Pokémon the Movie Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel

Quick menu: Story · Major Characters · Other Characters & Debuts · Cast · Trailer · Trading Cards · Movie Ads · Trivia · Errors · Reviews

Pokémon the Movie: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel is the 19th film in the Pokémon franchise, and the third and final film of the Pokémon XY series. The movie’s name in Japanese, when directly translated, comes out as “Pokémon the Movie XY&Z: Volcanion and the Ingenious Magearna” – the karakuri of the title is the word for a clockwork automaton.

The movie was directed by Kunihiko Yuyama and complements the final segment of the Pokémon XY anime, Pokémon Season 19 – XYZ.

The first we saw of the movie was in a vague teaser trailer at the end of Pokémon: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages. The trailer showed Zygarde in both its Core and Complete Formes but didn’t show a lot else. It wasn’t until January 2016’s issue of CoroCoro that Volcanion was revealed to be taking a starring role in the movie; at this point the title had still not been announced. That came in the March 2016 issue of CoroCoro, which gave the film further coverage, revealing both the movie’s title and Magearna – a brand-new Pokémon from the then-unannounced seventh generation – as the other star of the film.

Release around the world

Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel was initially released in Japanese theatres on 16 July 2016, with plans to release in the USA and Europe later in the year. The English dub premiered first in Australia and New Zealand, with special screenings at Hoyts cinemas from 4 November 2016, before arriving in the UK via a showing on CITV on 19 November 2016. In the US the movie premiered on Disney XD on 5 December 2016 – the first Pokémon movie to premiere on the channel after the series left Cartoon Network – as part of a launch evening that also carried the first two episodes of Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon.

DVD releases followed in Australia on 7 December 2016 and in Japan, on DVD and Blu-ray, a week later on 14 December. Viz Media’s US DVD arrived on 21 March 2017 and the UK DVD and Blu-ray on 15 May 2017.

Unusually, Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel had no Pikachu short in front of it – the first Pokémon movie to go without one since Victini and Reshiram / Zekrom in 2011. Executive producer Junya Okamoto explained that the previous year’s short had been so demanding to make that the team gave the format a year off; as it turned out, it never came back.

Chronology in relation to the anime
In Japan the film opened on 16 July 2016, between Valuable Experience for All! (XY126, 7 July) and Analysis Versus Passion! (XY127, 21 July) in XYZ – right in the middle of the Lumiose Conference, the Kalos League tournament. The film itself has to sit a little earlier, while Ash, Serena, Clemont and Bonnie are still on the road with all eight Kalos badges in hand. Ash’s team is Pikachu, Greninja (complete with its Ash-Greninja form), Talonflame, Hawlucha and Noivern, with Goodra still away at the Lumiose Badlands wetlands; Serena brings Braixen, Pancham and Sylveon, Clemont his Chespin, Bunnelby and Luxray along with Dedenne, and Bonnie is still looking after Squishy, the little green Zygarde Core she picked up at the start of the season. In the dub, Disney XD premiered the film on 5 December 2016, two months after Valuable Experience for All! aired in the US and on the same night as the first episodes of Sun & Moon.

Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel is broken down into the following parts

• Pokémon the Movie: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel – the main feature, 95 minutes, opening with the series’ traditional “World of Pokémon” introduction (the last film to begin that way)
• No Pikachu short – for the first time since 2011 the feature played on its own in Japanese cinemas

Story

Mega Wave

High above the clouds an airship carrying a sealed container is being chased down by a Pokémon wreathed in steam. Its pilot, Cherie, sends her partner Levi out on deck to deal with it, and Levi releases an Alakazam and a Glalie, then touches a jewelled bracelet and calls on a power he names “Mega Wave” – forcing both Pokémon to Mega Evolve on the spot. Volcanion lands and fights the pair to a standstill, but in the scuffle Levi snaps an electronic band around one of its legs. A second band is batted away and sails off into the sky; moments later Mega Glalie freezes Volcanion solid and the airship launches it overboard like a cannonball.

