Japan Expo 2017 took place from July 6th, 2017 until July 9th, 2017 at the Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre in Paris, France. The world premiere of Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! was held on July 6th, 2017 at Yuka. A Movie Rollout Pre-Screening was held Sunday July 2nd 2017, at Tokyo Dome City Hall in Japan. Higher resolution press photos have been added to an Imageboard thread.

The film was shown in Japanese with French subtitles and Director Kunihiko Yuyama and Voice Actress Rica Matsumoto were in attendance at the premiere. PackSciences was able to attend the event and wrote the following report. Due to the ban on recording equipment for the movie, video and pictures were taken with a Nintendo 3DS during the preshow and interview segments only, hence the lower than normal quality. The following report does not contain a summary or spoilers for the movie.

Japan Expo 2017 - Pokémon Store Kansai International Airport Booth

A small booth about the Pokémon Store located in Kansai International Airport was at the Japan Expo. This booth wasn't that interesting because there was nothing to do besides taking pictures with a Pikachu cosplay if you were lucky enough to meet it or look at the A380, a French airplane. Nothing was sold at the booth but they were doing advertisements for the store which is located in Japan.

Japan Expo 2017 - World premiere of the 20th Pokémon Movie - Report

On Thursday July 6th, 2017, The Pokémon Company decided to show Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! in France for the world premiere. To get a ticket for the movie, you had to follow a large queue for 2 hours and that might have discouraged some Pokéfans because on the 3200 available places, only 3114 were given, meaning that if you had reached the ticket booth after everyone gave up, you could grab a ticket freely without the pain of a queue.


The session started and there were some fun Pokémon name jokes in French about the security consign, not recording the movie and so on, gave us some fun.


Apparently, they were spying on us with powerful cameras while we were watching to the movies and they were happy that we were hyped about some the emotional moments of the movie.

Then, we were about to ask some questions to Rica and Kunihiko. Some kid asked "How do you produce the movies?" He answered, "I take inspirations from my travels, for this movie, I took inspiration on New Zealand".

Then, someone asked to Rica, "How does it feel like to come to a place like France?" which she answered that her ballerina friend told her a lot about France and that she was glad to finally come here. Also, about the voice acting, since it was the first time that a Pokémon anime was in a theater in France with a Japanese audio track, she said that the work of all other voice actors mattered.

Finally, someone asked to Rica, then to Kunihiko which movie were their favorite to work on, they both answered, "Pokemon: Mewtwo no Gyakushuu".

Preshow and Interview Videos

Note: Transcripts and translations of the Preshow and Interview videos will be posted here later.