Pokémon: Arceus & The Jewel of Life

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Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life, or Pocket Monsters Diamond & Pearl the Movie – Arceus: To a Conquering Spacetime as the Japanese title directly translates, is the Pokémon franchise’s 12th movie and the third and final part of the Pokémon Diamond and Pearl trilogy.

The movie is directed by Kunihiko Yuyama and the plot continues directly from its prequel, Giratina & The Sky Warrior – and, for that matter, from The Rise of Darkrai before it, finally explaining why Dialga and Palkia came to blows over Alamos Town in the first place.

Initially released to Japanese theatres on 18 July 2009, Arceus & The Jewel of Life was particularly successful in Japan, being the top-grossing Japanese anime movie of 2009 and beating off strong competition from Detective Conan: The Raven Chaser and Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance.

Release around the world

Cinema releases of the movie in the rest of the world were non-existent, with the English dub instead airing first on Australian TV on 6 November 2009. In the United States it premiered on Cartoon Network on 20 November 2009 – the first time a Pokémon movie had reached America in the same year as Japan – with several further broadcasts on the network. Next its Spanish dub aired in Spain on 4 April 2010, and then in the UK the movie aired on Disney XD on 28 May 2010. Later that year the Latin American arm of Cartoon Network aired the film across South America on 21 November 2010.

Like many of the Pokémon movies before it, the setting for Arceus & The Jewel of Life took inspiration from real-world locations; this time it was various locations in Greece. Kunihiko Yuyama and his production team travelled across the Acropolis, Delphi, Mycenae and Metéora in August 2008, before production of the movie began.

Chronology in relation to the anime
In Japan the film opened on 18 July 2009, between Beating the Bustle and Hustle! (DP135, 9 July) and Gateway to Ruin! (DP136, 23 July), midway through Galactic Battles. Ash has seven of Sinnoh’s eight badges and is on the long road to Sunyshore City for the last one; his team is Pikachu, Staraptor, Grotle, Monferno, Buizel and Gliscor – it is Monferno that the group let out of its Poké Ball in the ancient jail to prove where they come from. Dawn has three Contest Ribbons and travels with Piplup, Buneary, Pachirisu and Mamoswine, and Brock’s Sudowoodo and Croagunk both have their moment in the finale. In the dub Cartoon Network premiered the film on 20 November 2009, three weeks before the American broadcast of DP135 – the first time a Pokémon movie debuted in the US in the same year as Japan.

Arceus and the Jewel of Life is a single feature

• Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life – the main feature, 94 minutes; the year’s Pikachu short, Pikachu’s Sparkle Search! (PK20), was shown only on All Nippon Airways flights

Story

Arceus’s judgment

Thousands of years ago, in an age of swords and stone temples, the Alpha Pokémon Arceus descended on the town of Michina to collect something it had lent to a man named Damos: the Jewel of Life. Instead of returning it, Damos’s army of Pokémon attacked. Arceus struck Damos down, and – wounded, betrayed and barely alive – it withdrew into the dimension between dimensions to sleep, swearing that when it woke it would judge all of humanity by what Damos had done.

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Michina Town

In the present day Ash, Dawn and Brock arrive at Michina, a town of white stone and olive groves built around ancient ruins, and are challenged to a tag battle by two local children, Kato and Kiko, with their Heracross and Beautifly. Afterwards, cooling off at the lake, Pikachu and Piplup are suddenly sucked into a whirlpool of distorted space – and are saved when a young woman named Sheena summons Dialga itself, which seals the rift with Roar of Time.

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Sheena and the Legendaries

Dialga’s arrival brings an angry Giratina up out of the water, still nursing its grudge over the damage done to the Reverse World – until it recognises Ash, who saved its life, and Sheena uses her gift for touching the hearts of Pokémon to persuade it that Dialga means no harm. When Palkia appears in turn, she makes peace between the three of them for good. Sheena and her colleague Kevin are the guardians of the Michina ruins, and she has heard legends of a boy and a “thunder creature” who once changed the town’s history.

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The Time-Space Axis

Inside the ruins Sheena and Kevin show the group the Time-Space Axis, an ancient device that charts disturbances across the dimensions of time, space and the Reverse World – and that explains the last two films. Arceus, the creator of all three worlds, has begun to stir, and its waking sent the temporal and spatial worlds crashing into each other; that is why Dialga and Palkia fought over Alamos Town, and why Giratina was dragged in. Now the Axis shows Arceus itself coming to deliver its Judgment. Sheena tells the legend of Damos: how Arceus destroyed a meteor that would have ended the world, lost its sixteen Plates in the process and was saved by the one Plate Damos found and returned; how it gave him five of them, fused into the Jewel of Life, to turn barren Michina into a paradise; and how Damos was to give the Jewel back at the next solar eclipse – and did not. Sheena is Damos’s descendant, and she holds the Jewel. She means to return it.