• 
• 

An icy meteor

Far below, Ash, Serena, Clemont and Bonnie have stopped for a training battle when something crashes into the field like a meteor. As the steam clears from the thawing Volcanion, Ash notices the stray band has clamped itself to his own arm – and when Volcanion tries to leave, Ash is yanked bodily after it. Clemont works out that the two bands are magnetically chained together. Volcanion wants nothing to do with humans and flies off in pursuit of the airship anyway, dragging a protesting Ash and Pikachu through the sky, pausing only at a roadside café long enough for Team Rocket to spot them and give chase.

• 
• 

The Azoth Kingdom

The airship delivers its cargo to a castle of gears and chimneys in the Azoth Kingdom, where Cabinet Minister Alva and a boy, Prince Raleigh, open the container to reveal Magearna – an Artificial Pokémon built five hundred years ago by the kingdom’s great inventor Nikola. Volcanion bursts in with Ash in tow, and Alva uses the Mega Wave of his staff to Mega Evolve his Gengar alongside Levi’s Alakazam and Glalie. Volcanion is frozen again, and while Ash is stuck fast beside it Raleigh excitedly tells him Magearna’s story. Ash’s own Pokémon catch up, the three Mega-Evolved Pokémon are overwhelmed in the confusion, and Volcanion escapes with Magearna in its arms – to Alva’s fury. Raleigh’s elder sister Kimia, told of the intruder by her assistant Flamel, takes off in her flying machine to investigate, while Levi and Cherie catch Team Rocket scaling the castle wall.

• 
• 
• 

Team Rocket’s Mega Wave

Under a bridge Ash is reunited with his friends and Magearna introduces itself, scolding Volcanion for trying to keep the humans away. Serena buys Ash a change of clothes to replace his soaked outfit, and Clemont fails completely to get the bands off, so the whole party is obliged to follow Volcanion and Magearna home to the Nebel Plateau. Alva, meanwhile, has discovered that his new prisoners know Ash well, and recruits Team Rocket to his cause with Mega Wave bracelets and a Heracross and Pinsir to use them on. Their night attack is broken up when Volcanion lets off an explosive Steam Eruption and Kimia arrives with a Shiny Mega Gardevoir of her own to send the trio blasting off. Clemont hands Ash a protective suit for the next eruption, and Kimia explains what is going on at court: Raleigh is fascinated by the arcane science Nikola practised, Alva has made himself the boy’s tutor and confidant, and Kimia trusts the minister about as far as she can throw him.

• 
• 
• 

The Nebel Plateau

The Nebel Plateau is a hidden highland sanctuary where every Pokémon has, at some time, been hurt by people, and Volcanion is their self-appointed guardian. The visitors slowly win the residents over – bringing out their own Pokémon, chasing off a hunter who tries to snatch an Amaura, and Kimia treating the injured Amaura with a Super Potion. In the cave where Volcanion lives Ash watches it refill its water reserves in a pool, Clemont’s protective suit promptly malfunctions and blows up, and the group realises that the acid of the cave’s Gulpin can dissolve the bands. Freed at last, Ash is told by Volcanion to go home. He refuses, and the two of them carry on arguing exactly as before.

• 
• 
• 
• 

The Soul-Heart

Alva’s forces descend on the plateau under cover of smoke, snaring Pokémon and humans alike in electrified traps while Levi and Cherie unleash an entire army of Mega-Evolved Pokémon. Threatened with watching its friends tortured, Magearna gives itself up and is carried to Alva by Levi’s Steelix. Raleigh believes his dream of restoring the kingdom’s past glory is about to come true – until Alva has Gengar paralyse Magearna, opens the hatch in its chest and tears out the Soul-Heart, the crystal that gives it life. Levi holds the horrified prince back as Magearna goes dark and its body is tossed aside; Alva then orders every Pokémon in his army to fire Hyper Beam into the valley below, apparently wiping out Ash, Kimia and everyone else, and has Gengar put Raleigh to sleep so that he can take the throne himself.

