Pokemon the Movie: I Choose You!

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Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! is the 20th Pokémon movie and the first released during Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon – though you would never know it from the film itself. Made for the 20th anniversary of the anime, it is a retelling of Ash and Pikachu’s very first days together, from the morning Ash oversleeps in Pallet Town to his promise to find the Legendary Pokémon Ho-Oh, and it is set in a world of its own rather than the continuity of the TV series. Its Japanese title, Pocket Monsters the Movie: I Choose You! (キミにきめた！), is the same as the first episode’s, and it is the first Pokémon movie whose Japanese name does not contain the name of a single Pokémon.

The movie was directed by Kunihiko Yuyama, who had directed every Pokémon film before it, and written by Shōji Yonemura, who had scripted the anime for years. It was first revealed in a teaser on the Japanese TV show Oha Suta on 15 December 2016, which showed little more than Ash and Pikachu meeting for the first time; the full trailer followed on 2 March 2017, and a third trailer on 8 April 2017 confirmed that the Mythical Pokémon Marshadow would have a role.

Release around the world

The world premiere was held at Japan Expo in Paris on 6 July 2017, with Japanese audio and French subtitles, nine days before the Japanese release on 15 July. In the West the film did something no Pokémon movie had managed since Pokémon Heroes in 2003 – it played in cinemas, as a two-night event on 5 and 6 November 2017 in the US (through Fathom Events), the UK and much of Europe and Latin America, with extra dates added when screenings sold out. Australia and New Zealand followed on 11 November, Singapore on 23 November and Malaysia on 7 December. The TV premieres came after: Disney XD in the US on 25 November 2017, as part of a Pokémon marathon, CITV in the UK on 8 December and 9Go! in Australia on 10 December.

Japan’s DVD and Blu-ray arrived on 20 December 2017, Viz Media’s US DVD and Blu-ray on 13 February 2018, and the UK DVD on 12 February 2018, with a limited-edition Blu-ray steelbook on 30 April 2018.

There was no Pikachu short, but the Fathom Events screenings in American cinemas were preceded by three episodes of the web series Pokémon Generations and a music video for the new recording of the Pokémon Theme cut from clips of (most of) the previous nineteen films.

Chronology in relation to the anime
This one needs explaining. In Japan the film opened on 15 July 2017, between Big Sky, Small Fry! (SM033, 6 July) and A Crowning Moment of Truth! (SM034, 20 July) in Sun & Moon – but it has nothing to do with Alola. Instead it rewinds to the morning of 1 April 1997, the day Ash left Pallet Town in the very first episode, and retells his first weeks as a Trainer in a parallel world: one where Ho-Oh leaves him a Rainbow Wing, where he never meets Brock or Misty (they appear only in the closing credits) and travels instead with two new friends, Verity and Sorrel, and where his team is just Pikachu, a Caterpie and a Charmander. Director Kunihiko Yuyama described it as a world that splits off from the series at that first encounter, and reminded everyone that Ash is “eternally 10 years old”. It is the first Pokémon movie set outside the continuity of the anime airing at the time, and the next two films, The Power of Us and Secrets of the Jungle, continue in the same world.

I Choose You! is broken down into the following parts

• Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! – the main feature, 97 minutes; the “World of Pokémon” sequence that used to open every film now plays at the end
• No Pikachu short – in US cinemas the film was preceded instead by three Pokémon Generations episodes (The Adventure, The Chase and The Challenger) and a Pokémon Theme music video

Story

Pallet Town, take two

The night before his journey begins, Ash Ketchum is glued to a televised battle between two Trainers, Neesha and Corey, and dreams so hard about his first Pokémon that he hurls his Poké Ball alarm clock across the room in his sleep. His mother Delia has to wake him, and he sprints to Professor Oak’s laboratory barefoot and in his pyjamas to find Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle all gone. There is one Pokémon left – a Pikachu wandering loose around the lab, which greets its new Trainer with a face full of electricity. Delia arrives with Ash’s clothes, Pikachu bats away the Poké Ball Ash tries to put it in, and Ash declares that the two of them are best friends already. Pikachu shocks all three of them.

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A thousand Spearow and a Rainbow Wing

Dragging a sulking Pikachu along Route 1 on a rope, Ash tries and fails to make friends with it, then tries to catch a Pidgey with a thrown rock and hits a Spearow instead. The Spearow blames the laughing Pikachu, Pikachu answers with a Thunderbolt, and a whole flock – a thousand birds, the director later said, up from fifty in the original episode – comes after them. Ash carries the battered Pikachu until he can run no further, begs it to get into its Ball, and when it refuses stands over it to take the attack himself. Pikachu leaps from his shoulder and fires off a Thunderbolt that scatters the flock. As the storm clears a rainbow spreads across the sky and a golden bird flies along it: Ho-Oh, which drops a glowing feather at Ash’s feet. Holding the Rainbow Wing, Ash and Pikachu promise each other that one day they will find it.

