Pokémon: Jirachi Wish Maker — the Millennium Comet and the first film of the Hoenn era

This is the film that kicked off a whole new cycle. Released in Japanese theaters on July 19, 2003, Pokémon: Jirachi Wish Maker is the first of the four feature films of the Advanced Generation era: a new region, new companions for Ash, and a Mythical Pokémon that wakes for only seven nights every thousand years. It is also the first film in the saga whose star creature was distributed in the games, a practice that would become the norm. In France, fans had to wait until May 16, 2007, and a three-DVD box set.

Contents

• July 2003: The First Film of the Hoenn Era
• The Plot: A Comet, a Crystal and Seven Nights
• Jirachi, the Mythical Pokémon That Wakes for Only Seven Nights
• A New Group Around Ash, and a Troublesome Magician
• The First Event Distribution Tied to a Film
• Production, Music and a Voice Lost Before Release
• Reception: 4.5 Billion Yen in Japan
• May 16, 2007: Three Films at Once in a Box Set
• What the Film Left Behind for the Saga
• Pokémon: Jirachi Wish Maker at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

July 2003: The First Film of the Hoenn Era

The sixth feature film reached Japanese theaters on July 19, 2003, right on time for the saga's summer slot. Its original title, 七夜の願い星 ジラーチ, means "The Wish-Making Star of Seven Nights: Jirachi." In France, the official title is Pokémon: Jirachi, le génie des vœux (Pokémon: Jirachi Wish Maker in English): unlike the previous film, it does keep the franchise name up front, even though some listings and DVD covers shorten it.

This film opens a new chapter. It is the first of the four feature films of the Advanced Generation series, the one that accompanies the sixth season of the anime and the arrival of the Hoenn region. The complete guide to the Pokémon movies shows this division clearly: each generation of games brings its own batch of films, companions and creatures.

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The release timing does follow the games, but on the Japanese calendar. The film came out eight months after Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, released on November 21, 2002, in Japan and not until July 25, 2003, in Europe. The saga has always timed its feature films to the Japanese release schedule of its games; the fact that the cartridges launched in Europe six days after the film's Japanese premiere is pure coincidence.

At the helm, as always, Kunihiko Yuyama and studio OLM, for an eighty-one-minute film. In Japan, it was screened with a short film titled Gotta Dance!! — the last Pikachu short to accompany a feature film until Kyurem vs. the Sword of Justice, nearly ten years later.

The Plot: A Comet, a Crystal and Seven Nights

It all starts with a celestial phenomenon. The Millennium Comet crosses the sky only once every thousand years and stays visible for seven nights; the city that sees it pass holds a big festival for the occasion. Ash and his friends arrive while the preparations are under way and come across the show of a magician named Butler and his assistant, Diane.

It's Max, the youngest of the group, who sets the story in motion. A crystal owned by the magician calls out to him telepathically, and Butler explains that the stone holds a sleeping creature waiting for two things before it can wake up: the comet, and a friend. The boy is entrusted with the crystal, and with the task of playing that second role.

Jirachi awakens, and the film then takes the shape of a countdown: seven days, not one more, before the Mythical Pokémon has to go back to sleep. The story is even split up day by day, following the comet. Max takes the opportunity to make wishes — including one that comes true at the expense of a festival vendor, a sequence both funny and unsettling about what "granting a wish" really means.

The dark side arrives with Butler. The magician used to be part of Team Magma, and his real ambition is to use the comet's energy, channeled through Jirachi, to bring back to life a Groudon. The group flees toward Forina, the valley where Jirachi must return to its slumber, with an Absol as a traveling companion. We'll stop there: the film's final act deserves to be discovered without spoilers.

Jirachi, the Mythical Pokémon That Wakes for Only Seven Nights

Jirachi is a Steel- and Psychic-type Mythical Pokémon introduced in the third generation. Its legend rests entirely on a time limit: it sleeps for a thousand years, wakes for seven days when the comet passes, grants the wishes written on the tags attached to its head, then goes back to sleep. The film follows this game lore to the letter rather than inventing its own.

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The distinction between Legendary and Mythical matters here, even though Jirachi isn't the first Mythical Pokémon brought to the screen: Mew and Celebi had already headlined the first and fourth films. Jirachi is a Mythical Pokémon, meaning a creature you normally can't obtain through regular play, only through an event — a category explained in detail in the guide to Legendary and Mythical Pokémon. From this sixth film onward, every feature film in the saga would put one on its poster.

The film also takes care with its mythological setting. Forina, the valley where Jirachi returns to sleep, is presented as a sanctuary cut off from the world, with its rock formations and clear skies — the kind of place the series reserves for its rarest creatures. This way of rooting a Mythical Pokémon in a local geography and belief runs through the entire franchise, as shown in the feature on regional legends and mythologies.

