Pokémon the Movie Genesect and the Legend Awakened

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Pokémon the Movie: Genesect and the Legend Awakened is the 16th movie in the Pokémon franchise and the final one of three movies from the Best Wishes! series. The Japanese title for the movie, when directly translated, comes out as “Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! the Movie – ExtremeSpeed Genesect: Mewtwo Awakens”.

The movie, like its predecessors, is directed by Kunihiko Yuyama, who is also the director of the anime series.

The starring Pokémon of this movie are Genesect, as the title suggests, and indeed Mewtwo. A Shiny Genesect leads a group of four other Genesect who had been seen previously in a special prologue episode of the anime, Meowth, Colress and Team Rivalry!, and we also see Mewtwo take on its Mega Evolution Y form for the first time, prior to Pokémon X and Y’s release. This is not the Mewtwo of the first movie but a second, separately created individual – a decision that, it emerged years later, was forced by a legal dispute over the rights to the original.

Release around the world

The initial release of the movie came when it arrived in Japanese theatres on 13 July 2013, where it was paired with the Pikachu short Eevee & Friends and preceded two days earlier on TV Tokyo by a half-hour prologue special, Mewtwo – Prologue to Awakening. Just three months later – the shortest gap the series had ever managed – the film premiered in Australia, Europe and the United States on 19 October 2013, broadcast by Cartoon Network in the USA and on the same day in the UK by CITV. Audiences in Indonesia and the Philippines, unusually, got to see it in cinemas, complete with the Eevee & Friends short.

The DVD release in the US was done by Viz Media, becoming available on 3 December 2013 – even earlier than the Japanese DVD and Blu-ray release date of 18 December 2013, the first time an American disc had beaten the Japanese one to the shops. A special “Mewtwo Box” collection of DVDs is also available in Japan which features this movie alongside The Battle of the Badge, Mewtwo Strikes Back, Mewtwo Returns and Mewtwo – Prologue to Awakening.

Chronology in relation to the anime
In Japan the film opened on 13 July 2013, between Capacia Island UFO! (BW133, 4 July) and The Journalist from Another Region! (BW134, 18 July) – deep into the Decolora Islands cruise of Adventures in Unova and Beyond. It cannot really belong there: the film’s own publicity places New Tork City in Unova and describes Ash as still travelling the region, so the story fits best into his last weeks there, after Charizard rejoined the team in The Fires of a Red-Hot Reunion! (BW116) and before the gang sailed away in Farewell, Unova! (BW123). By then Ash’s Unova League and the Team Plasma crisis were both behind him, and the film draws on his whole Unova roster: Pikachu, Charizard, Oshawott, Pignite, Snivy and Leavanny all appear, with Iris bringing Axew, Excadrill, Emolga and her Dragonite and Cilan his Pansage, Crustle and Stunfisk. In the dub, Cartoon Network aired the film on 19 October 2013, the same day as Mystery on a Deserted Island! (BW135) – mid-cruise for American viewers too.

Genesect and the Legend Awakened is broken down into the following parts

• Eevee & Friends (PK25) – the Pikachu short, around 20 minutes; shown in cinemas in Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines and dubbed for Pokémon TV from 6 December 2013
• Pokémon the Movie: Genesect and the Legend Awakened – the main feature, 71 minutes
• Mewtwo – Prologue to Awakening – a half-hour TV special broadcast in Japan on 11 July 2013, two days before the film, telling the new Mewtwo’s origin; it reached English speakers on Pokémon TV in 2014

Story

Eevee & Friends (the Pikachu short)

Pikachu, Axew, Oshawott and Pansage tumble into a field of pink flowers and are led by a strange new Pokémon – Sylveon, in its first appearance anywhere in the anime – to a house in the hills where it lives with Eevee and all seven of its other evolutions, each with a room and a personality to match: the affectionate Jolteon, the artistic Glaceon, the laid-back Leafeon, the mysterious Umbreon, the shy Flareon, the vain Espeon and the hostess Vaporeon. Oshawott’s attempts to chase Jolteon through the house wreck most of it, Meowth and Wobbuffet are roped in as cooks and perform a hopeless Leafeon-and-Glaceon routine, and Umbreon slips away to arrange a surprise with its friends Weavile, Gible, Gothita, Gothorita and Gothitelle – a light show of Misty Terrain, Energy Ball and Draco Meteor under the stars before everyone falls asleep in a heap.

