Sitting in the backseat of the car playing Pokemon on a Gameboy is no doubt a core memory for many Millennial gamers, including me. Before backlit screens were a thing, we’d strain to get enough light from passing streetlamps to finish one last battle. Along with the games came the Pokemon anime and the trading cards, all deeply linked to what I remember about being a kid.
I was a shy kid. Talking to my peers wasn’t easy, and this was complicated by the fact that I was a girl who “liked boy stuff.” So many times, I’d sit on the school bus, listening to the boys talk about my favorite things, like Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon. I’d want to join in, but I couldn’t get myself to say the words. Before I’d work up the courage, the moment passed me by every time.
Pokemon Finally Pulls Through For Female Fans
If you’ve seen the first episode of Pokemon Horizons: The Series, this might sound familiar. After Liko boards the bus for her new school, she finds herself in the back seat near a couple of girls who are watching a Nidothing video on their Rotom Phones. We hear Liko’s inner thoughts: “Nidothing? I love Nidothing too! … is what I would say if I could talk to people…” She sits there, wishing she could join in and share the thing she loves with her peers, but she feels too awkward to make it happen. I’ll admit I was a little close to tears, seeing this moment from my own childhood so perfectly mirrored in our newest Pokemon protagonist.
I had high hopes from the first promos for Pokemon Horizons: The Series. Liko is the first female main character at the center of the Pokemon anime since it first began so many years ago. And as a longtime female Pokemon fan, I was eager to see what that might mean. And let me tell you, thus far, Liko is exactly the main character I would’ve loved to have as a little girl who used Pokemon cards as a bookmark, just hoping a classmate might notice and strike up a conversation.
Growing up in the aughts as a nerdy girl was an interesting experience. Many of my early video game memories involved playing as a male avatar because, back then, male avatars were often the default (or only) choice. While you could occasionally opt in for the incredibly girly, pink Princess Peach in games like Mario Kart, by and large, it didn’t even occur to me that gaming with a female avatar would even be an option.
And then, I booted up Pokemon Crystal on my Gameboy Color for the first time, and everything changed. There I sat, in the backseat of my parents’ car on the way to somewhere, starting my first game. I’d played Pokemon Blue previously, running around as a little boy in a ball cap, and expected more of the same. But Professor Oak surprised me that day, asking the now-infamous question: “Are you a boy? Or are you a girl?”
I had to explain my excited squeal to my concerned parents. This game, this Pokemon game, was going to let me play as a girl. Nowadays, thankfully, it’s much more common to be able to choose your player character’s avatar in all sorts of games, but this was my first memory of getting the chance to embody a character who even remotely looked like me. Pokemon Crystal remains one of my favorite games in the franchise for this reason.
As much as I enjoyed running around the map in Pokemon games and collecting the cards, I could never quite connect to the anime in the same way. I watched it when it was on and have plenty of fond memories of Ash and his friends. Seeing the first Pokemon movie in theaters for that gold-plated card was a must, and yes, I did cry right along with Pikachu in that pivotal scene.
But Ash, with his confident, self-assured attitude, wasn’t someone I could relate to as a kid. I loved Misty, and she partly inspired my fondness for water-type Pokemon, but she was rarely central to the plot. Even so, when she was no longer a main character and Ash moved on to other areas and other traveling companions, I more or less fell away from following the series.
Because Ash was so central to the anime for so very long, I never really considered that we might one day have a female-led story in that universe. Sitting down to watch Pokemon Horizons, I didn’t know what to expect. What would this Liko character be like? And it turns out, what she’s like is… me. She’s like me, or at least the me that I was when I was around Liko’s age.
Pokemon Horizons is a much more interior, self-reflective take on the Pokemon protagonist, and I am here for it. We get to know Liko’s inner monologue through her narration, which is no doubt a choice partly inspired by her struggles to speak up. Ash never hesitated to say what he was thinking out loud, but for Liko, that’s part of her journey, and it’s nice that we get to hear her thinking it through. In this way, we get closer to her inner life and understand her motivations, her fears, and all her uncertainty.
As much as Ash defined a generation of Pokemon fans, he was generally very sure about who he was and who he wanted to be. That’s a great story to tell, but it’s nice to see we’re getting something different with this new series. Even the new anime’s theme song, “Becoming Me,” lets us know that Liko’s story isn’t necessarily about wanting to become a master but wanting to become herself. She isn’t quite sure what she wants and spends a lot of time studying the world around her and taking notes to try and figure things out. As someone who constantly carried a composition notebook full of scribbles around with me at school, I can relate.
It’s been 27 years since the first Pokemon anime aired, and it’s been about that long since I first met Ash from Pallet Town and followed his journey. Now, even all this time later, I am thrilled to meet Liko and get the chance to know a Pokemon protagonist who reminds me of the girl I used to be.
