Pokémon Movie: Destiny Deoxys

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Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys, or as the Japanese title directly translates, Pocket Monsters Advanced Generation the Movie: Deoxys the Visitor, is the Pokémon franchise’s seventh movie and the second in the Advanced Generation series.

Like the previous films, Destiny Deoxys is directed by Kunihiko Yuyama and written by Hideki Sonoda, and the starring voice actors remain the ones featured in the anime. The film was originally released in Japanese theatres on 17 July 2004, and staggered cinema and DVD releases followed in the rest of the world right the way up to 12 July 2006, when it finally finished releasing across Europe.

Some parts of the Japanese release were cut for international audiences, as a couple of scenes were deemed “too intense” for children outside Japan. Oddly, the Japanese home-video version was also heavily revised, with a large number of visual edits compared with the theatrical cut – the English dub is based on the original theatrical version.

For the first time in Pokémon movie history there was no short animated Pikachu adventure at the beginning; instead more time was given to the main story itself, with the usual stars of the movie shorts appearing as minor characters in the main feature. The movie complements Pokémon Season 7 – Advanced Challenge, and as such was the first movie to feature a Pokémon from Generation IV: Munchlax.

Distribution and airings

Once more 4Kids Entertainment took charge of producing the English adaptation, while Miramax Films (still a Disney subsidiary at the time) continued with distribution duties. The English adaptation debuted on Kids’ WB! on 22 January 2005, trimmed down to fit the slot. This was pretty major for Kids’ WB! as a network, giving them their best ratings on anything in two years in the first month of 2005. The DVD release had an extra fifteen minutes of footage compared with the broadcast version.

Cartoon Network has been known to air the movie pretty frequently, like the movies before it; however, Toon Disney once again managed to negotiate a showing, most probably because Miramax was a Disney subsidiary. This was the last time that Miramax would act as the US distributor of a Pokémon movie – Viz Media took over from the next film.

Chronology in relation to the anime
In Japan the film opened on 17 July 2004, two days after Sky High Gym Battle! (AG085) and before Lights, Camerupt, Action! (AG086), midway through Advanced Challenge. Ash has just taken the Feather Badge from Winona in Fortree City – his sixth in Hoenn – and is heading towards Mossdeep with Pikachu, Grovyle, Corphish, Torkoal and Swellow, all of whom get a run-out at the Battle Tower. May has Combusken, Beautifly, Skitty and Bulbasaur, and Brock has Forretress, Lombre and Mudkip. For English-speaking viewers the timing was slightly off: the Kids’ WB! premiere in January 2005 showed off May’s Bulbasaur two months before the episode in which she caught it had aired in the US.

Destiny Deoxys is a single feature

• Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys – the main feature, 98 minutes; the first Pokémon movie released without a Pikachu short

Story

Prologue on the ice

Four years before the main story, a polar research expedition led by Professor Lund is studying the Arctic when the professor’s young son Tory wanders off to look at a herd of Spheal, Sealeo and Walrein. A meteor slams into the ice, the herd stampedes and Tory is pinned helplessly against a ridge. From the meteor emerges a strange alien Pokémon – Deoxys – carrying a green crystal. Rayquaza, lord of the ozone layer, takes the arrival as an invasion of its territory and attacks. The two legends tear across the ice until Rayquaza’s Hyper Beam blasts Deoxys into the sea, leaving the green crystal behind and leaving Tory terrified of Pokémon for life.

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Four years later

Professor Lund’s team now works in futuristic LaRousse City, still trying to revive the green crystal recovered from the crash site; every attempt to fire lasers into it simply knocks out the city’s power. Tory, meanwhile, keeps to himself in the city’s greenhouse, where a shimmering, sprite-like presence has quietly befriended him. Far to the north, the purple-cored Deoxys has spent four years regenerating on the sea bed, and now it breaks up through the ice with one purpose: to find its missing friend.

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Welcome to LaRousse City

Ash, May, Brock and Max arrive in LaRousse City, a gleaming metropolis of moving walkways, passport-carrying citizens and Block Bots, the cube-shaped robots that keep everything running. Ash makes straight for the Battle Tower, where he and a reluctant stranger are paired in a tag battle against the cocky Rafe and the boastful Sid – and the stranger turns out to be Tory, who can’t bring himself to even hold a Poké Ball. The battle is a disaster, but Ash refuses to give up on him. Along with Rafe’s twin sisters Audrey and Kathryn, Sid (who is instantly smitten with May) and the laptop-wielding analyst Rebecca, the gang spend the day trying to coax Tory out of his fear, with a pair of wild Plusle and Minun and a very hungry Munchlax tagging along.

