Pokémon the Movie: Kyurem vs. The Sword of Justice

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Pokémon the Movie: Kyurem vs. the Sword of Justice is the 15th movie in the Pokémon franchise and the second movie of the Best Wishes series. Its Japanese title, when directly translated, is Pocket Monsters Best Wishes! The Movie: Kyurem vs. the Sacred Swordsman: Keldeo.

The movie was first announced in a teaser trailer at the end of the paired movies Pokémon the Movie: Black – Victini and Reshiram and White – Victini and Zekrom. In that same trailer Kyurem, the Boundary Pokémon, as well as Cobalion, Terrakion and Virizion – the three of which form the Swords of Justice, or “the Sacred Swordsmen” in Japan – were also revealed. Keldeo, although not shown in this teaser, took a prominent role in the movie too.

A small celebratory feature is included within the film for the 90th anniversary of Shogakukan, the Japanese manga publisher who have been long-term producers of Pokémon manga.

Release around the world

Initially released in Japan on 14 July 2012, the movie was later broadcast in the US on 8 December 2012 on Cartoon Network (and the same day on YTV in Canada), with the UK following on CITV just four days later on 12 December – the fastest a Pokémon movie had ever reached British screens. A US DVD release wasn’t far behind, released on 2 April 2013 by Viz Media, and it was later released in the UK by Universal on 30 September 2013. Australia and New Zealand got the rarest treatment of all: special cinema screenings at selected Hoyts cinemas over two weekends in February 2013, followed by the Region 4 DVD and Blu-ray in March.

Japanese cinema showings of the movie were preceded by a Pikachu short called Meloetta’s Moonlight Serenade – the first short to accompany a Pokémon movie into cinemas since Gotta Dance!! in 2003 – which is one reason the main feature is the shortest in the series at a little over 70 minutes.

Chronology in relation to the anime
In Japan the film opened on 14 July 2012, between Expedition to Onix Island! (BW087, 5 July) and The Mystery of the Missing Cubchoo! (BW088, 19 July) – in the middle of the gang’s summer at Cynthia’s villa in Undella Town in Rival Destinies, when Dawn was visiting and Meloetta was tagging along, neither of whom appears here. So the film has to sit a little earlier, in the stretch after Ash’s seventh badge at Icirrus City and before Meloetta joined the group in BW082, with the Virbank Gym still ahead. It is an all-Unova affair: Ash travels with Iris and Cilan and brings Pikachu, Pignite (Tepig had evolved in BW077), Oshawott, Snivy, Scraggy and Boldore (evolved in BW061), Iris has Axew, Excadrill and Emolga, and Cilan his Pansage, Crustle and Stunfisk; the rest of Ash’s Unova team – Leavanny, Krokorok, Palpitoad and Unfezant – are rotating through Professor Juniper’s lab. In the dub, Cartoon Network aired the film on 8 December 2012, four weeks after Expedition to Onix Island! reached America.

Kyurem vs. the Sword of Justice is broken down into the following parts

• Meloetta’s Moonlight Serenade (PK24) – the Pikachu short, around 20 minutes; shown in Japanese cinemas and later dubbed for the Pokémon TV app and Camp Pokémon
• Pokémon the Movie: Kyurem vs. the Sword of Justice – the main feature, 71 minutes

Story

Meloetta’s Moonlight Serenade (the Pikachu short)

Under a full moon, Pikachu, Axew, Oshawott, Snivy, Scraggy, Emolga and Pansage gather with the wild Pokémon of the forest for Meloetta’s concert. The Melody Pokémon plants its Melody Tree, which blossoms with five Melody Berries, and begins to sing – until a lovestruck Meowth, perched with Wobbuffet on what turns out to be Cilan’s Crustle, provokes a Sandstorm that destroys the tree and scatters the Berries. Next morning the gang split up to find them, racing a repentant Meowth: Pikachu rides a Water Gun up a giant tree for the purple Berry, Snivy and Emolga chase the blue one down a hillside of holes with a Togepi, a Chikorita and a Torchic, Oshawott, Piplup and Squirtle wrestle the yellow one from a Corphish in a lake, and the red one is finally plucked from the cloud of a passing Drifblim with the whole cast dangling beneath it in a chain. Meloetta regrows the tree, sings its Relic Song, and shifts into its Pirouette Forme for a closing dance that runs through the credits.

