National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Pokémon: The Movie 2000 arrived in North American theaters in July 2000, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures during the peak of the global Pokémon phenomenon. Produced by OLM, Inc. for Nintendo and Game Freak, the film expanded the anime universe onto the theatrical stage, drawing enormous audiences and cementing the franchise as a genuine cultural force at the turn of the millennium.

This cell captures a dense crowd sequence in which Magikarp — voiced in the Japanese production by Shin-ichiro Miki — appears among a mass of similarly colored creatures packed tightly against a dark background. A circular lens artifact is visible toward the right side of one frame, a small physical record of the film's projection history preserved within the encapsulation.