Pokémon Movie: Giratina & The Sky Warrior

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Giratina and the Sky Warrior, or Pocket Monsters Diamond & Pearl the Movie: Giratina and the Bouquet of the Icy Sky: Shaymin as the Japanese title directly translates, is the 11th movie in the Pokémon franchise and the second part of the Pokémon Diamond & Pearl trilogy.

The movie is directed as usual by Kunihiko Yuyama and continues many of the plot elements from Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai before it – the Dialga that Giratina drags into the Reverse World is the very same one that fought Palkia over Alamos Town. Unbeknown to audiences at the time, the movie’s plot also tied in significantly with the yet-to-be-released Pokémon Platinum for Nintendo DS: Giratina’s Origin Forme, Shaymin’s Sky Forme and the Reverse World itself all appeared on the big screen two months before the game reached Japanese shops.

Giratina and the Sky Warrior was originally announced at the end of its prequel, The Rise of Darkrai, in the form of a teaser trailer at the end of the film. Said trailer featured the Pokémon Regigigas rising from the earth’s surface.

The film’s initial release came on 19 July 2008, when it arrived in theatres across Japan, and the Japanese DVD release followed later that year on 19 December 2008. It premiered in the US on Cartoon Network on 13 February 2009, and staggered television and DVD releases continued across the globe until the middle of 2009, when the European releases were finally complete.

Distribution

This would be the first time that Universal Studios were charged with the distribution of a Pokémon movie, and it was in fact the first time Universal had distributed an anime film at all. Universal’s Region 1 DVD arrived on 31 March 2009, and Viz Media re-released the movie on 7 July 2015. The Region 2 DVD was released by Universal for the UK and Europe on 28 November 2011, and Manga Entertainment have since reissued it in the UK, in the Diamond & Pearl Collection of May 2018 and on its own in April 2019.

Chronology in relation to the anime
In Japan the film opened on 19 July 2008, between Arriving in Style! (DP086, 10 July) and The Psyduck Stops Here! (DP087, 24 July), in the middle of Battle Dimension. Ash holds four Sinnoh badges, the Fen Badge from Crasher Wake having arrived only a month earlier, and is bound for Hearthome City; his team is Pikachu, Staravia, Turtwig, Chimchar, Buizel and Gliscor – which had evolved from Gligar in Fighting Fear with Fear! just sixteen days before the premiere. Dawn has two Ribbons, including the Aqua Ribbon from the Wallace Cup, and travels with Piplup, Buneary, Pachirisu, Ambipom and a Swinub caught that same fortnight; Brock has Sudowoodo, Croagunk and Happiny. In the dub Cartoon Network premiered the film on 13 February 2009, only seven weeks after the American broadcast of DP087 – the closest the two schedules had yet come.

Giratina and the Sky Warrior is a single feature

• Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior – the main feature, 96 minutes; the year’s Pikachu short, Pikachu’s Ice Adventure (PK19), was shown only on All Nippon Airways flights

Story

A quarrel in the Reverse World

After a tour of the Pokémon world and a quick battle between Pikachu and an Electivire, the film settles on a mountain lake where a tiny Shaymin, the Gratitude Pokémon, has come to drink. Dialga is resting there too – and in the Reverse World, a mirror-dimension of floating islands and impossible gravity that lies alongside our own, Giratina has been watching it. Still furious at the damage Dialga and Palkia did to its home when they fought over Alamos Town, Giratina drags Dialga through a portal and attacks. Shaymin is caught in the middle: it absorbs the poisonous cloud the battle throws up, blasts it away with Seed Flare and is flung back into the real world, while Dialga slips home through the hole Shaymin has opened and seals Giratina in behind it with a curse that locks it out of our world.