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Training with the Swords of Justice

Keldeo, the Colt Pokémon, is being raised by the three Swords of Justice – Cobalion, Terrakion and Virizion – and trains with each of them in turn: dodging Virizion in the long grass, trading blows with Terrakion among the boulders, racing Cobalion through a burning forest. Each of them can draw a blade of light from its horn, the Sacred Sword; Keldeo cannot, and makes do with its stubby horn. It is impatient to take the final test of a Sword of Justice, a battle with the Boundary Pokémon Kyurem, and when it overhears Cobalion say that it has not yet learned “the weight of the sword” and is not ready, it slips away in the night.

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Full Court

Kyurem lives in Full Court, the ruin of an old mine and its workings, attended by a swarm of Cryogonal. Keldeo arrives, lies that it is already a Sword of Justice, and challenges it. The fight goes badly: Kyurem shears off Keldeo’s horn with Shadow Claw, and when the three Swords arrive and Terrakion tries to intervene, Kyurem takes its White form – drawing on Reshiram’s power – and freezes all three solid with Ice Burn. Keldeo, terrified, runs. Kyurem’s parting roar is a promise: the battle is not finished.

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The train to Roshan City

Ash, Iris and Cilan are on a train bound for Roshan City, stocking up on Darumaka lunch boxes at Windy Station and nearly leaving Scraggy on the platform, when the wounded Keldeo tumbles down the mountainside onto the roof. It has barely warned them about Kyurem before the dragon itself lands on the train and attacks, and only a tunnel shakes it off. In the goods wagon Iris recalls the legend of Kyurem she heard from the Elder of the Village of Dragons: the hollow remnant of the original dragon from which Reshiram and Zekrom were born.

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Roshan City

At the Roshan City Pokémon Center, Nurse Joy patches Keldeo up – all but the horn – and tells the legend of the Swords of Justice, who once rescued the Pokémon of a forest set ablaze by a human war and found an orphaned Keldeo in the ashes. Outside, while Kanata’s Herdier and Misaki’s Liepard battle on the Center’s field, Keldeo admits the truth: it lost to Kyurem, its friends are frozen because of it, and it ran away. Ash tells it that losing is no reason to be afraid, which stings enough to make Keldeo vow to go back and rescue the Swords – after a lunch box, and after choking on it at exactly the same moment as Ash.

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Kyurem comes to town

The harbour freezes over and Kyurem rises out of the ice at the head of its Cryogonal, shifting into White Kyurem as it comes. The gang are chased through the streets; Pikachu’s Thunderbolt only prompts Kyurem to switch to its Black form and answer with Dragon Pulse, Keldeo carries Ash and Pikachu away on a jet of Hydro Pump, and Boldore gets them across a river the Cryogonal have frozen. They go to ground in the old subway, where Cilan’s locked doors are no match for Keldeo’s kicks and Iris spots a museum blimp among the vintage trains.

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Decoys

Iris takes the blimp up as a decoy and Cilan pedals a handcar out of the tunnels as a second, and both are duly frozen by Black Kyurem – Iris’s airship dropped into a lake, Cilan’s car iced to the rails – while Ash and Keldeo slip away on foot through the forest towards Full Court. On the walk Keldeo describes its family: Terrakion the toughest and the funniest, Virizion the calm, quick one, Cobalion the stern leader who says things Keldeo does not always understand. Ash asks why it keeps wondering why he is helping; because they are friends, he says. At the gates of Full Court Kyurem’s roar brings the memory of the broken horn flooding back, and Keldeo confesses the lie it told Kyurem and cannot make itself go in.

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Resolute Form

At dawn Ash, Pikachu, Pignite and Boldore are hammering at the ice around the Swords of Justice when Kyurem returns and tells him to leave. He refuses; its Dragon Pulse is knocked aside by a Focus Blast – Keldeo has come after all. It confesses its lie to Kyurem, who knew all along and only wants to finish their fight, and as Iris and Cilan arrive Keldeo stops trembling, remembers it has never really been alone, and changes into its Resolute Form. The duel that follows is the heart of the film: Kyurem freezes Keldeo’s leg with Ice Beam and shifts to Black Kyurem for Freeze Shock, Keldeo breaks free with Hydro Pump and uses Double Team and Focus Blast, and the collision of attacks shatters the ice around the three Swords, who refuse to step in – this is Keldeo’s battle.

