Pokémon Movie 5 – Heroes: Latias and Latios

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Pokémon Heroes: Latios and Latias, or Pocket Monsters the Movie: The Guardians of Altomare as it directly translates from its Japanese title, is more commonly known simply as Pokémon Heroes. It’s the fifth movie in the Pokémon franchise and the last of the original series.

The film was initially released in Japan on 13 July 2002 and had staggered releases in other countries right the way up to the middle of 2004, when it finally finished releasing across Europe. Like all of its predecessors, this movie was directed by the chief director of the Pokémon anime, Kunihiko Yuyama, and voiced in the Japanese release by the cast of the anime: Rica Matsumoto, Yūji Ueda, Mayumi Iizuka, Megumi Hayashibara, Shin-ichirō Miki and Ikue Ōtani.

The main setting is a city called Alto Mare, which means “high sea” in Italian, and the city is very openly based on Venice – Yuyama scouted the real thing for reference. Although the movie is set during our heroes’ adventure in Johto, Alto Mare is an island just off the coast of the mainland region, and the film ties in with and complements Pokémon Season 5 – Master Quest while also signifying the end of the original Pocket Monsters story arc in Japan.

Distribution and airings

As in Pokémon 4Ever before it, the English adaptation and distribution were done by 4Kids Entertainment and Miramax Films respectively, with voice acting by the regulars from the English anime adaptation: Veronica Taylor, Eric Stuart, Rachael Lillis and Maddie Blaustein.

Cinema releases of the movie were a little more limited for Pokémon Heroes, as its predecessors after Pokémon the Movie 2000 hadn’t performed amazingly at the box office. As such the 16 May 2003 US cinema release of Heroes was short-lived and it was then released on DVD and home video in January 2004.

A good few years later the movie was aired on both Cartoon Network (on several occasions) and on Toon Disney (27 November 2007). It was the fourth time a Pokémon movie had been shown on Toon Disney, largely down to the fact that Miramax, the distribution company for these movies, was still owned by Disney at this point; the first three movies they showed were Jirachi: Wish Maker, Pokémon Destiny Deoxys and Pokémon 4Ever.

Chronology in relation to the anime
This is the film that closes out the original series. In Japan it opened on 13 July 2002, two days after Entei at Your Own Risk (EP256) and before A Crowning Achievement! (EP257), deep into Master Quest; the English dub slots it between Outrageous Fortunes and One Trick Phony!. Ash has all eight Johto badges and is on the long road to the Silver Conference with Pikachu, Bayleef, Cyndaquil, Totodile, Noctowl and Phanpy, and it’s Totodile who gets the starring role in the Tour de Alto Mare. Misty’s Poliwhirl has only just evolved into Politoed, which lines up neatly with her bringing Politoed and Corsola to the race, while Brock’s Crobat does the flying. Team Rocket are along for the ride too – though, unusually, they never cross paths with the heroes.

Pokémon Heroes is broken down into the following parts

• Camp Pikachu (Pikapika Starry Sky Camp) – the Pikachu short, around 22 minutes
• Pokémon Heroes: Latios & Latias – the main feature, 71 minutes

Story

Camp Pikachu (the short)

The Pichu Brothers are knocked off a passing freight train and land in the woods where Pikachu, Totodile, Cyndaquil, Togepi, Psyduck, Corsola and Phanpy are enjoying a camping trip. The gang set about getting the brothers home, meeting a Wynaut, a Volbeat and a Duskull along the way, sheltering from a rainstorm in an old mill that suddenly whirs into life and very nearly chews them up. Come morning it’s a mad dash back to the tracks to get the Pichu Brothers aboard the departing train – Pokémon only, no humans, as is tradition for these shorts.

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Thieves in the library

The English version opens with Brock narrating a quick recap of Ash’s journey so far – from the day he overslept and ended up with Pikachu, through Kanto, the Orange Islands and Johto. Then the real story begins. Two cat burglars working for Team Rocket, Annie and Oakley, are in a library checking out a book… after hours. It tells of the Soul Dew and a mysterious device that it is used to control: the Defense Mechanism of Alto Mare (DMA).

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The Tour de Alto Mare

Ash and company stop off in Alto Mare, a city that uses a canal system instead of roads for its main avenues of travel. While Ash is competing along with Misty in a local canal race, a couple of invisible creatures pull Totodile off course. After Misty wins the race, the runner-up offers to give her and her friends a tour of the city and tells them about the Guardians of Alto Mare, a Latios and a Latias. When the trio goes for ice cream Pikachu wanders off and Ash follows. They meet a mysterious girl who turns out to be the Latias in disguise and wind up rescuing her from being captured by Annie and Oakley. Ash doesn’t know the reason for their interest in the girl, and the girl seems to be unable or unwilling to speak – but she does seem interested in Ash for some reason beyond having just been rescued by him. As they escape, the girl takes Ash back to Misty and Brock, then disappears.