• 
• 
• 
• 

The flying fortress

Safeguard and Dig have saved everyone below, and the group recovers Magearna’s lifeless body and resolves to get the Soul-Heart back. Riding Kimia’s aircraft towards the castle, Volcanion tells them how it met Magearna centuries ago in the plateau’s flower field, and Flamel reports that Alva intends to use the Soul-Heart to power the hidden defences Nikola built into the castle. He does: the whole fortress tears itself out of the ground and takes to the air, bristling with weapons. Its great cannon will not fire, though – the captive Meowth realises that Magearna’s spirit, still inside the crystal, is fighting Alva every step of the way. Ash releases every Pokémon he has and the group storms the ramparts, where Levi, Cherie and their Mega Wave army are waiting. Volcanion punches through to the control room with Ash, Kimia, Greninja and Gardevoir, only for all of them to be caught in Alva’s traps. To break Magearna’s will Alva turns the cannon on the Nebel Plateau and fires; the flower field burns, and the light inside the Soul-Heart goes out. When he fires again the plateau’s Pokémon join forces to block the beam, and Squishy, gathering a swarm of Zygarde Cells, briefly takes on its Complete Forme to hold the line. Volcanion rips the traps apart even with its water gone, Pikachu floors Alva and Gengar, and Ash jams the minister’s staff into the machinery, shattering the Mega Wave jewel: every forced Mega Evolution ends at once and the army scatters. Alva flees on an arcane-science jetpack, Greninja’s Water Shuriken brings him down, and Ash puts the Soul-Heart back into Magearna – but the Pokémon that wakes has no memory and no personality at all.

• 
• 
• 
• 

Flowers

Alva’s parting gift is to lock the fortress on a collision course with the Nebel Plateau, and Raleigh cannot override the controls. Someone will have to destroy the engine room from inside, and Volcanion volunteers; Ash refuses to let it, and Volcanion instead helps the evacuation – then, with everyone safely aboard Kimia’s aircraft, turns back, apologises to the friend it could not save, and detonates itself inside the castle. On the plateau Ash, his friends, Kimia and Raleigh grieve with the Pokémon until a thick fog rolls in and Volcanion staggers out of it, barely alive. The sight brings Magearna’s true self flooding back, and when Volcanion collapses Magearna produces flowers from its arms. The pollen makes Volcanion sneeze – and the sneeze brings it round. Pikachu and the others are made honorary citizens of the plateau, and even Team Rocket, watching from the bushes, are content with how it all turned out. Over the credits the Pokémon bury the wreck of the fortress, Bonnie proposes to Flamel on Clemont’s behalf, Kimia tracks down Alva tangled in a tree and arrests him with the very same magnetic bands, Levi and Cherie are jailed, and Raleigh sets out with his Slurpuff on a journey of his own.

• 
• 
• 

Major Characters

Ash Ketchum (Satoshi), Serena, Clemont (Citron) and Bonnie (Eureka) take their final movie bow as a group, and for once the film belongs to Ash and his Pokémon: Greninja fights in its Ash-Greninja form, Talonflame, Hawlucha and Noivern all get their moment against the Mega Wave army, and Pikachu lands the blow that fells the villain. It is also the last time Team Rocket appear in a film as the hapless trio of the main series.
Volcanion (Somegorō Ichikawa / Mike Pollock) is the Steam Pokémon of X and Y: proud, grumpy, contemptuous of humans after a lifetime of watching them hurt the Pokémon of the Nebel Plateau, and – thanks to the magnetic bands – stuck with Ash for most of the movie. Magearna (Yuka Terasaki) is the first Pokémon of the seventh generation ever to appear in the anime, the clockwork creation of the inventor Nikola, animated by the Soul-Heart in its chest; in flashback we see it in its Original Color, with the Azoth Kingdom’s coat of arms on its dress.