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Caterpie, Erika and an Entei

The journey proper is told in a rush: Ash catches a Caterpie, battles his way to two badges we never see, and beats Erika of the Celadon Gym for his third, the Rainbow Badge. At a Pokémon Center a Trainer bursts in with news that an Entei has been seen in the woods, and every Trainer in the building – plus a trio of Pokémon thieves called Team Rocket – goes after it. Ash finds it first, only to fall into a squabble with Verity, a girl from Sinnoh with a Piplup, over who gets to battle it; a would-be Pokémon Professor named Sorrel and his Lucario join in, Entei slips away, and as the rain comes down the two arguing Trainers find a Charmander left out in a storm by its Trainer. The Trainer, Cross, strolls past and says he does not want it back – it is weak.

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The rainbow hero

Sheltering in a cave with Sorrel, the children nurse Charmander back to health while Entei and a crowd of wild Pokémon bed down around them. Ash shows off his Rainbow Wing, and Sorrel explains the legend: Ho-Oh gives its feather only to the “rainbow hero” destined to battle it at Mount Tensei – and unseen in the shadows, a small dark Pokémon called Marshadow is listening. Charmander joins the team the next morning, and the three set out for the mountain with Team Rocket on their heels. Caterpie evolves into Metapod, Verity glimpses a Suicune, and Charmander becomes Charmeleon; Sorrel adds that the Wing loses its colour in the hands of someone with a cold heart. Then Cross turns up again, and his Incineroar demolishes Charmeleon in a battle that is barely a contest.

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A world without Pokémon

Stung by the defeat, Ash says the unforgivable – that he would have won with Pikachu, that he wishes he had been given a Bulbasaur or a Squirtle instead – and storms off alone. When he realises Pikachu has stopped following him, the Rainbow Wing darkens and Marshadow puts him to sleep. He dreams of a world with no Pokémon at all, where he goes to an ordinary school with ordinary friends, and it is the nagging sense that something is missing that brings him back to Pikachu and to his senses; the Wing regains its colour. That night Sorrel tells the others why he keeps people at arm’s length: as a small boy he was caught in a blizzard and his family’s Luxray froze to death keeping him warm. A troop of angry Primeape chases the group, Metapod evolves into Butterfree to get them out of it, and when Butterfree rescues a pink Butterfree from a Fearow it becomes clear the two want to be together. Ash lets his Butterfree go. A Raikou passes in the distance, and the Wing begins to glow in the direction of Mount Tensei.

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Mount Tensei

At the mountain the trio meet Bonji, an old researcher who has spent his life waiting for Ho-Oh, and climb to the great crystal where the Rainbow Wing must be placed. Cross gets there too: he saw Ho-Oh once as well and was given nothing, and he means to take the battle for himself. His Incineroar faces Charmeleon again – and this time Charmeleon evolves into Charizard mid-fight and wins. Cross will not accept it. He snatches the Wing and jams it into the crystal, and in his cold hands it turns black. Marshadow, Ho-Oh’s guardian, flares up and takes control of every wild Pokémon on the mountain, and of Cross’s Lycanroc, turning them all on the humans. Charizard saves the man who abandoned it, which is enough to bring Cross round, and he and his Lycanroc join the fight. Overwhelmed, Ash tries to force Pikachu into its Poké Ball to keep it safe; Pikachu refuses, and – for the first time in twenty years – says in words that it always wants to be with him. Then Marshadow’s attack strikes Ash, and he fades away to nothing. Pikachu’s grief-stricken Thunderbolt blasts Marshadow and its army free of the corruption, and the blackened Wing crumbles to dust.

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I choose you

Ash wakes in a grey, empty version of the world, hears Pikachu calling, and is pulled back – by Ho-Oh’s power, it seems, in return for the moment he put Pikachu before himself. A new Rainbow Wing forms in his hand; he sets it in the crystal, Ho-Oh descends in a blaze of Sacred Fire, heals everyone on the mountain, and Ash and Pikachu finally get their battle. Afterwards Bonji muses that Ho-Oh will one day choose another Trainer, Cross leaves on good terms with a promise of a rematch, and the three friends go their separate ways: Verity home to Twinleaf Town to become a Trainer like her mother, Sorrel to find the Legendary birds of Kanto, and Ash to become a Pokémon Master. Over the credits every one of Ash’s old travelling companions, from Brock and Misty to Serena, flashes past in cameo, Team Rocket tail Ash and Pikachu from their balloon, and Ho-Oh drops another feather from the sky.

