Concerning the review directly below: The Power of One is a subtitle that comes up a just before the main theme, after Lawrence III captures the fire bird Moltres but before the main theme (with Ash and friends on the little yatch); I’m not surprise that people miss it cause it’s only on screen briefly and is generally irrelevant to the rest of the film.

Anyway this is the second is the series of Pokémon films released… and like its predecessor, it’s something of a dozy. Ash turns out to be the chosen one of an ancient legend, whose job it is to quell the fighting of the three elemental powers of ice, fire and lightening – or Articuno, Moltres and Zapdos – and save the planet. To do this he must collect three orbs from their respective islands of fire, ice and lightening and place them in a pedestal. Along the way he is helped by Lugia and, more surprisingly, Team Rocket.

Lugia (the main draw of this film) was the Pokémon on the cover of the Silver version of the games, the counterpart of Ho-Ho from the gold version, Ho-Ho being the first legendary Pokémon that Ash ever saw (on the very first episode of the first series). In the game you would need a item called ‘silver wing’ to have a chance to catch the pokémon, which of course you acquired after a little bit of work. In the films as opposed to the games, catching legendaries is something of a no-no, if only cause they are immensely more powerful than there are in the games, though they’re no pushovers there either. Still this doesn’t stop the film’s villain from trying to catch Lugia.

The first thing I’ll say is that the second film is an improvement on the first one, but it still never gets near anywhere resembling greatness; it just mostly means that it’s a little bit more watch-able then the first. However, the animation is still mostly lacklustre and is this time mixed in with some really dodgy CGI (Lawrence’s airship being the prime example). As ever, action scenes have a better degree of animation applied to them, unsurprising really, as they are what most fans of the games will want to see in the film. In fact, the whole thing would be confusing to most anyone who not a fan, particularly as the movie assumes that you already know the main characters.

There is also an anti-collector stance here, which is kind of odd considering that the most famous slogan of Pokémon is “Gotta Catch ‘em All.” Mind you in this fictional world keeping animals locked up against their will is frowned on, with Misty shouting at Lawrence that his treatment regarding the pokémon he's captured is barbaric and cruel. To this end one should keep in mind that Ash’s pokémon pretty much all agreed to travel with him.

Yet ultimately the film is more a victim of its - or rather its creators - own desire for sheer scope more than anything; in that the film's production values limit its own ability to be truly epic. Future films in the series would place less pressure on Ash and the whole franchise, becoming more down to Earth, more manageable and as a result, more watchable.

This one though is for the fans only.