Being so real, I rewatched this movie literally yesterday and I don’t remember a good chunk of it. A testament to its quality.

Giratina and the Sky Warrior is a movie about, well, Giratina and the Sky Warrior (Shaymin.) Shaymin, despite being the gratitude Pokemon, is a complete ass in this movie who is demanding thanks more than giving it, which is honestly really funny. I don’t get the Shaymin hate stemming from this movie, that’s my GOAT.

a "brief" summary of this god forsaken movie

Giratina is pissed that Dialga and Palkia fought in the previous movie, so it attempts to drag Dialga into the Distortion World (called the Reverse World in this movie, for some reason. I’m sticking with distortion) for a battle. This drags a poor Shaymin who happened to nearby along with it. While this battle is raging on, some guy named Zero is watching intently.

Dialga eventually traps Giratina in a time loop and escapes, dragging Shaymin with it, leaving Giratina alone in the Distortion World. Cut to Ash, Dawn and Brock, who meet a battered, hungry Shaymin and “befriend” it rather quickly. Not long after, Ash and Dawn get yanked into the Distortion World themselves, taking Shaymin with them once again. In it, they meet a scientist named Newton who claims to be a genius. What he’s doing chilling in the Distortion World is never fully explained to my recollection. Also, Team Rocket is there but they do literally nothing in this movie, so I won’t elaborate on this whatsoever. Dawn, Ash and Shaymin eventually escape the Distortion World and end up back in the real world.

In the real world, the gang is harassed by a metric shit ton of Magnemite and Magneton as Zero shows up, seemingly commanding them. Zero wants to get his hands on Shaymin, so everyone makes a run for it and they end up on a train. There’s a scene where Shaymin conveniently comes into contact with the Gracidea flowers that someone had onboard and transforms into Sky Form, letting it battle the Magnemite/ton army that eventually finds them alongside Pikachu and Piplup. Eventually, they make it to their destination, and the gang boards a boat that takes them to Shaymin’s flower garden.

Everyone is pulled into the Distortion World yet again by a ripple in the water, and this time, Zero is there to greet them. Newton reveals that Zero was once his student, but not before Zero attempts to get Shaymin to use Seed Flare and/or kill everyone with poison gas. What a pleasant guy!

Shaymin does use Seed Flare, sending everyone back to the real world once again. Here, Giratina transforms into its Altered Forme and is promptly captured by Zero’s ship (apparently called the Megarig, according to Bulbapedia.) Zero makes a leap of faith onto his ship, which is seemingly draining Giratina’s energy and hurting it in the process. Newton reveals that he was the one who designed the Megarig in order to gain Giratina’s power to enter and leave the Distortion World at will, but he cancelled the plans and deleted the blueprints when he realized that it would kill Giratina. Zero was against canning the project, but he somehow remembered enough of the blueprints to rebuild it from scratch.

Ash, Dawn and Newton hop on Zero’s weird… hoverboard scooter? Thing? And board the Megarig. Newton goes inside and begins typing on a keyboard to shut down the ship. Zero taunts him, but the idiot forgot that Newton was the one who designed the thing and obviously knows how to shut it down. Conveniently, it shuts down the moment that the drainage of Giratina’s power hits 99%. In order to shut down that part of the ship, he also had to cut power to the engines, so everyone makes a run for it as the ship crashes into the forest. Zero escapes on a smaller, Giratina-themed ship that was hidden in the Megarig.

It appears that they were too late, at first, as Giratina seems to flop over dead as it climbs out of the water. However, it takes a breath, leading Shaymin to use Aromatherapy on it and heal it completely. Zero, however, shows up once again before entering the Distortion World again. From there, he tries to destroy a nearby glacier from inside the Distortion World, which works like a charm. The glacier begins heading towards a village and nobody has any idea how they’re going to stop it.

Just when all hope seems lost, there’s a random Regigigas event where it awakens from its slumber and shows up out of literally nowhere, commanding a hoard of Mamowsine to push back the glacier. Back in the Distortion World, Zero isn’t alone, as Ash followed him inside. Zero blabbers on about how he’s protecting the Distortion World before once again trying to kill Ash and Pikachu by flying his ship into poison gas. Everyone’s fighting in the Distortion World, in the real world Regigigas and its Mamoswine hoard are trying to stop the glacier, basically whole house mad.png

Shaymin uses Seed Flare to open the portal to the real world, sending Zero’s ship flying into the Glacier. Zero seems to calm down and accept his fate as the systems begin to fail, deleting all info he had saved on Giratina. Giratina guides Ash out of the Distortion World on its back, Shaymin meets its friends and they all fly off, yay! Happy ending!

Is the movie actually good?

No.

Solid 6/10 at best

So why did you write all this?

As someone who hyperfixates on obscure Pokemon trainers like there’s no tomorrow, every time Zero and his AI companion Infi were on screen was like jingling keys in a baby’s face. Why does Zero do what he does? He seems to believe that the Distortion World is somehow more pure than the real world (that he straight up states that he hates in the manga adaptation,) but what drove him to think like that? All the backstory we get on him is that he used to be Newton’s student. That’s literally it. Why the fuck is he like this. He’s like Cyrus, but instead of trying to become God of all, he’s just trying to become the God of the Distortion World. Cyrus: Lite, if you will.

And by god, that intrigues me. The writers probably had no actual vision for Zero as a character beyond this, lets be real. Its a movie for 7 year olds, they probably weren’t giving Zero a backstory that caused these actions in that writers room. Which leaves the task to me. I will make this guy an actual character if its the last thing I do, just give me… a while to think…

I bought the manga adaptation of this movie, and for some reason, Zero literally won’t stop crying in it. The dude bursts into tears on 3 separate occasions despite not doing it once in the movie. What the fuck is his problem, man. Also, it’s pretty heavily implied he straight up fucking dies in the manga version, while in the movie he’s rescued in the credits. Awesome manga 10/10 make Zero suffer more