Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us

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Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us is the 21st Pokémon movie and the second released during Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon. Known in Japan as Pocket Monsters the Movie: Everyone’s Story (みんなの物語, Minna no Monogatari), it picks up the parallel world introduced in I Choose You! – an Ash who travels alone with Pikachu, wears the redesigned cap and has never met Brock or Misty – and drops him into Fula City, a seaside town powered by the wind that the Legendary Pokémon Lugia brings to its Wind Festival once a year. For once, though, Ash is not really the lead. The story belongs to five townsfolk and visitors with problems of their own: a runner who has lost her nerve, a braggart who cannot stop lying, a researcher who cannot find his voice, an old woman who wants nothing to do with Pokémon, and a little girl hiding a very big secret on the mountain above the town.

It is a film of firsts. It is the first Pokémon movie not directed by Kunihiko Yuyama, who stepped back to the role of animation supervisor and handed the chair to Tetsuo Yajima, a long-serving director on the TV series; the first co-produced with WIT Studio, the studio behind Attack on Titan; and the first in which Ash travels with no companions at all and Pikachu is his only Pokémon. It also introduced the Mythical Pokémon Zeraora, teased for months in early publicity only as “the Mythical Pokémon Inazuma” before its unveiling on the TV show Oha Suta on 9 April 2018.

Release around the world

After a premiere screening at Tokyo Dome City Hall on 1 July 2018 – with Mana Ashida, Rina Kawaei, Masako Nozawa and Porno Graffitti on stage – the film opened across Japan on Friday 13 July 2018, the first Pokémon movie to open on a Friday rather than a Saturday. The English dub premiered in Singapore on 12 November 2018, and in the West The Power of Us repeated the cinema experiment of the previous year: Fathom Events booked it into around a thousand American cinemas for four dates (24, 26 and 28 November and 1 December 2018), with event screenings in the UK and Ireland from 24 November and Australia and New Zealand from 25 November. Disney XD gave it its US television premiere on 8 December 2018, CITV followed in the UK on New Year’s Day 2019, and it reached Hong Kong and South Korea in cinemas before Christmas.

Japan’s DVD and Blu-ray – including a limited edition with a pouch, postcards and a making-of booklet – arrived on 19 December 2018. Beyond Home Entertainment had Australian discs out by 5 December 2018, Manga Entertainment released a UK Collector’s Edition Blu-ray and DVD on 18 February 2019, and Viz Media’s US DVD and Blu-ray followed on 19 March 2019. The film later spent two years on Netflix in the US (January 2020 to April 2022) and was paired with The Power of One on Viz’s Tales of Lugia double-feature DVD in February 2024.

As with I Choose You!, there was no Pikachu short. American audiences instead got a pre-show of every dubbed TV opening theme, Who’s That Pokémon? segments, two Pokémon Generations episodes and an interview with Kunihiko Yuyama and Detective Pikachu director Rob Letterman.

Chronology in relation to the anime
In Japan the film opened on 13 July 2018, between A Young Royal Flame Ignites! (SM081, 5 July) and All They Want to Do is Dance Dance! (SM082, 19 July); the slot in between went to a three-hour TV Tokyo special that gave I Choose You! its television premiere and counted down to the new film. On television Ash was deep into his second year in Alola – a pupil at Professor Kukui’s Pokémon School, an Ultra Guardian, and travelling with Pikachu, Rowlet, Lycanroc, Torracat and the Ultra Beast Poipole. None of that applies here. Like I Choose You! before it and Secrets of the Jungle after it, The Power of Us is set in the parallel world of the 2017 film, where Ash wears his redesigned cap, travels alone, and has only Pikachu with him; the region Fula City belongs to is never named. The dub reached American screens on 24 November 2018, three weeks before SM082 aired on Disney XD, so for English-speaking viewers the placement is much the same.