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Mewtwo awakens

The film assumes you have seen Mewtwo – Prologue to Awakening, the TV special that aired two days earlier: scientists at a laboratory created a Mewtwo from Mew’s DNA, it escaped during a brutal experiment, and after a battering from Team Rocket’s airship it was taken in by a cave full of wild Pokémon who taught it that it was not alone. As the movie opens that Mewtwo is flying with a flock of Flying-type Pokémon over mountains and sea, and, wanting to know the limits of its power, changes into a lighter, faster form – what the games would soon call Mega Mewtwo Y – and climbs until the air runs out.

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The Genesect Army

Five Genesect – Pokémon that lived 300 million years ago, revived from fossils and fitted with cannons by Team Plasma before they broke free – arrive in a snowfield their leader, a Shiny red Genesect, insists is home. The smallest, carrying the Douse Drive, keeps saying it wants to go home. Falling back to earth, Mewtwo hears the cry and reaches them as an avalanche hits, saving the four ordinary Genesect while the Red Genesect is swept away; reading the Douse Genesect’s mind, it learns their history and that they see every living thing as an enemy. The Red Genesect returns and attacks, furious to learn that the home it remembers vanished with the ages, and the Army flies on – until a skyline of towers on the horizon reminds them of their ancient world, and the Douse Genesect says happily that it is going home.

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New Tork City and Pokémon Hills

Ash, Iris and Cilan arrive in New Tork City to visit Pokémon Hills, a vast new nature park in the middle of the skyscrapers that is about to open to the public. Their guide Eric shows them round, their Pokémon play with the residents – among them a Sableye that takes a liking to Ash – and Pikachu finds the Douse Genesect sitting by a pond gazing at the flowers floating on it. It folds up in fright, Ash mistakes it for a statue and sits on it, and the two of them end up airborne; by the time they land Ash has made a friend, learned that it is lost, and promised to get it home. Then the Red and Shock Drive Genesect arrive, read Ash’s petting as an attack and force the Douse Genesect to fire on its new friends – and a Mewtwo appears out of nowhere to shield them.

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Mewtwo’s story

In a tunnel beneath the park Mewtwo tells the gang what they have met – Pokémon extinct for 300 million years and brought back by humans – and why it cares: it too was made by people, and it tells them to forget they ever saw it. Team Rocket, eavesdropping, resolve to catch both Mewtwo and the Genesect. That night, on a bridge over the river, Mewtwo remembers its own creation in a tank, the experiment it fled, the lightning strike that nearly killed it and the cave of Pokémon that nursed it back – and decides that the Genesect deserve to learn what it learned. A pair of Starly bring news that the Army is rampaging in Pokémon Hills.

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The nest

At the Pokémon Center – a dead ringer for Central Park’s Tavern on the Green – Eric explains that the flowers the Genesect was watching are Panna Lotuses, an ancient species he transplanted from Absentia Natural Park. Over dinner the Genesect drive every Pokémon out of the Hills, all but a Feraligatr that refuses to leave, and begin to spin a vast cocoon of thread that reaches down into the power station beneath the park, flickering the lights of the whole city. Team Rocket try a net bazooka and are chased off by the Red Genesect; Ash, Iris and Eric take a workers’ corridor to the generators and find them wrapped in silk.

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Red Genesect against Mewtwo

The Douse Genesect apologises to Ash and proudly shows him the Panna Lotuses in its new pool – the same flowers that grew in its home, which is why the Army has chosen Pokémon Hills. Eric rushes off to stop the power station exploding. When the Red Genesect kicks the Feraligatr off a ledge, Mewtwo catches it, warns the Red Genesect off and, when it refuses to listen, draws it away into a Mega-Evolved chase through the canyons of New Tork City, past the giant screens of its Times Square. Back in the park the other Genesect fight the returning wild Pokémon and are losing until their leader comes back; when the Red Genesect turns its cannon on a Persian and Ash runs between them, the Douse Genesect takes the full blast meant for him, thanks Ash for being safe, and goes dark.

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Fire in Pokémon Hills

Mewtwo shields the park’s Pokémon with Protect and takes on all four remaining Genesect at once, Mega Evolving to outpace them; when they try to drag it down with their threads it breaks free with Psystrike and three of them crash through into the power station. The generators overload, the cocoon catches fire and New Tork City goes black – Team Rocket, groping around in the dark, fall into a worksite full of Durant and are blasted off. The wild Pokémon fight the blaze, a Persian’s Water Pulse frees the three trapped Genesect, who repay it by shielding Ash from falling debris, and Mewtwo, knocked out of the sky by the Red Genesect, is caught by the three friends. Ash steps between the two of them one last time. The Red Genesect charges a Techno Blast at him anyway, deaf even to the weak plea of the Douse Genesect, and declares that even its own kind are its enemies.