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Judgment

Arceus arrives in a storm of light and rage and lays waste to the ruins. Sheena apologises for her ancestor and offers the Jewel; Arceus calms for a moment, then crushes it underfoot. It is a fake – the real Jewel, made of Arceus itself, cannot be broken – and the deception confirms everything Arceus believes about humans. As it tears Michina apart, Dialga, Palkia and Giratina return to hold it off, and with the last of its strength Dialga does the only thing that can save the town: it sends Ash, Dawn, Brock, Sheena and their Pokémon back through time to the day of the betrayal.

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Into the past

They arrive just in time to watch the betrayal happen – and to see that it is not what the legend says. Damos stands glassy-eyed before Arceus, and behind him a man in red robes directs an armoured Heatran and a Bronzong whose Hypnosis is controlling him. The group are nearly killed in the crossfire before Sheena’s prayer reaches Dialga and the exhausted Legendary pulls them back a few hours further, to the morning of the eclipse. This time they are captured by soldiers and thrown into a cell – with Damos himself, who turns out to be cheerful, kind and entirely unaware that his trusted adviser Marcus has been using Bronzong to bend his will.

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Damos and Marcus

In the cell Damos tells his side of the story – the meteor, the Plate, the Jewel, the promise – and, shown Monferno as proof that his visitors come from the future, believes them. Marcus, meanwhile, entertains Sheena at dinner, hears everything she knows and quietly swaps the Jewel out of its staff while Heatran provides a distraction; he means to keep it, and to make sure Arceus never leaves Michina alive. A Spiky-eared Pichu that Damos befriended through the same heart-touching gift Sheena has steals the cell keys and lets everyone out.

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The eclipse

As the sun goes dark Arceus comes for its Jewel and finds Sheena instead, who warns it that Damos will betray it – the very warning that primes it for Marcus’s trap. Marcus’s army attacks and a flood of molten silver pours into the temple, hardening around Arceus’s legs. Ash and Dawn take on Heatran and Bronzong and lose, Ash snatches the Jewel back by hand, Brock’s Sudowoodo splits the floor with Hammer Arm to divert the silver away from Damos and Sheena, and Pikachu and Piplup smash the armour controlling the two Pokémon with Iron Tail and Peck. Freed, Heatran turns on its master – but Marcus has already won, he says: Arceus is dying, and when it dies the future dies with it. Pikachu flickers out of existence. Ash, fading himself, carries the Jewel to Arceus, and it is Damos’s voice reaching the last spark of its heart that gives it the strength to take the Plates back and live.

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A new history

Arceus returns the travellers to their own time – where nothing seems to have changed, and a victorious Arceus is preparing to finish Michina off. Ash’s pleading finally stirs the new memory in it: the betrayal never happened, and the Jewel was returned. The destruction unwinds, Dialga, Palkia and Giratina are healed and go home, and Michina stands as beautiful as ever – because, Arceus explains, Damos and his people spent their lives making it so without the Jewel. Sheena finds a new carving on the ruins showing Ash, Dawn, Brock and herself, with a message of thanks from Damos, and Arceus leaves saying that for the first time it feels it belongs in this world. Over the credits Marcus is given a job as Damos’s temple steward, Alice and Tonio drift over Alamos Town, Zero gets a visit from Newton in prison, and Shaymin watches the sunrise.