The humans of the Azoth Kingdom are Alva (Jarvis; Kōichi Yamadera / Billy Bob Thompson), the Cabinet Minister whose staff channels the Mega Wave and who means to rule with Nikola’s weapons; Kimia (Mayu Matsuoka / Riley Joseph), the princess who flies her own aircraft and commands a Shiny Mega Gardevoir; her younger brother Prince Raleigh (Racel; Shōko Nakagawa / Laurie Hymes), a gentle history-obsessed boy with a Slurpuff who learns the hard way whom to trust; and Alva’s enforcers Levi (Dohga; Yasuyuki Kase / Jake Paque) and Cherie (Ether; Kanako Tōjō / Eileen Stevens), who between them field fourteen Mega-Evolved Pokémon. The inventor Nikola (Éliphas; Tomomichi Nishimura / Scottie Ray) appears in flashback, with his Ampharos and Skitty.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Other Characters & Pokémon Debuts

Jessie, James and Meowth are more involved than usual: hired by Alva and handed Mega Wave bracelets, blasted off by Kimia, then held hostage in the fortress until Jessie and James sneak aboard to rescue Meowth. Kimia’s loyal assistant Flamel (Sanae Kobayashi / Aurora Bea) ends the film engaged to Clemont, courtesy of Bonnie, and the opening “World of Pokémon” sequence shows the start of Alain’s battle with Korrina – Mega Charizard X against Mega Lucario – whose conclusion had aired in A Diamond in the Rough! a month earlier.

The Pokémon of the Nebel Plateau include an Amaura, a Chesnaught, a Kirlia, an Aron, the Gulpin of Volcanion’s cave and dozens more, and it is their Safeguard and Dig that save everyone from Alva’s Hyper Beam barrage. Levi and Cherie’s Mega Wave army runs to Alakazam, Glalie, Steelix, Manectric, Heracross, Pinsir, Camerupt, Banette, Houndoom, Tyranitar, Pidgeot, Swampert, Aggron, Beedrill, Salamence and Sharpedo – the biggest gathering of Mega Evolutions the anime has ever staged. Squishy gets a scene-stealing moment of its own, and the crowd scenes squeeze in a Debutante Trim Furfrou and the first Ambipom in the anime since Dawn’s.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Pokémon making their anime debut in the film

Two Mythical Pokémon make their anime debut here – the first time more than one has starred in a single film – and Magearna arrived a full four months before Sun & Moon made its generation official.

• Volcanion#721 · the Steam Pokémon
• Magearna#801 · the first Generation VII Pokémon on screen
• Original Color Magearna#801 · seen in flashback

Cast

The voice cast of both the Japanese and English versions. Volcanion is played in Japanese by the kabuki actor Somegorō Ichikawa VII (now Matsumoto Kōshirō X) and in English by Mike Pollock, better known as Dr. Eggman in Sonic; actress Mayu Matsuoka is Kimia, Shōko Nakagawa makes her tenth movie appearance as Raleigh, and Kōichi Yamadera – Hoopa Unbound the year before – is the villain Alva.

Character	English voice actor	Japanese voice actor
Ash Ketchum (Satoshi)	Sarah Natochenny	Rica Matsumoto
Pikachu	Ikue Ōtani	Ikue Ōtani
Serena	Haven Paschall	Mayuki Makiguchi
Clemont (Citron)	Mike Liscio	Yūki Kaji
Bonnie (Eureka)	Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld	Mariya Ise
Dedenne	Megumi Satō	Megumi Satō
Squishy (Puni-chan)	Billy Bob Thompson	Yūki Kaji
Jessie (Musashi)	Michele Knotz	Megumi Hayashibara
James (Kojirō)	Carter Cathcart	Shin-ichirō Miki
Meowth (Nyarth)	Carter Cathcart	Inuko Inuyama
Wobbuffet (Sonans)	Kayzie Rogers	Yūji Ueda
Volcanion	Mike Pollock	Somegorō Ichikawa
Magearna	Yuka Terasaki	Yuka Terasaki
Alva (Jarvis)	Billy Bob Thompson	Kōichi Yamadera
Kimia	Riley Joseph	Mayu Matsuoka
Raleigh (Racel)	Laurie Hymes	Shōko Nakagawa
Levi (Dohga)	Jake Paque	Yasuyuki Kase
Cherie (Ether)	Eileen Stevens	Kanako Tōjō
Nikola (Éliphas)	Scottie Ray	Tomomichi Nishimura
Flamel	Aurora Bea	Sanae Kobayashi
Narrator	Rodger Parsons	Unshō Ishizuka

Trailer

The first official English trailer for Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel, from the official Pokémon YouTube channel.