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The weight of the sword

Encased in ice by a second Freeze Shock, Keldeo begins to glow and bursts out with the one thing it has never managed: its own Secret Sword. It fights Kyurem to a standstill, and when a stray Freeze Shock hurtles towards Ash, Iris and Cilan it throws itself in the way and cuts the attack in half with a blade bigger than itself, taking the explosion full on. Kyurem ends the battle there and then. Keldeo chose to protect its friends rather than win; that, says the Boundary Pokémon, is a fine sword, and Cobalion agrees that Keldeo has at last understood its weight. Keldeo’s horn is restored, White Kyurem freezes the collapsing mine to let everyone out, and the four Swords of Justice recite their oath together – Keldeo in Resolute Form – before the credits return the blimp to the museum.

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Major Characters

Ash Ketchum (Satoshi), Iris and Cilan (Dent) are back for their second film, and it is the most Ash-centred of the Unova movies: his friendship with Keldeo carries the plot, while Iris and Cilan get a decoy mission apiece and Iris supplies the Kyurem legend she learned in the Village of Dragons. Pikachu, Pignite, Boldore, Oshawott, Snivy and Scraggy all see action.
Keldeo (Shōko Nakagawa / Vic Mignogna) is the Colt Pokémon, the youngest of the Swords of Justice and the film’s real protagonist: brash, impatient, quick to lie and quicker to run, and for most of the running time missing the horn that is its sword. Its Resolute Form, unlocked when it finally stops being afraid, was the film’s big reveal and the headline of the Japanese posters. Kyurem (Katsumi Takahashi / Marc Thompson) is the Boundary Pokémon of Black 2 and White 2, shifting between its Black and White forms by borrowing Zekrom’s and Reshiram’s power; it is less a villain than a stern examiner, as fixed on finishing the fight fairly as it is on winning it, and it commands an army of Cryogonal from its lair at Full Court.

The three elder Swords of Justice are Cobalion (Kōichi Yamadera / H.D. Quinn), the stern leader; Terrakion (Hiroki Yasumoto / Henry Carr), the strongman and the joker; and Virizion (Takako Honda / Emily Williams), the calm, fast one. They spend most of the film frozen, but their training sessions open it and their oath closes it, and the Nurse Joy legend of how they saved a forest of Pokémon from a human war – and found Keldeo in the ashes – is where the title comes from.

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Other Characters & Pokémon Debuts

The human cast is the thinnest of any Pokémon movie. Malin, a girl from Roshan City with a Vanillite, is voiced in Japan by the model and TV personality Rola, who also sings the ending theme Memories; Nurse Joy tells the legend of the Swords; Kanata and Misaki are the Trainers whose Herdier and Liepard battle outside the Pokémon Center (a scene mostly cut from the TV edit); Mimi is the small boy whose family shares the train with the gang; and a station attendant sells Cilan his Darumaka lunch boxes. Jessie, James and Meowth have no lines at all for the only time in the series – they are glimpsed in the opening, in the background of a couple of scenes and in the credits. The World of Pokémon prologue, meanwhile, is a roll-call of nearly every species then known, including Porygon2 and Porygon-Z, whose cameo completed the set of pre-Unova Pokémon to appear in the anime.

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Pokémon making their anime debut in the film

Ten species debuted here, five of them Legendary or Mythical, plus the two forms each of Kyurem and Keldeo that the film exists to show off. It is the first Pokémon movie with no pre-Unova Pokémon in its story at all beyond Pikachu and Meowth – Porygon2 and Porygon-Z appear only in the opening montage.

• Keldeo#647 · the Colt Pokémon
• Keldeo#647 · Resolute Form
• Kyurem#646 · the Boundary Pokémon
• Black Kyurem#646 · with Zekrom’s power
• White Kyurem#646 · with Reshiram’s power
• Cobalion#638 · the Iron Will Pokémon
• Terrakion#639 · the Cavern Pokémon
• Virizion#640 · the Grassland Pokémon
• Ferrothorn#598
• Vullaby#629
• Zweilous#634
• Porygon2#233 · opening cameo
• Porygon-Z#474 · opening cameo

Cast

The voice cast of both the Japanese and English versions. Shōko Nakagawa, the series’ most devoted celebrity fan, gets her biggest movie role yet as Keldeo, with model Rola as Malin; in the dub Vic Mignogna – Edward Elric of Fullmetal Alchemist – voices Keldeo and Marc Thompson returns from the previous film’s dragons to voice Kyurem.

