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Ever since the series premiered in 1997, the original Pokémon anime has remained a staple part of the franchise. Fans around the world have followed the adventures of the legendary Pokémon Trainer Ash Ketchum and his Pikachu for decades, ever since he first embarked on his quest in Pallet Town. After many seasons, Ash's animated adventures came to an end, ending the original series. Taking up the mantle after the Trainer from Pallet Town, Liko and the members of the Rising Volt Tacklers act as the spirited new protagonists of Pokémon Horizons: The Series.

Alongside the original Pokémon series, a vast roster of movies gives the viewers extra narrative about the world that Ash and his companions travel throughout. Like the seasons of the anime, each movie varies in content, and especially in which Pokémon are the stars of the show. Each film, however, also corresponds with a certain point in Ash's journey,...

Are the Avenger and Pokémon franchises related to each other? ( Photo Credit – YouTube )

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand with every passing year, Kevin Feige’s studio has also called in reinforcements — The Avengers. With Avengers: Secret Wars and Avengers: Doomsday set to resume the event film series within the franchise, Marvel aims to reiterate its golden era by officially bringing Robert Downey Jr. back.

Despite being the most successful movie franchise, The Avengers pales compared to the most successful media franchise—no filters needed—Pokémon. As it happens, both Pokémon and Avengers share quite a few similarities. The sophomore theatrical releases for Pokémon The Movie 2000 and Avengers: Age of Ultron celebrate significant milestones this summer, marking their respective 25th and 10th anniversaries.

Looking further back, Pokémon The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back poses even more intriguing connections. These uncanny parallels spotlight how closely Age of Ultron...

In the world of animation, anime has been one of the medium’s most prolific and revered contributors both domestically and overseas. Recent years have skyrocketed anime’s acclaim in the mainstream, changing its worldwide perception from a self-contained pop culture niche to a booming international phenomenon appreciated on a global scale.

No metric showcases anime’s flourishing popularity better than the box office success of its feature films. While many standalone anime features, like Your Name and Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away, have had remarkable runs on the big screen, it’s the medium’s most prominent franchises that got anime to its current heights of popularity. Some of the highest-grossing anime films of all time are parts of beloved long-running series - and serve as outstanding exemplars of what makes their franchises so favored.

Related10 Best Anime Movies Since 2020, Ranked

Hit movies like The Boy and the Heron...

As a special holiday gift to The Film Stage podcast feed, listen to a new Box Office Bonanza! Here we talk about random box office weekends and where they fit into our lives. The movies, the memories! This episode features Dan Mecca, Conor O’Donnell, Mitchell Beaupre, Jordan Raup, and Cory Everett.

The box office weekend in question is July 21, 2000. The number one movie in the country was the Robert Zemeckis-directed, Clark Gregg-scripted, Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer-starring supernatural thriller What Lies Beneath. The number three movie was the second Pokémon feature film, Pokémon 2000. Gladiator was still in theaters, so was U-571.

But at the start, we mount a passionate defense of the new Zemeckis epic Here, which has now arrived digitally. After that, we talk about Martin Lawrence movies. We talk about how horrible Greg Kinnear’s character is in Amy Heckerling’s Loser. We talk...

Rachael Lillis, a voice actor who starred in many “Pokémon” films and series as the characters Misty, Jessie and more, died Aug. 10. She was 46.

Lillis was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2024. Veronica Taylor, Lillis’ “Pokémon” co-star who voiced the lead character Ash Ketchum, posted a statement on X Monday morning that announced Lillis’ death.

“It is with a very heavy heart that I share the news of the passing of Rachael Lillis on Saturday evening, 10 August 2024,” Taylor wrote. “Rachael was an extraordinary talent, a bright light that shone through her voice whether speaking or singing. She will be forever remembered for the many animated roles she played, with her iconic performances as ‘Pokemon’s’ Misty and Jessie being the most beloved. Rachael was so thankful for all the generous love and support that was given to her as she battled cancer. It truly made a positive difference. Her family...

Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film The Boy And The Heron has achieved another milestone as it climbed the ladder to become the third highest earning anime film in the North American box office, surpassing Pokémon the Movie 2000.

According to Box Office Mojo’s latest estimations, The Boy and the Heron has amassed an impressive total of approximately $44.24 million Usd in the United States. This achievement propels it past the previous third-place holder, Pokémon the Movie 2000, which had garnered $43.8 million Usd.

Currently, Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train secures the second position with $49.5 million Usd, and Pokémon: The First Movie holds the lead with $85.7 million Usd.

The Boy and the Heron earned Usd 1,817,762 in its opening weekend in the U.S. and came in at the 12th position in the box office.

The movie has also been a critical success, bagging the Best Animated Film...

The Beekeeper and Mean Girls were locked in a race for number one at the North American box office, although the more interesting results saw most of last week’s Oscar nominees surge after theatrical expansions or re-releases.

Amazon MGM Studios’ Jason Statham thriller The Beekeeper earned an estimated $7.4m and Paramount’s Mean Girls musical delivered $7.3m in their third weekends in a slow session overall. The studios will report final numbers on Monday when the box office winner will be determined.

Warner Bros’ Wonka ranked third on $5.9m for an excellent $195.2m in its seventh weekend, followed by...

The Beekeeper and Mean Girls were locked in a race for number one at the North American box office, although the more interesting results saw most of last week’s Oscar nominees surge after theatrical expansions or re-releases.

Amazon MGM Studios’ Jason Statham thriller The Beekeeper earned an estimated $7.4m and Paramount’s Mean Girls musical delivered $7.3m in their third weekends in a slow session overall. The studios will report final numbers on Monday when the box office winner will be determined.

Warner Bros’ Wonka ranked third on $5.9m for an excellent $195.2m in its seventh weekend, followed by...

Toho International’s Godzilla Minus One – with an Oscar nom and a $2.6 million estimated three-day gross – was no. 10 at the U.S. box office in week 9, and hit a milestone Friday. The giant radioactive reptile, on 2,001 screens, became the third highest-grossing foreign-language film Stateside passing Hero and Parasite.

Godzilla’s cume will pass an estimated $55 million this weekend.

The film by Takashi Yamazaki, starring Ryunosuke Kamiki and Minami Hamabe was on about 2,050 screens. The number is quadruple last week’s footprint as it prepares to exit theaters with a bang on Feb. 1. That gives it only a few days to overtake the no. 2 foreign-language film spot currently held by Life Is Beautiful. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in first place remains pretty un-catchable.

Meanwhile, Bollywood has a big one. Hindi action thriller Fighter from Viva Entertainment grossed $3.74 million in 662 locations, for a no. five spot at the...

Quick Links Digimon: The Movie's Rocky Development The Enduring Legacy Of Digimon: The Movie Digimon: The Movie doesn't exist in Japan. It was created by combining footage from three different Digimon films shown at the Toei Anime Fair. The production of the combined film was difficult and stressful for the team involved, leading to strain on their relationships and eventual departure. Despite mixed reviews, the film performed well at the box office and has gained a cult following over the years, becoming a source of memes and continued discussion.

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the pet-collecting anime genre explode in popularity. In America, two series were the figureheads of this movement: Pokémon and Digimon, with both franchises' televised cartoons drawing massive audiences. In 1999, Pokémon would move to the big screen with Pokémon: The First Movie, a localized version of Mewtwo Strikes Back, breaking box office records as it did.

One game based on Pokémon The Movie 2000 has been impossible to play since shortly after its original release, but things have finally changed in a major way. Following the financial success of Pokémon: The First Movie, the follow-up film was poised to be a hit, and its American distributor Warner Brothers committed heavily to advertising. An in-browser game was developed as part of this strategy, with millions being invested in a major marketing gimmick. Dubbed Pokémon The Movie 2000 Adventure, the game was faced with the very unusual problem of being a little bit too successful to work out.

