Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution and the charm of 2d animation

The Pokemon Company celebrated its 24th birthday on February 27th, a day dubbed “Pokemon Day”, by bringing us back a classic. Mewtwo Strikes Back: Evolution is a remake of the classic 1998 film that won over hearts across the world. A story about friendship, love and even included a bit of social commentary regarding things like nationality and how we choose to separate ourselves based on differences rather than come together based on similarities. It was an iconic 90’s film and is still widely regarded as the best Pokemon movie to hit the big screen.

The remake left a lot to be desired, though. While it was almost beat for beat the exact same story — though there were a few dialogue and visual changes here and there — it felt… different. The movie's charm and emotional impact were seemingly absent.

Pokemon’s move to 3d, across both the on screen media and the games themselves, has been terrible thus far. As I wrote about before, the new 3d games have lost all of their sense of character in the transition, and it seems the same has happened in the film.

First, the models of each character fall deeply into the uncanny valley. While disproportionally oversized eyes are nothing new to Pokemon animation or anime in general, the way the characters faces look in the remake film seems off. The animation style tells us they want things to look slightly more real, but the disproportional sizing of the character's faces makes everything feel off.

The way the characters move also feels wrong. They are stiff and robotic. Each movement every character makes feels deliberate and inhuman. They are moving by necessity, bot because they are human beings and humans just kind of move around sometimes. Often when a character is not the focus of the scene they are just standing absolutely still like an unactivated statue. Each of the characters feels weightless as well, making their movements seem even less natural.

These issues feel like problems that go beyond Pokemon, and into modern animation in general. “Realism” in animated and virtual media has always been something people have strived towards. Many video games have marketed themselves on their realistic graphics that look almost straight out of real life. 3d animation takes much more…