The Power of Us is broken down into the following parts

• Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us – the main feature, 100 minutes, opening on a plain title card rather than the usual CGI title sequence
• No Pikachu short – the Fathom Events screenings in the US were preceded instead by a pre-show of TV opening themes, Who’s That Pokémon? quizzes, the Pokémon Generations episodes The Lake of Rage and The Reawakening, and A Pokémon Journey with Kunihiko Yuyama

Story

A promise to Rick

Risa, a high-school student, visits her little brother Rick in hospital, where a broken leg has put paid to his trip to Fula City’s Wind Festival. Risa was a track star herself until an injury of her own; she has not run since and has lost her nerve for it. Rick asks her to go to the festival in his place and catch him a Pokémon, and sweetens the deal with a pair of red sunglasses. Risa knows next to nothing about Pokémon, but she agrees. The next morning fireworks open the festival in Fula City, a sunlit seaside metropolis powered by wind turbines, and the people this story will be about drift into view: Margo, the Mayor’s small daughter, waving her father off to work; Harriet, an elderly woman who recoils from a friendly Sunflora; Toren, a nervous young researcher who drops his papers the moment his phone rings; and Callahan, in town with his sister Mia and his frail little niece Kellie. Ash and Pikachu, meanwhile, roll in on the tram and head straight for the food stalls.

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The legend of Fula City

On the Pokémon Channel the festival’s host tells the city’s story: the land was barren until Lugia, moved by the bond between the people and their Pokémon, brought the wind, and the townsfolk harnessed it, built their city and lit the Eternal Flame that calls Lugia back each year to renew it. Callahan has his own version, told to a crowd of admirers, in which he personally summoned Lugia to put out a fire on the mountain. Mia rolls her eyes; Toren, listening from the back, wishes he had a fraction of the man’s confidence. Across town three boys running a lemonade stand – Townes, Hoyt and Miles – terrify Harriet with their Phanpy and then lose their whole stock when Margo knocks over the cart. Miles throws a lemon at her; Ash catches it, and Pikachu sees off Hoyt’s Phanpy in a two-move battle. Margo thanks him, promises he will see Lugia at the festival, and points out the Eternal Flame and the abandoned power plant on the hill above the town. Watching from a distance, Team Rocket decide – at Jessie’s insistence – to open a Lum Berry juice stand and leave Pikachu for later.

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The Pokémon Catch Race

Kellie bumps into Risa at a target game and, spotting the empty Poké Ball in her hand, proudly insists her uncle is a great Trainer. Risa shows Callahan a picture of the Pokémon Rick wants – an Eevee – and he confidently, and falsely, sends her up the mountain to find one. Then the Pokémon Catch Race is announced, Kellie begs Callahan to enter, and he finds himself striking a deal with Toren: Toren will lend him a Staryu and coach him through an earpiece, and in return Callahan will deliver Toren’s research presentation the following day. The race itself is a scramble through the parkland above the city with special Poké Balls and points for every catch (all to be released afterwards). Ash bags an Ekans and a Sentret; Callahan, with Toren whispering in his ear and Staryu’s Illuminate lighting the way, lands a Girafarig and a Golduck, and saves a Sudowoodo from the Golduck while telling it, without a hint of irony, to stop lying to itself. Ash and Pikachu spend most of the race chasing a rampaging Tyranitar with a rope around its neck, which Pikachu cuts loose and calms before it reaches the crowd. Mayor Oliver hands Callahan the trophy and Ash second place, and when the winner is asked what he will catch next he boasts, live on air, about a rare Pokémon hidden in Fula City – a line two Pokémon hunters in the audience note with interest.

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Night in Fula City

The Sudowoodo follows Callahan back to his hotel and will not be shooed away. Over dinner at the mansion Margo mentions Zeraora and is sharply told by her father that it no longer exists and that the subject is closed. Risa, hiking the off-limits mountain in search of her Eevee, is turned back by Pokémon Rangers who warn her about “Zeraora’s curse” and tell her, in passing, that no Eevee live up there – Callahan lied. Harriet comes home to find a Togepi, a Xatu, a Totodile and a Marill wrecking her house, grabs a small box she treasures and flees. Team Rocket break into Toren’s laboratory, make a racket and run, leaving a broken flask and a puddle of Smeargle ink behind them. By morning Harriet has woken on her own porch with a Heracross and a Tyrogue snoozing beside her, and Risa has found Ash at the Pokémon Center and asked for help. Pikachu sniffs out a wild Eevee, Ash lends Risa his partner and talks her through her very first battle, and on the second throw the Eevee is hers. She tells him she used to be a regional champion before her injury, and that for the first time in a long while she feels excited about something.

