten and never appearing again. Mewtwo is caught by machines, and instead of using their Pokemon, Ash and Brock try body-checking it themselves, and they don’t summon their Pokemon until after it’s destroyed(fun fact, I totally forgot Brock had a Pineco). They get trapped in a jail cell with all the clone Pokemon, despite almost all of them being capable of destroying a jail cell... They have a fucking Charizard with them, for Christ’s sake. The water is poisoned with pollution, but a flock of bug Pokemon attacking the factory causes someone to drop a blowtorch which somehow destroys the whole building, and I guess that gets rid of all the pollution, because it’s never mentioned again. Mewtwo is injured, Ash decides to bring him to the water and throw him in, even though the smart thing to do would have been catching him in a pokeball and sending him to Oak.

Mewtwo is astounded by Ash’s compassion even though he distinctly remembers Ash for his compassion. The researchers protest to Mewtwo entering the water and possibly sullying it’s purity despite all the pollution that’s already happened, and they saw baby Nidoqueen drinking out of it earlier... OH YEAH, DID I MENTION THERE’RE BABY NIDOQUEENS? And I mean that literally, baby Nidoqueens. Not Nidoran females. Literal baby Nidoqueens, like miniature versions of her. This is the stupidest thing that’s ever happened in Pokemon. Not just the anime, but all of it. This is stupider than anything 4Kids ever did. It’s stupider than anything Ash ever did, from forgetting about Pidgeot, to refusing to trade away his Tauros despite having thirty of them. This is stupider than Misty giving away Starmie because her sisters said so, or the lack of pay-off for the GS Ball, or even Ash never turning eleven. That’s it. There’s no coming back from this. Everything else I’ve mentioned so far is just your typical stupid bullshit that you should have come to expect from Pokemon, but Baby Nidoqueens? This special is officially the holy grail of stupidity in Pokemon, and as far as I’m concerned, you should buy a copy for that alone.

Mewtwo Returns is long out of print, but it’s fairly easy to find on DVD, ranging in price from 15 to 20 dollars on average if you’re looking on Ebay. As a bonus, the special features include the original deleted opening vignette of the first movie, which 4Kids initially decided was too dark for the kiddies, but due to fan demand it’s been faithfully dubbed and restored on this DVD release.

It really is tragic that as weird and casually batshit insane as this special was, the only thing people remember it for today is a lame pun that Brock made. I have a soft spot for it myself, as I like what it was trying to do, but even I have to admit that it didn’t do it very well. The bar for quality in Pokemon movies had dropped pretty low at that point, and nobody was really expecting anything out of a TV special that plays very much like three episodes stitched together, but it till delivers on everything the series has always been good at. Face it, nobody comes to the Pokemon franchise for coherent storytelling, consistent lore and actual continuity. That’s not to say they don’t exist, but it really is a series that’s best enjoyed if you turn your brain off, and while I may be a jaded critic who hates doing that for most franchises, Pokemon is easily one of my few exceptions. It’s kind of like modern day WWE, with the difference being that while that company feels like it’s actively trying to piss you off, Pokemon just wants you to have fun, and for what it’s worth, I did. There’s a lot of good in this special, but even the bad stuff is mostly worth checking out.

I give Pokemon: Mewtwo Returns a 4/10.