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Major Characters

Ash Ketchum (Satoshi) is, for the first time, the one who travels through time rather than watching a friend do it, and the carving on the Michina ruins makes him and Pikachu the “thunder creature” of the town’s own legend. Dawn (Hikari) and Piplup fight alongside him against Heatran and Bronzong, and Brock (Takeshi) – after one more failed romance, with Sheena – gets his hero moment when Sudowoodo diverts the flood of silver.
Arceus (voiced in Japanese by the singer and actor Akihiro Miwa, and in English by ADR director Tom Wayland) is the Alpha Pokémon, creator of Dialga, Palkia and Giratina and of their worlds, able to change its type with its Plates and to erase a town with Judgment. It is the most powerful being the movies have shown, and the most wounded. Dialga, Palkia and Giratina all return, finally on the same side, with Dialga’s time travel the engine of the plot.
Sheena (Kii Kitano / Evelyn Lantto) is the guardian of the Michina ruins and a descendant of Damos, able to “transcend the confines of time and space” and speak to the hearts of Pokémon; Kevin (Yūji Kishi / Wayne Grayson) is her colleague, left behind to mind the Time-Space Axis. Damos (Masahiro Takashima / Dan Green) is the ancient Michinan whom history remembers as a traitor and who turns out to be anything but, with a Chikorita, Cyndaquil and Totodile and a soft spot for a Spiky-eared Pichu (voiced by Shōko Nakagawa). Marcus (Kōichi Yamadera / Jason Griffith) is the true villain, Damos’s adviser, who controls Damos with Bronzong’s Hypnosis and his Heatran with armour, and who would rather Arceus died than Michina lose the Jewel. The children Kato and Kiko and the old man Tapp fill out the modern-day town.

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Other Characters & Pokémon Debuts

Kato’s Heracross and Kiko’s Beautifly give Pikachu and Piplup their warm-up battle; Damos’s Chikorita, Cyndaquil and Totodile – a nod to the Johto remakes due that autumn – and his army of Baltoy, Claydol and others are the Pokémon made to attack Arceus; Marcus commands an armoured Heatran and a Bronzong. The mother and daughter who have cameoed in every DP movie are back for a fourth time, and the credits catch up with the whole trilogy: Alice, Tonio and a jealous Baron Alberto in Alamos, Darkrai on its cliff, Zero in his cell with Newton and a rescued Infi, and Shaymin greeting the dawn. Jessie, James and Meowth never actually meet the heroes this time – they are too busy failing to steal watermelons.

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Pokémon making their anime debut in the film

Only three Pokémon debuted here, but one of them is the creator of the universe and another had never been seen anywhere before – Spiky-eared Pichu appeared on screen two months before HeartGold and SoulSilver. With this film every Pokémon of the first four generations had appeared in the anime, bar Porygon2 and Porygon-Z.

• Arceus#493 · the Alpha Pokémon
• Heatran#485 · Marcus’s
• Pichu#172 · Spiky-eared, Damos’s friend

Cast

The voice cast of both the Japanese and English versions of Arceus and the Jewel of Life. Akihiro Miwa, one of Japan’s most famous singers and actors, voices Arceus; Kōichi Yamadera plays his fifth movie role as Marcus.

Character	English voice actor	Japanese voice actor
Ash Ketchum (Satoshi)	Sarah Natochenny	Rica Matsumoto
Pikachu	Ikue Ōtani	Ikue Ōtani
Dawn (Hikari)	Emily Jenness	Megumi Toyoguchi
Piplup	Michele Knotz	Etsuko Kozakura
Brock (Takeshi)	Bill Rogers	Yūji Ueda
Jessie (Musashi)	Michele Knotz	Megumi Hayashibara
James (Kojirō)	Carter Cathcart (as Billy Beach)	Shin-ichirō Miki
Meowth (Nyarth)	Carter Cathcart (as Billy Beach)	Inuko Inuyama
Arceus	Tom Wayland	Akihiro Miwa
Sheena	Evelyn Lantto	Kii Kitano
Damos	Dan Green	Masahiro Takashima
Marcus (Gishin)	Jason Griffith	Kōichi Yamadera
Kevin	Wayne Grayson	Yūji Kishi
Spiky-eared Pichu	Kayzie Rogers	Shōko Nakagawa
Kato	Tom Wayland	Motoko Kumai
Kiko	Evelyn Lantto	Kei Shindō
Tapp	Bill Tost	Yuzuru Fujimoto
Heatran	Tom Wayland	Kenta Miyake
Narrator	Rodger Parsons	Unshō Ishizuka

Trailer

The official English trailer for Arceus and the Jewel of Life, from Viz Media’s YouTube channel.

The in-flight Pikachu short

The 2009 short was another All Nippon Airways exclusive: Pikachu’s Sparkle Search! (PK20), shown only on ANA domestic flights during August 2009. Pikachu and Piplup bump into the Spiky-eared Pichu and a Smoochum and lose the “sparkle”, which they have to recover before Meowth’s gang gets hold of it. The short usually called Pikachu’s Really Mysterious Adventure – Bulbapedia’s Pikachu’s Strange Wonder Adventure, PK21 – is the following year’s ANA short, the one that belongs with Zoroark: Master of Illusions. Neither has had an official release outside Japan, so there is no legitimate copy to embed; if one ever appears we will add it here.