The second English trailer, released ahead of the Disney XD premiere.

Trading Cards

For the first time in years there was no trading card in the Japanese cinema gift: audiences in 2016 received a Pokémon Ga-Olé arcade disk instead, whose QR code unlocked Magearna in Sun and Moon that November. The TCG tie-ins came through the shops. The Black Mega Gardevoir Campaign (17 June – 8 July 2016), themed on Kimia’s Shiny Mega Gardevoir, gave anyone spending ¥500 on Pokémon products a pack containing one of four promos – a Volcanion (249/XY-P) among them – plus a half-size play mat; a second Volcanion (266/XY-P) came tucked into first-edition copies of YUKI’s ending-theme single Mailing out My Voice on 13 July; and a Magearna (268/XY-P) was the bonus card in the Volcanion-EX Special Jumbo Card Pack of 5 August.

In the West, Volcanion-EX and Magearna-EX headlined the Steam Siege expansion of August 2016, the campaign Volcanion became the set’s prerelease promo XY145, and both EX cards were reissued with new artwork as XY173 and XY175 in the Battle Heart tins that September. Everything is catalogued in our Trading Card Game section.

• VolcanionXY145 · 249/XY-P Black Mega Gardevoir Campaign & Steam Siege prerelease
• Volcanion266/XY-P · Mailing out My Voice CD insert, 13 July 2016
• Magearna268/XY-P · Volcanion-EX Special Jumbo Card Pack, 5 August 2016
• Volcanion-EXXY173 · Battle Heart tin, September 2016
• Magearna-EXXY175 · Battle Heart tin, September 2016
• Volcanion-EX115/114 · Steam Siege secret rare, art by Mitsuhiro Arita
• Steam Siege booster packVolcanion artwork, August 2016

Movie Ads & Posters

Posters and home-video artwork for Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel – the Japanese teaser and theatrical posters, the English poster, the CoroCoro reveal page, the manga adaptation covers, and the DVD and Blu-ray releases from Japan, Australia, the US and the UK. Magazine clippings and adverts are always wanted.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Trivia & Facts

• In Japan the film was released between Valuable Experience for All! (XY126) and Analysis Versus Passion! (XY127), but since those episodes are set in the middle of the Lumiose Conference it must take place a little earlier in the story.
• It is the first Pokémon movie to star more than one Mythical Pokémon, and the only animated appearance of a seventh-generation Pokémon before Sun & Moon began – Magearna was revealed in the March 2016 issue of CoroCoro (on sale in mid-February), around a fortnight before the games themselves were announced. In the US the film premiered on Disney XD alongside the first two episodes of the new series.
  

  

• It was the first movie since Victini and Reshiram / Zekrom (2011) without a Pikachu short. Executive producer Junya Okamoto said the 2015 short had been so hard to make that the team were giving it a rest; none has been made since.
• The “World of Pokémon” introduction shows the beginning of Alain’s battle with Korrina, the end of which had been seen in A Diamond in the Rough! (XY123). This is the last film to open with the sequence – from I Choose You! onwards it was moved to the very end – and the last to be animated by OLM’s Team Kamei, the last set in the main anime continuity (the CGI remake Mewtwo Strikes Back – Evolution aside), and the last to feature Kayzie Rogers as Wobbuffet before her retirement.
  

  

• For most of the film Ash wears a new outfit that Serena buys him after his own is soaked – one of the very few costume changes he has ever had in a movie.
  