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Breakfast with Shaymin

Shaymin lands, quite literally, in the middle of Ash, Dawn and Brock’s breakfast, eats everything in sight and, when it swallows the smoke from Brock’s stove, lets off another Seed Flare that wrecks the campsite. Once it has been washed it turns out to be able to speak to them telepathically – and to be rude, vain and very insistent that it must get to “that place”. When it falls ill, Nurse Joy at the nearest Pokémon Center explains that Shaymin draws in pollution and has to purge it, which is exactly what Team Rocket overhear from the next room.

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Into the Reverse World

Team Rocket’s attempt to grab Shaymin ends when a portal opens in the reflection of a stone monument and swallows Ash, Dawn, Shaymin and the thieves alike, leaving Brock behind. On the other side they meet Newton Graceland, an eccentric scientist who has spent years studying the Reverse World and who explains that its purple haze is poison that leaks through from our side whenever something goes wrong. Giratina appears and chases them: it wants Shaymin, because Shaymin’s Seed Flare is the only thing that can tear open the way back to the real world. Shaymin, terrified, blows a hole in reality and they all tumble out.

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Gracidea

The journey continues by train towards Shaymin’s destination, the field of Gracidea flowers where its kind gather. A passenger named Sylvan explains that people give Gracidea to say thank you, and when Shaymin is handed a flower it transforms: in Sky Forme it is swift, sharp-eared and confident, and it immediately needs to be, because Zero – Newton’s former assistant – sends a swarm of Magnemite, Magneton and a Magnezone to snatch it from the carriage. Shaymin’s new wings win the day, and the group reach a lakeside town at the foot of a glacier and set off by boat.

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Zero and the Megarig

A ripple on the lake pulls everyone back into the Reverse World, where Zero finally shows his hand. From the deck of his airship, the Megarig, he traps Giratina in an energy cage designed to drain and copy its powers – a machine Newton himself designed years ago and destroyed when he realised it would kill Giratina, and which Zero has rebuilt from memory. Zero wants to rule the Reverse World alone, and he does not care what happens to the real one. Shaymin, Pikachu and Piplup storm the Megarig; their attacks bounce off the cage until Newton shuts it down at the last possible moment, with ninety-nine per cent of Giratina’s power already copied into Zero’s ship.

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Healing Giratina

Giratina collapses, close to death. Shaymin, the Pokémon it has been hunting all film, uses Aromatherapy to heal it, and the two come to an understanding – Giratina will no longer chase Shaymin, and Shaymin will open the way home. Zero, meanwhile, has escaped into the real world with Giratina’s stolen power, and from inside the Reverse World he smashes the great ice pillars that hold the glacier above the town in place.

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The glacier and the Mecha Giratina

In the real world the glacier begins to slide towards the town. Regigigas rises from beneath the ice and, with a herd of Mamoswine, braces against it while the townspeople flee. Ash rides Giratina back through the portal Shaymin opens and takes on Zero, who has transformed the Megarig into a mechanical Giratina of his own; the two dragons tear across the fjord until Pikachu, Shaymin and Giratina together bring the machine down. Giratina pours its power into stitching the Reverse World back together, the glacier stops with the town’s skyscraper in its shadow, and Zero’s ship freezes solid where it stands.

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The flower-carrying

Giratina carries Ash back through the portal and the group finally reach the Gracidea field, where dozens of Shaymin are waiting. As the sun rises every one of them turns to Sky Forme and lifts off together – the migration the locals call the flower-carrying – and Ash and Dawn say a tearful goodbye to a Shaymin that has become a great deal politer. Over the credits Brock’s family and Dawn’s mother receive Gracidea bouquets, Zero is arrested, and Team Rocket have an unfortunate encounter with Regigigas.