As a playable 3D experience, Pokémon The Movie 2000 Adventure allowed players to explore several islands, collect Pokémon, and use them to overcome environmental obstacles and evolve. Although all of this could be completed in a brief session, the technology was impressive for a free game at the time, quickly skyrocketing the game to popularity.

Go Nagai's iconic Grendizer is returning for a modern audience, with a fantastic look to go with its reboot. A new teaser trailer has dropped for Grendizer U, a reboot of the classic manga and anime mecha series from the 1970s. It developed as one of the many sequels and spin-offs from the hit anime, Mazinger, also from Go Nagai.

Manga Productions is the company developing the latest iteration of Grendizer. The manga series that inspired it, UFO Robo Grendizer, originally serialized from 1975 to 1977, was written by Go Nagai and included work from different illustrators. It was then adapted into an anime series that aired from 1975 to 1977. It made a manga comeback from 2014 to 2015, spanning two volumes, and titled Grendizer Giga.

Related: Crunchyroll Announces Exciting Lineup of Summer Anime Acquisitions

Grendizer U is the Franchise's Triumphant Return

On YouTube, Manga Productions shared a teaser for the upcoming Grendizer U.

When Pokémon introduced its fifth generation of games to the world, it brought with it the game series' first female Pokémon Professor, Professor Juniper. Though Juniper was a relatively small addition to Pokémon Black & White, many fans of the game were happy to have such an integral role finally played by a woman. The anime, however, had already achieved that particular goal way back in its second season with the introduction of Professor Ivy of the Orange Islands.

The Orange Islands were a region created specifically for the Pokémon anime, intended to buy a little time for the series' creators while the Gold and Silver games were finished. Because the anime was creating this area from scratch, the creators had more freedom than they usually did in how to depict things, which led to a number of firsts: the first time one of Ash's companions was replaced, for example,...

Streaming recent and classic Dragon Ball movies has just gotten significantly easier.

According to Crunchyroll, they have added a slew of tie-in films from the long-running franchise to its streaming service. This includes Dragon Ball Z: Cooler's Revenge, which sees Goku and crew face off against Frieza's older brother, and Dragon Ball Z: Super Android 13, which depicts the epic showdown between Earth's strongest defenders and a new group of Androids that are faster and more dangerous than those created by the evil Doctor Gero.

Related: When Did Dragon Ball Z Become All About Power Creep?

The Dragon Ball Movies Coming to Crunchyroll

Other Dragon Ball movies that have already hit the platform include Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone, Dragon Ball Z: World's Strongest, Dragon Ball Z: Tree of Might, Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug and Dragon Ball Z: Return of Cooler. Multiple other films are scheduled to appear on...

Anime has broken down the doors to the global stage within the past couple of decades, rightfully earning its spot as an entertainment powerhouse and captivating millions of viewers around the world. Anime films receiving theatrical releases outside of Japan have become the norm, and otaku around the world couldn't be happier.

Related: 15 Manga With Incredible Artwork

From Studio Ghibli to modern classic shonen smash hits, anime movies continue to dominate the box office year after year. The highest-grossing anime films of all time have cemented themselves as classics and must-watch titles for new viewers, while others are fan-favorite hits that satisfy their series' most dedicated viewers.

Updated on May 25, 2023 by Ajay Aravind: Anime movies can either hit the mark or collapse spectacularly, but there are a few that deserve all the recognition they receive. Many Naruto films, for example, are exercises in mediocrity, whereas Studio Ghibli has consistently put out anime masterpieces.

The events of Dragon Ball Super: Broly finally has an official place in the manga's timeline.

According to Screenrant, Chapter 93 of the Dragon Ball Super manga revealed that Frieza's recruitment of Broly and the juggernaut's epic showdown with Goku and Vegeta occurred reasonably quickly after the conclusion of the Tournament of Power. This suggests that the Galactic Patrol Prisoner Saga occurred afterward, likely settling an ongoing debate among readers.