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Sabotage and a ruined presentation

Toren works out why Harriet is being followed: the spilled flask held Sweet Scent, and every Pokémon in town can smell it on her – and no, he does not have an antidote. Down at the pier Officer Jenny finds the festival wiring vandalised, and the Mayor sends everyone home while repairs are made. Risa confronts Callahan about his lie, then covers for him when Kellie appears; Ash volunteers himself and Risa for the clean-up, Mia and Risa see straight through Callahan’s excuse about a “speaking engagement”, and he is roped in too. On the second day the lemonade boys repeat the legend of the curse – the whole mountain cursed since Zeraora vanished in a fire fifty years ago – and Margo dismisses it a little too quickly. Callahan is delayed and misses Toren’s presentation. Toren stumbles through it himself, and when his colleague Jason cues up the video it turns out to be the wrong footage: a recording of Toren coaching Callahan through the Catch Race. Mia sees everything; Callahan drops his empty Poké Ball as he flees and Kellie finally understands that her uncle has been lying. Then Harriet’s torch picks out Team Rocket hiding in the lab. They recite the motto, drop a smoke bomb and bolt, and in the stampede Risa’s Eevee is trampled underfoot. Toren’s Chansey keeps it alive with Heal Pulse; Wobbuffet’s Mirror Coat lets the trio slip away from Pikachu. That night everyone is at their lowest: Eevee has a broken leg, Kellie has collapsed and is resting at the Pokémon Center, Toren has to report that Team Rocket stole his distilled Effect Spore essence, Mia tells her brother they are going home tomorrow, Callahan tells Sudowoodo to stop following him and drops his Poké Ball in a bin, and Harriet shuts her door on her unwanted menagerie. Team Rocket, for their part, discover they have lost the essence somewhere in the city.

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The wind stops

On the final day of the festival the turbines stand still and the Eternal Flame has been stolen – and without the Flame, the Mayor admits, Lugia has nothing to guide it to the city. Pikachu’s nose leads the others to Toren’s Smeargle, and Toren realises the ink spilled in his lab was no accident: Smeargle’s essence is an invisible marker, and under an ultraviolet torch a trail of footprints leads straight up the mountain. At the abandoned building Margo is trying to misdirect the two hunters, who have found her Teddiursa and Ditto and set a Houndoom and a Sneasel on them. Margo throws herself in front of the Pokémon she has been hiding – Zeraora, very much alive – as a net is fired; Pikachu slices it apart with Iron Tail and Mayor Oliver arrives to chase the hunters off with the threat of prosecution. Toren’s UV light finds the ink on Margo’s shoe. She took the Flame to stop the festival and keep people off the mountain, because Zeraora saved her from a rockslide, was hurt doing it, and she has been nursing it in secret ever since. Oliver, cornered, tells the rest: fifty years ago it was people who started the fire, Zeraora who saved the wild Pokémon and turned against humans for it, and the previous mayor who closed the mountain and announced that Zeraora had “vanished” – a lie the city has told itself ever since.

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Effect Spore

A huge explosion sends a purple plume into the sky above the city: Team Rocket’s stolen Effect Spore essence has gone up, and the wild Pokémon downwind of it are sickening fast. Chansey’s Aromatherapy can heal a few Pidgey at a time, nowhere near enough, and the cloud is drifting towards the town. Ash insists that with Pokémon anything is possible; Toren says a large enough dose of Natural Cure could neutralise it; and Harriet, of all people, points out that the old wind plant on the hill could blow the gas away – she should know, she built it. The plan splits them up. Harriet and Toren head for the plant and Ash, Risa and Margo treat the injured Pokémon. Callahan, learning that Mia and Kellie are stuck in a stalled cable car, is found by Sudowoodo, which tearfully presses his discarded Poké Ball back into his hand; he finally accepts it as his partner. At the Pavilion Toren finds his voice at last and rallies the sneering researchers to brew the cure – only for fires to break out across the city and a blackout to wipe the batch. Zeraora runs into the flames to rescue Pokémon, Margo and then Ash go after it, and Risa is handed the Eternal Flame and told to get it back to the stadium to summon Lugia. She says she cannot run any more. Eevee drags the Flame to her feet, and she kicks off her heels and goes.

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The power of us

Toren spots Team Rocket’s Lum Berries – the trio fled into the Pavilion – and switches recipes. Callahan carries Harriet towards the plant until flames block the road and she freezes, reliving the fire in which she lost her Snubbull; then she remembers the key Snubbull saved for her, and her “scamps” and Sudowoodo clear a path. Rick, oddly well informed about where his sister is, phones Risa and steers her around the smoke. Harriet’s key starts the plant, Callahan, Sudowoodo and Harriet’s Pokémon push the turbine round, and the Mayor broadcasts the truth about Zeraora and asks every citizen and Pokémon to help. Toren arrives by car with the Lum Berry concentrate; with the ladders long since burned away, Callahan’s famous throwing arm sends it into the blades while Sudowoodo’s Stone Edge knocks falling debris aside, and the spray clears the Effect Spore from the air. On the mountain Zeraora turns its Plasma Fists, Close Combat and Thunder Punch on Ash and Pikachu, and Ash keeps insisting he wants to be its friend until he throws himself in front of the rescued Pokémon to shield them from a stray attack – at which point Zeraora relents and helps him up. The fire at the stadium outpaces even Zeraora until Oliver arrives with the townspeople and their Pokémon, the Electric-types jump-start the sprinklers, and when a falling beam threatens Margo it is Zeraora, cheered on by the whole crowd, that catches it and holds it up until she is safe. At dawn Risa and Eevee set the Flame back on its pedestal. A column of green light climbs into the sky, the exhausted Zeraora tumbles from a rooftop into a bed of Cotton Spore spun by Mareep, Flaaffy and Ampharos, and Lugia descends, bringing rain to drown the fires and then the wind that sets every turbine in Fula City turning again. On the festival’s closing night the Mayor retracts the old lie, declares that the city will live alongside Zeraora, and orange lanterns float up into the dark. After the credits Risa storms back into Rick’s hospital room to ask how he knew where she was – Rick, it turns out, is the Pokémon Channel host, and those sunglasses had a camera in them.

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Major Characters

Ash Ketchum (Satoshi) is the I Choose You! Ash – same redesigned cap, same world – but this time he is a supporting player in other people’s story, drifting into Fula City alone for the festival with Pikachu, his only Pokémon, on his shoulder. He comes second in the Catch Race with a borrowed Ekans and Sentret, coaches Risa through her first battle, and supplies the film’s refrain: if you cannot do something alone, you can do it with a Pokémon.
Risa (Lisa; Rina Kawaei / Haven Paschall) is a high-school student and former regional running champion whose injury has left her afraid to run; she comes to the festival knowing nothing about Pokémon and leaves with an Eevee and her nerve back. Callahan (Kagachi; Kōji Ōkura / Billy Bob Thompson) is a big, likeable liar with a brilliant throwing arm and no Pokémon of his own, who cheats his way to the Catch Race trophy to impress his niece and is adopted, whether he likes it or not, by a Sudowoodo – his Japanese name is the word for the Chinese lantern plant, which in the language of flowers means deception. Toren (Torito; Gaku Hamada / Eddy Lee) is a painfully shy scientist at the Pokémon Research Pavilion who studies Pokémon moves as medicine, with a Chansey, a Staryu, a Smeargle and a Lurantis to help him; his Japanese name comes from the wolfsbane flower.
Harriet (Hisui; Masako Nozawa / Kathryn Cahill) is a gruff old woman who wants nothing to do with Pokémon and spends most of the film pursued by a growing parade of them – Togepi, Totodile, Marill, Smoochum, Heracross, Xatu, Tyrogue and a Machamp – after an accident with a flask of Sweet Scent. She helped build the city’s old wind plant, and lost her Snubbull in the fire fifty years ago. Margo (Largo; Mana Ashida / Erica Schroeder) is the Mayor’s young daughter, who has been secretly feeding and nursing an injured Zeraora in the abandoned power plant, with a Teddiursa and a Ditto for company, and who steals the Eternal Flame to keep the town away from it. Her father, Mayor Oliver (Kōichi Yamadera / Marc Thompson) – never actually named in the English dub – is a decent man carrying a fifty-year-old lie on behalf of the whole city.
Zeraora (Kōichi Yamadera / “Pete Zarustica”, the pseudonym of Oliver Wyman) is the film’s Mythical Pokémon: the Thunderclap Pokémon, fast, feline and hostile to humans since the fire, with Plasma Fists, Close Combat, Thunder Punch and Thunder to prove it. Lugia is a presence more than a character – the Legendary Pokémon who brings Fula City its wind, glimpsed in the legend and seen in full only when Risa returns the Flame at dawn.

