National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Warner Bros. distributed Pokémon: The Movie 2000 in North America in July 2000, following the franchise's explosive crossover from Game Boy cartridges into mainstream cinema. Produced by OLM, Inc. and directed by Kunihiko Yuyama, the film arrived at the peak of the global Pokémon phenomenon and remains a cultural marker of that particular turn-of-the-millennium moment.

This cell, titled Pikachu, captures the series' central character in a continuous motion sequence against a stone wall, mouth open and posture shifting across three frames, with a curved white cord or tube visible in the composition. Pikachu, voiced throughout the film by Ikue Ōtani, reads as distressed or alert, and the three-frame progression gives the strip a quiet, animated energy.