Crown Grading
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FILM NOTES
Pokémon: The First Movie arrived in American theaters in November 1999 from Warner Bros., riding the full force of Pokémania at its commercial peak. The trailer campaign that preceded it was engineered for a generation discovering the franchise through cards, games, and the original television series, promising a feature-length leap for characters who had only lived in episodic form. For many families, this was their first indication that Pokémon could carry the weight of a theatrical release, and the marketing push around it remains a touchstone of late nineties franchise building.
This cell comes from that promotional reel and centers on Pikachu, the single most recognizable figure to emerge from the Pokémon universe and the character most responsible for its crossover into mainstream culture. A moment described simply as Pikachu Crying speaks to the emotional register the film's trailers used to signal this was more than a kids' cartoon, hinting at stakes and feeling meant to pull audiences beyond the existing fanbase. Trailer cells like this are sought by collectors precisely because they capture the advertising language of a franchise at its cultural height, a single frame of persuasion rather than narrative.
Consistent with a 35mm release print trailer of Pokémon: The First Movie (1999).
- Gauge
- 35mm layout: four perforations per frame along both edges, and the strip holds four frames, the first partly cropped at the left.
- Perforations
- Four per frame on both edges, evenly spaced, rounded-rectangle holes, cleanly punched with no visible tearing or distortion.
- Soundtrack
- A variable-area optical track runs beside the lower perforations, showing as wavy white and dark bands; no Dolby Digital blocks or DTS timecode are visible.
- Edge print
- Not visible in this capture
- Base & colour
- Clear base with a light blue-cyan tint along the edges; the dye image looks saturated, with no obvious fading or red shift.
- Projection history
- No scratches, cue marks or splices seen at this size; the frames look clean.
- Picture
- Positive image, four consecutive near-identical frames of one held shot; the yellow Pikachu-style character matches the Pokémon film on record.
- Era check
- Consistent with a late-1990s 35mm release print: a variable-area optical track and a positive dye image fit a 1999 trailer.