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Major Characters

Ash Ketchum (Satoshi) ends up riding Giratina into battle, with Pikachu supplying the Thunderbolts; Dawn (Hikari) and Piplup share the Reverse World adventure, with Piplup’s Bubble Beam and Shaymin’s prickliness towards it running through the film; and Brock (Takeshi), left behind in the real world, gets the job of organising the town’s evacuation.
Shaymin (voiced by Vanilla Yamazaki in Japanese and Amy Palant in English) is the smallest Legendary ever to headline a movie and by far the most abrasive: vain, bossy and quick to blame Ash for everything, until a Gracidea flower turns it into its sleek Sky Forme and it starts to earn its title of Gratitude Pokémon. Giratina is the Renegade Pokémon, sole inhabitant of the Reverse World – terrifying in its serpentine Origin Forme, which it takes whenever it enters our world, but ultimately a guardian rather than a monster. Dialga returns from The Rise of Darkrai for the opening fight, and Regigigas rises from the ice for the climax.
Zero (Shidō Nakamura / Parker Anderson) is a scientist who fell in love with the Reverse World and wants it for himself, dressed from head to toe in Giratina’s colours and backed by a flock of Magnemite, Magneton and Magnezone, his airship the Megarig and his computer Infi (voiced in Japanese by Shōko Nakagawa). Newton Graceland (Kōichi Yamadera / Marc Thompson), Zero’s former mentor, is an eccentric explorer with a Shieldon and a conscience. The townsfolk include Layla (Kako; Akina Minami), a girl with a Teddiursa, and Sylvan, the train passenger who explains the meaning of Gracidea.

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Other Characters & Pokémon Debuts

The “World of Pokémon” opening has fun with the Sinnoh Pokédex: Brendan and Lucas from the games cameo battling with Rhyperior and Magmortar, and Eevee appears with all seven of its evolutions as they stood in 2008, Leafeon and Glaceon included. Froslass and a herd of Mamoswine live on the glacier, Cresselia and Togekiss flash past in the opening, and the mother and daughter who have cameoed in the last two films are back once more. On the train Sylvan’s Smeargle and Flaaffy and Layla’s Teddiursa keep Shaymin company, and the Pichu Posse from the Pikachu shorts turn up in the real world. Jessie, James and Meowth spend most of the film lost in the Reverse World, and finish it being stepped on by Regigigas.

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Pokémon making their anime debut in the film

Eleven Pokémon made their anime debut in the film, headed by two Legendaries whose alternate formes had not yet appeared in any game.

• Giratina#487 · Altered Forme
• Giratina#487 · Origin Forme
• Shaymin#492 · Land Forme
• Shaymin#492 · Sky Forme
• Magnezone#462 · Zero’s
• Regigigas#486
• Mamoswine#473
• Froslass#478
• Cresselia#488 · cameo
• Leafeon#470 · cameo
• Togekiss#468 · cameo
• Magmortar#467 · Lucas’s, cameo
• Rhyperior#464 · Brendan’s, cameo

Cast

The voice cast of both the Japanese and English versions of Giratina and the Sky Warrior. Kabuki actor Shidō Nakamura plays Zero, Kōichi Yamadera returns for his fourth movie as Newton, and Shōko Nakagawa follows her Allegra with Zero’s computer Infi.

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
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
Shaymin	Amy Palant	Vanilla Yamazaki
Zero	Parker Anderson	Shidō Nakamura
Newton Graceland (Mugen Graceland)	Marc Thompson	Kōichi Yamadera
Infi	Bella Hudson	Shōko Nakagawa
Layla (Kako)	Amy Palant	Akina Minami
Nurse Joy	Michele Knotz	Yuriko Yamaguchi
Officer Jenny	Emily Williams	Chinami Nishimura
Narrator	Rodger Parsons	Unshō Ishizuka

Trailer

The official English trailer for Giratina and the Sky Warrior, from our own Pokémon Dungeon YouTube channel.

The in-flight Pikachu short

No Pikachu short played in Japanese cinemas with Giratina and the Sky Warrior, but one was made: Pikachu’s Ice Adventure (PK19), shown only aboard All Nippon Airways domestic flights during August 2008. Pikachu, Piplup and Buizel head to the beach, Meowth and company turn up with a surfboard determined to catch the big wave, and the fun ends up on the ice. It has never been released outside Japan, so there is no legitimate copy to embed here.

