“The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” Director Returns for Pokémon Wartortle Short

A new episode of the POKÉTOON anthology follows a boy’s summer vacation on an island and his meeting with an unusual Pokémon.

The official Pokémon YouTube channel has released the short film “Wartortle and the Summer That Goes On” from the POKÉTOON animated anthology. Shingo Yamashita directed the project, having recently made his feature film directorial debut with the anime “The Super Dimension Princess Kaguya.”

The story centers on a boy named Rikuto who visits his grandmother on an island at the end of the summer. There, he meets an unusual Wartortle whose tail differs from its Pokédex entry and whose shell has grown mossy over many years. Rikuto spends the rest of his vacation playing with the Wartortle and other island inhabitants before learning that the Pokémon is connected to his family’s past. Thirty years earlier, this same Wartortle was friends with his father when his father was a child.

Studio Chromato and Studio Colorido handled the production of the short film. Yamashita has previously worked with Pokémon, directing the miniseries “Pokémon: Twilight Wings” and the short film “Splitting the Difference” for POKÉTOON. The director is also known for his work on the opening sequences for the first season of “Jujutsu Kaisen,” “Chainsaw Man,” and “Urusei Yatsura.”