Pokémon Movie: Zoroark Master of Illusions

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Pokémon – Zoroark: Master of Illusions, or as its Japanese title directly translates Pocket Monsters Diamond & Pearl the Movie: Phantom Ruler: Zoroark, is the 13th film in the Pokémon franchise and the final part of the Diamond & Pearl series of films.

Although the fourth of four movies to complement the Diamond and Pearl series of the anime, this movie stands separately from the three movies before it, which comprised the Diamond & Pearl Trilogy – those movies being The Rise of Darkrai, Giratina & The Sky Warrior and Arceus & The Jewel of Life. It is the only Diamond & Pearl movie without a Mythical Pokémon in the title role; instead it introduced the world to Zorua and Zoroark, a full two months before Pokémon Black and White reached Japanese shops.

The initial release of the movie came in Japan on 10 July 2010, and it had a staggered global release which completed in February the following year when the European releases were all done.

Release around the world

The US cinema and DVD release of the film was dealt with by Universal Pictures, and the movie aired on Cartoon Network on 5 February 2011, coinciding with the day that the Diamond and Pearl anime saga concluded in America. The same day it began a run of screenings in selected US cinemas as part of the Pokémon Black and White Tour – the first time a Pokémon movie had played in American theatres since Pokémon Heroes in 2003.

Disney XD aired it in the Netherlands on 25 February 2011 and the Dutch dub version of the DVD came out there in May 2011. The UK channel CITV also aired the film on 26 February 2011 – less than a month after it was aired in the US, significant due to the fact the UK usually gets Pokémon movie releases much later on. This was also the first time that a new movie came straight to terrestrial (free) TV. It aired again in the UK on Disney XD on 5 May 2011.

The UK DVD release was dealt with by Universal UK, who packaged a limited edition Celebi trading card with it. For another first in the series, the UK actually got this movie on DVD before the US did, and additionally it was the first Pokémon movie to reach the UK on DVD since the 2008 release of Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai.

Like many Pokémon movies, the settings for Zoroark: Master of Illusions were inspired by real-world locations. This time it was based on areas of Belgium and the Netherlands; Kunihiko Yuyama and his production team travelled across the Amstel River, Brussels and Kinderdijk amongst other places before production of the movie began. Zoroark: Master of Illusions was also the sixth movie in the Pokémon series to feature debut appearances of Pokémon from a yet-to-be-released generation.

Chronology in relation to the anime
In Japan the film opened on 10 July 2010, between League Unleashed! (DP183, 1 July) and Casting a Paul on Barry! (DP184, 15 July) – right in the middle of the Lily of the Valley Conference in Sinnoh League Victors, which makes a road trip to Crown City impossible to take literally. It is best placed in the weeks before the League: Ash has all eight Sinnoh badges, Dawn has her five Ribbons and the Grand Festival behind her, and the Pokémon who appear are Ash’s Pikachu and Infernape, Dawn’s Piplup, Mamoswine and Togekiss and Brock’s Sudowoodo and Croagunk. In the dub the fit was neater than ever: Cartoon Network premiered the film on 5 February 2011, the very day the last Diamond and Pearl episode aired in America and seven weeks before Black & White began.

Zoroark: Master of Illusions is a single feature

• Pokémon – Zoroark: Master of Illusions – the main feature, 95 minutes; the year’s Pikachu short, Pikachu’s Strange Wonder Adventure (PK21), was shown only on All Nippon Airways flights

Story

Pokémon Baccer and a kidnapped Zoroark

After a quick battle against a Trainer with a Donphan, Ash, Dawn and Brock watch an exhibition match of Pokémon Baccer – a cross between football and a Pokémon battle – and learn that the World Cup is about to be held in Crown City. Team Rocket, disguised as janitors, overhear and plan a trip of their own. High above, on his airship, the media tycoon Grings Kodai is holding a Zoroark and her young Zorua captive. Using holograms of Raikou, Entei and Suicune he is training Zoroark to cast illusions of the three Legendary beasts, illusions so complete that they even register on camera; when he threatens Zorua to make her comply, the little fox turns itself into a Skiploom and floats out of a hatch to freedom.

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Zorua

Taking a “shortcut” through the woods, the gang save a Zorua from a pack of Vigoroth at the edge of a cliff and discover that it can speak to them telepathically – and that it has a habit of transforming into whoever it is talking to, Dawn, Ash and Brock included. Zorua explains that he and his “Meema” were snatched from their island home by a man who kept them on a flying ship, and that his mother is being taken to Crown City. He is going there to get her back, with or without their help.