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Beyond the limit

Mewtwo has had enough. It Mega Evolves, blocks the Techno Blast, seizes the Red Genesect by its cannon and rockets straight up – beyond the limit, to a place where nobody else exists – until both of them black out in the freezing thin air. They wake at the edge of space with the whole planet below them, and Mewtwo tells the Red Genesect that this is the world both of them were born on, that they exist for a reason, and that everything on it is their friend. The anger goes out of the Red Genesect’s eyes. As they fall, Mewtwo faints again and the Red Genesect uses its last strength to call the others; the Genesect spin a net, Charizard and Dragonite cannot hold it, and in the end every Pokémon in the park – Water-types pumping, Psychic-types shaping – builds a cushion of water to catch them.

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A new home

Ash knows where the Panna Lotuses still grow, and Eric takes the gang and the Genesect Army to Absentia Natural Park, where the Army begins a new nest and the Douse Genesect tells Ash it likes its home. Mewtwo thanks Ash for finding it, promises never to forget that they met, and flies away in its Mega form. The credits open the finished Pokémon Hills to the public, parade almost every rival and ally of the Unova years past Eric’s tour group, show N walking alone across a salt flat and Team Rocket in disguise at a café, and end with Mewtwo landing on a skyscraper above another city at night – the exact image on which Mewtwo Returns left the original.

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Major Characters

Ash Ketchum (Satoshi), Iris and Cilan (Dent) close out the Unova movies, and for once Ash has his full strength with him: Charizard, back on the team since BW116, makes its first movie appearance since Spell of the Unown, alongside Pignite, Oshawott, Snivy and Leavanny, while Iris’s Dragonite and Cilan’s Crustle and Stunfisk all get a moment.
Mewtwo (Reiko Takashima / Miriam Pultro) is the film’s most controversial choice: a second, separately created Mewtwo with a female voice and none of the first film’s memories, whose origin is told in the TV special Mewtwo – Prologue to Awakening and whose “Awakened Form” – revealed in the games three months later as Mega Mewtwo Y – made it the first Pokémon ever shown Mega Evolving. Having learned from the Pokémon who sheltered it that it was never alone, it wants the Genesect to learn the same thing, by persuasion if possible and by force if not.

The Genesect Army are five Paleozoic Pokémon revived from fossils by Team Plasma and armed with cannons: the Shiny Red Genesect (Kōichi Yamadera / Scottie Ray), a leader whose only word for the world is “enemy”, and four followers each fitted with a different Drive – the gentle, homesick Douse Drive Genesect (Sumire Morohoshi / Samia Mounts), who befriends Ash, and the Shock, Burn and Chill Drive Genesect. Eric (Takashi Yoshimura / Jake Paque) is the Pokémon Hills guide who shows the gang round, knows where the Panna Lotuses came from and keeps the power station from blowing up.

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Other Characters & Pokémon Debuts

The human cast is small: besides Eric there are Neva and Tanner, a pair of visitors to the park with an Eevee, a Nurse Joy, and Jessie, James and Meowth, who after a silent cameo in the previous film get a proper subplot trying to catch Mewtwo and the Genesect with a bazooka before a nest of Durant sends them flying. The real supporting cast is Pokémon Hills itself – a Feraligatr that refuses to abandon its home, the Sableye that adopts Ash, a Persian, a Chansey, the Starly who act as Mewtwo’s messengers and a hundred others – and the mother and daughter who have cameoed in every film since Lucario and the Mystery of Mew are in the park again. Team Plasma, Colress and their airship appear in flashback, the first villainous team other than Team Rocket in a movie since Jirachi: Wish Maker.

For the first time in sixteen films, no Pokémon makes its anime debut in the main feature: the Genesect had been seen in Meowth, Colress and Team Rivalry! and Mega Mewtwo Y in the prologue special, and it is the first finale to a series to feature nothing from the next generation. The Pikachu short is a different story.

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Debuting in the Eevee & Friends short

Eevee & Friends introduced one Pokémon – and it was the first Generation VI Pokémon anyone had seen in the anime, three months before X and Y.

• Sylveon#700 · the Intertwining Pokémon

Cast

The voice cast of both the Japanese and English versions. Reiko Takashima’s female Mewtwo was the talking point in Japan, and Miriam Pultro, who voiced it in English, has spoken about being “equally terrified and thrilled” to take on a role fans were already arguing about. Kōichi Yamadera, the series’ regular movie villain, voices the Red Genesect.