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The visitor returns

Strange purple lights ripple across the sky over LaRousse like an aurora. Professor Lund and his assistant Yuko realise what it means moments before Deoxys itself arrives, hovering over the city and conjuring dozens of faceless copies of itself to search the streets. Worse, the lab’s sensors pick up Rayquaza descending from the ozone layer, drawn by its old enemy. Lund orders the city evacuated at once.

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City under siege

Before the evacuation can finish Deoxys throws a shimmering barrier around the whole city, sealing everyone inside and killing every electronic system – the moving walkways, the Poké Ball transfer machines and, most dangerously, the Block Bots, which start malfunctioning en masse. The clones round up the remaining citizens and carry them off. Ash and friends take refuge in Lund’s lab, where Tory and Max discover that the green crystal is a second Deoxys, dormant but alive, and realise that the purple Deoxys has come to LaRousse looking for it.

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Powering the green Deoxys

The only way to end the stand-off is to revive the green Deoxys so the two can be reunited. With the city’s grid dead, the group rig the wind turbines of the LaRousse wind park into the lab and pour everything they have into the crystal – the turbines, the Trainers’ Electric-type moves and finally a surge from Pikachu, Plusle and Minun together. The crystal wakes, and the green Deoxys rises.

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Rayquaza versus Deoxys

Rayquaza smashes through the barrier and the fight that began on the ice four years ago resumes over the rooftops, with both Deoxys now shifting between their Normal, Attack and Defense Formes. The battle is cut short when the malfunctioning Block Bots swarm over all three legends and bury them under a mountain of cubes. The only way to shut the robots down is to reach the central control system and present a passport – and Tory, the boy who couldn’t touch a Pokémon, must do it with Plusle and Minun at his side. When he and the two little Pokémon fall, it is the Deoxys who catch them.

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Aurora

Freed from the cubes and having seen the Deoxys save a child, Rayquaza finally lets the invaders be and returns to the ozone layer. The two Deoxys rise together and leave the planet, painting a brilliant aurora across the night sky. Tory, no longer afraid, lets Plusle and Minun smother him with affection, and Ash and his friends leave LaRousse City by monorail.

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Major Characters

Ash Ketchum (Satoshi), May (Haruka), Brock (Takeshi) and Max (Masato) are the regulars, but for once the emotional centre of the film is a guest: Tory Lund (Tōi, voiced by Noriko Hidaka in Japanese and Tara Jayne in English), a lonely boy so traumatised by the stampede on the ice that he can’t bear to be near a Pokémon. His father Professor Lund (Kōichi Yamadera / Sean Schemmel) is the scientist who has spent four years trying to understand the visitor from space, with his assistant Yuko (Takako Uehara / Rachael Lillis).
Deoxys – or rather two of them, one with a purple core and one with a green – are the DNA Pokémon, alien lifeforms able to switch between Normal, Attack and Defense Formes and to spin off faceless copies of themselves. They are not villains: the purple Deoxys brings LaRousse to a standstill only because it is searching for its friend. Rayquaza, the Sky High Pokémon that guards the ozone layer, is the real threat, treating Deoxys as a trespasser to be destroyed.

LaRousse City’s Battle Tower supplies the supporting cast: the arrogant Rafe and his Blaziken, the loud-mouthed Sid and his Blastoise, who spends the film chasing May, the cool-headed analyst Rebecca (voiced in Japanese by TV personality Becky) with her Metagross and her ever-functional laptop, and Rafe’s twin sisters Audrey and Kathryn with Masquerain and Surskit. A wild Plusle and Minun adopt Tory, a Munchlax eats everything in sight, and Jessie, James and Meowth are in town too – though, as in Pokémon Heroes, they never actually run into the heroes.

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Other Characters & Pokémon Debuts

LaRousse City is run by its Block Bots, the cube robots that double as security guards, bridges and – once Deoxys kills the power – a very real hazard. Officer Jenny coordinates the evacuation, and a hot-dog seller and a Battle Tower referee round out the locals. In the prologue the Arctic is home to Spheal, Sealeo and Walrein, while the city streets are packed with Hoenn Pokémon making their anime debuts, from Gardevoir and Mawile to Registeel and Metagross.