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Crown City

Crown City is a canal-laced town of gabled houses, windmills and a great stadium, filling up with fans for the World Cup. There the group meet Karl, a scruffy investigative reporter in a Woobat cap with a Bronzor, and Rowena, Kodai’s assistant, who turns out to be Karl’s partner working undercover. Kodai himself is the toast of the town – the sponsor of the Baccer team, the owner of its television network, a man who can seemingly see the future.

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Kodai’s illusions

That night Kodai’s plan goes into action. Zoroark, forced to obey by the threat to her child, is set loose in the city in the guise of Raikou, Entei and Suicune, and Kodai’s cameras broadcast the “attack” live while his men quietly do the real damage to the streets. The city is evacuated, Kodai pins the blame on the beasts and then on Zoroark herself, and – wearing a bracelet called the illusion canceler that lets him see through any disguise – sets about his real purpose. Meanwhile the city’s flowers begin to bloom out of season: Celebi has returned to Crown City for the first time in twenty years.

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Celebi and the Time Ripple

Rowena tells the group the truth about Kodai. Twenty years ago he came to Crown City and found the Time Ripple, the trail of energy Celebi leaves when it travels through time; by seizing it he gained the power to see a few moments into the future, and used it to build his empire – but the act scorched the land around the city barren, and Celebi fled. Now the Ripple is fading, and Kodai has come back to drain it again, whatever it does to the town. Zorua, separated from the others, befriends Celebi in a park where the Legendary calms a squabble between wild Pokémon, and Kodai’s men close in on them both.

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Into the sewers

Karl leads Ash, Dawn and Brock back into the sealed-off city through the sewers, while Kodai’s enforcer Goone hunts for Celebi with his Scizor and a swarm of Ninjask and the elderly couple Joe and Tammy, with their Mightyena and Tangrowth, shelter Zorua. Team Rocket, naturally, have found their own way in. The chase converges on the Baccer stadium, where Celebi has gone to ground.

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The beasts arrive

And then the real Raikou, Entei and Suicune – all three shining in their rare colours – arrive in Crown City, drawn by the attack on their names, and go straight for Zoroark. Freed at last from Kodai’s control, she fights all three to protect the city and her son, conjuring a forest of crystal illusions around the stadium, until Ash and the others manage to make the Legendaries understand who the real enemy is.

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Mother and child

In the stadium Kodai finally lays hands on Celebi and begins to drain the Time Ripple – but it is an illusion. Zorua, biting at his arm, has already smashed the illusion canceler, and everything Kodai thinks he has won is Zoroark’s doing; Celebi and the Ripple are safe, and his gloating confession has been broadcast across the city by Karl’s camera. Zoroark, mortally hurt by the beasts’ attacks, collapses in Zorua’s arms, and it is Celebi, drawing on the Ripple, who heals her. Kodai makes a last run for his airship and is tricked by one more illusion into a long fall; he wakes up surrounded by police, with Goone and his men already under arrest.

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Farewell

With Crown City back to normal and the World Cup saved, Zoroark and Zorua set sail for the island they were stolen from, watched from the cliffs by the three Legendary beasts, and Ash promises to visit one day. The credits catch up with just about everyone from the Sinnoh years – and Team Rocket get the final shot before them, as in the earliest films.

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Major Characters

Ash Ketchum (Satoshi), Dawn (Hikari) and Brock (Takeshi) take their final movie bow as a trio here, with Pikachu and Piplup doing most of the work and Infernape, Mamoswine, Togekiss, Sudowoodo and Croagunk in support. For Dawn and Brock it was the last film before the series moved on to Unova without them.
Zorua (voiced by Kurumi Mamiya in Japanese and Eileen Stevens in English) is the film’s heart: a cheeky, stubborn, mischievous fox who speaks telepathically, transforms into anyone who annoys him and refuses to give up on his “Meema”. Zoroark (Romi Park in both languages) is that Meema – not, in fact, Zorua’s biological mother, but the Pokémon who raised him – whose Illusion ability lets her become the three Legendary beasts and who tears Crown City apart under duress to keep him safe. Raikou, Entei and Suicune appear together for the first time in the anime, in their Shiny colours, and Celebi returns to the movies for the first time since 4Ever.
Grings Kodai (Takanori Jinnai / Sean Schemmel) is one of the series’ nastiest villains: a smooth media baron with Garchomp-shaped hair, a Mismagius and a Shuppet, visions of the near future stolen from Celebi twenty years ago, and no qualms about poisoning a whole town to keep them. Goone (Kōichi Yamadera / Marc Thompson) is his muscle, with a Scizor and a flock of Ninjask; Rowena (Rioka; Natsuki Katō / Bella Hudson) is his secretary and Karl’s undercover partner. Karl (Kurt; Takashi Tsukamoto / Wayne Grayson) is the rumpled reporter with the Woobat cap and the Bronzor who exposes everything, and Peg (Proof; voiced in Japanese by Shōko Nakagawa) is Kodai’s young Baccer-team cheerleader.

