Pokémon: I Choose You! gives Pikachu one cringeworthy moment (update)

The Pokémon anime has hardly adhered to the rules of the original games. But Pokémon: I Choose You!, the cartoon’s 20th anniversary movie that’s screening nationwide this week, goes a step further, ending with a moment so bizarre that my entire theater howled in disbelief.

(There’s spoilers below for this Pokémon movie, if that is seriously a thing that bugs you.)

In the Pokémon cartoons, only one Pokémon regularly speaks in a language humans can understand: Meowth, which taught itself how to communicate to impress another Meowth, as one does. (It’s one of the best episodes of the original anime, and you should totally watch it.) This unique trait is one of the things that makes Meowth unique in the Pokémon world; the only other Pokémon we’ve heard speaking with humans are legendaries (and that weird Slowking in Pokémon 2000).

Pokémon: I Choose You! throws this out for one climactic scene that’s way more disconcerting than anything else. The movie goes through familiar paces of Ash and Pikachu teaming up, Ash making some new friends, Ash becoming a “chosen hero” for some reason and Ash entering a battle he wasn’t at all prepared for. At the end of said battle, Ash — in an effort to protect a battered Pikachu — takes a hit from a bunch of possessed, enraged Pokémon and ... dies.

Just before he dies (seriously), Ash has a vision of Pikachu, his best friend. In this vision, Pikachu talks. And not in its little Pikachu language; it talks to Ash using human speech.

It’s extremely weird and, frankly, uncomfortable to see. Everyone in the audience with me gasped, shouted or cursed at the screen. Because if there’s anything we thought we could trust about the ever-changing Pokémon cartoons, it’s this:

Pikachu.

Does.

Not.

Talk.

This tweet sums it up best:

Pokémon: I Choose You! is playing in select theaters on Nov. 11 and Nov. 14.

Update: You want to hear Pikachu’s voice? Check out the tweet below.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.