Pokémon: Twilight Wings

The poke-rap and an occasional GO open on my phone aside, Pokémon isn’t a game or television series or collectable monolith I tend to care much for today. But some 15 odd years ago I wouldn’t ever believe I’d ever be referring to one of the “best things ever” so coldly, without batting an eyelash. I’m a bit of a reformed Poké-holic, as I assume many adults unfortunately become, when the franchise, doesn’t present anything new for them (and myself) to hold onto anymore. Fortunately, this cute little web-series gets to the heart of what I loved most about the pocket critters, and gave my wary, decrepit young adult a bit of genuine child-like heart murmurs again.

Presented, in a style akin to the newer, more “rubbery” character design you’d find in Ash Ketchum’s newer adventures, but coloured more prettily with a sort of faux, painterly look, Twilight Wings is nothing less than easy on the eyes. That combined with any early, late and a bit of in the middle focus on younger kids simply existing in the world of Pokémon, make up a lot of my previous sentiment on, making me feel a bit starry-eyed again.

I’d say just about anyone would be able to sit down and enjoy this. The v.a. performances (I watched in English) are very charming and suite each character quite well, as does the character writing and design. I really felt like in such a short time, I could easily attach and understand every main character.

Although the show is criminally short, being only seven episodes long (and an eighth released later), each clocking in at an average of seven minutes, you’ll figure out quick if this show is going to work out for you or not (hint: if you never liked Pokémon, you probably have a good idea). At the same time, that length makes it all pretty palatable and hard to argue you’ve necessarily wasted that much time with it in the end.

My only real complaint, besides a couple shots in it’s final episode, where some animation comes out a bit stiff compared to the rest of what was done, just comes back to the short series length. I really felt like each character who got the starring feature in an episode, deserved more than those seven to eight minutes of screen time. Such short episodes left a couple stories feeling cheap in their grander moments. And unfortunately that’s all in due to the true purpose of this series being a glorified advertisement for the game series newest titles. I was kind even strangely heart-broken when a more informed friend mentioned my favorite character and episode from the show, is “magically” the big bad of the video-game.

This series really has some talent, coming from Studio Colorido. It’s a shame those folks didn’t just get greenlit to go off the cuff even more, and make this a proper seasonal series.
And this passion is coming from someone who gets headaches from just looking at new Pokémon designs.

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...wait