One last word on the relationship between Jirachi and Max. The film puts wishing on the side of friendship rather than power, and makes the youngest member of the group its main character — a rare choice in the saga, where Ash usually takes center stage.

A New Group Around Ash, and a Troublesome Magician

This is where it's easy to mix up one film with another. Misty no longer travels with Ash: the sixth film is the first in which the group is made up of May and her little brother Max, alongside Brock and Pikachu. Misty is only mentioned in dialogue. The feature on Ash's journey traces these lineup changes season after season.

The team's Pokémon reflect the new region: Ash travels with his Treecko, Brock with his Mudkip, and May with her Torchic. A curiosity fans have pointed out: Treecko and Mudkip appear on the film's cover even though they barely show up in the main plot.

🧩 Treecko and Mudkip decorate the film's cover even though they barely appear in the plot: an illustration made to be looked at, like the ones in our Pokémon puzzles, except this one you put together piece by piece on your table.

Butler, the magician, is the real antagonist, and he brings a first to the saga. This is the first film in which a criminal organization other than Team Rocket is mentioned: Butler is a former member of Team Magma, one of Hoenn's two rival groups covered in the feature Team Aqua and Team Magma. His team includes a Kirlia and a Dusclops.

Two appearances are worth pointing out. Diane, Butler's assistant, is the film's moral counterweight, the one who sees her partner going off the rails. There's also a brief glimpse of Brendan, the playable male character from Ruby and Sapphire, accompanied by an Aggron and a Shiftry: a subtle bridge between the game and the film.

The First Event Distribution Tied to a Film

This is the sixth film's most concrete contribution to the franchise's history. Jirachi is the first Mythical Pokémon distributed in the games to accompany a feature film's release, rather than simply shown on screen. Previous films showcased Legendary Pokémon; this one puts them in the players' hands.

The distribution took place in three stages and on three platforms. In Japan, in 2003, the Jirachi nicknamed Negaiboshi was distributed directly for Ruby and Sapphire. In 2004, North America received the "WISHMKR" Jirachi through a bonus disc bundled with Pokémon Colosseum, while Europe and Australia got the "CHANNEL" Jirachi from the software Pokémon Channel, one of the strangest titles in the GameCube catalog, listed in the spin-off overview.

These Jirachi had the same characteristics from one region to another. Each is a level 5 Jirachi with the Ability Serene Grace and the moves Wish, Confusion and Rest, holding a Berry that depends on the version. It's more a collector's piece than a battler, but for a long time it was the only legitimate way to obtain the species.

The film also left its mark on the games themselves. A Trainer in Pokémon Colosseum fields a team made up entirely of the film's creatures, led by Jirachi, and in the Japanese version, two Ace Trainers in the Sinnoh region carry the names and teams of Butler and Diane.

Production, Music and a Voice Lost Before Release

The film carries a loss that few viewers know about. Tomiko Suzuki, the Japanese actress who voiced Jirachi, died of a heart attack a week and a half before the theatrical release: this feature film is the last one she worked on. In hindsight, the role of a creature that grants wishes takes on a special poignancy.

On the music side, the film breaks new ground on one specific point. The ending theme, Make a Wish, performed by Cindy Mizelle, marks the first time the English version kept the Japanese ending theme rather than replacing it, simply putting English lyrics to it. May's singing voice is also kept in the dub. On the other hand, the film doesn't open with the season's theme song, another first for the saga.

The end credits hide a little game that few viewers notice: several real constellations serve as a backdrop for Pokémon chosen for their mythological match — Ursa Major and Ursa Minor for the two bears of the second generation, Draco for Milotic, Scorpius for Gligar. A nod that fits the theme of the wish-granting star.

✨ The end credits slip Milotic into the constellation Draco and Gligar into Scorpius: with our Pokémon stickers, your wall becomes a star chart.

Finally, the French dub is a case of its own. This film was handed to the MediaDub International studio, with a voice cast different from that of the series and the other feature films — and a surprising decision: the Pokémon names were not translated and are pronounced in English throughout the film. The next film shares the same fate; the songs weren't dubbed either.

Reception: 4.5 Billion Yen in Japan

Commercially, the film held its own. It grossed 4.5 billion yen in Japanese theaters, making it the second-highest-grossing Japanese film of 2003, and ninth among all films in Eiren's annual ranking. The saga was keeping up its pace of one film every summer, and 2003 even marked a 68.5% rebound over the previous year: from 1998 to 2005, none of its feature films dropped out of the year's top 4 Japanese films.

Internationally, the treatment was far more modest. It was the first Pokémon film released direct-to-video in the United States, on June 1, 2004, with no theatrical run — the end of an era when the franchise's feature films were released in theaters outside Japan. The same shift applied to Europe.

Local versions then went down very different paths. In Latin America, this film and the next were dubbed in Argentina rather than in Mexico, with an entirely different voice cast, and aired on only a handful of local channels; in Spain, they were simply never dubbed. The first Italian broadcast didn't happen until March 2012.

These disparities partly explain the film's uneven reputation. Depending on the country, people discovered it at the right time, years late, or not at all — a phenomenon that the complete guide to the Pokémon movies describes for the saga as a whole.

May 16, 2007: Three Films at Once in a Box Set

In France, this film never came out in theaters, nor did it get a notable TV premiere. It arrived on May 16, 2007, on DVD, inside a three-disc box set titled Les Aventures des Pokémon, alongside the saga's fourth and seventh films. Three feature films released in Japan in 2001, 2003 and 2004 thus reached France on the same day.

This box set is the best illustration of the French release chaos. The fifth film, Pokémon Heroes, had already been available on DVD since July 13, 2005: French audiences therefore saw the fifth film before the fourth, then got the fourth, sixth and seventh all at once, almost two years later. The Japanese date tells you the film's place in the saga; the French date tells you nothing more than when the disc showed up.

More editions followed. A standalone DVD edition came out on April 2, 2009, followed by a slipcase version with four Pokémon cards on January 20, 2010, then a standard DVD reissue on April 1, 2017. It was through these reissues, more than the original box set, that most French households discovered the film.

A useful reference point to keep things straight: only the saga's first three films had a genuine run in French theaters, on April 5, 2000, December 20, 2000 and June 13, 2001.

What the Film Left Behind for the Saga

Its main legacy isn't narrative, it's structural. This film set up the model that would shape the saga for fifteen years: a Mythical Pokémon on the poster, an event distribution in the games of the day, and a feature film that is as much a showcase as it is a story. Nearly every film that followed would reuse this formula.

The film also made Jirachi popular for the long haul. Its sleeping-star silhouette, with its wish tags, made it one of the most recognizable Mythical Pokémon of the third generation, on par with Deoxys, the star of the next film. It has regularly returned in official distributions over the generations.

Finally, this sixth installment has a pivotal status that fans of the series are quick to notice: it is the only film in the Advanced Generation series in which no creature from the next generation appears. The three that follow all slip in a fourth-generation Pokémon ahead of its time, continuing a habit already seen in Pokémon Heroes.

Pokémon: Jirachi Wish Maker at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the exact French title of the sixth Pokémon film?
  Pokémon: Jirachi, le génie des vœux (Pokémon: Jirachi Wish Maker in English). Some DVD covers and listings shorten it to Jirachi, le génie des vœux, but the official title does include the franchise name up front. The original Japanese title means "The Wish-Making Star of Seven Nights: Jirachi."
• When was the film released in France, and how?
  On May 16, 2007, on DVD, inside a three-disc box set titled Les Aventures des Pokémon, which also contained the saga's fourth and seventh films. It was never released in French theaters. A standard DVD edition followed on April 2, 2009, then a slipcase version with four Pokémon cards on January 20, 2010, and a reissue on April 1, 2017.
• Why isn't Misty in this film?
  Because the film accompanies the sixth season of the anime, set in the Hoenn region, where Ash now travels with Brock, May and her little brother Max. It is the saga's first feature film without Misty in the group. Ash does, however, mention her in dialogue.
• Was Jirachi distributed in the video games?
  Yes, and it's the first film in the saga whose star creature got an event distribution. A Jirachi nicknamed Negaiboshi was distributed in Japan in 2003 for Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. In 2004, North America received a WISHMKR Jirachi through a bonus disc bundled with Pokémon Colosseum, and Europe a CHANNEL Jirachi from the Pokémon Channel software.
• Who is Butler, the film's antagonist?
  A stage magician and former member of Team Magma, one of the two criminal organizations of the Hoenn region. He wants to use the energy of the Millennium Comet, channeled through Jirachi, to bring a Groudon back to life. It's the first Pokémon film in which a criminal organization other than Team Rocket is involved.
• How long does Jirachi stay awake?
  Seven days, as long as the Millennium Comet stays visible in the sky. According to its legend, taken straight from the video games, Jirachi sleeps for a thousand years between two passes of the comet. The film's story is even split up day by day, which gives it the shape of a countdown.
• Did the film do well in Japan?
  Yes. It grossed 4.5 billion yen in Japanese theaters and finished as the second-highest-grossing Japanese film of 2003 in Eiren's annual ranking, and ninth among all films. Internationally, however, it was the first Pokémon film released direct-to-video, with no theatrical run.

In short