Pocket Monsters (2019) Planetarium "The Message from the Aurora" (2024)

The PocketMonsters planetarium shows are a series of special stand-aloneepisodes of the animated series that are shown exclusively in theplanetariums installed in kids' science museums all across Japan. Theyare, in essence, educational programs disguised as an episode of the Pocket Monsters TV series. Thespecials are projected on the domes of the planetariums, using theextra real estate afforded to them to provide audiences with a viewingexperience unlike any other.

I recently had the chance tosee the newest Pocket Monstersplanetarium show, PocketMonsters Planetarium "The Message from the Aurora", over atthe

TheVenue

Iactually ended up making two attempts to see this thing. The firstone was the morning of October 4th, 2020. I took the train to UrawaStationand, after about a 10-15 minute bus ride, arrived outside the SaitamaMunicipal Youth Astronomical Museum. I arrived at around 10:00 and theshow was scheduled to start at 10:30, so that shouldbe fine, right? Apparently not! The museum was limiting the number oftickets they were selling thanks to COVID-19 and so they were alreadysold out by the time I arrived. The woman behind the counter suggestedI come back in a few weeks and that when I do, Iarrive right when the museum opens at 9:00 am to increase my chances ofgetting a ticket.

It took a while for me to be able to make the second trip but onSaturday, November 21st I was finally able to make my second attempt. Iarrived at around 8:50 to see a line of about 15 people or so, allwaiting to buy tickets to the PocketMonsters Planetarium show. I waited in line, filledout the little COVID-19 survey they gave us, had my temperaturechecked, and then bought my ticket for 520 yen.

The planetarium special was well publicized. A huge banner was drapedon the outside near the museum's entrance, a huge poster was in aprominent location on the wall leading to the entrance of the actualplanetarium itself, and posters and otherflyers were hung up all around the rest of the museum. When I had seenthe other Pokémonplanetarium shows in years past there was always a conspicuous lack ofadvertising for those specials but this time things were different. Youcouldn't visit this children's science museum and not know that a Pokémon show was airing here.

At around 10:00 am we were allowed to enter the actual planetariumitself.We were free to sit anywhere we wanted, though we were asked to be sureto social distance from each other because, y'know, coronavirus. Theseats all hadthese signs that said "Disinfected" (消毒済み) on them to let us knowthat the staff had wiped everything down. The venue has aseating capacity of 250 but I'd say only about 50 people or so wereactually allowed in. I sat to the right side of the projector since itwasthe seat that was kinda-sorta the closest to the center.

Once everyone wasseated the lights were dimmed and trailers for the otherplanetarium shows currently playing were shown to us. Thisincluded Detective Conan ThePlanetarium Show - The Burning Galaxy Railroad, *deepbreath* Ninaboy Rantaro andthe Big Space Adventure with Cosmic Front Next "The Close Call at theBlack Hole!?", and Hayabusa 2 ~ Reborn.Once those were out of the way a pre-show science lecture took place.

Beforethe show

When I went to see back in 2018I talked about a 15 minute science lecture that took place after theshow.There was a similar presentation at this museum as well, but this timearoundthe show took place beforethe show, not after.

I don't need to go into too much of this pre-show talk. A man on amicrophone displayed the sky of the neighborhood around the museum andthen showed us atime-lapse so we can see what the stars will look like as the sun sets.Hepointed out that Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were going to be visible,showed what the night sky would look like without all the lightpollution caused by us humans, and then went on to point out a bunch ofconstellations. It was pretty interesting, and the guy who was pointingthingsout to us did a good job of making the presentation easy enough tounderstand,but toward the end of the thing - right around when he was going onabout the Greek myth of Andromeda and all the constellations related toher tale - you could tell the kids in the audience were getting a bitrestless.

I guessit's good that they put this presentation in front of the show likethis because if they had waited until the end then I can imagine itwould have been tough to ask everyone to sit tight for an extra 15minutes

Now that the obligatory lecture was completed, it was time to start Pocket Monsters Planetarium "The Messagefrom the Aurora" proper.

PocketMonsters Planetarium "The Message from the Aurora"

The episode starts with a shot of Suicune far off in the distance - sofar away that you can barely tell what it is - galloping in the skyacross an aurora curtain backdrop.

The opening theme, 1, 2, 3.,is then played.

What's next is an extended sequence where the camera zips around acomputer generated simulation of outer space. We start off by taking alap around the Sun before heading past Venus, Mercury, the Earth'smoon, and then the star that's only ever referred to as "ourplanet" (この星) throughoutthe rest of the special.