Trading Cards

For the first time the Japanese movie cards were sold like a proper expansion. The Movie Commemoration Random Pack, released on 18 July 2009, came in sealed booster packs rather than a fixed album: 22 numbered Pokémon cards – including three different Spiky-eared Pichu and three different Arceus – plus eight basic Energy cards with new artwork, all using the new “Pokémon M” (Movie’s Pokémon) designation that replaced the old Owner’s Pokémon cards. One of the Arceus illustrations came from a reader competition in Weekly Shōnen Sunday. The cinema gift with every ticket was an Arceus promo (041/DPt-P), and the Movie Commemoration Special Pack 2009 added a Pikachu M LV.X and the Michina Temple Stadium card.

In English the cinema Arceus artwork was reissued as DP Black Star Promo 50 in the Arceus Poster Pack and Poster Box of late 2009, the latter with a jumbo version. Everything is catalogued in our Trading Card Game section.

• Movie Commemoration Random PackJapan, July 2009 · booster pack
• Arceus041/DPt-P cinema gift · DP Promo 50 in English
• Arceus020/022
• Arceus021/022
• Arceus022/022
• Spiky-eared Pichu009/022
• Spiky-eared Pichu010/022
• Spiky-eared Pichu011/022
• Chikorita001/022
• Heracross002/022
• Beautifly003/022
• Cyndaquil004/022
• Heatran005/022
• Totodile006/022
• Piplup007/022
• Palkia008/022
• Pikachu012/022
• Croagunk013/022
• Giratina014/022
• Bronzong015/022
• Dialga016/022
• Meowth017/022
• Staraptor018/022
• Buneary019/022

Movie Ads & Posters

Posters and home-video artwork for Arceus and the Jewel of Life – the Japanese teaser and final one-sheets, the Korean and English posters, and DVD and Blu-ray releases from Japan, the States, the UK and Australia. Magazine clippings and adverts are still wanted; if you have any, please get in touch.

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Trivia & Facts

• In Japan the film was released between Beating the Bustle and Hustle! (DP135) and Gateway to Ruin! (DP136).
• Kunihiko Yuyama and his producers toured Greece in August 2008 – the Acropolis, Mycenae, Delphi and the monasteries of Metéora – to find the look of Michina Town and its ruins. The film was announced at the end of Giratina and the Sky Warrior with a teaser of Dialga, Palkia and Giratina squaring up over ruins that resemble the Spear Pillar.
  

  

• Ash’s friends had travelled through time before, but this is the first movie in which Ash himself does. It is also the first to feature a Legendary that had appeared in two previous movies (Dialga), and the solar eclipse that heralds Arceus had a real-world echo: a total eclipse was visible from Japan on 22 July 2009, four days after the premiere.
• It was the first Pokémon movie to debut in the United States in the same year as Japan – making 2009 the first year with two Pokémon movie premieres there – and the first since Lucario to use its season’s own English theme, Battle Cry (Stand Up!), as the opening. It also holds the record for the longest wait between a US premiere and a US DVD, fourteen and a half months, and although Cartoon Network aired it in 1080i the disc that eventually followed was standard definition only.
• Arceus’s Plates are drawn as rainbow-coloured, coffin-shaped tablets rather than the plain bricks of the games, and the Japanese title card bills the film as a Diamond & Pearl Platinum movie. Giratina spends almost the whole film in its Altered Forme.
  

  

• According to dub director Tom Wayland, Arceus was originally to be voiced by Vincent D’Onofrio of Full Metal Jacket and Men in Black; when problems with the actor’s agent scuppered the session, Wayland re-auditioned the part and ended up voicing it himself. Marcus shares both his Japanese and English voice actors with Sir Aaron from Lucario and the Mystery of Mew.
  

  

• Spiky-eared Pichu was first hinted at when Yuyama promised “a small, yellow Electric-type that would save the world”, and a poster showing her alongside Pikachu and Dawn leaked days before the official reveal; according to Shōko Nakagawa, who voices her, an entirely different unused Pokémon design was considered first. Fans who pre-ordered tickets in Japan received a Shiny Pichu for their games which, taken to Ilex Forest in HeartGold or SoulSilver, unlocked a Spiky-eared Pichu of their own.
  

  

• At Japanese cinemas – and at Toys “R” Us stores in the US – players could download an Arceus knowing Roar of Time, Spacial Rend, Shadow Force and Judgment; brought to the Sinjoh Ruins in HeartGold and SoulSilver, it produced a level 1 Dialga, Palkia or Giratina. The Western Arceus carried the Original Trainer name “Michina”.
  