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Other Characters & Pokémon Debuts

The elderly Joe and Tammy, with their Mightyena and Tangrowth, give Zorua shelter; the Baccer World Cup is contested by teams of Beldum, Metang and Metagross, Elekid, Electabuzz and Electivire and Magnezone, and Kodai’s own team is announced as the “Nimbasa Legends”, a sly nod to Unova. Ethan, the hero of HeartGold and SoulSilver, is the Trainer with the Donphan in the opening battle, and the mother and daughter who have cameoed in every Sinnoh movie are back for the fifth and final time. Jessie, James and Meowth get a mecha, a janitor disguise and the last laugh before the credits, over which Professor Rowan, Johanna, Paul, Zoey, Barry, Nando, Conway, Ursula, Cynthia, Palmer and the Sinnoh Gym Leaders and Elite Four all make an appearance.

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Pokémon making their anime debut in the film

Only two Pokémon debuted here – but they were the first Generation V Pokémon anyone had seen in the anime, two months ahead of Black and White and more than a year before the Black & White series began.

• Zorua#570 · the Tricky Fox Pokémon
• Zoroark#571 · the Illusion Fox Pokémon

Cast

The voice cast of both the Japanese and English versions of Zoroark: Master of Illusions. Romi Park – Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist – voices Zoroark in both languages, and Kōichi Yamadera clocks up his sixth movie villain’s sidekick as Goone.

Character	English voice actor	Japanese voice actor
Ash Ketchum (Satoshi)	Sarah Natochenny	Rica Matsumoto
Pikachu	Ikue Ōtani	Ikue Ōtani
Dawn (Hikari)	Emily Jenness	Megumi Toyoguchi
Piplup	Michele Knotz	Etsuko Kozakura
Brock (Takeshi)	Bill Rogers	Yūji Ueda
Jessie (Musashi)	Michele Knotz	Megumi Hayashibara
James (Kojirō)	Carter Cathcart	Shin-ichirō Miki
Meowth (Nyarth)	Carter Cathcart	Inuko Inuyama
Zoroark	Romi Park	Romi Park
Zorua	Eileen Stevens	Kurumi Mamiya
Grings Kodai	Sean Schemmel	Takanori Jinnai
Karl (Kurt)	Wayne Grayson	Takashi Tsukamoto
Rowena (Rioka)	Bella Hudson	Natsuki Katō
Goone	Marc Thompson	Kōichi Yamadera
Peg (Proof)	Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld	Shōko Nakagawa
Joe	Nick Sullivan	Yuzuru Fujimoto
Tammy (Tomo)	Annie Roland	Ai Satō
Celebi	Rie Kugimiya	Rie Kugimiya
Raikou	Katsuyuki Konishi	Katsuyuki Konishi
Entei	Kenta Miyake	Kenta Miyake
Suicune	Kiyotaka Furushima	Kiyotaka Furushima
Narrator	Rodger Parsons	Unshō Ishizuka

Trailer

The official English trailer for Zoroark: Master of Illusions, from the official Pokémon YouTube channel.

The in-flight Pikachu short

The 2010 short, Pikachu’s Strange Wonder Adventure (PK21, often translated as Pikachu’s Really Mysterious Adventure), was shown only aboard All Nippon Airways domestic flights during August 2010. Pikachu is whisked into a wonderland to help a lost Unown find its way back to its friends before Meowth gets there first. It came out on DVD in Japan in July 2011 and had its television premiere on TV Tokyo on 20 October 2011, but it has never been released outside Japan, so there is no legitimate copy to embed here.

