Pocket Monsters Movie 12 - Arceus - Towards the Continuum of Conquest (アルセウス超克の時空へ) ranked #2 in the Japanese box office for its debut weekend of July 18th and 19th. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which also was released this week, was the overall winner in Japan.

Source: http://movie.goo.ne.jp/ranking/boxoffice/index.html

This really seemed like a bad week for Pokemon to debut. Putting anything up against Harry Potter is pointless. While the Pocket Monsters movies air this time every year, you would think that after WB announced Harry Potter was going to be delayed for 6th months, that Toho and the producers of the 12th Movie would have picked up on that and adjust the release date accordingly. While Pokemon still did well, it probably would have done amazingly well if it wasn\'t up against such a powerhouse. Movie 11 was up against Ponyo last year as well.

Wow That sucks, I hate harry potter. But what did pokemon beat... i dont know any of these movies exept for tranformers 2 in 9th. Besides this movie looks 10 times better than harry potter. This movie should be relesed in thetres here in america not on Cartoon network.

That\'s quite a shame.... But still I prefer this movie than Harry Potter. But unfortunately, they never air pokemon movies in my country... T_T

What is you're country, ralts03?

Indonesia... T_T

That's the ugly truth. Since it is no longer the late 90s/early 2000s and as of now,multibillion media franchises such as Harry Potter,Twilight, Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers (which can be irritating most of the time) come in first, then Pokemon. So you can't really blame them.

But on the plus side, this movie was the highest grossing animated film of 2009 in Japan, beating Evangelion: 2.0 and Detective Conan: The Raven Chaser