Pokemon B&W Movie Collection releases 9/17

Similar to a collection released for the 4th generation movies, the movies of the Black & White generation will be getting a release on DVD and Blu-Ray on September 17th. The set includes both Victini movies, the Keldeo movie, and the Genesect movie.

Anime Update: 20th Movie Locations, Indigo League Blu-Ray

Turns out there were some announcements made regarding the Pokemon anime in the last few weeks I wanted to catch up on:

Links:

Fathom Events
Bulbanews

DVDs, Blu-rays of first three Pokemon movies releasing in February 2016 in the US

Update: A Blu-ray pack of all three movies has been added, to be released on February 9th. Original article follows.

Amazon US recently posted new listings for DVDs for the first three Pokemon movies:

Pokemon: The First Movie
Pokemon: The Movie 2000
Pokemon 3

The movies are set to released in February (the 9th for The First Movie and the 16th for the second and third) for $14.98 each. While the descriptions do make reference to the theatrical shorts, they also appear to be placeholders and it is not known for certain if the discs will contain these or any other special features. It is also not known if these movies will be coming to Blu-ray or digital distribution in the US, though the recent trend of releasing the 8th, 9th, and 17th movies digitally suggests that possibility for these films.

The first three Pokemon movies have been out of print in the US since the 10th anniversary of their original US theatrical release dates, the result of an apparent expiration of Warner Bros.'s rights to distribute them. Since then, they have made occasional appearances on television and the Pokemon TV service, and were released on DVD and Blu-ray in Australia earlier this month. These new US releases come very shortly before the 20th anniversary of the original Pokemon games' release in Japan.

A Real Pokemon: The First Movie Blu-Ray Appeared! In Australia...

Turns out the Aussies are getting the first three Pokemon movies on Blu-ray just in time for Christmas. Find out what we know (and don't know) about this collection, and what it could mean for the wider world:

Transcript:

Hi, folks. Steven here. Just wanted to put up a video discussing one of the news stories from earlier this week that I think could use a little more attention. So, some of you may remember that last year I put up a video about a fake Pokemon: The First Movie Blu-ray that appeared on eBay. And, this is sort of a follow up to that.

Now, since then, I’ve seen fake Blu-rays of second and third movies, fake DVDs of the first three movies and Mewtwo Returns. A fake “repress” of the 4-7 Blu-ray, Origins and even the Zoroark movie. But, what’s happened this week is that we found out that Australia is getting a Blu-ray pack of movies 1-3. You may remember that this has been out of print for years. First Movie in 2009, second in 2010, third in 2011. So, there hasn’t been a legitimate way to buy these.

But, in any case, this 1-3 Blu-ray collection is coming out on December 2^nd. And, if you would rather get them on DVD, they’re available individually on that same day. We don’t know a ton about these collections. We can’t actually see the backs of them, so we don’t know if they’re going to have the shorts or special features of any sort. Now, you may remember that the first three Pokemon movies have been cycling through on Pokemon TV. As of recording this, they have the third movie up there. And, none of them, as far as I know, have the shorts associated with them. So, it remains to be seen if they’ll be on these. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t.

And, as far as special features, to be honest, I’m not expecting a whole lot. It would be nice if they could at least bring the special features from the original releases forward. That would be very nice. So, with this release, I’m sure a lot of you are wondering, is this going to be importable? Well, as it turns out, these are labeled as Blu-ray Region B, which covers Australia, New Zealand, and a good chunk of Europe. Which, is a different region from Region A, which covers the US, Canada, Japan, and a few other places. So, technically speaking, unless you had a region-free Blu-ray player, you wouldn’t be able to use these.

However, as you may know, the Magna and Beyond Blu-ray for movies 12-15 that came out in Australia-the same distributor for this-would also play in Region A players. There were a few caveats. You might want to check out my review of the movie 14, the Victini movie Blu-ray that we did a couple years ago, sort of discusses some of that.

These might also play in Region A players. We really don’t know. And, my advice, if you don’t have a region-free player, is just to wait until they come out and then look for some confirmation online about whether they support Region A. And then, I guess, you could find a way to import them.

So, next question you’re probably asking, what does this mean for the US? Are we going to see these eventually? I suppose there’s a small chance that we could get something announced for this year. But, I think we’re much more likely to see something next year. And, just to kind of forewarn you, this could be a Blu-ray, or it could be just digital distribution of these movies on iTunes, Amazon Instant, and the like.

Part of the reason for this is that we’ve never gotten, in North America, a Blu-ray of Pokemon from Viz, who would probably end up doing this type of distribution. No real reason why Australia has gotten this but the US hasn’t. Maybe Viz thinks it’s economically unviable. One idea that I have-pure speculation on my part-is maybe Viz has some sort of cap on how many Blu-rays they can produce in a given year and Pokemon would use up too much of that quota. Like I said, total speculation on my part. Just putting that out there.

So, with that said, hopefully some time within the next 6-8 months, we’ll find something out that something is coming to the US. But, until then, I’m just kind of curious, what are your thoughts, idea, comments on this? Are any of you thinking about getting this from Australia? Or, what’s the deal with that? Alright, folks. Thanks.

A Fake Pokemon: The First Movie Blu-Ray Appeared!

Recently, a fake disc of Pokemon: The First Movie started appearing on eBay. Here's what you need to know:

Transcript:

Hi, everybody. Steven here. Just wanted to alert you to something I’ve seen on eBay a couple time in the last few weeks. Now, if you’ve been following my Twitter feed, I’ve pointed this out a couple times. There is a fake Blu-ray version of Pokémon: The First Movie that’s popped up on eBay a couple times. In no way should you buy this. But, I’m going to explain it.

It’s actually a pretty good fake, to be honest. Someone did put some effort into making it look kind of legitimate. But, I’m going to go ahead and poke some holes in it just so you know what’s wrong with it and kind of how to spot fakes like this.

So, if we take a look at the front cover, you’ll notice that the picture in the front is misaligned. For whatever reason, there’s some blank space on the left that kind of forms a diagonal line. I guess what must have happened is that they scanned either the DVD cover or the VHS cover or a movie poster of it or something, in order to create this. And, that’s how they got the picture that you see there. But, you can see on the left hand side there’s this little border area that-it’s just not consistent there.

The other thing you probably notice is that the place where it usually says Kids’ WB! Presents, there’s a little Pokéball over. Personally, I don’t think it quite fits in there. I suppose if they were downplaying the Kids WB! part of it, now that that doesn’t really exist anymore in a rerelease. But, just keep that in mind.

Now, the first auction listing only had the front cover there. So, you could only see this. I knew it was fake because there is no Blu-ray version of Pokémon: The First Movie in English. The second time this was listed, which was just a few days ago from when I was recording this. We actually got a picture of the front and the back. And, if you take a look at the back, on initial inspection it might look kind of legit. But, there’s a few things wrong there too.

It has the text from the original DVD/VHS release, although a few words here and there have been cut out. It still loosely makes sense. But, the first thing that’s off is there’s negative space in the top right. You almost never see that on the back of a disc these days. Usually they fill it up with either actual pictures or with text or with something in there. So, you wouldn’t see a big space like that on the top right. Not sure what’s going on there. If you look very closely, there’s a space where there’s a bunch of Pokémon and there’s sort of a starburst behind them. You’ll notice if you look next to Charizard, there’s this white space. If you compare it against the one from the original DVD, there should be some stuff there. But, when they Photoshopped or whatever this together, they cut it out wrong. There’s that blank white space there next to Charizard’s neck.

Another big thing that’s missing, and you’ll see this a lot of these types of bootlegs, is there’s no rights information. Nothing about Warner Bros, Viz, The Pokémon Company, none of that stuff is on there. And, there are a few smaller things on there too. It’s got the same zebra code as the DVD version. It should have a different code number, since it is a different product. And, I’m sure there’s a number of other things that are off. And, if I had a close up, I’m sure I could spot even more stuff. So, I guess that kind of begs the question, what’s actually on the disc?

Well, I’m not buying this and neither should you. But, what I’m guessing is on there is they took the Japanese Blu-ray of The First Movie, which if you recall, is only sold as a set of the first 12 or 13 movies. And, they went in and spliced in the English audio and maybe they took some stuff from that remastered version that debuted on Cartoon Network earlier this year and used it to create this bootleg disc. But, that’s my best guess. Like I said, don’t buy this. If you see it somewhere, if someone else is considering buying it, tell them not to buy it. Just a little fair warning there. Thanks.

Transcript by GetTranscribed.com