At the beginning of the film, Ash, Brock, and Dawn are watching a match of the Pokemon Baccer World Cup at a Pokemon Center. While watching the television, a man exhibits his team, which consists of the Legendary Pokemon Raikou, Entei, and Suicune. Ash and his friends are traveling to Crown City to watch the next match live.Meanwhile, Zoroark and Zorua are traveling in a plane. During the trip, they find themselves face-to-face with the three Legendary Pokemon. Watching from above is Grings Kodai, the man who appeared on the television with the Legendary Pokemon, along with his assistant, Rowena. Zoroark is held captive by Kodai, and a Ninjask swoops down and takes Zorua.
Zorua manages to escape, but falls from the plane. This Pokemon uses its illusion ability to transform into Skiploom, which allows it to fall a little more gracefully toward the ground. Ash, Brock, and Dawn end up getting lost on the way to Crown City, and save Zorua from a group of Vigoroth. Using telepathy, Zorua explains about Zoroark going to Crown City. The three trainers agree to help Zorua.
Kodai uses an image of Zorua to blackmail Zoroark into destroying Crown City by disguising as Raikou, Entei, and Suicune. At the same time, Kodai sends out a public message framing Zoroark as the culprit. The Ledendary Pokemon Celebi also becomes involved in this story. Can Ash and his friends figure out what Kodai is up to and stop him before it's too late?
Once again, attempts were made to combine computer graphics with traditional animation. Unfortunately, the CG stands out just as badly, if not a little worse, than in previous films in the Pokemon franchise. As I watched this film with my children, at least one of kids kept cracking jokes about the bad computer animation. The musical score is rather similar to what has been heard in previous Pokemon films; since I enjoyed the music in the earlier films, I also enjoyed hearing the pieces in this film.
When it comes to the actual story of the film, I thought there was the potential for a decent story; however, the execution was a little on the weak side. I found that this film had a harder time keeping my interest than many of the earlier films in the franchise. At this point in the franchise, it feels as if the director is relying more on a formula when producing the films.
This film runs for an hour and a half, but I think the film may have been a little on the long side for the story it was trying to tell. My youngest child got really fidgety after we hit the one hour mark; perhaps a runtime of 70-80 minutes would have been a little better.
Zoroark Master of Illusions was released as a single disc DVD. On the disc, you can watch the film, use the setup menu to choose if you want to have English subtitles and which English audio option you want, and you can choose where in the film you want to start watching. When it comes to the subtitles, this disc includes a way to turn them off in the menu if your player decides to default to showing the English subtitles.
Like the previous three DVD releases of the Pokemon films, Zoroark Master of Illusions does not include any special features. Personally, I would recommend buying a copy of Zoroark Master of Illusions if you can find it somewhere that's selling it for under $15.
In order to write this review, I checked out a copy of this DVD through the King County Library System.