Pokémon making their anime debut in the film

Thirteen Pokémon were seen in the anime for the first time, headed by the two legends – and by Munchlax, the very first Generation IV Pokémon ever shown, more than two years before Diamond & Pearl arrived in Japan.

• Deoxys#386 · the DNA Pokémon
• Rayquaza#384 · guardian of the sky
• Munchlax#446 · first Gen IV Pokémon
• Metagross#376 · Rebecca’s
• Cacturne#332
• Registeel#379
• Gorebyss#368
• Gardevoir#282
• Armaldo#348
• Lunatone#337
• Snorunt#361
• Grumpig#326
• Mawile#303

Cast

The voice cast of both the Japanese and English versions of Destiny Deoxys.

Character	English voice actor	Japanese voice actor
Ash Ketchum (Satoshi)	Veronica Taylor	Rica Matsumoto
Pikachu	Ikue Ōtani	Ikue Ōtani
May (Haruka)	Veronica Taylor	KAORI
Max (Masato)	Amy Birnbaum	Fushigi Yamada
Brock (Takeshi)	Eric Stuart	Yūji Ueda
Jessie (Musashi)	Rachael Lillis	Megumi Hayashibara
James (Kojirō)	Eric Stuart	Shin-ichirō Miki
Meowth (Nyarth)	Maddie Blaustein	Inuko Inuyama
Tory Lund (Tōi)	Tara Jayne	Noriko Hidaka
Professor Lund	Sean Schemmel	Kōichi Yamadera
Yuko	Rachael Lillis	Takako Uehara
Rafe	Sebastian Arcelus	Kenji Nojima
Sid	Matthew Charles	Makoto Higo
Rebecca	Lisa Ortiz	Becky
Audrey	Rebecca Honig	Nana Mizuki
Kathryn	Rebecca Honig	Maria Yamamoto
Officer Jenny	Lee Quick	Chinami Nishimura
Deoxys (purple)	Susumu Chiba	Susumu Chiba
Deoxys (green)	Kenji Nojima	Kenji Nojima
Rayquaza	Katsuyuki Konishi	Katsuyuki Konishi
Plusle	Akiko Kawase	Akiko Kawase
Minun	Kumiko Higa	Kumiko Higa
Munchlax	Darren Dunstan	Keiko Yamamoto
Narrator	Mike Pollock	Unshō Ishizuka

Trailer

The official English trailer for Destiny Deoxys, from our own Pokémon Dungeon YouTube channel.

Trading Cards

There were no card giveaways in the West for Destiny Deoxys – it never played in Western cinemas – but Japan carried on the tradition with the Movie Commemoration VS Pack: Sky-Splitting Deoxys, a 19-card half deck sold exclusively at Pokémon Center stores from the day the film opened, 17 July 2004, before going on wider sale on 14 August. The headline cards are two Sky-Splitting Deoxys (Normal and Attack Forme) and Sky’s Rayquaza, backed up by LaRousse’s Plusle, Minun and Munchlax, Ash’s Torkoal, Rafe’s Blaziken, Sid’s Blastoise, Rebecca’s Metagross and the twins’ Masquerain and Surskit, plus a Trainer card called Tory’s Feelings. The pack also came with a lenticular Deoxys promo and a silver Munchlax coin.

A separate LaRousse’s Munchlax promo was handed out in Japan during the film’s run as part of the PCG promotional series. None of these cards was ever printed in English; the first Western Deoxys cards arrived in EX Deoxys the following year. Everything is catalogued in our Trading Card Game section.

• Movie Commemoration VS PackSky-Splitting Deoxys · Japan, July 2004
• Sky-Splitting DeoxysNormal Forme · 001/019
• Sky-Splitting DeoxysAttack Forme · 002/019
• Sky’s Rayquaza003/019
• LaRousse’s Plusle004/019
• LaRousse’s Minun005/019
• LaRousse’s Munchlax006/019
• Ash’s Torkoal009/019
• Rafe’s Blaziken012/019
• Tory’s Feelings017/019

