Pokemon Pikachu's Winter Vacation

Rating:
Summary: Good Winter Pokémon Fun
Review: This DVD contains 4 "Pokémon" shorts that were never shown in the theaters or on TV. You get "Winter Vacation", "Winter Games", "Winter Vacation 2", and "Stantler's Little Helpers". The general theme of each story is pretty much the same. All 4 stories focus on the Pokémon, who get into various fun/mischief/trouble involving snow and ice. Do you know of the "Pikachu's Vacation" short that was shown before the first movie? These stories are like that. You don't see the humans' faces, and they don't have much dialogue. Most of the dialogue consists of Pokéspeak, which is just the Pokémon saying their names (or parts of their names) over and over again. No, it doesn't make any sense how that could be a language or how they can understand each other. It's kind of cute, though. The best part about this DVD is that Team Rocket does not appear! I've always found them annoying. Well, Meowth appears in 2 of the shorts, but he's not there for very long. The first 2 stories seem to be from the pre-Johto era, and the second 2 stories seem to be from the Johto era, judging by the Pokémon present in each story. There is no Japanese audio track, just English. Is it too much to ask that bilingual DVDs be released? There are also some editing problems, such as 2 sets of credits appearing back-to-back after all 4 stories are done. This is odd. Here's my final judgment on this DVD: If you don't care for the Pokémon that much and prefer the human characters instead, this disc might not be for you. Still, since you can find it in discount bins, it's a fun way to spend around 45 minutes.