Trading Cards

Japan followed up the previous year’s album with the 11th Movie Commemoration Set, sold at cinemas from opening day on 19 July 2008 and in shops from 1 August: nine holographic cards with a special holofoil border – Icy Sky’s Shaymin, Piplup, Pikachu, Magnezone, Reverse World’s Giratina, Mamoswine, Shieldon, Dialga and Regigigas – whose artwork by Kagemaru Himeno fits together into one enormous illustration of the whole cast. The cinema gift with every ticket was Real World’s Giratina (109/DP-P), and the tie-ins kept coming: a Regigigas promo with the Intense Fight in the Destroyed Sky deck box and a Croagunk in the official movie brochure.

In English, several of the set’s illustrations were reused as DP Black Star Promos – Regigigas (DP40), Magnezone (DP44) and Dialga (DP49) – and the Regigigas was packed inside Dutch copies of the Giratina and the Sky Warrior DVD. Everything is catalogued in our Trading Card Game section.

• 11th Movie Commemoration SetJapan, July 2008 · album of 9 cards
• Real World’s Giratina109/DP-P · cinema gift
• Icy Sky’s Shaymin001/009
• Piplup002/009
• Pikachu003/009
• Magnezone004/009 · DP Promo 44 in English
• Reverse World’s Giratina005/009
• Mamoswine006/009
• Shieldon007/009
• Dialga008/009 · DP Promo 49 in English
• Regigigas009/009 · DP Promo 40 in English, with the Dutch DVD
• The combined illustrationAll nine cards assembled · art by Kagemaru Himeno

Movie Ads & Posters

Posters and home-video artwork for Giratina and the Sky Warrior – the Japanese teaser (still featuring Palkia) and final one-sheets, the English poster, the Toys “R” Us poster for the US Shaymin event, and DVD releases from Japan, the States, the UK, Australia, Finland and the Netherlands, the last a complete sleeve with the back cover. Magazine clippings and adverts are still wanted.

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Trivia & Facts

• In Japan the film was released between Arriving in Style! (DP086) and The Psyduck Stops Here! (DP087).
• Advance ticket sales in Japan reached 2,384,198, which put the film in the Guinness World Records for the greatest advance sales of any animated film.
• The staff travelled to Norway for the setting: Sognefjord, the Jostedalsbreen glacier – the largest in mainland Europe – and the city of Bergen, with the glacier bearing down on the town inspired by Geiranger, which lives under the threat of a collapsing mountainside.
  

  

• A film of firsts: the first movie to be a true sequel to another (Mewtwo Returns was a TV special), the first to run the opening credits over the title sequence, the first in which Brock’s family and Dawn’s mother appear, and the first Pokémon broadcast of any kind to be shown in high definition on its first airing. The Dialga here is the same individual that fought over Alamos Town, making this the first time a Legendary carried straight over from the previous film.
• Origin Forme Giratina and Sky Forme Shaymin both debuted here before Pokémon Platinum did, and although the film is billed as a Diamond & Pearl movie, the Japanese logo quietly adds the katakana for “Platinum” underneath. Newton even calls the Reverse World a “distorted world” – a nod to the game’s Distortion World.
  

  

• Palkia is on the first poster but only appears in a flashback – the second time a poster has advertised a Pokémon that plays no part in the film, after the Jirachi poster with Treecko and Brock.
  

  

• The cameos keep coming: the mother and daughter from Lucario and Darkrai make a third appearance, Brendan and Lucas from the games battle with Rhyperior and Magmortar in the opening, Eevee shows off all seven of its evolutions, and the Pichu Posse from the Pikachu shorts turn up in town.

  

  

• Shaymin’s Substitute is the first time the move has ever been used in the anime, despite existing in the games since Generation I. Some of Giratina’s roars are recycled from the Japanese movie monster Mothra.
  

