While browsing Netflix one day, I came upon the movie Mewtwo Strikes Back EVOLUTION: a remake of the first Pokémon movie originally from the late 90s. Out of curiosity, I decided to look at the language settings to see what was available, and was surprised to see Japanese audio among the options.

This is a fairly big deal because the US release of the first movie never came with Japanese as an option, and it was from a time when dubs would substantially alter the contents of the original. While both the Japanese and English versions of Mewtwo Strikes Back are clearly meant primarily for kids, the differences are enough to practically make them two different movies. 

I watched EVOLUTION with Japanese audio and English closed captioning (an actual subtitle track was unavailable), and to my surprise, it actually translates a majority of the script faithfully. Gone are the attempts to “explain” mysterious moments from the film—there’s no legend of “healing tears,” for example. And rather than the antagonist Mewtwo being a grievance-filled villain out to start his “reign” over the world, they’re back to being the traumatized soul who “strikes back” at the world because of a deep existential crisis. I am serious when I say that Mewtwo is literally the best character in the entire anime because of the complexity of their character, and I’m happy that people get to see that now. For those watching in Japanese, Ichimura Masachika reprises his role as Mewtwo, and his performance remains unbelievably good. Ichimura’s background is actually in theater acting (he was the very first Japanese Phantom of the Opera), and his veteran skill shows.

I said the script was mostly faithful, though, and that’s because a few things do not match up. 

The opening and ending songs are still the ones used in the dub version even when you watch in Japanese, so I sadly did not get to hear the new rendition of one of my favorite songs, “Kaze to Issho ni.” At the very least, the new ending song is better than what used to be there in the dub.

The biggest departure comes from the fact that the English script retains the dub’s version of Mewtwo’s speech at the end: “I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.” It’s not a bad sentiment, but it is significantly different from the Japanese, where Mewtwo is much more ambivalent to the very end. In Japanese, they talk about how the clones are alive, and they will continue to live—somewhere.” The difference in sentiment feels like it comes down to America’s valuing of being a master of your fate vs. Japan’s love of the ephemeral and imperfect (to overly simplify things), but I wish at least this version could have stuck closer to the original. Given how the rest of the script is so close, I suspect that those in charge felt that the dub line is inextricably tied to perceptions of the movie in English.

Aside from the translation comparison, the rest of the film just feels like an experiment they decided to throw out there. The CG is all right but unspectacular, and a number of action scenes feel longer than they did before (sometimes to the detriment of the pacing). Overall, the original holds up a bit better in Japanese, but having a version that’s 80% more accurate in English is something I’m just glad to see.