  

• A Mega Sableye appears on the main Japanese poster as a member of Alva’s army, but is nowhere to be seen in the film itself. Among the many Mega Evolutions that are, Pikachu’s Iron Tail is given a metallic CGI sheen for the first time since the Black & White series, the Gulpin’s Gastro Acid is the move’s anime debut despite having existed in the games since Generation IV, and the film has the first Ambipom in the anime other than Dawn’s and the first Glameow since Zoroark: Master of Illusions.
• The English dub is dedicated to the memory of Eric Medalle, The Pokémon Company International’s creative director, who died in March 2016. Closed captions on Disney XD and CITV manage to misname two of the leads, rendering Kimia as “Chymia” and repeatedly calling Alva “Eliphas” – which is actually Nikola’s Japanese name – and Sean Schemmel voiced Alva in the dubbed teaser before Billy Bob Thompson took the role.
• CoroCoro ran a readers’ vote to choose the game distribution that accompanied the film: Greninja won, ahead of Arceus, Mew, Pikachu and Sylveon, and was given away holding a Master Ball, while Simisear, which finished dead last of 720, was handed its own consolation distribution at Japanese shops. Passcodes for a Shiny Mega Gardevoir and a Mega Gengar modelled on Kimia’s and Alva’s Pokémon followed, and the cinema gift itself was a Pokémon Ga-Olé disk with a QR code that unlocked Magearna in Sun and Moon.
  

  

• The dub replaced the opening theme XY&Z with Stand Tall and YUKI’s ending song Mailing out My Voice with Soul-Heart. It also removes the sound of Magearna screaming as the flower field burns, and cuts 37 frames – about a second and a half – of Ash, Pikachu, Greninja, Kimia and Gardevoir being shocked by Alva’s chains.

Errors

• When Levi and Cherie unleash their entire Mega Wave army it numbers fourteen Pokémon – two more than the twelve two Trainers should be able to carry between them.
  

  

• After kicking Mega Sharpedo during the big battle, Hawlucha’s mouth is coloured red instead of white.
  

  

• After Mega Evolving, Kimia’s Gardevoir has a blue torso in one shot instead of black.
• When Kimia arrests Alva during the credits her Gardevoir is missing both its necklace and the Gardevoirite it carries.
• In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, as Volcanion prepares to destroy the fortress, Ash says it is “outside the water” rather than out of water.

Reviews & Reception

Volcanion and the Ingenious Magearna opened fourth at the Japanese box office with ¥324 million from 366 screens – the second-lowest opening in the series at that point – and finished its ten-weekend run on about ¥2.15 billion, the lowest Japanese total of any Pokémon movie to date and the fifth consecutive year-on-year decline. A further $5.9 million or so came from cinemas overseas, for a worldwide total of around $26 million; everywhere else it went straight to television and disc.

With no Western cinema release there was next to no mainstream criticism, but among fans it has aged well and is often ranked near the top of the XY trilogy. The odd-couple relationship between Ash and the ill-tempered Volcanion is the thing most people remember fondly, the Mega Evolution free-for-all on the flying fortress gave the animators a chance to show off, and the Nebel Plateau sequences have a warmth the previous two films lacked. The complaints are familiar ones: Alva is a stock villain, Magearna spends most of the running time as cargo, and the sacrifice-and-miraculous-recovery ending had been done several times before. As the last movie set in the original anime continuity, it has also taken on a nostalgic glow as the end of an era.

On home video Australia’s DVD came first on 7 December 2016, Japan’s DVD and Blu-ray a week later, Viz Media’s US DVD on 21 March 2017 and the UK’s DVD and Blu-ray on 15 May 2017.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 5.9/10 from around 1,900 user ratings
• Rotten Tomatoes – 69% audience score (50+ ratings) · no critics’ score – only one review“It tosses away all the innovations introduced by previous movies” – Sebastian Zavala Kahn, Más Gamers
• Letterboxd – 2.9/5 average from 9,000+ ratings
• Anime News Network – “Worth Seeing” tier in ANN’s ranking of every Pokémon movie“The character dynamics between the heroes elevates Volcanion” – Callum May