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Other Characters & Pokémon Debuts

Rick (Riku; Shōko Nakagawa / Lianne Marie Dobbs) is Risa’s hospitalised little brother and, as the post-credits scene reveals, the host of the Pokémon Channel, which explains how he always seems to know where his sister is. Mia (Yū Shimamura / Martha Harms) is Callahan’s long-suffering younger sister and Kellie (Lily; Inori Minase / Laurie Hymes) her sickly daughter, whose hero-worship is the whole reason Callahan enters the race. Jason (Jake Paque) is the one colleague at the Research Pavilion who stands up for Toren; Townes, Hoyt and Miles – the “Lemon Kids” in Japan – run the lemonade stand and repeat the legend of Zeraora’s curse; and two nameless Pokémon hunters with a Houndoom and a Sneasel go after the “rare Pokémon” Callahan boasted about on television. Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy keep the town running, and the Mayor’s secretary keeps the Mayor running.
Jessie, James and Meowth spend the festival running a Lum Berry juice stand, burgling Toren’s laboratory and stealing – then promptly losing – the Effect Spore essence that causes the entire crisis, making this the first Pokémon movie in which Team Rocket are directly responsible for the plot. Their stock of Lum Berries ends up saving the day. Not one of Ash’s television companions appears, not even in the credits, for the first time in any Pokémon movie.

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Pokémon making their anime debut in the film

Only one Pokémon makes its anime debut: the Mythical Zeraora, revealed to the world three months before the film opened. Toren’s Lurantis is the only other Alola Pokémon in a cast that otherwise leans heavily on Johto – Sudowoodo, Eevee, Chansey, Smeargle, Totodile, Marill, Togepi, Smoochum, Heracross, Xatu, Tyrogue, Tyranitar and the rest – and the film marks the first anime appearance of a Typhlosion since Poetry Commotion! (AG055) in 2003 and the first Bayleef since Ash’s own in The Dream Continues! (BW142).

• Zeraora#807 · the Thunderclap Pokémon

Cast

The voice cast of both the Japanese and English versions. Japan’s celebrity guests were actress and former AKB48 idol Rina Kawaei (Risa), stage and screen actor Kōji Ōkura (Callahan), actor Gaku Hamada (Toren), Masako Nozawa – the voice of Goku – as Harriet, child star Mana Ashida (Margo) and TV personality Shōko Nakagawa (Rick), with Kōichi Yamadera doubling as the Mayor and Zeraora. The English dub was recorded in New York under voice director Lisa Ortiz; Haven Paschall, Risa’s voice, also sings the English ending theme. It was Unshō Ishizuka’s last Pokémon movie as narrator; he died a month after the film opened.

Character	English voice actor	Japanese voice actor
Ash Ketchum (Satoshi)	Sarah Natochenny	Rica Matsumoto
Pikachu	Ikue Ōtani	Ikue Ōtani
Risa (Lisa)	Haven Paschall	Rina Kawaei
Callahan (Kagachi)	Billy Bob Thompson	Kōji Ōkura
Toren (Torito)	Eddy Lee	Gaku Hamada
Harriet (Hisui)	Kathryn Cahill	Masako Nozawa
Margo (Largo)	Erica Schroeder	Mana Ashida
Rick (Riku)	Lianne Marie Dobbs	Shōko Nakagawa
Mayor Oliver	Marc Thompson	Kōichi Yamadera
Zeraora	Pete Zarustica (Oliver Wyman)	Kōichi Yamadera
Kellie (Lily)	Laurie Hymes	Inori Minase
Mia	Martha Harms	Yū Shimamura
Jason	Jake Paque	–
Townes, Hoyt and Miles	Lisa Adams, Lori Gardner and Lisa Ortiz	Nozomi Sasaki
Callahan’s Sudowoodo	Bill Rogers	Yūji Ueda
Officer Jenny (Junsar)	Emily Bauer	–
Nurse Joy (Joy)	Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld	–
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 English trailer for The Power of Us, from the official Pokémon YouTube channel.