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Major Characters

Ash Ketchum (Satoshi) is ten years old again – or rather still – and redesigned for the occasion with a nod to Ken Sugimori’s original artwork, a new cap with a new symbol (the old one survives on his backpack) and a wardrobe Yuyama called “more fashionable”. Pikachu is the disobedient, Ball-hating Pikachu of the first episode, right up to the line of dialogue that set the internet alight. His Pokémon this time are a Caterpie that becomes Butterfree and is released, and the Charmander abandoned by Cross, which evolves all the way to Charizard and – unlike its television counterpart – never once disobeys him.
Verity (Makoto; Shiori Satō / Suzy Myers) is a hot-headed Trainer from Twinleaf Town in Sinnoh with a Piplup and a Lapras, travelling to prove herself to a mother she has fallen out with – a mother who looks so much like Champion Cynthia that the director had to deny it. Sorrel (Sōji; Kanata Hongō / David Oliver Nelson) is a bookish aspiring Professor with a Lucario, who has avoided getting close to Pokémon since his family’s Luxray died protecting him in a snowstorm, and who knows everything there is to know about Ho-Oh and the Rainbow Wing. Cross (Ryōta Ōsaka / Billy Bob Thompson) is the rival: a cold, strength-obsessed Trainer with an Incineroar and a Midnight Form Lycanroc who throws away his Charmander for being weak, takes over the role Damian played in the original series and plays it rather like Paul from the Sinnoh years.
Ho-Oh is the goal rather than a character, glimpsed over the rainbow at the start and met in full at the end, and Marshadow (Kōichi Yamadera / Simona Berman) is its shadow – the Gloomdweller Pokémon, which trails Ash from the moment he picks up the feather, tests his heart with a dream, and becomes the film’s antagonist when the Wing turns black. Bonji (Arata Furuta / Mike Pollock), the old man who has waited his whole life at Mount Tensei, provides the exposition. Entei, Raikou and Suicune, the three Legendary beasts of Johto, all put in appearances along the road.

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Other Characters & Pokémon Debuts

Professor Oak, in his first movie appearance since Celebi, and Delia Ketchum, in her first speaking role since Spell of the Unown, see Ash off from Pallet Town, and the Trainers who collected the other three starters that morning are shown in flashback as Gary, Tierno (choosing Charmander, in different clothes) and Marina – the girl from Johto’s The Legend of Thunder! special, in her only appearance outside it. The battle Ash watches on television is between Neesha and Corey, two of the Trainers invited to New Island in Mewtwo Strikes Back, and the Celadon Gym Leader Erika wears her kimono and black hair from FireRed and LeafGreen rather than her blue-haired anime look. Jessie, James and Meowth follow Ash for the entire film without once being noticed by him – the only Pokémon movie in which Team Rocket never meet the hero.

Three of the Sun & Moon starters (Rowlet, Litten and Popplio) and an Alolan Exeggutor or two are tucked into the Pokémon Center crowds, and the closing credits add a parade of cameos: Brock, Misty, Tracey, May and Max, Dawn, Iris, Cilan, Clemont and Bonnie, and Serena, all in their original outfits, none of them with their Pokémon – Brock and Misty’s only appearance in a film that pointedly does without them.

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Pokémon making their anime debut in the film

Two Alola Pokémon make their anime debut: the Mythical Marshadow, revealed to the world only two months before the film opened, and Cross’s Incineroar – the only fully evolved Alola starter in the movie. Marshadow is also the only Pokémon in the anime to use a Z-Move (Soul-Stealing 7-Star Strike) without a Trainer.

• Marshadow#802 · the Gloomdweller Pokémon
• Incineroar#727 · Cross’s

Cameos in the closing credits

Every one of Ash’s former travelling companions is glimpsed during the end credits – the only time Brock and Misty appear in the film.

• Brock
• Misty
• May
• Dawn
• Iris
• Cilan
• Clemont and Bonnie
• Serena

Cast

The voice cast of both the Japanese and English versions. Rica Matsumoto and Ikue Ōtani have voiced Ash and Pikachu since 1997; Kate Bristol provides Pikachu’s one line of English dialogue. The celebrity guests are actors Kanata Hongō (Sorrel), Shiori Satō (Verity) and Arata Furuta (Bonji), with Kōichi Yamadera – Hoopa Unbound and Alva in the two previous films – as Marshadow and Shōko Nakagawa, in her eleventh movie, as Nurse Joy.