Related: Dragon Ball Z's Manga and Anime Had Vastly Different Concepts of Hell

How Chapter 93 Connected With the Broly Movie

Chapter 93 sees a break in the Dragon Super manga's current storyline, which is adapting the events of the Dragon Ball Super: Super Movie. The latest movie debuted in June 2022 and earned over 13.8 billion yen globally. The narrative shifts focus away from Goku and Vegeta, centering its story around the relationship between Gohan and his mentor Piccolo. It also sees the...

For many fans of shipping, or pairing up fictional characters, the Pokémon anime was their first introduction to the concept, due to the complicated feelings Misty and Ash had for each other. While Ash and Misty remain a popular pairing, especially among older fans who started with the original series, the truth is that their relationship had a lot less romantic hints in Japanese.

That's not to say that Ash and Misty's potential romance was entirely a creation of the dub, of course. Misty does often get jealous when Ash receives attention from other girls, as in Pokémon the Movie 2000, when Melody asks Ash to dance. She also does blush when thinking about him, often lying about what she's thinking when pressed. Still, the idea of Ash and Misty together is pushed much harder by the dub than the original Japanese, although the reasons why are less clear.

Misty...

Warning: Contains spoilers for Pokémon Horizons episodes 1 and 2.Pokémon Horizons has officially premiered, and in a surprise turn of events, it revealed a new Pokémon ahead of the upcoming Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Dlc. Promotional material for Pokémon Horizons put an emphasis on Liko’s story revolving around her mysterious pendant, and sure enough, the series premiere opens with the villainous Explorers and the heroic Rising Volt Tacklers both going after Liko for her pendant. At the moment, it still isn’t entirely clear what Liko’s pendant is, but with the amount of attention the pendant has been given, there’s certainly something unique about it.

That uniqueness quickly made itself known in the rebooted anime series Pokémon Horizons episode 2. In episode 2, a barrier appears to protect Liko and Sprigatito from an attack, and the barrier was created by the true form of Liko's pendant: a small turtle-like Pokémon...

Of Pikachu's numerous abilities, its strangest in the Pokémon franchise has long been forgotten - and it's for the better. Pokémon's anime has spanned numerous seasons and several films, which place Ash and his friends in special circumstances. Though some of the Pokémon movies fail by following the games too closely, others just invent things that make no sense. While several cool abilities sometimes come out of these films, there are some - like in Pokemon the Movie 2000 that just don't make sense.

Released in 1999 in Japan and 2000 in the United States, Pokemon the Movie 2000 features Ash and his friends on an adventure in the Orange Islands. A collector disrupts the harmony between Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos, in the hopes of awakening Lugia for capture. However, after capturing Moltres, Zapdos edges in on the legendary bird's territory, resulting in a peculiar exchange between it and Pikachu.

The early days of Pokémon were a much less strictly controlled time than the Pokémon franchise of today, which carefully executes anime, Tcg, video games, and merchandise on a tight schedule. As it turns out, this was especially true when it came to the creation of one Legendary Pokémon, Lugia, which was originally never meant to appear in the games at all.

As the version mascot of Pokémon Silver, it can be a bit difficult to believe that Lugia was a fairly late addition to generation 2's roster. Yet, the Gold and Silver beta leaks from a few years back proved it to be true, as Lugia is not present at all in the 1997 demo. Instead, Lugia was commissioned by the anime's head writer at the time, Takeshi Shudo, to star in the second Pokémon movie, which would eventually be called Pokémon the Movie 2000. Originally, it was known only as Pokémon X,...