At the Sakuragi Laboratory, Dr. Sakuragi is checking on the status ofthe sun. Satoshi and Gou enter the room, asking him what he's doing.What follows is one of two large sections in this episode where thecharacters launch into a science lecture since this is, first andforemost, an educational program. Dr. Sakuragi tells the boysabout howthe weather on our planet affects Pokémon in certain ways,right? When it's sunny out, for example, certain Fire-TypePokémon's attacks (like Hitokage's) grow stronger. And when it'sraining, certain Water-Type Pokémon (like Showers) appear out ofhiding. Well, did you know there's also this thing called "spaceweather" as well? And that itcan affect Pokémon just as much? Dr. Sakuragi likes to keep tabson space weather for this reason.

One such phenomenon he's looking at right now is auroras, the prettycurtains of lights you can see at our planet's poles. Dr. Sakuragiexplains that auroras get their name from Aurora,the goddess of dawn in Roman mythology. He explains that the

Dr. Sakuragi then states that when you think of auroras, you think ofthe Aurora Pokémon, Suicune! "There's a legend in AuroraVillage, in a country up north. It says that when the sky was tornapart, Suicune appeared together with the northern wind and purifiedthe dirty water there." Satoshi and Gou ask if they can go to this"Aurora Village" to see if they can look into the connection betweenauroras and Suicune, and Dr. Sakuragi says that of course they can.

Ourheroes arrive at an airport in a snowy country up north somewhere. Asthe boysmake their way down the plane's passenger steps they complain about howhard the trip was.About how many layovers do you think we had? they wonder. Satoshiwonders what's next (are we getting in a car? a train?) and Gou repliesthat Dr. Sakuragi had apparently asked to have one of his friends comemeet them at the airport to guide them the rest of the way to AuroraVillage. No one's arrived yet and so Satoshi and Pikachu decide to killtime by having an impromptu snowball fight. Gou's annoyed - they camehere to work, not to play! - but when a snowball hits him in the facehequickly changes his tune. Gou joins in on the fight, and before longthe two boys are throwing snowballs at each other.

One of the snowballs Gou throws misses Satoshi and hits a random Mammoorighton the face! The Twin Tusk Pokémon is angry and is about tocharge at Gou when it's stopped by the little girl riding it! The girlintroduces herself as Emma, the daughter of the friend Dr. Sakuragi hadcontacted earlier. Her father was supposed to be their guide to AuroraVillage but he got tied upin something so he asked her to go meet Satoshi and Gou instead. Goucomments that he had assumed they'd be assisted by an adult. Satoshi,on the other hand, is excited; they get to participate in a MammooRide! Emma adds that her Mammoo there will be able to help get themthrough whatever rugged terrain they come across.

Satoshi,Gou, and Emma all chat with each other as Mammoo carries them acrossthe snowy tundra. Gou looks Mammoo up in his Pokémon Bestiary.At one point during their ride, Emma mentions that she would love totravel to places like the Kanto Region to see Pokémon there thatshe can't see around her own village. She wonders what thePokémon who live in cities are like, for example. Satoshi getsexcited and startslisting off a bunch of the Pokémon you can see in Kanto -Fushigidane, Zenigame, Hitokage, Caterpie, male Nidoran, Purin - butGou cuts him off before he gets too carried away. The two boys end uptellingEmma that she's welcome to come visit anytime.As theirtrek continues, our heroes comeacross a bunch of Ice-Type Pokémon like Jugon, Yukiwarashi,Tamazarashi, and maybe others that I'm forgetting, all in this sort ofmontage segment. They then come across a Kumashun, so Gou decides totry to get it. He throws a Monster Ball at the Chill Pokémon butit spots the ball and dives into a hole it had just burrowed into thesnow at the last minute, narrowly avoiding capture. A fewmoments later, a Tunbear bursts out from under the snow with a hugeroar! Is this the Kumashun's mother!? The angry Pokémonbegins to chase after Gou and his Rabbifoot and so the two hitch a rideon Mammoo, who was already running away at this point, to get away tosafety.

Up in the sky above, the Rocket trio are riding in their giant Nyarthhot air balloon. Maybe an open-air hot air balloon basket wasn't thebest way totraverse across a snowy land like this? As the three shiver from thecold wind, Nyarth spots the twerps in his binoculars. What are they doing here!? Could it be...arethey also after..."that?" It's no matter; the Rocket trio (plusSonansu)figure this will be a good chance as any to try to get Pikachu.

Our heroes arrive on a hill overlooking Aurora Village. It's stillearly and they have some time to kill, so Emma decides to start talkingabout auroras. In the episode's second science lecture, Emma talksabout how the plasma particles affect the colors of the auroras.According to Emma, oxygen produced by things like plant life give theauroras their green color, which she interprets as proof that there'slife on this here planet. There's also an explanation about volcanoes'contribution to the colors of auroras, but I unfortunately wasn't ableto catch much of what she was saying at that part. In any case, Goucomments that Emma sure does know a lotabout auroras, and she responds that she learned it all from herfather.

Emma also says thatwhile she's seen auroras plenty of times before,neither she nor anyone else in her village had ever seen the legendaryPokémon Suicune for themselves. It's their guardian deity and issaid tohave turned their land from an unlivable wasteland to a place wherehumans can actually live and thrive, but no one's ever actually seen itwith their own eyes.

All of a sudden, a net appears and traps Emma inside! The Rocket trioappear out of the snowy mist and recite their motto before tellingSatoshi that if he wants them to return the girl he'll have to handover his Pikachu first. He refuses, so they call on their Rocket Gachatmachine to start a Pokémon battle. Musashi and Kojirou putNyarth's coin into the machine, turn the dial, andthrow the two Monster Balls that come out. Today's Pokémon areManyula, the Sharp Claw Pokémon, and Onigohri, the FacePokémon! Musashi orders Manyula to use some Ice-Type attack -IcyShard, maybe? - while Kojirou has Onigohri use Ice Fang. As Pikachubattles the Rocket Pokémon it eventually gets itself frozen,leaving it up to Gou to continue the battle. The young Trainer thenremembers that oh yeah, his Rabbifoot is a Fire-Type and shouldtherefore have an advantage, and so he has his Pokémon use Emberto free Pikachu fromits icy prison. Now that Satoshi's Pokémon is able to movearound again its Trainer has it use a powerful Thunderbolt attack toput an end to the battle. The Rocket trio, hair frizzy from thestatic, are all sent blasting off.

Nightfalls, and it looks like a blizzard is blowing its way through. Ourheroes don't go into the village for shelter, for some reason, andinstead rush over to a nearby tree to shield themselves from the icycold wind. As the three kids and their Pokémon huddle togetherfor safety, Emma warns the boys not to allow themselves to succumb toany drowsiness they may be feeling. Some time later, all threekids have fallen asleep in the snow. And then...a roar.

The children have all been brought into the inside of an icy cavesomewhere, right near the entrance. Emma opens hereyes first and is greeted by the sight of Suicune looking over them!Was the legendary Pokémon the one who dragged them out of thesnow?Suicune, startled by this human suddenly regaining consciousness, turnsaround and walks out of the cave. Satoshi and Gou wake up shortlyafter, and while they are upsetthat they missed seeing the legendary Pokémon they're at leasthappy to know that it's around.

Thechildren get up and make their way out of the cave. Once outside, thetrio is greeted by the sight of a beautiful aurora! And what's this?They see (that same footage from the cold opening of) Suicune gallopingacrossthe aurora in the sky above!

Elsewhere, the Rocket trio are sitting on top of a large icy mound.It seems like this is where they landed after blasting off? They didn'tget to see Suicune, much to their chagrin, but at least they did get tosee thiswonderful aurora! The three of them shout out ii kanji!into the air as the camera zooms away.

Back at the Sakuragi Lab, Dr. Sakuragi reviews the footage his researchfellows took of Suicune running across the night sky. He commends theboys on a job well done before turning his attention to Emma, who hasapparently taken up Satoshi's and Gou's offer to come visit the Kantoregion! She tells Dr.Sakuragi that her father says hi and then turns to Satoshi and Gou; itseems like the two boys are going to show her around the Kanto Region!

The special ends with still frames chronicling the kids'journeys through Kanto being shown off on the left-hand side of thescreen, slideshow style, while the episode's credits run down theright-hand side ofthe screen.

StrayObservations

Here are somemiscellaneous notes I took while watching the special:

• There was noPokémon Riddle segment, eyecatch, or "next episode preview."
  
• The version of 1,2,3used was the very first one from when the series debuted in November2019. It was completely textless; yes, even the lyrics that are usuallyon the bottom of the screen aren't there! The version of the openingthey used in this special is the onewith Zacian and Zamazenta at the end.
• Dr. Sakuragi veryspecifically uses the phrase "Roman mythology" (ローマ神話) when talking about theorigin of the term "aurora," so I guess this means Italy exists in thePokémon world. His namedrop of this real-world (mythological)person is accompanied by this image:

  

• I've gotta say, hearingDr. Sakuragi casually use the word "corona" in theyear 2020 was a little bit jarring, even though his use of it heremakes perfect sense in the context of auroras and the Sun and all that.
  
• Gou throws snowballsthe same way he throws Monster Balls.
  
• Emma's Mammoo is ableto outrun a Tunbear, for what that's worth.
  
• Emma's father isbrought up multiple times throughout this special but we never actuallyget to meet him. We don't ever get to see a photograph or anything toshow what he looks like, either.
  
• Our heroes neveractually enter the Aurora Village; they just kind of hang around theoutskirts the whole time. I have no idea why.
• When the Rocket-Dan isblasting off, all four members are shown with frizzy hair. For thehumans this is fairly straightforward - Musashi's and Kojirou's naturalhair is drawn as fluffy wads of cotton - but for the Pokémon theanimators decided to give Nyarth and Sonansu wigs (black for Nyarth,brown for Sonansu) to give them hair that they can make look frizzy.
  
• The Suicune in thisepisode has a really weird, awkwardly deep voice that I don't recallhearing from any other member of its species before.
• Emma gets a costumechange for when she goes to Kanto, which is pretty amazing consideringwe only see her wearing these clothes for a grand total of one minute.
  

The special has aruntime of approximately 27 minutes, so about the same as a regularepisode of the TV series.

Presentation

This ismy third Pocket Monstersplanetarium review, and it seems like things are getting better themore of these that are made. PocketMonsters XY The Space Debris had terrible looking CGbackgrounds, had better CG backgrounds but all thecolors look faded and dark, and now, PocketMonsters Planetarium "The Message from the Aurora" has thesame quality backgrounds from the previous special but then also fixesthecolor issues.

However, a new problem cropped up for me;

It doesn't really help that the animation in this was generally prettyweak. The Rocket battle toward the end was particularly bad, with abunch of the "still characters sliding across backgrounds" shortcutsthe show used to use being implemented much more liberally here, andwhat was actually animatedlooked pretty limp. They did not use their A-Team on this episode,that's for sure. The only part of this that didn't look superlow budget was Pikachu's final Thunderbolt attack at the end, whichlooked amazing but only made the rest of the battle look so much moreweak by comparison.

Like with the other specials, the parts of the program that reusedfootage from the TV show - the opening theme 1, 2, 3, the Rocket-Dan motto, andthe footage of Nyarth's coin being inserted into the Rocket Gachatmachine - didn't take up the full dome and were instead displayed in alittle rectangle in the middle. Imagine watching a movie that keepsswitching back and forth between 4:3 and 16:3, over and over again, andyou'll get an idea of what it's like to watch these planetariumspecials. Weirdly, the big splash screens they use to introduce thisepisode's Rocket Pokémon - Manyula and Onigohri - were also shrunk down to 16:3 eventhough that would have been brand new footage created just for thisepisode. Maybethey animated it that way in case theywant to ever reuse it for the TV series someday? I honestly can't thinkof any otherreason why this would be the case.

Voiceacting wise we get the usual cast who all does their usual great job.This time around we're joined by Nana Mizuki (水樹奈々) as thecharacter-of-the-day Emma. In Pocket Monsters, she was the voice ofAudrey (one of the two twin girls) in Pocket Monsters Advanced GenerationThe Movie "TheSky-Splitting Visitor, Deoxys" aswell as Victini in Outside Pokémon, she'sprobably most well-known as the voice of Hinata Hyuga in Naruto (and its various sequelseries) and Wrath in FullmetalAlchemist, among many, many others.

The music used in the special is the same Yuki Hayashi background musicfrom the Pocket Monsters (2019)TV series.

FinalThoughts

This was an OK episode of PocketMonsters (2019). The episode's merging of science andPokémon didn't feel as forced as it usually does, and Emma was apretty interesting character-of-the-day, but it's also the kind ofspecial I'll probably forget about a few months from now. It's notgreat, but it's not terrible, either.

PocketMonsters Planetarium "The Message from the Aurora" iscurrentlyplaying exclusively in planetariums throughout Japan.