Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution is a new instalment in the long-running
Pokémon franchise. While it's considered the 22nd Pokémon film, it's actually a remake of the very first. What differentiates the new and old version of
Mewtwo Strikes Back is their animation style.
Pokémon: The First Movie made use of the franchise's traditional 2D animation style, however, the recently released remake is wholly 3D. The director of
Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution recently attended Anime Expo 2019 (via
Comicbook.com) wherein he participated in a panel and discussed exactly why he and The Pokémon Company decided to change up the look.
Kunihiko Yuyama explained that they had planned to make use of 3D CG animation for quite some time now but there was hesitation as they were worried that not everything would translate well from 2D to 3D.
"We felt that using 3D animation technology, we could portray maybe an extra level or different dimension of the Pokemon world that maybe would be a little bit difficult to do with one dimensional methods."
Yuyama went on, explaining that he believes they were able to get across
"a level of depth and a level of interesting imagery" that they were only able to achieve thanks to the modern 3D technology.
With
Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution being the first official 3D-animated
Pokémon film, Yuyama was worried that fans wouldn't be too fond of it. Thankfully, the film has now released and it seems that his worries were for naught as it
has received some quite favourable reviews.
"[T]his is first time we have done full 3D computer generated animation. And so even though we've done over 20 Pokemon movies, it feels like this is the first time. And I was so worried that this was just going to be a flop and that people weren't going to like it."