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Pokemon's continuing on with the 23rd movie in its franchise with Pokemon the Movie: Coco, releasing later this Summer in Japan. A new movie in the works has been known for a while, and after taking a brief respite with an experimental CG animated film, this latest film in the franchise is a return to the traditionally 2D animated work. And with the return to this style also comes the return of the director for the last film, Tetsuo Yajima, who was pretty excited to see that the film was finally officially announced.

Taking this excitement to Twitter, Yajima shared some slick new art featuring the new film's version of Ash and Pikachu along with a currently unnamed new character revealed in the first promo and poster for the new film (who's probably titular "Coco"). Check out the art below:

Pokemon the Movie: Coco is currently slated to release in Japan on July 10th, but there's currently no confirmed English language release as of this writing. Story details for the new film are currently being kept under wraps for now, but the first promo for the new movie features a familiar locale from the 2001 film, Pokemon 4Ever: Celebi - Voice of the Forest. It's led fans to theorize about whether or not the Legendary Pokemon Celebi would be making a return to the film franchise too.

While that is simply conjecture, what has been confirmed, however, is that Tetsuo Yajima will be returning to direct Pokemon: Coco after directing The Power of Us for OLM. Atsuhiro Tomioka has also been tapped to write the script for the new film, but casting and other staff details are currently unknown as of this writing.

Are you ready for the next Pokemon film or are you waiting to see a bit more? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter!