This is the tape you put on when you want your brain to stop. Forty minutes of Pokémon in the snow, no gym badge on the line, no villain plot, just Christmas Night and Kanga Games doing their thing at the pace of a kettle coming to boil. The genius move is the vocabulary: everybody communicates in their own name, so the bickering, the sulking, the tiny triumphs all land through body language and cries alone, and it works better than dialogue would. Kanga Games turns fresh powder into a field day and asks nothing of you but to watch small creatures fall over. Nothing here is trying to be a spectacle, which is exactly why it survives as comfort viewing decades after the holiday it was cashing in on. Put it on in December with the lights off except the tree. That's the correct use.

Ash, Misty and Brock take their Pokémon to the Professor's private lodge for a short winter break, and the Pokémon take over the story. Pikachu and its companions run into other Pokémon, Kangaskhan among them, and set off on a string of adventures. Later, while the three trainers head out to shop for Christmas dinner, the Pokémon amuse themselves on their own. The humans barely speak here, since the Pokémon carry the talking. This two-episode OVA gathers winter- and Christmas-themed Pikachu shorts, Christmas Night and Kanga Games, into a light, comic fantasy outing.