Movies and Anime...

[jHo1987]

Do you Movies actually have anything to do with the anime at all? Because I just realised that in Season 4 (Johto league Champions) Episode 189: Moving Pictures, Ash says that he'd really like to see an Articuno...

Well hasn't he already?! Pokemon the Movie 2000?!

Confusing!

 

[MewthreeXL]

And he's also seen a Lugia and acknowledged it somewhere in Johto.

 

[Aegis]

No, they don't. It also seems that they're memory gets erased after each movie, but that has only been confirmed in Mewtwo Returns.

 

[Volta.]

Works the same for Celebi... the characters seem to have no recollection of anything that happens in the movies desu~ Either that or the movies happen in an alternate universe! 'o'

 

[Chibi Pika]

The movies are intended to be separate. The only lines in the anime made to acknowledge events in the movies are (I believe) dub-only.

~Chibi~

 

[Jorah]

And he's also seen a Lugia and acknowledged it somewhere in Johto.

Yeah, in Master Quest during the Lugia episodes both Team Rocket and Ash talk about a Lugia they saw in the Orange Islands - the one from the 2000 movie.

But they don't seem to have ever made another reference to a film.

 

[Forci Stikane]

Additionally, the first movie is pretty much linked to by all the references in the main series, plus the special episode, so while they don't remember the events of the first movie, I could argue that it is indeed canon.

There's also the fact that they specifically state Mewtwo wiped everybody's memory clean, hence the memory loss in that case.