Pokémon Horizons: Three Years Later

Hey everyone- I know I wanted to do more than just talk about this anime; but my illness late last month cost me a lot of progress I’m trying to make up for. Rest assured, you’ll see my other projects the moment they’re done. In the meantime, I thought I would do my followup with it anyway now that the most recent arc (and by proxy, the main storyline of HZ) concluded. Here is a look at Pokémon Horizons- three years later.

I deliberately waited until the entire second half of Rise Again was available to even watch it; let alone address it. In hindsight, it was the right decision. I was honestly expecting the multi-part finale to be worse than it actually was- there were admittedly moments of off-model animation and decisions in the story I personally would have handled differently;  but on the whole, it did conclude the arc in a satisfactory manner (Spinel’s fate excepted). Overall, I found Rise Again to be a much better arc than Mega Voltage; and a decent conclusion to the main storyline of HZ.

With that established, there’s a lot to unpack surrounding the next story arc. The discourse has been all over the place, so I’m going to focus on what’s directly in front of me and form my thoughts on that. So, let’s briefly address the next arc of HZ, known as “Wonder Voyage.” As the Rising Volt Tacklers befriend an enigmatic youngster named Navi and her partner Ditto; a new series of challenges await our heroes.

Likewise, the promotional images contain story elements from the games on both mobile and the Switch family. Admittedly, using the recent hit Pokémon Pokopia as the base for a 1-hour special is a good idea. I am less sure about how they’ll adapt the box legendaries for Generation IX, let alone Ogerpon; the Loyal Three or the Ancient Titans (regarding the former, whether they’ll stick to the “incident” they’ve been hemming and hawing about or retcon it). I am particularly puzzled about the inclusion of aspects from Pokémon Go, Pokémon Sleep and Pokémon UNITE. I personally would prefer that got its own OVA; along with aspects of Z-A that they’re hinting at as opposed to being crowbarred into HZ.

At this point I don’t know who HZ is even aimed at- on one hand, you have story threads about how the private sector will do anything to sell products that are overhyped at best and dangerous at worst. On the other, you have a character cooing at Mega Evolutions while dressed as a Nidorina. That’s not a particularly huge amount of overlap, and actually embodies the problems this anime was intended to solve.

On that note, I am open to the 1-hour special focused on Pokopia (having logged over 150 hours into the game so far). I am far less certain about plans to prolong this anime’s run a whole calendar year to compensate for the Generation X delay, let alone do the elements they’re hinting at justice. Even the Pokopia special comes with much more pressure than was likely imagined- I’m willing to at least speculate (something I do much more rarely than others) that the creatives were likely expecting the game would be a modest success like most people did before launch. They were obviously not expecting it to be the breakout Switch 2 system seller that would normally be reserved for mainline entries.

Though I am trying to maintain a sense of cautious optimism by way of healthy skepticism, I have no plans to formally cover Wonder Voyage until its first few episodes have debuted. If I had to say right now- I think it should move towards wrapping things up before Winds and Waves debuts. While I cannot say who will be leading the next anime (whether it’s an existing character or whole new ones), my gut tells me it won’t be the HZ cast. Either way, we’re in uncharted waters. 

Likewise, I am still aiming to have my review of “Terastal Debut” out in summer at the earliest. I have other projects in the wings as well that I will post as they’re ready. That will be all for now, take care.