The domestic box office isn’t going to get interesting until next weekend when Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II and Disney’s Cruella launch the summer season. From that point on, we largely won’t have any weekends where the major studios are taking a break from releasing wide entries, which is the case this weekend as Lionsgate’s Spiral: From the Book of Saw repeats in its second frame with $1.38M yesterday, -63%, and an expected 3-day of $4.7M, -46% (actually a pretty good hold for a horror film which typically drops -60% or greater) and a running total of $15.9M. Spiral is booked at 2,997 theaters (+186). All the action is overseas where Universal’s F9 is heading to $160M this weekend in 8 markets, charged by China where it’s set to become the second biggest opener for the studio and the Fast franchise, already counting $105M. F9 parks itself at U.

Both films are estimated to earn around $6 million in their second weekend

It’s round 2 between Warner Bros./New Line’s “Mortal Kombat” and Funimation’s “Demon Slayer,” and this time, “Demon Slayer” may actually come out as the victor.

After an opening weekend where the anime film came surprisingly close to topping “Mortal Kombat” for the No. 1 spot, industry estimates have “Demon Slayer” just edging out the video game adaptation with $6.4 million from 1,915 theaters in its second weekend compared to $6.2 million from 3,113 theaters for “Kombat.” With such close margins, it will come down to final totals on Monday to determine who ends up on top on the charts.

Regardless, both films are showing the kind of frontloaded box office performance analysts were expecting with drop-offs of over 70% from their opening weekends. With R ratings and very specific lore that can shut out most casual audiences, both “Kombat” and “Slayer...

Rarely are transformational works well-regarded in their time. Vincent Canby of The New York Times compared The Godfather Part II’s dialogue to “cartoon captions,” and wrote that the movie was “stitched together from leftover parts” — like Frankenstein’s monster. The Fast and the Furious was called “Rebel Without a Cause without a cause” by Rita Kempley of The Washington Post. Rolling Stone’s David Fear claimed Detective Pikachu “is strictly for the fans, in the best and worst possible ways.”

It’s claims like these that seem reasonable, but time proves them wrong,...

’Avengers: Endgame’ aims to hold top spot for third week.

Warner Bros’ Pokémon Detective Pikachu faces a daunting task in trying to wrest the box office crown from Avengers: Endgame this weekend.

The feature is the latest instalment in the popular Japanese franchise, with Ryan Reynolds lending his voice and motion-captured face to the small rodent-like creature with powerful electrical abilities. It is the first Pokémon film to mix animation with live action.

In this story, a former Pokémon trainer Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) finds a talking Pikachu that once belong to his father, and wants to be a detective.

Daniel Kurland Feb 11, 2019

After the success of Dragon Ball Super: Broly, it's time distributors consider true wide releases for anime films not named Pokémon.

Anime’s presence in North America has evolved over the years, and we’ve come a long way from the days when “Japanimation” was just a morbid curiosity and guilty pleasure. The perceived fringe animation has grown into a genuinely enjoyable and thrilling source of content for Western audiences, and while anime has become much more popular with the mainstream over the past few years, the current content out there has hit new heights. Dragon Ball Super: Broly, the latest chapter in the ongoing Dragon Ball series, has made over $30 million domestically (with a global total of over $100 million), which makes it the third highest-grossing anime film of all-time in North America.

Dragon Ball Super: Broly has found very real success, but its numbers hold even...

Streaming platform Twitch is working in tandem with The Pokémon Company to host a few lengthy “Pokémon“-themed marathons.

The “massive” marathon will feature 932 episodes live-streamed as part of several different sessions set to take place from Aug. 27 throughout 2019. According to Twitch, it’s the service’s longest viewing event to hit the platform thus far, and will utilize special Twitch-exclusive Extensions with interactive overlays so that viewers can collect badges while watching.

The “Twitch Presents: Pokémon Badge Collector” Extension will offer badges for players to snap up while poring over the streaming episodes in an effort to place higher on special leaderboards created for the event.

Twitch community members can join in on the fun when “Pokémon: Indigo League” kicks off on Aug. 27 at 10:00 Am Pdt for audiences in the United States, Canada, Europe, Latam, and Australia, with respective language dubs available in participating areas. Series from “Pokémon:...