Character	English voice actor	Japanese voice actor
Ash Ketchum (Satoshi)	Sarah Natochenny	Rica Matsumoto
Pikachu	Kate Bristol (speaking) / Ikue Ōtani	Ikue Ōtani
Verity (Makoto)	Suzy Myers	Shiori Satō
Sorrel (Sōji)	David Oliver Nelson	Kanata Hongō
Cross	Billy Bob Thompson	Ryōta Ōsaka
Bonji	Mike Pollock	Arata Furuta
Marshadow	Simona Berman	Kōichi Yamadera
Professor Oak (Dr. Okido)	Carter Cathcart	Unshō Ishizuka
Delia Ketchum (Hanako)	Sarah Natochenny	Masami Toyoshima
Nurse Joy	Michele Knotz	Shōko Nakagawa
Erika	Nathalie Gorham	Kyōko Hikami
Jessie (Musashi)	Michele Knotz	Megumi Hayashibara
James (Kojirō)	Carter Cathcart	Shin-ichirō Miki
Meowth (Nyarth)	Carter Cathcart	Inuko Inuyama
Narrator	Rodger Parsons	Unshō Ishizuka

Trailer

The full UK theatrical trailer for I Choose You!, from the official Pokémon YouTube channel.

The first teaser, with Ash and Pikachu’s very first meeting.

Trading Cards

The card of the film is Ash’s Pikachu, wearing Ash’s new cap with the movie logo in the corner. In Japan it came in the Ho-Oh-GX Special Jumbo Card Pack of 1 July 2017, and from 16 June anyone buying five booster packs at the shops selling advance tickets received one of six Ash’s Pikachu promos (071–076/SM-P), each wearing a different cap from Ash’s travels – the TCG counterpart to the six Cap Pikachu given away in the games. The movie’s Japanese expansion, To Have Seen the Battle Rainbow, launched alongside it on 15 July with Ho-Oh-GX and Marshadow-GX.

In the West the plain Ash’s Pikachu (SM108) was handed to everyone who attended the cinema screenings in November 2017, and the six capped Pikachu followed as SM109–SM114 in a $25 purchase promotion from 8 November (and a £19.99 one in the UK from March 2018). Ho-Oh-GX and Marshadow-GX arrived in Burning Shadows in August 2017. Everything is catalogued in our Trading Card Game section.

• Ash’s PikachuSM108 · cinema gift, November 2017; Ho-Oh-GX Special Jumbo Card Pack in Japan
• Ash’s PikachuSM109 · Original Cap · 071/SM-P
• Ash’s PikachuSM110 · Hoenn Cap · 072/SM-P
• Ash’s PikachuSM111 · Sinnoh Cap · 073/SM-P
• Ash’s PikachuSM112 · Unova Cap · 074/SM-P
• Ash’s PikachuSM113 · Kalos Cap · 075/SM-P
• Ash’s PikachuSM114 · Alola Cap · 076/SM-P

Movie Ads & Posters

Posters and home-video artwork for I Choose You! – Ken Sugimori’s Japanese poster of Ash and Pikachu on the hill, the key visual, the English poster, overseas posters, logos, the manga adaptation covers, and the DVD and Blu-ray releases from Japan, the US, the UK and Australia. Magazine clippings and adverts are always wanted.

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Trivia & Facts

• In Japan the film was released between Big Sky, Small Fry! (SM033) and A Crowning Moment of Truth! (SM034) – but it is the first Pokémon movie not set in the continuity of the series airing at the time, and so the first with no human characters from that series in it. Its title is the first episode’s, and it is the first movie whose Japanese title names no Pokémon at all.
• The differences from the first episode are legion: Cross replaces Damian as Charmander’s original Trainer; Pikachu knows Iron Tail and Charizard knows Slash years ahead of schedule; Caterpie evolves fighting a Pinsir and Butterfree against Primeape rather than Beedrill; Charmander evolves against a Jigglypuff instead of a herd of Exeggutor; Erika is Ash’s third Gym Leader rather than his fifth and he beats her fair and square; and Ash never steals anyone’s bicycle. Yuyama also admitted that his dream of a world without Pokémon was borrowed from an idea first used in The Rise of Darkrai.
  

