Plot
With Marina in Team Rocket's clutches, Jimmy and Vincent are in a panic. Jimmy remembers that Vincent can call Marina on her PokeGear, but Hun has already taken it from her. However, Vincent can still trace the call to find Marina and not a moment too soon: Team Rocket is setting up another Miracle Crystal trap for Raikou. Jimmy, Vincent and Eugene find Team Rocket only moments before Raikou does, and this time, Raikou pounds the area with lightning while staying out of the Crystal's range. In the chaos, Jimmy sends his Beedrill to rescue Marina by flying her out of Team Rocket's grasp.
Raikou purposely smashes the Crystal's control unit, but Team Rocket still doesn't look beaten. With the controls gone, the Crystal is on auto-destruct mode, sucking in energy until it explodes—and it latches onto Raikou, leaving it helpless! Eugene has a risky idea: break open the Crystal's field to rescue Raikou before the Crystal can explode. Jimmy's Typhlosion, Vincent's Meganium and Marina's Misdreavus all volunteer to take the risk and they charge the Crystal's energy field. At the same time, Eugene sends out his Alakazam to watch their backs and Team Rocket sends out a Muk to make the battle even harder!
Even as Hun's Steelix attacks the Trainers, they order their Pokémon to concentrate on saving Raikou. Jimmy manages to trick Steelix into falling off a cliff, but it soon comes roaring back out of the ground! It lunges at the Pokémon trying to free Raikou, but Jimmy, Marina and Vincent throw themselves in front of their Pokémon to protect them. When Raikou sees this, it blasts its way out of the Crystal's energy field to stop Steelix, then breaks the Crystal into pieces as Team Rocket flees for good. Raikou seems to realize that some people don't mean it any harm, and as it returns to the wild, Jimmy waves goodbye—as a friend!
Trivia
- This special was later released on DVD for Japan, as well as Taiwan and mainland China.
- By the time this aired dubbed, Eugene and Vincent had already been seen before, in JE111: For Ho-Oh the Bells Toll! and JE151: Love, Pokémon Style, respectively. In the episodes in question, they were named as Eusine and Jackson.
- This special marks the first time that any characters based on game protagonists have appeared besides Ash, who is based on Red.
- This special has the longest time between the original airings in Japanese and English, taking three and a half years to air dubbed.
- This is the only movie-length anime special that hasn't aired in Finland.
Errors
- In one scene, Hun commands Skarmory to use Fury Attack, but Skarmory is Attila's Pokémon.
- When Raikou is put into the cargo hold, there is no sign of Marina, though she had been knocked down when Raikou collided with her after the bubble exploded.
- Attila incorrectly refers to multiple Caterpie as Caterpies.
- When Vincent's Meganium hits Steelix with SolarBeam, Hun implies that Grass types are ineffective against a Steel type like Steelix. This is not entirely true because Steelix's other type, Ground, is weak to Grass, and thus Steelix receives neutral damage from Grass-type attacks.
- Raikou's electric attacks worked on Steelix, even though Steelix is part Ground. This, however, could be because of Raikou's sheer strength, similar to Pikachu. A similar situation occurs when Raikou tackles Steelix forcefully, sending it crashing into the cliff side.
- In the Hindi dub, Misdreavus was once mispronounced as "Misdrees."
Dub edits
- The dub of The Legend of Thunder is one of the most heavily edited episodes of Pokémon, most likely due to TV time constraints:
- All of the music is replaced, besides the three seconds of Jigglypuff's song.
- Hun was male in the Japanese version, but has a female voice in the dub.
- The Trainer that Jimmy battles at the beginning had a name in Japanese, Shinji. The scene in which Shinji introduces himself and swaps Pokégear numbers with Jimmy is cut in the dub.
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