Crown Grading

FILM NOTES

Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in North American theaters in November 1999, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures following its 1998 Japanese release by Toho. Produced by OLM, Inc. and animated under the supervision of Kunihiko Yuyama, the film represented the peak of late-1990s Pokémon cultural saturation, translating a television phenomenon into a theatrical event that broke opening-weekend records for an animated feature at the time.

This cell captures Pikachu in three consecutive close-up frames against a blue background, offering a rare sequential look at the character's subtle animated movement. The slight shifts in expression across the frames, along with the marginally lighter tonal quality of the third, reflect the layered cel photography process central to traditional hand-drawn animation of this period.