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The secret garden

Then they arrive at the Alto Mare Museum of History, where the DMA is kept. There Ash spots the girl and leaves the museum to follow her. Ash loses her, but finds Latias instead, who leads him and Pikachu to a secret garden. There he is introduced to Bianca, the girl Latias disguises herself as, and her grandfather Lorenzo. He also learns about the powers of Latias and Latios, the history of Alto Mare, and the secret of the Soul Dew. However, Ash was followed by a flying spy camera controlled by Annie and Oakley.

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The Soul Dew stolen

That night, Annie and Oakley make their move to capture the Eon duo and steal the Soul Dew. The thieves capture Latios and steal the gem, then find the instructions on how to use it to power the DMA – but Latias escapes to look for Ash. They go to the museum with Latios in tow and activate the machine, capturing Bianca and Lorenzo in the process.

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The Defense Mechanism runs wild

Latias finds Ash at the Pokémon Center. Oakley, mad with the power of controlling the DMA, revives the fossils of the evil Kabutops and Aerodactyl and activates the barriers to prevent people from moving around the city. Latias knocks Ash into the canal, but Misty and Brock are trapped; Ash only has Pikachu with him, so Brock and Misty send Crobat, Politoed and Corsola to help. Under attack by a water trap created by Oakley, Latias uses Teleport to take Ash, Pikachu and herself to the museum, causing a feedback to the DMA. The machine starts to go out of control, trapping Oakley inside. Releasing Latios shuts the DMA down just as Misty and Brock arrive. Annie goes to grab the Soul Dew, but it releases a burst of energy, trapping her with Oakley in the DMA. With the gem now burned out, the water drains out of the canals. Latias and Latios rush to prevent the backwash, in the form of a tidal wave, from destroying the city – but Latios, weakened by its injuries while captured, dies. The waters return to the canal, the DMA shuts down and the city returns to normal. Latios is recovered by Ash and the others as a new Soul Dew.

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Farewell to Alto Mare

As Ash and company leave, Latias – in the form of Bianca – catches up with Ash and gives him a present and a kiss. As they finally leave, they see Latias flying above with baby Latias and Latios following her. Annie and Oakley are released from the DMA and are taken into custody, eventually winding up in prison.

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Major Characters

Ash Ketchum (Satoshi), Misty (Kasumi) and Brock (Takeshi) are on their last big-screen outing together; Misty would leave the travelling party a handful of episodes later. Ash and Totodile make up the ground in the race and Misty, for once, gets to win something, but it’s Ash’s unexpected friendship with a mute, oddly behaved girl that drives the story.
Latias and Latios are the guardians of Alto Mare: a brother and sister pair of Eon Pokémon who can turn invisible and take on human form. Latias (voiced by Megumi Hayashibara in both languages) is curious and playful and spends most of the film disguised as Bianca; Latios (Masashi Ebara in Japanese, Hayashibara again in English) is the protective older brother whose fate gives the film its famously bittersweet ending. Bianca (Kanon, voiced by Fumiko Orikasa and Tara Jayne) is the real girl Latias imitates, an artist who sketches the city from the secret garden, and Lorenzo (Bongore) is her grandfather, a gondola-maker and the keeper of the guardians’ secret.
Annie (Zannā, voiced by Uno Kanda and Megan Hollingshead) and Oakley (Rion, voiced by Yumiko Shaku and Lisa Ortiz) are the glamorous thieves after the Soul Dew – sisters working for themselves in the Japanese version, Team Rocket agents in the dub – with Espeon and Ariados doing their dirty work. Ross (Rosshi, voiced by Kōichi Yamadera and Michael Sinterniklaas) is the local lad Misty beats in the race, who repays the heroes with a tour of the city. Jessie, James and Meowth are in Alto Mare too, but for the first time in a Pokémon movie they never actually run into the twerps.

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Other Characters & Pokémon Debuts

Alto Mare’s museum curator, the race officials and the townsfolk fill out the cast, along with the two fossil Pokémon – a Kabutops and an Aerodactyl – that the Defense Mechanism brings back to life, and Ross’s Wailmer, which gives Totodile a run for its money in the canals. Annie’s Espeon and Oakley’s Ariados are the villains’ muscle, while Misty’s Politoed and Corsola and Brock’s Crobat get their moment in the flooded streets.

Pokémon making their anime debut in the film

Only two Pokémon made their first anime appearance in the feature, but they are the two that matter: the Eon duo, arriving a good four months before Ruby & Sapphire reached Japan.