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
Oshawott (Mijumaru)	Lisa Ortiz	Misato Fukuen
Pignite (Chaoboo)	Marc Thompson	Wasabi Mizuta
Snivy (Tsutarja)	Michele Knotz	Megumi Hayashibara
Scraggy (Zuruggu)	Jason Griffith	Akeno Watanabe
Emolga (Emonga)	Mika Kanai	Mika Kanai
Crustle (Iwapalace)	Tom Wayland	Shin-ichirō Miki
Nurse Joy	Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld	Chika Fujimura
Malin	Erica Schroeder	Rola
Station attendant	—	Kenta Miyake
Keldeo	Vic Mignogna	Shōko Nakagawa
Cobalion	H.D. Quinn	Kōichi Yamadera
Terrakion	Henry Carr	Hiroki Yasumoto
Virizion	Emily Williams	Takako Honda
Kyurem	Marc Thompson	Katsumi Takahashi
Narrator	Rodger Parsons	Unshō Ishizuka

Trailer

The official English trailer for Kyurem vs. the Sword of Justice, from Viz Media’s YouTube channel.

Trading Cards

The card game tie-ins all landed on 13 July 2012, the day before the film opened in Japan and the release date of the Freeze Bolt and Cold Flare expansions that introduced Black Kyurem-EX and White Kyurem-EX. Anyone spending ¥1,000 on cards at a participating shop received the Keldeo promo of the “Original Keldeo Card Get!” campaign (162/BW-P; a version stamped with the Pokémon Center logo was 164/BW-P), and 7-Eleven and the Pokémon Centers sold the Special Campaign Pack: Kyurem, the successor to the previous year’s Movie Commemoration Value Pack, with boosters, a deck box and one of three Swords of Justice promos – Virizion (154/BW-P), Terrakion (155/BW-P) and Cobalion (156/BW-P). Two weeks later, on 28 and 29 July, McDonald’s Happy Meals carried two Meloetta promos for the star of the Pikachu short.

None of these reached Western cinemas, since the film went straight to television outside Australia, but every one of them was reprinted in English: the Keldeo in the Keldeo Box of October 2012 (BW60), the three Swords in the Legends of Justice Box of February 2013 (BW70–72) and the two Meloetta in the EX Power Tins of March 2013 (BW68 and BW69), while the Keldeo-EX of Boundaries Crossed had its own promo print (BW61). In Korea the Keldeo promo was handed out to commemorate the film’s cinema release. Everything is catalogued in our Trading Card Game section.

• KeldeoBW60 · 162/BW-P “Original Keldeo Card Get!” campaign, 13 July 2012
• VirizionBW70 · 154/BW-P Special Campaign Pack: Kyurem
• TerrakionBW71 · 155/BW-P Special Campaign Pack: Kyurem
• CobalionBW72 · 156/BW-P Special Campaign Pack: Kyurem
• Special Campaign Pack: Kyurem7-Eleven and Pokémon Center, July 2012
• MeloettaBW68 · 160/BW-P McDonald’s, 28–29 July 2012
• MeloettaBW69 · 161/BW-P McDonald’s, 28–29 July 2012
• Keldeo-EXBW61 · promo print of the Boundaries Crossed card

Movie Ads & Posters

Posters, press and home-video artwork for Kyurem vs. the Sword of Justice – the Japanese teaser and theatrical posters (including the Resolute Form reveal), the English and Australian posters and the Hoyts cinema banner, a CoroCoro reveal spread and pages from the Japanese cinema pamphlet, and DVD and Blu-ray releases from Japan, the US, the UK and Australia, where the film also came in 3D-lenticular and figure-bundle editions. Magazine clippings and adverts are always wanted.

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Trivia & Facts

• In Japan the film was released between Expedition to Onix Island! (BW087) and The Mystery of the Missing Cubchoo! (BW088), but it cannot take place there: Dawn and Meloetta were travelling with the group at the time, so it belongs either before BW082, when Meloetta joined, or after BW097, when it left.
• At 71 minutes it is the shortest Pokémon movie ever made – a consequence of bringing back the Pikachu short, which had not played in cinemas since Gotta Dance!! with Jirachi: Wish Maker in 2003. Meloetta’s Moonlight Serenade was also the first short to be dubbed into English since Pikachu’s Island Adventure, and the only time Meloetta’s original singing voice was kept in the dub.
  