The second Japanese trailer (April 2018), which revealed Zeraora, from the official Pokémon YouTube channel in Japan.

Trading Cards

Japan’s card of the film was Zeraora, released on 6 July 2018 in the Zeraora Special Jumbo Card Pack alongside a jumbo Zeraora and Friends card – Zeraora, Pikachu, Eevee, Sudowoodo and Lugia in Kouki Saitou’s artwork, with the movie logo in the corner and a thousand hit points. The regular-sized Zeraora (241/SM-P) was the Mythical Pokémon’s first card anywhere and later became Team Up 52/181 in English. Risa and her Eevee got a card of their own: a holofoil Eevee (247/SM-P) bundled with the anime edition of Porno Graffitti’s theme single Breath on 25 July 2018, with artwork that has never been printed in English. A Lugia promo (237/SM-P, later Team Up 131) was handed out with GX Starter Decks from the film’s opening day, and South Korean cinema-goers received their own Zeraora (126/SM-P) with new artwork by kodama and a serial code for the game.

In the West, unlike I Choose You!, no Black Star Promo was tied to the film; Zeraora’s English debut came instead in Lost Thunder (November 2018), with Zeraora-GX, and the promo art followed in Team Up in February 2019. Everything is catalogued in our Trading Card Game section.

• Zeraora and FriendsJumbo SM-P promo · Zeraora Special Jumbo Card Pack, 6 July 2018
• Zeraora241/SM-P · Zeraora Special Jumbo Card Pack; Team Up 52/181 in English
• Zeraora126/SM-P (Korea) · cinema gift, December 2018
• Eevee247/SM-P · with the anime edition of “Breath”, 25 July 2018
• Lugia237/SM-P · GX Starter Deck promotion, 13 July 2018; Team Up 131/181 in English

Movie Ads & Posters

Posters and home-video artwork for The Power of Us – the Japanese theatrical poster with the whole cast on the Fula City waterfront, the December 2017 teaser visual, Yoshitoshi Shinomiya’s painted key visual, the English poster, the logos, and the DVD and Blu-ray releases from Japan and Australia. The US (Viz Media) and UK (Manga Entertainment) covers, and any magazine adverts, are still wanted.

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Trivia & Facts

• This is the first Pokémon movie not directed by Kunihiko Yuyama, who had directed all twenty before it and stayed on as animation supervisor while series director Tetsuo Yajima took over; it is also the first co-produced with WIT Studio, the first to open on a Friday in Japan, the last released in the Heisei era, and the last narrated by Unshō Ishizuka, who died on 13 August 2018.
• Ash has never had less company. He travels with no companions, none of his television friends appear even in cameo, Pikachu is his only Pokémon – the fewest in any movie – and the Ekans and Sentret he catches in the race are the only Pokémon he has ever owned, however briefly, that he never had in the series. For the first time since Destiny Deoxys the only talking Pokémon is Meowth, and for the first time in any film Team Rocket are directly responsible for the crisis.
  

  

• The English title is a deliberate echo of The Power of One: both films star Lugia and both take their titles from their English ending themes. The post-credits scene with Rick is the first in a Pokémon movie since Mewtwo Strikes Back, and the plain title card replaces the CGI title sequence used by every film before it.
• The Japanese ending theme is Breath by Porno Graffitti, which went on to serve as the TV ending for SM082 to SM086 with clips from the film; the English version swaps it for The Power of Us, written and produced by Ed Goldfarb and sung by Haven Paschall, the voice of Risa. That is the dub’s only musical change – for the first time since Genesect the Japanese score was kept intact – though Disney XD’s broadcast cut the credits down to thirty seconds over black.
• The game tie-ins were a “Wind Lugia” – level 100, with its Hidden Ability Multiscale and a Hurricane it cannot normally learn – for Japanese advance-ticket holders from 13 April 2018, and a level 50 Zeraora holding an Air Balloon for everyone who saw the film in Japan between 13 July and 30 September 2018, plus a Pokémon Ga-Olé arcade disc. Western players got their Zeraora codes from October 2018 to January 2019 through GAME, GameStop and EB Games.
  