Character	English voice actor	Japanese voice actor
Ash Ketchum (Satoshi)	Sarah Natochenny	Rica Matsumoto
Pikachu	Ikue Ōtani	Ikue Ōtani
Iris	Eileen Stevens	Aoi Yūki
Axew (Kibago)	Kayzie Rogers	Minami Tsuda
Cilan (Dent)	Jason Griffith	Mamoru Miyano
Jessie (Musashi)	Michele Knotz	Megumi Hayashibara
James (Kojirō)	Carter Cathcart	Shin-ichirō Miki
Meowth (Nyarth)	Carter Cathcart	Inuko Inuyama
Eric	Jake Paque	Takashi Yoshimura
Mewtwo	Miriam Pultro	Reiko Takashima
Red Genesect	Scottie Ray	Kōichi Yamadera
Douse Drive Genesect	Samia Mounts	Sumire Morohoshi
Chill Drive Genesect	Yuko Minaguchi	Akeno Watanabe
Burn Drive Genesect	Tom Wayland	Kiyotaka Furushima
Shock Drive Genesect	Marc Thompson	Kensuke Satō
Narrator	Rodger Parsons	Unshō Ishizuka

Trailer

The official English trailer for Genesect and the Legend Awakened, from our own Pokémon Dungeon YouTube channel.

Trading Cards

Genesect was the face of the Japanese card game’s summer in 2013. The campaign began in April, when anyone spending ¥800 on Pokémon merchandise at participating shops as the advance tickets went on sale received a Genesect promo (219/BW-P), and CoroCoro bound another into its April issue (209/BW-P). On opening day, 13 July – which was also the release date of the EX Battle Boost expansion and the Mewtwo vs Genesect Deck Kit – a new Cracked Ice holo Genesect arrived in two prints: 231/BW-P in the EX Battle Boost Campaign Pack and 232/BW-P in the Movie Commemoration Genesect Set, which was sold only at cinemas screening the film and at the Pokémon Centers. Buyers of the Deck Kit were given a Shaymin (233/BW-P) or a Victini (234/BW-P) as well.

In the West the same Genesect became BW99 in the Red Genesect Collection that autumn and, as BW101, the first trading card ever packed inside an American Pokémon movie DVD when Viz Media’s disc shipped on 3 December 2013; the April promo was reprinted as BW86 in the Plasma Blast three-pack blisters. In Korea the Genesect promo was given out to commemorate the film’s cinema release. Everything is catalogued in our Trading Card Game section.

• GenesectBW99 · 231 and 232/BW-P · Movie Commemoration Genesect Set, 13 July 2013
• GenesectBW101 · packed with the US DVD, 3 December 2013
• GenesectBW86 · 219/BW-P advance-ticket campaign, April 2013
• Shaymin233/BW-P · Mewtwo vs Genesect Deck Kit purchase gift
• Victini234/BW-P · Mewtwo vs Genesect Deck Kit purchase gift
• Mewtwo vs Genesect Deck KitJapan, 13 July 2013
• Movie Commemoration Genesect SetCinema and Pokémon Center exclusive, 2013
• Red Genesect CollectionEnglish, autumn 2013

Movie Ads & Posters

Posters, press and home-video artwork for Genesect and the Legend Awakened – the Japanese teaser and theatrical posters including the “Awakened Form” reveal, the English and Australian posters, CoroCoro’s reveal page, a Sableye promotional poster, the Global Link banner and the artwork for the Genesect distribution, and DVD and Blu-ray releases from Japan, the US and Australia, plus the Black & White movie collection. Magazine clippings and adverts are always wanted.

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Trivia & Facts

• In Japan the film was released between Capacia Island UFO! (BW133) and The Journalist from Another Region! (BW134), but Eric’s official character profile says Ash is still travelling through Unova, so New Tork City is a Unova city and the story has to sit before Farewell, Unova! (BW123) – and after BW116, since Charizard is on the team.
• New Tork City is New York: Pokémon Hills is Central Park, the Pokémon Center is the Tavern on the Green restaurant and the chase runs through a Times Square whose screens are showing a Baccer World Cup match between the Reds and the Greens from Zoroark: Master of Illusions. Kunihiko Yuyama wanted the contrast between the ancient Genesect and a city that embraces technology.
  

