Pocket Monsters Movies: Anamorphic?

[MagicBox]

While I don't really consider myself the biggest Pokemon fan (anymore, anyway), I do enjoy some of the feature films enough to own. I don't want to invest in the region one DVDs since they're dub-only and pan-&-scanned; I'm sure you'll all agree that it's silly to have to settle for a release like that.

I've researched the Japanese DVDs and found out that they not only contain the movies in their original aspect ratio, but they're also randomly bilingual (some of them, anyway), which is also kinda neat. That automatically makes them better than the region one discs.

One thing I haven't been able to find is whether or not they're anamorphic. As cool as the discs seem to be, I don't want them if they're not enhanced for widescreen TVs.

If anyone could tell me which movie discs are anamorphic and which ones aren't, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

[PhilipReuben]

I rented movie 1 while I was in Japan and I'm pretty sure it was anamorphic. That was a few years ago though, so don't quote me on it.

[ChibiGoku]

As far as I am aware, all the movies are anamorphic with the only exception lies in the first movie short, which is framed at 4:3. The first three movies are billingual, including the shorts. Movie 2 does have a spot where the dub audio drops out, which is during the scene where Kenji (Tracy) realizes the pokemon's attacks are essentially going to create an explosion. This was cut on the R1 release, so the audio dropping out does make sense.

However, Movie 3's dub seems to been before 4Kids decision to rearrange the footage at the end of the movie. The intro song in the short is also left intact (and is at the same audio levels as the dub. Ending song, however, is the same audio levels as the Japanese audio track). The rest of the movies however, do not have the English dub included. Not a terribly big deal, but I suppose it could be annoying if you were trying to get it with the english version.

[MagicBox]

Thanks a bunch, you two. The only films I was actually thinking of getting were movies one and three, so it's nice to know those are fine. I'll get around to buying them... someday.

Stinks that the only English subs on them are for the English dub, but I'll take what I can get.

Thanks again.

[Legion]

What stinks even more is that IIRC you can't even watch the Japanese version on the discs with the dubtitles. For whatever reason the powers that be aren't interested in letting viewers watch the Japanese version with any kind of English subtitling.

[Thanatos]

What stinks even more is that IIRC you can't even watch the Japanese version on the discs with the dubtitles. For whatever reason the powers that be aren't interested in letting viewers watch the Japanese version with any kind of English subtitling.

But logically, the English dubtitles aren't a translation, so there's little need for Japanese viewers to watch the Japanese dialogue with an non-literal English adaptation. English dialogue with English closed captioned subtitles makes sense for Japanese viewers wanting to use the discs to study English.

I was more off put by the Japanese subtitles being the English dub translated back into Japanese. I guess that's interesting, but it doesn't help Japanese viewers who are hard of hearing. But I guess that's just Japan working on the assumption that the deaf don't watch TV or movies. Sigh...

But you can always use software to create your own custom disc for your own personal use that doesn't lock on the subtitles.