Movie Ads & Posters

Posters and home-video artwork for Destiny Deoxys from around the world, including a rare pair of front and back covers from the Middle Eastern DVD. 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 Sky High Gym Battle! (AG085) and Lights, Camerupt, Action! (AG086).
• This is the first Pokémon movie to reveal a Generation IV Pokémon – Munchlax – and the first to premiere on television (Kids’ WB!) before its video release. It is also the first since Wobbuffet joined Team Rocket in which Jessie’s Wobbuffet does not appear.
• Deoxys’s Speed Forme is nowhere to be seen because it hadn’t been revealed yet – Pokémon Emerald, which introduced it, came out two months after the film.
• Director Kunihiko Yuyama spent four days in Vancouver in October 2003 researching the look of LaRousse City; the Japanese cover art leaves Munchlax off, while the English cover puts it front and centre.
• It is the second movie, after Pokémon Heroes, in which Ash’s group never meets Team Rocket, and the only Hoenn-era movie (Meowth aside) without a talking Pokémon.
• When Deoxys perches on a tower shaped like a DNA double helix it is a nod to its species name, the DNA Pokémon. The basic set-up – a shape-shifting alien dug out of the Arctic ice – has often been compared to John Carpenter’s The Thing.
• The movie was later confirmed as canon when Deoxys returned in Pokémon Ranger – Deoxys’ Crisis!, and LaRousse City turned out to be the home town of May’s rival Drew.
• A film of lasts: the last Pokémon movie distributed by Miramax, the last released on VHS in the US and Canada, the last to premiere on Kids’ WB! (the next went to Cartoon Network), the last with Lee Quick as Officer Jenny, the last Canadian French dub until Detective Pikachu, and the last Pokémon production animated primarily on cels.
• Together with Pokémon Heroes it was one of the first two Pokémon movies released on Blu-ray, on an Echo Bridge double-feature disc in 2011 – and it carries a 2004 copyright despite its 2005 North American debut, reflecting when the dub was finished.
• Rebecca’s laptop keeps working throughout the blackout even though every other electronic device in LaRousse has been knocked out by Deoxys – a plot hole fans have enjoyed pointing out for twenty years.
  

  

• The English version is cropped slightly at the sides, so the picture appears shrunk compared with the Japanese release, and Brock’s line about Yuko reminding him of Professor Ivy was added by the dub – breaking the running gag that nobody can mention her name to him without a breakdown.

Errors

• Several Beedrill in the opening montage have purple heads, and some of the aquatic Pokémon are layered in front of things they should be behind.
• When Rayquaza knocks over the crates in the prologue, a crate duplicates itself between shots.
• Mudkip’s lower jaw is miscoloured in one scene, and Audrey’s Masquerain has white wings instead of orange.
• Both of the crystals that land at the start of the film appear purple, when one of them should be green.
  

  

• The US DVD’s bonus features list Deoxys’s Ability as Psychic; it is Pressure.
• In the ending credits Audrey and Kathryn’s shirts are yellow rather than cream, and the dub’s Torkoal is pitched noticeably higher than in the series.
• The Arabic dub refers to Professor Ivy as a man.

Reviews & Reception

Destiny Deoxys was another solid earner in Japan, taking around ¥4.4 billion – roughly $34 million – in the summer of 2004 and finishing just ahead of Jirachi: Wish Maker. It never saw the inside of a Western cinema, so there is no critics’ aggregate to speak of, but its Kids’ WB! premiere on 22 January 2005 was a ratings event for the network, drawing its biggest audience in two years.

Fan opinion has always been split. The LaRousse setting, the Block Bots and the two-Deoxys twist are well liked, and Tory’s slow recovery from his fear of Pokémon gives the film a heart that the spectacle-heavy final act doesn’t quite match – and Rayquaza, for all its billing, spends a surprising amount of the running time buried under cubes. It is often ranked in the middle of the pack among the Advanced Generation movies.

The Japanese DVD and VHS arrived in December 2004 from Media Factory, and the US DVD and VHS followed on 15 February 2005 from Miramax and Buena Vista, with fifteen minutes restored compared with the television cut. Echo Bridge Home Entertainment paired it with Pokémon Heroes on Blu-ray and DVD in May 2011 – the first Pokémon movies on the format – and later with Jirachi: Wish Maker on a double-feature DVD. UK and Australian DVDs eventually appeared in 2012 and 2016 respectively.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 6.1/10 from around 5,000 user ratings
• Rotten Tomatoes – 69% audience score (10,000+ ratings) · no critics’ score – only one review“More of the same, but even duller and more repetitive” – Sebastian Zavala Kahn, Más Gamers
• Letterboxd – 3.3/5 average from 22,000+ ratings
• DVD Talk – Skip It“This wasn’t the best movie of the series”
• Anime News Network – “Must Watch” tier in ANN’s ranking of every Pokémon movie“Like all the best Pokemon stories” – Callum May