Problems with Cartoon Network cablecast of this movie

POKÉMON THE MOVIE: HOOPA AND THE CLASH OF AGES premiered yesterday, December 19, 2015, on the Cartoon Network in a 90-minute time slot from 6:00PM to 7:30PM(EST). CN preceded the film with a two-and-a-half-hour time slot (3:30PM to 6:00PM) devoted to the 2009 Pokémon movie, POKÉMON: ARCEUS AND THE JEWEL OF LIFE. Why did they need that long a time slot for a 94-minute movie? ARCEUS ended at 5:42 PM (EST). I wondered if CN would run the Pikachu short film that usually accompanies new Pokémon movies in the gap between the two movies. No, starting at 5:47PM, they ran a different Pokémon short entitled “Hoopa: The Mischief Pokémon.” It was 13 min. long and was followed immediately by the start of POKÉMON THE MOVIE: HOOPA AND THE CLASH OF AGES. Now, this movie has a 78 min. running time in its original Japanese version. CN ran six commercial breaks of four minutes each in the 90-minute time slot, adding up to 24 minutes, meaning that the movie, as run on CN, lasted only 66 minutes, a gap of 12 minutes.

I wondered if the gap was attributable to the Hoopa short that preceded the movie. So I checked the Japanese DVD and that is not the case. The movie on the Japanese DVD is 78 minutes and does not include the Hoopa short, which is featured separately as an extra on the DVD. (A second disc includes the Pikachu short that usually accompanies the movie in Japan.) The end credits on the Japanese version last about four-and-a-half minutes, while the credits on the U.S. version were speeded up and squeezed into the side of the frame in the Cartoon Network airing and lasted about a minute. So, taking that into account, I’m guessing that there’s about an eight-minute gap between the Japanese version and the U.S. version as it aired on CN.

I fast-forwarded through the Japanese version to see if I could spot any unfamiliar scenes that were missing from the CN version and I found two: one short bit involving Nurse Joy and one two-minute flashback involving Baraz and Meray as children tending to an ailing Hoopa in a cave at night. If there were other unfamiliar bits in the Japanese version, I’m guessing they were in the lengthy battle scenes in the skies over Dahara City and require a scene-by-scene comparison to determine what’s missing, something I don’t have the time to do right now.

The closing credits in the Japanese version include scenes under the credits that feature the main characters in continuations of the action of the movie. None of this footage was in the CN version.

I don't understand why Cartoon Network didn't run the Hoopa short and the movie together in a two-hour time slot from 6PM to 8PM. At 7:30PM, they ran "Teen Titans," which runs umpteen times during the day on CN on Saturdays. They can afford to preempt one showing of it. Ideally, they would have run the short first, with an announcement that the movie would follow immediately, or they could have started with the movie and run the short afterwards, fitting comfortably within a two-hour time slot. I don't understand why they didn't do that. As it stands, a lot of fans probably missed the short because they tuned in to the movie at 6PM. I only caught it because I was curious about the gap between the ARCEUS and HOOPA movies.

I can only hope that the U.S. DVD version offers the complete movie and not just what aired on CN. And I hope it includes the Hoopa short. I would also like it to include the Pikachu short ("Pikachu & the Pokémon Music Band"), but I’m not holding my breath for that one. I don’t know why the U.S. distributor is so fearful of the wonderful Pikachu shorts.

P.S. Since posting this, I have re-watched the film in comparison with the Japanese DVD to determine what was cut. Please see my full review of the movie for more information.