  

• This Mewtwo is not the Mewtwo of Mewtwo Strikes Back. There were plans to bring the original back, but in 2019 producer Hidenaga Katakami confirmed they were dropped because of a legal dispute with the estate of the first film’s writer, Takeshi Shudō, over the character – which is why the film opens with a brand-new origin and a female voice. The nod to the original survives in the final shot, which recreates the last scene of Mewtwo Returns.
  

  

• Mewtwo is the first Pokémon ever shown Mega Evolving. Japanese publicity called the new look its “Awakened Form”; Mega Evolution was not announced for X and Y until August 2013, a month after the film opened, and this is the first series finale not to debut a single Pokémon from the following generation – and the first movie with no anime debuts at all, since both the Genesect and Mega Mewtwo Y had appeared on television first.
• With Mewtwo, the Red Genesect and the four Drive Genesect it features six headline Pokémon, one more than Kyurem’s record. It is also the only Black & White movie with Pokémon from earlier generations beyond Pikachu and Meowth, Charizard’s first film since Spell of the Unown, the fifth movie in a row in which Ash never meets Team Rocket, and the first since Pokémon Ranger without Shōko Nakagawa in the cast – she turns up in the Pikachu short instead.
  

  

• The three-month gap between the Japanese and English releases is the shortest of any Pokémon movie, and the US DVD beat the Japanese one to the shops for the first time. The English title leaked a month early on Taiwanese cinema billboards. Indonesia got its first theatrical Pokémon movie, and it was the last film until The Power of Us to keep its Japanese score in the dub.
• The dub swapped Summerly Slope for It’s Always You and Me as the opening and Smiling Face for We’re Coming Home at the end (Netflix’s version keeps Smiling Face), and the Australian release sang a different line in the ending. A pun was lost in translation: in Japanese Cilan says they are “lucky” to see Pokémon Hills before it opens, and Ash looks round for a Chansey – Lucky being Chansey’s Japanese name – so the dub has Cilan call it “a chance of a lifetime” instead.
• In Japan the film came with a promotional short, Top Secret Internal Team Plasma Genesect Video, and the TV special Mewtwo – Prologue to Awakening aired two days before release. Cinema-goers could download the Mewtwo for Black, White, Black 2 and White 2 with the Trainer name “Pokémon Hills”, and Genesect was distributed too. In a February 2021 poll on the official Japanese site it was voted the most popular of the Black & White movies.
  

  

Errors

• In a scene during the credits Ash’s eyebrow is drawn on top of his hair.
  

  

• In the first Cartoon Network airing, the characters’ voices can be heard over the top of It’s Always You and Me during the opening; the DVD fixed it.

Reviews & Reception

ExtremeSpeed Genesect: Mewtwo Awakens took around ¥3.17 billion in Japan – roughly $32 million – the lowest figure for the series so far and the second year running that the summer movie had fallen, though it still out-grossed most of the year’s domestic animation. Abroad it was a television premiere everywhere except Indonesia and the Philippines, which makes its box office impossible to compare with the earlier films.

The reception was dominated by Mewtwo. Fans who had grown up with Mewtwo Strikes Back were unhappy to find a new Mewtwo with a woman’s voice and no memory of the first film, and the explanation – a rights dispute that kept the original off limits – did not come out until 2019. Those who could get past it found a surprisingly thoughtful film: Mewtwo’s talk with the Red Genesect at the edge of space is one of the series’ best scenes, the Douse Drive Genesect is a lovely creation, the New York setting is used to the full and Shinji Miyazaki’s score is a highlight. In Japan it was voted the favourite Black & White movie in a 2021 official poll.

Western critics were, as usual, thin on the ground; the common verdict was a brisk, handsome entry that works better as a stand-alone than as a Mewtwo sequel. On home video the US disc of 3 December 2013 came with a Genesect card and beat Japan’s DVD and Blu-ray by two weeks, Australia followed with a Region 4 release and a 3D lenticular sleeve, and Japan added the Mewtwo Box collecting every Mewtwo story to date.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 5.4/10 from around 1,900 user ratings
• Rotten Tomatoes – 42% audience score (50+ ratings) · no critics’ score – only one review“Even they might have a good time with this movie” – Sebastian Zavala Kahn, Más Gamers
• Letterboxd – 2.7/5 average from 9,000+ ratings
• Anime News Network (review) – B overall“A very dark film in such a kid-friendly franchise” – Rebecca Silverman
• Anime News Network (ranking) – “Must Watch” tier in ANN’s ranking of every Pokémon movie“A welcome return to form for the Pokemon films” – Callum May