Pokemon's Lunar New Year anime short is so good I need an entire season of it right now
Come on, what's one more Pokemon anime?
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The Pokemon Company released a very cute anime short last week to celebrate Lunar New Year, and I want nothing more than an entire season of it now.
This year's Lunar New Year, the start of a new year for numerous countries across Asia including China, Korea, Vietnam, and many more, took place over the weekend, on February 10. To observe and celebrate the New Year, a new anime short called Tadaima, which you can sort of, somewhat translate as "I'm Home," was released on the official Japanese Pokemon YouTube channel. This particular short was produced by Hanmu Chunhua (also known as the abbreviated HMCH), directed by DaiWei, who also worked on the donghua series All Saints Street.
You can check out the full short above, and it's well worth doing so. The overall concept is a simple, slife-of-life one, showing people and their partner Pokemon doing everyday things like boxing, leaving work, packing a car, catching a train - all of them on a journey home to celebrate the Lunar New Year. It's really lovingly animated, and is easily one of the best examples of Pokemon anime showing how the pocket monsters could be a part of our everyday lives (certainly much better than the games ever manage to). While the concept of "going home for a holiday" is a bit of a limited one, I'd at the very least love to see a full series of people just going about their pretty normal lives with Pokemon. The whole trainer thing just feels a bit overdone by now, no?
In a comment about the short, director DaiWei said that he has "loved Pokemon since [he] was little" and "never thought that [he] would be able to create an animation about Pokémon" (via Crunchyroll). He also noted that he put all of his favourite Pokemon in the short, and that the whole studio put all of their effort into making it.