Pokemon Horizons Part 1 Review – We’ll Explain Later…

While I wasn’t a Pokemon fan since Day 1 (it was part of my “complex” at the time of hating “weird concepts” until I gave it a try and then loved them), I have been a fan since Gen 1. I’ve played every generation of Pocket Monsters and have played many of its spinoff titles and have happily reviewed many parts of the franchise for The Outerhaven! As you might recall, I was not happy with how Ash Ketchum was sent off, and sadly, as my Pokemon Horizons Part 1 Review will show, I’m not really happy with how his replacements have been introduced.

Let’s start with the obvious, shall we? Pokemon Horizons is a brand-new adventure set in the Pokemon world. That’s what made it so appealing to me and others at first, because it was going to be emphatically different from the adventures of Ash and Pikachu. The problem is that they tried to be different in such a way that it made it incredibly hard to connect with its new main characters, Liko and Roy.

I’ll start off with Liko because her flaws are much easier to point out. When we meet her, she’s at the very beginning of her Pokemon journey. She was born in Paldea, but decided to go to the Kanto region to be part of a Pokemon Academy. I liked this idea because it set her apart from Ash and it would get us a viewpoint that we only saw in parts in the original anime. That included her getting her partner Pokemon, Sprigatito, not by choosing it, but by it being selected for her based on an interview. A clever way to meet your new best friend, right?

The problem? From the moment we meet her up until the end of the first set of episodes, Liko is just…not that interesting. It was clear that they tried to make her the “awkward kid” versus the “gungho kid” that Ash was, which is fine in theory, but they were so bent on making Liko this way that they broke a cardinal rule of storytelling: Show, not tell.

By that, I mean that Liko is an exposition magnet in many episodes of Part 1, and it’s annoying! For example, right at the beginning of the series, she does an internal monologue about why she doesn’t “connect with people.” She goes into great detail about it multiple times over instead of SHOWING her failure to talk with the people around her.

Things only get worse when things go from “school life” to “adventuring life,” and she not only doesn’t react in a rational or even logical way but then straight-up breaks the 4th wall multiple times for no given reason. She literally says at one point, “Am I the main character in this story?” Like, really? Then, even when she does “come out of her shell” to interact with others (like Royal and the Rising Volt Tacklers, whom I’ll get to soon), she still doesn’t act in a way that makes sense at points.

In fact, her catchphrase, no joke, is “I don’t know.” If you did a drinking game of all the times, she said that just within the first few episodes, let alone the full set? Yeah, you’d be really drunk. Just as bad, I found myself saying “I don’t know” multiple times throughout Part 1 because the plot kept dangling things in front of me and refusing to answer them outside of a few rare things. I’ll touch on that in a second, I promise; I want to finish with the main characters first.

As for Roy, he had a more Ash-like origin, and you can see they didn’t want to lose that “Ash-like character,” even if he took it a bit too far at times. Including ignoring a man’s legitimate plight just because there was new information on a Pokemon he wanted to find. Not, cool, kid. Oh, and both Liko and Roy had very bratty and insensitive moments with a member of the Volt Tacklers that left me wondering how they were raised…because it clearly wasn’t properly!

As for the Rising Volt Tacklers, there are some interesting characters there, with the best being Friede and Captain Pikachu. Their dynamic is easily the thing that sets this series apart from the previous one because this is about a crew going across the Pokemon world versus a set of kids traveling from one region to the next. Not all of them work, but they are good for the most part.

Now, as promised, I’m going to talk about the plot in my Pokemon Horizons Part 1 Review. Mainly because there are plenty of issues to address, especially around the “I don’t know” recurring joke that is not at all funny.

It’s clear that the show is trying to “build up many mysteries” to separate itself from Ash’s journey, but they’re doing it in a way that makes it frustrating to watch unfold. That’s mainly because many of those mysteries don’t get answered! The biggest one surrounds Friede and his mission to “save Liko” in the first episodes. We find out that Liko’s mother hired the Volt Tacklers to bring her home. Why? “I don’t know!!!!”