  

• The credits tie off the whole trilogy: Alice and Tonio balloon over Alamos Town with Baron Alberto in pursuit and Darkrai watching, Newton visits Zero in prison with a copy of Infi salvaged from the Megarig, and Shaymin smiles at the sunrise. Ash, Dawn and Brock are briefly seen in their winter clothes for the first time since Snowpoint City, and Team Rocket’s run-in with a disguised Voltorb echoes What You Seed is What You Get. This is one of only three movies in which Ash never meets Team Rocket at all.
  

  

• Sheena’s ability to read the hearts of Pokémon echoes Anabel’s from the Battle Frontier; she activates it by clasping her hands and saying “Transcend the confines of time and space”. In the English version Arceus is referred to as male.
• The dub steers carefully around religion: Arceus’s “Prepare for Judgment!” became “Prepare for justice!”, and Brock’s description of Dialga and Palkia as “Pokémon who are called like a god” became simply “Legendary Pokémon”. It also cut Brock holding Sheena’s hand, had Arceus say the Jewel cannot break at all rather than that it no longer breaks easily, had Dawn claim all Michina thinks Damos evil where the Japanese script says only Ash’s group did, and had Arceus fail to recognise Ash on his return where the original has it know him at once. High Touch! 2009 and Antenna of the Heart were replaced by Battle Cry (Stand Up!), If We Only Learn, This is a Beautiful World and I’ll Always Remember You.

Errors

• When Jessie pulls the Jewel of Life out of the staff during Team Rocket’s fall, the Jewel is back in the staff in the next shot.
• As Pichu, Pikachu, Piplup and Dawn creep along the beams above the silver, Piplup is edging along the wall in one shot and standing in the middle of a beam in the next.
• When Arceus’s green light frees the armoured Pokémon, an Electrike and a Nosepass appear where Manectric and Probopass had been, as if they had devolved.
• Sheena tells the group that they have arrived on the day Damos made his promise to Arceus; it is actually the day of the betrayal. Baltoy and Claydol are among the Pokémon using Shock Wave on Arceus, a move neither can legally learn, and Giratina’s Will-O-Wisp is red in one scene and blue in another.
  

  

• In the dub Sheena says “Dialga” while talking to the calmed Giratina, Kiko’s reply when Ash asks about the ruins is silent, and Jessie’s first line as Team Rocket spy on the lake is missing. German television broadcasts omitted the credits entirely.

Reviews & Reception

Arceus: To a Conquering Spacetime opened on 18 July 2009 in fourth place at the Japanese box office, behind Kamen Rider Decade and the Japanese release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but it had legs: it finished on around ¥4.67 billion, making it the highest-grossing Japanese anime film of 2009 – ahead of Evangelion: 2.0 and Detective Conan: The Raven Chaser – and the ninth highest-grossing animated film of the year in Japan once Hollywood is counted.

There was no cinema release elsewhere. The dub premiered on Australian television on 6 November 2009 and on Cartoon Network in the US two weeks later, with Disney XD taking it in the UK in May 2010; the Japanese DVD came out on 18 December 2009, the American one not until 1 February 2011, and a UK Blu-ray finally arrived in December 2021. Critics were lukewarm: Anime News Network’s Carl Kimlinger gave it a B−, calling it inoffensive, reliably entertaining and forgettable in exactly the way Pokémon movies always are, while admitting the sheer beauty of its backgrounds would surprise even hardened fans and grumbling about the flat character designs; Film Music Central was warmer.

Fans tend to rank it a little below The Rise of Darkrai but value it as a genuine finale, one that pays off two films’ worth of set-up and gives the trilogy’s Legendaries a proper send-off. Arceus itself – Akihiro Miwa’s ancient, weary voice especially – and Marcus, a rare Pokémon villain whose plan very nearly works, come in for the most praise; Spiky-eared Pichu, a marketing creation with a very short shelf life, rather less. An official 2021 poll of the Diamond and Pearl films placed it behind Darkrai.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 6.3/10 from around 3,300 user ratings
• Rotten Tomatoes – 68% audience score (500+ ratings) · no critics’ score – only one review“At least it feels a little more original” – Sebastian Zavala Kahn, Más Gamers
• Letterboxd – 3.2/5 average from 17,000+ ratings
• Anime News Network – “Skippable” tier in ANN’s ranking of every Pokémon movie“Ash and his friends don’t feel very relevant within it” – Callum May