  

• It is the fourth film in a row in which Ash does not meet Team Rocket, and the only one in which Jessie, James and Meowth have no lines at all; they appear only in the opening, the credits and a couple of background shots. Despite being released during the second season of Best Wishes!, no pre-Generation V Pokémon appears outside the World of Pokémon intro except Pikachu and Meowth.
• The intro’s cameo by Porygon2 and Porygon-Z meant that every Pokémon from the first four generations had now appeared in the animated series – and it was the first sighting of Jynx and Kadabra since the Ruby and Sapphire era, two Pokémon the anime had quietly avoided for years.
  

  

• Australia and New Zealand were the only places outside Japan to see the film in cinemas: Hoyts ran special screenings on two consecutive weekends, 16–17 and 23–24 February 2013. The UK, by contrast, got the fastest Pokémon movie premiere it had ever had, on CITV four days after the US.
• The Darumaka lunch boxes Cilan buys at Windy Station turned up again eight years later in Partners in Time!, being eaten by James’s Morpeko. The number 15 in the Japanese title sequence is assembled from snapshots of the previous fourteen films, a flourish the dub dropped.
  

  

• The dub replaced the opening Be an Arrow! with Rival Destinies and Rola’s ending Memories with It’s All Inside of You. The Cartoon Network and YTV broadcasts used a shorter cut prepared by The Pokémon Company International: the title card was moved to after the World of Pokémon segment and Keldeo’s training and first battle with Kyurem were shifted to follow it, the Liepard-versus-Herdier battle outside the Pokémon Center was reduced to a background shot, and the whole credits sequence – including the blimp being returned to the museum – was replaced by a plain credit roll over black.
• In Japan, cinema-goers could download a Keldeo for Black, White, Black 2 and White 2 – the first legitimate way to obtain it – and in the newer games it could be taken to Pledge Grove to learn Secret Sword and take its Resolute Form, exactly as in the film. A Meloetta distribution followed for the Pikachu short, and Black 2 and White 2, released in Japan just three weeks before the film, let players fuse Kyurem with Reshiram or Zekrom into the two forms seen on screen.

Errors

• Kyurem freezes the three Swords of Justice with Ice Burn and Keldeo with Freeze Shock, but in the games those moves do the opposite: Ice Burn can only burn, and Freeze Shock only paralyse.
  

  

• In the first half of the dub the Swords of Justice are repeatedly called the “Swords of Destiny”, before the script settles on the name in the title.

Reviews & Reception

Kyurem vs. the Sacred Swordsman: Keldeo took around ¥3.61 billion in Japan in the summer of 2012 – roughly $46 million – down on the twin Victini films the year before, but still comfortably among the year’s biggest Japanese animated releases, and the Keldeo and Meloetta game distributions that went with it kept Black and White players queuing. Overseas it was the first Pokémon movie since Arceus and the Jewel of Life in 2009 to skip American cinemas entirely, premiering instead on Cartoon Network and YTV in December 2012.

Critics were not kind. Carl Kimlinger of Anime News Network gave the English release a C−, admiring Kyurem’s fluid, destructive battle animation and the villain’s design while calling Keldeo one of the dorkiest characters the franchise had produced, and the general verdict was of a slight, pleasant film that would have made a strong television special. Its brevity, oddly, is often counted in its favour.

Fans tend to remember it fondly for exactly the things the critics shrugged at: the training montage, the Resolute Form reveal, Kyurem as a genuinely intimidating “final exam” rather than a villain, and the Swords of Justice oath, which became a minor meme. Meloetta’s Moonlight Serenade is a favourite among the Pikachu shorts for cramming in so many old companions’ Pokémon. Home-video releases followed in Japan in December 2012, the US in April 2013 and the UK and Australia later that year, with Australia alone getting a 3D-lenticular sleeve and a Keldeo figure bundle.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 5.5/10 from around 2,000 user ratings
• Rotten Tomatoes – 56% audience score (100+ ratings) · no critics’ score – only one review“A step back towards what the franchise was doing” – Sebastian Zavala Kahn, Más Gamers
• Letterboxd – 2.8/5 average from 11,000+ ratings
• Anime News Network (review) – C− overall“Keldeo’s goony mug intrudes and wrecks all of the work” – Carl Kimlinger
• Anime News Network (ranking) – “Skippable” tier in ANN’s ranking of every Pokémon movie“Can be a real struggle to get through” – Callum May