• Latias#380 · guardian of Alto Mare
• Latios#381 · guardian of Alto Mare

Debuting in the Camp Pikachu short

The short was the usual sneak preview of the next generation, with Wynaut also featuring prominently.

• Volbeat#313 · Gen III preview
• Duskull#355 · Gen III preview

Cast

The voice cast of both the Japanese and English versions of Pokémon Heroes.

Character	English voice actor	Japanese voice actor
Ash Ketchum (Satoshi)	Veronica Taylor	Rica Matsumoto
Pikachu	Ikue Ōtani	Ikue Ōtani
Misty (Kasumi)	Rachael Lillis	Mayumi Iizuka
Brock (Takeshi)	Eric Stuart	Yūji Ueda
Togepi	Satomi Kōrogi	Satomi Kōrogi
Jessie (Musashi)	Rachael Lillis	Megumi Hayashibara
James (Kojirō)	Eric Stuart	Shin-ichirō Miki
Meowth (Nyarth)	Maddie Blaustein	Inuko Inuyama
Latias	Megumi Hayashibara	Megumi Hayashibara
Latios	Megumi Hayashibara	Masashi Ebara
Bianca (Kanon)	Tara Jayne	Fumiko Orikasa
Lorenzo (Bongore)	Wayne Grayson	Yūzō Gucci
Annie (Zannā)	Megan Hollingshead	Uno Kanda
Oakley (Rion)	Lisa Ortiz	Yumiko Shaku
Ross (Rosshi)	Michael Sinterniklaas	Kōichi Yamadera
Narrator	Ken Gates	Unshō Ishizuka

Trailer

The US trailer for Pokémon Heroes (Miramax Films, 2003).

Trading Cards

There were no trading cards handed out at Western cinema showings of Pokémon Heroes; however, when the DVD was released in the West we got two different Black Star Promo cards, one featuring Latios and one featuring Latias. These cards were by Nintendo, not by Wizards of the Coast as the previous movie promos had been – Nintendo had taken the English card game in-house in 2003, and Latias (#014) and Latios (#015) were among the very first Nintendo Black Star Promos.

Both of these cards had actually been used as McDonald’s promo cards in Japan in January 2003, before being translated for the January 2004 DVD. The Japanese McDonald’s versions are the pair of scans on the left below; the English DVD versions, both illustrated by Ken Sugimori, follow them.

Japanese cinema-goers did much better. From opening day, 13 July 2002, cinemas sold the Theater Limited VS Pack (Gekijō Gentei VS Pack), an 18-card half deck of movie-exclusive cards complete with Owner’s Pokémon for Annie’s Espeon and Oakley’s Ariados, Misty’s Politoed and Corsola, Brock’s Crobat, the fossil Kabutops and Aerodactyl, and Trainer cards for the Soul Dew and the Alto Mare Cube. The headline cards were Alto Mare’s Latias and Alto Mare’s Latios. None of the set was ever released outside Japan. As always, you’ll find every promo catalogued in our Trading Card Game section.

• LatiasMcDonald’s promo · Japan, January 2003
• LatiosMcDonald’s promo · Japan, January 2003
• LatiasNintendo Black Star Promo #014 · US DVD
• LatiosNintendo Black Star Promo #015 · US DVD
• Theater Limited VS PackJapanese cinema half deck · July 2002
• Alto Mare’s LatiasTheater Limited VS Pack 011/018
• Alto Mare’s LatiosTheater Limited VS Pack 012/018
• Soul DewTheater Limited VS Pack 016/018
• Alto Mare CubeTheater Limited VS Pack 018/018

Movie Ads & Posters

Movie posters, teaser posters and the Japanese and Western DVD covers for Pokémon Heroes. We are looking to add magazine scans advertising the movie, and maybe some reviews or mentions of the movie from gaming and movie magazines. If you know where we can get some that would be super-awesome – please get in touch via luke/at/pokemondungeon/com. Thanks!

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Trivia & Facts

• In Japan this movie was released between Entei at Your Own Risk and A Crowning Achievement! in the Johto chapter of the original Pocket Monsters series; in the US it arrived between Outrageous Fortunes and One Trick Phony! of the Master Quest season, so that is roughly where it sits in the anime timeline.
• Some people make a big deal about Ash being fully dressed instead of in his pyjamas when he receives Pikachu in the opening recap. They call it a continuity error, but they forget that this is a narrative being told by Brock – what we are seeing isn’t a flashback, it’s how Brock pictures it.
• Annie and Oakley never appear in Team Rocket uniforms. That’s because in the original Japanese version they were not members of Team Rocket at all – they were independent cat burglars, and sisters to boot; the dub turned them into Rocket agents and dropped the family connection. They even leave a calling card.
  