No, seriously, they never outright address it, and Liko never asks why in the ENTIRE TIME she’s on the ship heading back home. Friede legit says, “We’ll talk about it later,” and then they never do. When we meet Liko’s father, he just says that he was ‘worried about her’ and that’s it. Then, when her mother appears, she doesn’t address why he hired Friede either. She makes a loose line about Liko’s pendant, but that doesn’t explain hiring a FULL TEAM of people to bring her daughter home. Not to mention, she doesn’t see Liko at all once she’s in Paldea! And people thought Ash’s mom was bad?

Then, there are “The Explorers,” a mysterious group that is after Liko’s pendant. Why? We don’t know! They’re clearly a big organization, and have lots of people at their disposal, and yet, they never explain who they are or why they’re doing what they’re doing. Then, they straight-up vanish until the “stinger” image to end the episode set.

Oh, but that’s not the only time I said, “I don’t know.” Who really are the Rising Volt Tacklers? I don’t know. Where did they get their ship? I don’t know. How did all the crew meet? I don’t know. What’s the deal with the “old man” that looks like a Pokemon? I don’t know! Why did the Explorers not use their flying Pokemon to go after the Volt Tacklers until way AFTER they departed, or never chased them at all? I don’t know! Why did several episodes end in a way that didn’t satisfy the storyline? I don’t know!!!!

Do you see the problem here?

“Oh, is there more?” Yeah, sadly, there is. In the series’ launch trailer, one thing they noted is that the “Battles Are Bigger,” except…that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Legit, not only do they ‘skirt the rules’ of Pokemon battles and how Pokemon do things, but they don’t COMPLETE a battle for several episodes! No lie, they had Friede battle the same trainer multiple times, and the battle NEVER ends. It gets interrupted in various ways, and nothing meaningful happens battle-wise for a long time. Then, during a “training episode” with Liko and Roy, they have a fight that not only contradicts their battle in a previous episode but the two also act like they never battled in the first place!

I seriously cannot think of a meaningful battle in the first set of episodes, which is tragic! Yes, Pokemon isn’t all about the battles, but it’s a key part of its lore, even for non-dedicated trainers. And as for the “skirting the rules” bit, they continued the “logic” from past seasons where Pokemon moves of a certain type doing massive damage to Pokemon that had no reason to take damage as they did…and then…they reversed that in a later episode! Yes, this might be my “fanboy showing,” but if you’re not even going to try to make it make sense alongside the games, what’s the point?

To be fair, my Pokemon Horizons Part 1 Review isn’t going to be all negative. There are SOME things to like about this show. For example, the animation is really good, and I know from social media (thanks to Japan being WAY ahead of the US for obvious reasons) that there are going to be some really beautiful episodes coming up. The only complaints I had with the animation had to do with some “Liko exposition,” where they did still shots instead of animations.

Also, some characters did stand out from the rest. Captain Pikachu is totally a boss, and his use in the series is fun to see. Friede is also intriguing, but I hope we get more of his backstory soon. Plus, they absolutely crushed it with how they depicted Nemona. She’s the best.

Finally, even though it took its sweet time, the “big mystery” about the “Ancient Traveler” was intriguing and gave new insights into the Black Rayquaza and other Pokemon we meet that I didn’t expect. I’m not sure where this will go, but I am curious about it…which is more than I can say about the show in general.

I think, honestly, one of my biggest problems here is the lack of focus and knowing where they want to go at times. Yes, we have the “Ancient Traveler” mystery, but it took the ENTIRE set for that to get revealed. In contrast, in the first 12 episodes of Ash’s journey, he not only connected with Pikachu, but he met Misty and Brock, had two gym battles, saw Ho-Ho, caught multiple Pokemon, battled Team Rocket, and more! In contrast, it took three episodes to get Liko “on board,” another three to get Roy on board, and certain episodes honestly could’ve been left on the cutting room floor or combined, so more dramatic stuff happened.

In the end, don’t take what I thought about this series as gospel. You should watch it for yourself and see if you agree or disagree with my thoughts. But as I end my Pokemon Horizons Part 1 Review, I want to make it clear that I still love the Pokemon franchise, and I was really eager to see Horizons. So, to come off of the first set of episodes feeling lukewarm and knowing I’ll have to wait three months for the next batch to try and salvage things? That doesn’t make me excited for what comes next; it just makes me wonder if I’ll be watching at all when it arrives again.