For a short, bright moment over 20 years ago, Pokemon moved up from the anime/video game level where it normally lives and has become something more. Something edgier, something happier. And then, just as fast as it went up, it slid right back down, and most people now forget it ever happened.
I’m talking of course Pokemon Live!, a full blown musical that toured the United States in 2000 and then localized for more international performances over the next few years. If you actually went to a show, or at least remember the promotional material, you know this wasn’t a cheap spin-off.
The creators of the show have some serious Worked on it, especially when it came to the Pokémon themselves, and created stunning costumes and puppets to bring the main characters of the series to life. However, despite their best efforts, and although cameras were on hand to capture quality footage, for some reason the show was never released on VHS/DVD, and so outside of those lucky enough to have gone to see a performance 22 years ago its It has become an almost forgotten relic of a bygone era.
Or was it, until this week Jonii Vee and Jamie D. Elms released a documentary about the show, the culmination of a year’s work combing through archive footage and interviewing former cast members. Now if you’re wondering why people are going to all this trouble for a show you didn’t even know existed until you started reading this blog, Jamie recounts igamesnews
Which, you know, is fair. A year later, here’s the bottom line, called Pokémon Live: How Pikachu Almost Taken Broadway:
To accompany the documentary, they also released this shorter video with some facts and random footage:
And if you want to watch the whole show for yourself now, while an official recording was never released, there’s this bootleg recording of the entire performance, cleaned up in 2020: