I highly recommend watching _Top Secret Internal Team Plasma Genesect Video_ (just a few minutes long), _PK25 – Pokémon: Eevee & Friends_ (short that was screened together with the film), _Mewtwo — Prologue to Awakening_ (20 minute special of the animated TV series; it's directly connected), and _Pokémon the Movie: Genesect and the Legend Awakened_ in one sitting. I think it improves the pacing. Now to my review. Great animation, not a great script. It was just Mewtwo and Genesect fighting most of the time. And though I technically understand the reason for Red Genesect's aggression (it was explained), it still felt inscrutable. I can't say that with the first movie. Especially not the extended version of the first movie. The titles are a mess. "Prologue to Awakening"—okay, then you think that... he is going to wake up in the movie called "Genesect and the Legend Awakened" shown in theaters just two days after the special premiered on television (or technically, since the movie title says "Awakened", the awakening should be in between the prologue and the movie). But that's not what it is. It doesn't give any backstory. I didn't know that he was sleeping (literally or figuratively), by the way, just living in seclusion. This is not explained. But it is a prologue of sorts, in that it tells a story that happened before the main story. The main thing that it actually prologues is nothing with Mewtwo, but rather Ash and his friends getting an invitation to Pokémon Hills. That's actually good. That should have been in the movie, probably. The unforgivable sin of the movie, however, is to introduce the form change gimmick and not explain why Mewtwo suddenly has acquired this ability or how. Why bring back a nostalgic beloved Pokémon from the first movie, and not bridge the gap between the movies properly; not serve the people who actually experience the nostalgia? And as a character, Mewtwo doesn't feel very familiar. And his voice (in Japanese at least) is very different. I was confused that the _Mewtwo Returns_ special doesn't seem to be in the same canon as this film, cause Ash doesn't remember Mewtwo. (EDIT: I rewatched the segment where they meet. Ash/Satoshi says お前 は... Omae wa… to Mewtwo, meaning "You are..." Without a question mark, if PM's subs are correct, but they normally based their subs off of official Jap subs, so I assume it's correct. In my first viewing, I interpreted the sentence as sort of "And you are?", but that seems unwarranted. Ash seems to recognize Mewtwo. Still, this is a bare minimum recognition, and nothing else suggests they know each other. ... But since Mewtwo at the end of _Mewtwo Returns_ asked them to forget what happened, maybe Ash doesn't say anything with respect for the secret, given that Iris and Cilan is there.) That's significant. How do I unlearn the character progression that Mewtwo had in _Mewtwo Strikes Back_ and adapt to this film? It didn't go well; as I said, I was confused, and I didn't become especially un-confused. Just feels like the makers didn't care that much. And that's sad. I watched the little PR piece _Top Secret Internal Team Plasma Genesect Video_ before this. I thought Team Plasma would be featuring in this film. They basically don't. I'm not a Team Plasma fan, so I don't lament them not being featured per se, but it feels like a huge gap in the story—Genesect's revival and its origins—even if the little video I mentioned covers it a bit. The video says Genesect lived 300 million years ago. That's a lot. Wow. That's the Late Carboniferous era on Earth; 170 million years before the Age of the Dinosaurs, and of course, long before humans or even primates evolved. It was a land ruled by giant bugs. Genesect is a Bug/Steel Pokémon, so the 300 million years mark is probably not incidental. They could have shown us beautiful prehistoric landscapes in this movie. All we got was a 4-second shot of it, and it wasn't great. The Genesect look like robots. Why?? On the _good side_, other than good animation, is that I liked the emotional beats. And they didn't feel too contrived. Not by Pokémon standards. And the plot actually makes sense. My rating of the film on a Pokémon the Series (movies and specials included) scale... 7/10. It's much better than most episodes of the show. But not as good as the first and third films.