Trading Cards

With the card game between eras in 2010, Japan’s movie promotion took an unusual form. Readers of Shogakukan’s children’s magazines were invited to design their own Illusion’s Zorua and Illusion’s Zoroark cards on printed templates; 660 selected entrants received a standard print illustrated by the 2010 Pikachu Project animation team, and the ten winning young artists each had 200 copies of their own design printed, every card stamped in gold foil with “Pokémon Card Game Design Contest Award”. The Shiny Raikou, Entei and Suicune of the film also appeared as L-P promos in the Shiny Pokémon Present Campaign that spring.

In the West the film finally brought cards back to a Pokémon movie. A jumbo Zorua and Celebi was handed out at the Pokémon Black and White Tour where the film screened in American cinemas, a jumbo Zoroark and Legendary Pokémon came in the Call of Legends World of Illusions Box, and a non-holo Celebi from Triumphant was tucked inside the DVD and Blu-ray – the card Universal UK packed with the British release. Everything is catalogued in our Trading Card Game section.

• Zorua and CelebiJumbo · Pokémon Black & White Tour, 2011
• Zoroark and Legendary PokémonJumbo · World of Illusions Box
• CelebiTriumphant 3/102 · DVD and Blu-ray insert
• World of Illusions BoxCall of Legends, 2011
• Illusion’s ZoruaL-P Promo · Design Contest, Kindergarten
• Illusion’s ZoruaL-P Promo · Design Contest, 1st Grade
• Illusion’s ZoruaL-P Promo · Design Contest, Televi-Kun
• Illusion’s ZoruaL-P Promo · Design Contest, Pokémon Fan
• Illusion’s ZoroarkL-P Promo · Design Contest, 3rd Grade
• Illusion’s ZoroarkL-P Promo · Design Contest, CoroCoro
• Illusion’s ZoroarkL-P Promo · Design Contest, Ichiban

Movie Ads & Posters

Posters and home-video artwork for Zoroark: Master of Illusions – the mysterious “Phantom Ruler Z” teaser that hid the new Pokémon, the Japanese, Korean, Chinese and English posters, a Japanese magazine spread, and DVD and Blu-ray releases from Japan, the States, the UK, the Netherlands, Finland and Australia, plus the box sets that gathered all four Sinnoh films. More magazine clippings and adverts are always wanted.

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Trivia & Facts

• In Japan the film was released between League Unleashed! (DP183) and Casting a Paul on Barry! (DP184), although it has to take place some time before them, in the gap before the Lily of the Valley Conference.
• Crown City is built from the Netherlands and Belgium – Amsterdam’s Magere Brug and the Amstel, the windmills of Kinderdijk and the squares of Brussels – which the staff toured before production.
  

  

• It is the only Sinnoh movie that stands alone rather than forming part of the trilogy, the only one without a Mythical Pokémon, and only the third movie ever (after Spell of the Unown and Lucario) whose star is not a Legendary. On the other hand it is the first time Raikou, Entei and Suicune have all appeared together in the anime, the first starring role for Raikou, and – with Zorua and Zoroark – the only time a Generation V Pokémon appeared on screen before the Black & White series.
  

  

• The teaser at the end of Arceus and the Jewel of Life showed Ho-Oh and Lugia locked in an aerial battle, and a later trailer showed Ash meeting a darker version of himself; none of it made the finished film, and the mystery Pokémon was advertised for months only as “Z”.
• Karl’s cap carries a stylised Woobat, a Pokémon that was not fully revealed until the day after the film opened, and Kodai’s Baccer team is called the Nimbasa Legends, after a city nobody would visit for another two months. A snatch of Lostlorn Forest’s music plays over the title, and the invented alphabet used throughout the Black & White series makes its first appearance on Crown City’s signs.
  

  

• Cameos: Ethan, the hero of HeartGold and SoulSilver, is the Trainer with the Donphan in the opening – the second film after Mewtwo Strikes Back to open with Ash battling a Donphan – and the credits bring back Professor Rowan, Johanna, Paul, Zoey, Barry, Nando, Conway, Ursula, Cynthia, Palmer and every Sinnoh Gym Leader and Elite Four member Ash faced. The Officer Jenny has the star on her cap worn by the very first Jenny in Viridian City.
  