  

• Pikachu had had its words subtitled before, but this is the first time it actually speaks – “I always want to be with you”, in Japanese and English – and reaction to the moment was, to put it mildly, divided. In the English dub it is the first film without Kayzie Rogers, who had voiced at least one character in all nineteen before it, and the first anime film to be dubbed into Catalan.
• The film was Japan’s first Pokémon movie in 4K and, in the West, the first since Pokémon Heroes to be shown in cinemas. Ash’s redesign draws on Ken Sugimori’s original art, Erika is drawn as she looks in FireRed and LeafGreen, and the pink Butterfree has the black wing spots that mark a female – a gender difference that did not exist when the species first appeared in 1997. Shōko Nakagawa, who voices Nurse Joy, was cast by Yuyama as a deliberate symbol of a generation that grew up with the first games.
  

  

• With this film every Legendary and Mythical Pokémon of the second generation had starred in a movie. Oak’s appearance is his first in a film since Celebi, Delia’s first speaking part since Spell of the Unown, Gary’s first in anything for seven years, and Marina’s only appearance outside The Legend of Thunder!. It is also the first film in which Ash releases a Pokémon, and the only one in which Team Rocket never actually meet him – which rather raises the question of how he recognises them in the sequel.
• The game tie-ins were enormous: six Cap Pikachu (Original, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos and Alola), one every fortnight from April to July for advance-ticket holders, each with a Pikashunium Z for the exclusive 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt; Marshadow and its Marshadium Z for cinema-goers from 15 July to 30 September; a level 100 Ho-Oh holding Sacred Ash through CoroCoro; and 7-Eleven codes for Mew and for Charizard, Lucario and Piplup modelled on Ash’s, Sorrel’s and Verity’s. The Marshadow distribution later reached the West through GameStop, GAME and EB Games in October 2017.

  

  

• The dub swaps the Japanese ending Oración’s Theme ~Let’s Walk Together~ for I Choose You, mutes most of Marshadow’s cries, and on Disney XD cut the closing credits down to thirty seconds over black – losing most of the companion cameos. The Japanese opening is a 20th-anniversary rerecording of Aim to Be a Pokémon Master, the very first theme song.

Errors

• When the Spearow flock dives at Ash after he tells Pikachu to get into its Poké Ball, his cap is suddenly facing forwards despite having been turned backwards a moment earlier. The shot was fixed for later home-video releases.
  

  

• In the English dub, when the possessed Pokémon attack Ash on Mount Tensei, his cry is briefly heard in his original Japanese voice.
• Also in the dub, Incineroar’s Throat Chop is called by its Polish name, “Gardłowy Cios”, throughout the second half of the film.

Reviews & Reception

I Choose You! was exactly the shot in the arm the series needed. After five years of falling returns it took around ¥3.5 billion in Japan – some $30 million, the best result since Kyurem in 2012 – and the worldwide total of about $37.6 million was swelled by a surprisingly strong $3.6 million in South Korea and $2.4 million from the two-night Fathom Events run in the US, where sell-outs prompted extra dates. The cinema screenings in the UK, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Argentina were the first for a Pokémon movie in those markets since Pokémon Heroes in 2003.

Reviews were mixed in the way Pokémon reviews usually are. Rotten Tomatoes’ handful of critics split roughly two to one against it, Common Sense Media gave it two stars and judged it strictly for existing fans, while Anime News Network’s Callum May awarded it an A and called its story stronger than any of the films before it. Among fans the reaction was loud and polarised: the absence of Brock and Misty (reduced to credits cameos), the decision to let Pikachu talk and the dub’s replacement of the Japanese music all drew real anger, while the animation, the Sugimori-flavoured redesigns and the emotional set pieces – the Spearow storm, Sorrel’s Luxray, the release of Butterfree – won it a devoted following. Time has been kind to it; it is now widely regarded as one of the strongest films in the series and the start of a well-liked trilogy.

Japan’s DVD and Blu-ray came out on 20 December 2017, Manga Entertainment’s UK DVD on 12 February 2018 and Viz Media’s US DVD and Blu-ray the following day, with a UK Blu-ray steelbook on 30 April 2018. The film also reached Netflix in several regions in 2019.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 6.3/10 from around 8,000 user ratings
• Rotten Tomatoes – 33% Tomatometer (9 reviews) · 64% audience score“Two decades’ worth of vanished, irretrievable pocket money would say otherwise” – Mike McCahill, The Guardian
• Metacritic – no Metascore · 7.3/10 user score
• Letterboxd – 3.3/5 average from 27,000+ ratings
• Anime News Network – A overall“The strongest narrative arc of any Pokémon film” – Callum May