  

• Fula City (フウラシティ, from fū, wind) is modelled on San Francisco – trams, cable cars and all – and the staff scouted California locations including Yosemite and Santa Monica Pier. Zeraora was teased in the earliest synopses only as “the Mythical Pokémon Inazuma” (lightning) until its reveal on Oha Suta on 9 April 2018, and the painted key visual released that July is by Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, who drew the flashback sequences in Your Name.
  

  

• With a 71% Tomatometer the film became the first Pokémon movie rated “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, and it remains the highest-rated of the series there. A manga side story, Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us – Zeraora’s Story by Kemon Kawamoto, tells how Zeraora was born of lightning striking an erupting volcano; Viz published it in English in June 2019.
• Kōichi Yamadera voices both the Mayor and Zeraora, as he had voiced Hoopa Unbound and Alva, Marshadow and a long line of movie Pokémon before them; Masako Nozawa, Goku himself, plays Harriet; and Zeraora’s English voice is credited to “Pete Zarustica”, the pseudonym Oliver Wyman uses for his Pokémon work. The Mayor is never once called Oliver in the English dub.

Errors

• During the Pokémon Catch Race, as Risa watches Ash chase the Tyranitar, a Trainer’s Squirtle in the background has its shell coloured the same blue as its body.
• Risa kicks off her heeled shoes before her run to the stadium, and they are left lying in the street next to Ash’s cap – but a few scenes later both the shoes and the cap have quietly vanished from the spot.
  

  

Reviews & Reception

The Power of Us opened at number two in Japan on 13 July 2018, a whisker (3.1%) behind I Choose You!’s opening the year before, and topped the Pia exit-poll satisfaction survey that weekend with 92.8% approval. It finished on ¥3.09 billion, the eighth-biggest Japanese film of 2018 – a touch below its predecessor’s ¥3.55 billion but comfortably ahead of the lean years of 2014–16. Overseas the Fathom Events run took $789,000 across four dates in around a thousand US cinemas, the UK added $227,000, and South Korea a healthy $1.36 million; Box Office Mojo’s running total, which stopped counting Japan in mid-August, puts the worldwide figure at a little under $24 million, while the final Japanese gross alone is worth about $28 million.

The reviews were the best any Pokémon film had received in the West. With a 71% Tomatometer it became the first entry in the series to be rated Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and it still holds the highest score of any Pokémon movie there. IGN’s Rosie Knight gave it 7.5 and called it sweet and sincere, Anime UK News’ Josh A. Stevens went to 9 out of 10 and declared it the best film in the series, Nintendojo’s Marc Deschamps graded it a B+ and suggested it should be the template for every Pokémon movie to come, and the Daily Mirror gave it four stars. The dissenters were loud, though: The Guardian’s Mike McCahill awarded a single star and dismissed the whole thing as a feature-length advert lost in “promo fog”, and The List thought it strictly for fans. Common Sense Media settled on three stars and called it one of the better films in the series.

Fans were kinder still, if divided along familiar lines. The ensemble of ordinary, flawed human leads, the Callahan–Sudowoodo and Risa–Eevee stories and WIT Studio’s animation were widely praised, and the lower-stakes, almost slice-of-life tone was a welcome change for many after two decades of world-ending Legendaries; others felt Zeraora was under-used, Ash reduced to a bystander and the Team Rocket-caused plot contrived. The film did well on home video and streaming – Beyond’s Australian discs in December 2018, Manga’s UK Collector’s Edition in February 2019, Viz’s US release in March 2019, two years on Netflix in the US from New Year’s Day 2020, and a place on Viz’s Tales of Lugia double bill with The Power of One in 2024.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 6.3/10 user rating
• Rotten Tomatoes – 71% Tomatometer (7 reviews) · 70% audience score“Sweet and sincere” – Rosie Knight, IGN
• Metacritic – No Metascore (2 critic reviews) · 7.3/10 user score“Dud animation lost in promo fog” – Mike McCahill, The Guardian
• Letterboxd – 3.2/5 average from 12,000+ ratings
• Common Sense Media – 3/5 stars · recommended for ages 7+“One of the better movies in the series” – Brian Costello