  

• Karl is partly based on the documentary maker Michael Moore – a cap-wearing journalist with messy hair, according to his concept notes – and Kodai’s hair is shaped like a Garchomp’s head. Goone’s name is simply “goon”, and he shares his voice actors in both languages with Newton Graceland and Mayor Oliver; Peg’s Japanese name, Proof, is a translation of another reading of her voice actress Shōko Nakagawa’s name, and in the dub her cheer slips in the words “Heart” and “Soul”.
• When Team Rocket first see Zoroark, Jessie asks “Who’s that Pokémon?” – a joke that turned out to be a premonition, since the segment returned to the show the following season. Remixed versions of the Voice of the Forest theme from Celebi play whenever Celebi flies, calms the Pokémon or heals Zoroark, and Team Rocket are the last characters seen before the credits, a pattern not used since that film.
• In Japan, fans who pre-ordered tickets could download the Shiny Raikou, Entei and Suicune, which in turn unlocked a special Zoroark encounter in Black and White; cinema-goers received Celebi for HeartGold and SoulSilver. The Shiny beasts given out in Japan carried the Trainer name “Crown City”.

  

  

• The film was shown in American cinemas during the Pokémon Black and White Tour between 5 February and 20 March 2011 – the first US theatrical outing for the series since Pokémon Heroes in 2003 – and in Taiwan just twenty days after Japan. Cartoon Network’s first broadcasts cut the entire prologue and began at the title sequence, a cut made without The Pokémon Company’s permission and restored from 16 February 2011. By the end of the film Ash has now seen every Legendary from the first four generations at least once.
• The dub renames Zorua’s “Maa” as “Meema”, changes the password to Kodai’s files from “Time Ripple” to “V-I-S-I-O-N” (six characters in Japanese kana, eleven letters in English), has Zoroark tell Zorua never to speak to strangers rather than never to speak to humans, and darkens Zorua’s line at the climax from “Maa… I couldn’t do anything” to “I guess there isn’t much time left for me…”. The Japanese ending theme Ice Cream Syndrome was replaced by I Believe in You.

Errors

• Two small colouring slips: when Ash asks “What do you mean?” in Kodai’s cage, Dawn’s hair clip is the same colour as her hair, and during Kodai’s broadcast Peg is briefly drawn with oval eyes and visible pupils, unlike everywhere else in the film. In the credits Palmer’s Rhyperior’s mouth is coloured the same as its horn.

  

  

• Kricketune is among the Pokémon using Bullet Seed in the park, a move it cannot legally learn, and Karl’s Bronzor deflects Mismagius’s Psywave with Reflect, which only works on physical moves.
• Zorua’s illusions are inconsistent: early on it floats safely to the ground as a Skiploom, but later it cannot fly while disguised as Celebi. Near the end Kodai’s illusion canceler fails to see through Zorua’s Celebi disguise even though it had not yet been broken.

Reviews & Reception

Phantom Ruler: Zoroark took around ¥4.16 billion in Japan in the summer of 2010 and is credited with roughly $71 million worldwide once its many television and home-video markets are counted – a strong result for a film built around two Pokémon nobody had met yet. It arrived at the end of the Sinnoh era and the dawn of Unova, and did its job as a teaser for both the new games and the new series.

In the West it was a film of firsts: the first Pokémon movie in American cinemas since 2003, courtesy of the Black and White Tour; the first to premiere on free-to-air television in Britain, on CITV; the first the UK received on DVD before the US; and, when Universal’s US disc arrived on 20 September 2011, the first Pokémon movie released on Blu-ray outside Japan. Reviews were kind: Common Sense Media’s Jeffrey Anderson judged it a cut above most of the series, with gorgeous computer-rendered backdrops and some surprisingly majestic moments, while noting that it is rather more violent than Pokémon usually gets.

Fans tend to agree. Zorua is one of the most popular movie companions Ash ever had, Zoroark’s protectiveness gives the film an emotional core the trilogy before it lacked, and Grings Kodai is regularly named the darkest villain in the whole movie series – a man who quite knowingly poisons a town for a glimpse of tomorrow. The Shiny Legendary beasts are mostly scenery, which is the usual complaint, but as a send-off for Dawn and Brock and a hello to Unova it is one of the best-liked films of its era.

Scores at a glance (as of October 2026)

• IMDb – 6.1/10 from around 2,900 user ratings
• Rotten Tomatoes – 71% audience score (250+ ratings) · no critics’ score – only one review“Introduces enough narrative innovations in order to stand out” – Sebastian Zavala Kahn, Más Gamers
• Letterboxd – 3.1/5 average from 14,500+ ratings
• Common Sense Media – age 8+“Better but more violent than the usual Pokemon entry” – Jeffrey M. Anderson
• Anime News Network – “Worth Seeing” tier in ANN’s ranking of every Pokémon movie“The second half of the film doesn’t deliver in the same way” – Callum May