  

• Zero’s outfit, and the mecha he pilots at the end, are both designed to echo Giratina; his computer Infi takes her name from “infinity” and wears lemniscates. Newton shares his voice actors in both languages with Goone in Arceus and the Jewel of Life and Mayor Oliver, and the official English synopsis manages to spell his name both “Newton” and “Newtown”.
• Japanese fans who pre-ordered tickets received a Regigigas for Diamond and Pearl, and a Shaymin could be downloaded at cinemas during the run; in the US Toys “R” Us stores gave away Shaymin to coincide with the Cartoon Network premiere.
  

  

• Brock’s family and Dawn’s mother Johanna both receive Gracidea bouquets over the credits – the first time either has appeared in a movie.

  

  

• The Finnish dub, which had skipped the previous two movies entirely, has Jessie compare the Reverse World to the Vekkula fun house at Linnanmäki amusement park in Helsinki. The English dub softens two references to Giratina dying – Newton says it would “be no more”, and Shaymin tells it to “stay with me” rather than to live – and has Newton say that Zero never forgot the destroyed blueprints, implying a photographic memory, where the Japanese script only says he never gave up recreating them. ONE was replaced as the ending theme by This is a Beautiful World.

Errors

• In the opening battle Pikachu’s Thunderbolt affects Electivire, which should be immune through its Motor Drive Ability.
• When Ash and Dawn are first pulled into the Reverse World, Piplup’s arms are coloured the same dark blue as its head.
• When Piplup tries to Bubble Beam Giratina, Shaymin’s flowers are already the dark purple they turn when it has absorbed pollution, and when Shaymin approaches Meowth a few frames give its front paw three toes instead of two.
  

  

• In one Reverse World scene Shaymin speaks with its Land Forme voice while in Sky Forme, and the last Magneton to leave the train does so with a Magnemite’s cry.
• Dodging Giratina’s Will-O-Wisp, Pikachu jumps clean off a cliff edge, only to be back on the ledge in the next shot.
• In the dub Brock’s line as Shaymin heals Giratina is missing, and the English promotional image issued before the US DVD left out the line running from Giratina’s eye to its nose.

Reviews & Reception

Giratina and the Bouquet of the Icy Sky: Shaymin opened in Japan on 19 July 2008 and had the misfortune to arrive the same weekend as Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo, which kept it to second place: 982,000 people paid around ¥1.02 billion over the opening two days. It went on to roughly ¥4.8 billion, about ten per cent down on The Rise of Darkrai’s record but still one of the biggest Pokémon films ever – and its advance ticket sales set a Guinness World Record for an animated feature.

The English dub premiered on Cartoon Network on 13 February 2009 and was released on DVD by Universal on 31 March 2009, the first anime film the studio had ever handled, with Viz Media reissuing it in 2015. The Japanese DVD had arrived on 19 December 2008; the UK had to wait until Universal’s Region 2 disc of 28 November 2011, since reissued by Manga Entertainment in 2018 and 2019. Reviews were generally positive, with Kidzworld calling it a fine film worth watching whether or not you were a Pokémon fan, and most critics singling out the Reverse World’s upside-down landscapes as the series’ best-looking setting yet.

Among fans it sits comfortably in the middle of the Sinnoh trilogy. Shaymin divides opinion – its sharp tongue is either the funniest thing in a Pokémon movie or deeply irritating, depending on who you ask – but Zero is often praised as a rare movie villain with a coherent motive, the Giratina-and-Dialga grudge is a satisfying continuation of the first film, and the final flight of the Shaymin is one of the DP era’s loveliest sequences.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 6.0/10 from around 3,000 user ratings
• Rotten Tomatoes – 65% audience score (1,000+ ratings) · no critics’ score – only three reviews“These movies are getting more similar to each other” – Sebastian Zavala Kahn, Más Gamers
• Letterboxd – 3.1/5 average from 17,000+ ratings
• DVD Talk – Recommended“Have other recent Pokémon movies looked this good?” – David Cornelius
• Common Sense Media – 3/5 stars · age 5+“Mildly violent tale of dark and light, anime style” – Nancy Davis Kho