  

• Director Kunihiko Yuyama travelled to Venice to research Alto Mare, wanting the city to feel like “entering a mysterious world”. The canals, the gondolas, the lion statues and the Piazza San Marco-style square are all lifted straight from the real thing.
• Latios’s death is the first permanent death of a Pokémon in the film series – previous casualties had always been revived before the credits.
• This is the last movie of the original series, the last with Misty as a main character, and the last Pokémon film without a Mythical Pokémon in it. It was also the last to get a cinema release in the United States until Black – Victini and Reshiram in 2011.
• It is the first movie to open with the Japanese “World of Pokémon” introduction sequence, and the first not to feature a remixed version of the season’s theme song.
• The English dub cut around two minutes of backstory about the Soul Dew and the history of Alto Mare, and replaced it with a new version featuring an evil Trainer and his Kabutops and Aerodactyl. In the dub the Soul Dew holds the soul of Latias and Latios’s father; in the original it was simply an ancestor – and the Japanese version makes clear that many Latias and Latios have visited the city over the centuries, which is why several of them fly over Alto Mare during the credits.

  

  

• The whole English version was given a noticeably blue colour tint compared with the Japanese original, which is why the Alto Mare of the dub looks like a city under permanent twilight.

  

  

• Alto Mare has its own alphabet, which appears on signs, the museum displays and the pages of the book Annie and Oakley steal.
  

  

• Megumi Hayashibara voices Latias in both Japanese and English – and, because 4Kids had her voice Latios too, the brother sounds a good deal more feminine in the dub than in Japan, where Masashi Ebara played him.
• Team Rocket have no contact whatsoever with Ash and his friends – the first movie in which the two groups never meet before the credits roll.
• The film’s accordion-led score was written by Shinji Miyazaki with the Japanese accordionist coba, giving it a sound unlike any other Pokémon movie.
• Decades on, Pokémon Heroes keeps topping fan polls: it was voted the most popular original-series film in an official poll in February 2021, and the events of the movie were confirmed as canon when Bianca and Latias reappeared in Pokémon Journeys (JN146).

Errors

• In the Japanese original there were more than two Latias and Latios in Alto Mare’s past, which is why extra Eon Pokémon appear during the closing credits – a detail the English dub’s rewritten backstory leaves unexplained.
• Throughout the opening recap of Ash’s journey, the front panel of his cap flips orientation between shots, and the storm that strikes on his first day hits at a different point from the original episode.
• While Oakley is typing at the museum computer, the keys on the keyboard disappear and reappear between shots.
  

  

• In the Finnish dub the race announcer, rather than the narrator, delivers the opening lines.

Reviews & Reception

Our own verdict is short: if you haven’t seen it yet, do so. If you have, try to find the Japanese original. If you have seen the Japanese original, we are very jealous.

Commercially, Pokémon Heroes marked the low point of the series’ fortunes in the West. In Japan Guardian Gods of the City of Water took around ¥2.7 billion – a steep drop from the first two films but still a solid hit – while Miramax’s limited US run from 16 May 2003 brought in just over $750,000, making it the lowest-grossing entry in the franchise. Worldwide the film finished on roughly $27 million.

Critics were no kinder than they had been to 4Ever: the film sits at 19% on Rotten Tomatoes from 42 reviews and 27 on Metacritic. The Washington Post dismissed it as being for kids and no one else, the New York Times found it tedious, and even Variety, which liked the Venetian atmosphere and visuals, felt the plot ran out of steam once the villains got going. Fans could not disagree more. With its gorgeous setting, coba’s score, the Latias-as-Bianca mystery and that gut-punch of an ending, Heroes has quietly become the most beloved of the original-series films, topping official fan polls in both 2017 and 2021.

The movie was released on DVD and VHS in the US on 20 January 2004, with the UK following on DVD from Buena Vista that April. It was re-released on DVD in the UK by Optimum Home Entertainment on 9 May 2011, and again as a twin pack alongside its predecessor Pokémon 4Ever by StudioCanal on 2 April 2012 – one day before the twinned Pokémon Black & White movies came out. In the USA Echo Bridge Home Entertainment released Pokémon Heroes alongside Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys on Blu-ray as a double feature.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 6.1/10 user rating
• Rotten Tomatoes – 20% Tomatometer (41 reviews) · 60% audience score“Below-average for series and too violent for younger kids” – Nell Minow, Common Sense Media
• Metacritic – 27/100 Metascore (17 critics) · 7.5/10 user score“Brimming with values that should serve its young audience well” – Chris Kaltenbach, Baltimore Sun
• Letterboxd – 3.3/5 average from 28,000+ ratings
• Anime News Network – “Must Watch” tier in ANN’s ranking of every Pokémon movie“One of the most engaging openings to a Pokemon film” – Callum May