I proceed to the garden, where Kukui appears to be being menaced by some children.

You say you wanna make a Pokemon League? You got rocks in your skull?

The children make some good points.

Kukui: Four turns!

If the idea is that you can beat them in four turns, I don’t see how that has anything to do with what they say and also they’re idiots who only carry one pokemon, saying you’ll beat them fast isn’t actually impressive.

The children agree with me, asking only, Huh?

He elaborates that he wants to fight them both because he’s been researching pokemon moves and therefore is totally qualified.

I’ll take you both on in a Battle Royal, and you’ll be down with just a Swift and Incinerate or two!

Unless they have ghost pokemon, who are immune to swift, or rock types, who resist both, or… Also they’ll have to find a fourth for the established Royal format.

You gotta beat the man to be the man, boys!

Which you never actually did, to my knowledge.

The children appear impressed by the fact he sure seems to think this is true, but not so impressed they won’t make an attempt.

Get ’em good, Professor! calls out some other adult.

You numskulls should learn your place! is shouted, I think, by another. I’m not sure this is really the best way to make idiot children be less stupid.

???: Battle Royal, huh? Nice idea there, Kukui. You can beat down three Pokemon at once, huh?

Oh, game. Please don’t make it all the more obvious that it didn’t make sense for him to say that originally when only facing two.

Ah, it’s grouchy skull leader.

It’s Guzma… says Bystander. So either Team Skull isn’t doing anything illegal, so despite knowing exactly who’s in charge they can’t just arrest him, OR there’s functionally no law around here at all. AND YET there are roadblocks everywhere.

The boss has graced us with his presence! cries one child, probably with the sempai-noticed-me sparkles.

Guzma: The hated boss who beats you down, and beats you down, and never lets up…

He sure is leaning in close to Kukui here, isn’t he? And we know Kukui spends his free time getting beat up by pokemon for “research.”

Yeah. Big bad Guzma is here!

Listen, whatever consenting adults do in their own free time is fine, but maybe you could do this…whatever it is…somewhere that isn’t in the middle of the park in front of innocent children? And possibly innocent possibly dittochildren.

Guzma will have none of that. He spikeyboxes: Greetings, cowering public! We have an exciting bout for you tonight! In the opposing corner, the Pokemon professor Kukui!

They’re just fucking with me on the capitalization now.

And in this corner, the boss of Team Skull and the hardest guy around, Guzma!

but seriously guzma this isn’t appropriate think of your sort-of kids watching this

Guzma: Here we are, Kukui… Fellow rejects who never could become captains. We’ve got all these moldy old traditions in Alola–the kahunas, the captains… It’s about time we cut out all that silly garbage and make something new for ourselves. Trust me, I get that. Don’t get me wrong, though, Kukui. We’ve got no need for a Pokemon League. After all, everyone already knows who the strongest Trainer is on these islands!

Kukui: Speak for yourself, Guzma. It’s not like I couldn’t become a captain. I chose not to. I had other dreams, see?

Haha yeah sure.

Kukui: I wanted to figure out which moves would be strong enough to beat old Hala…

Uh…flying, psychic… It’s not that hard.

and I finally found what I was looking for.

Flying, psychic? Seriously. Not that hard.

The strongest moves you can use are the ones a Trainer and their Pokemon choose together…

So, transcribing that, I naturally wrote “a Trainer and Pokemon”. Always have to watch out for that kind of thing, and it’s why I try hard to transcribe so much dialogue. It’s so easy, when reading, to subtly correct a sentence to what you think it said rather than what it really did.

And the “their” is pretty damning, you know.

If this is supposed to be z-moves, there’s also the issue that the book we found is talking about the tapu using moves they didn’t want to and, from the sounds of it, had no control over at all.

But he’s still talking: in the heat of the moment, when it really counts. Which is a meaningless concept in a turn-based battle system.

Kukui: That’s when I knew I had to make a Pokemon League, yeah, to give everybody a chance to be pushed to the limit with their team and find that perfect move!

Sure. Because you went through all this trouble trying to beat a kahuna, the existing system of kahunas is useless and only the mainlander ways will do it.

Let’s see it, Guzma! Show me your moves and prove you aren’t just all talk! If you really can, that is…

At this point, the designers remember that the protagonist is neither of these people and has him turn to Bonnibel. That was actually an interesting exchange, though! If we’re going to have NPCs talk to each other, it ought to be this sort of raving and exposition.

Kukui: Right, Bonnibel? Don’t you agree?

That’s right/What?

Once again, it’s hard to decide. I mean, the whole thing about moves is incredibly stupid, but is that what you’re asking? Or are you asking if we should fight? Because obviously I want to fight.

I guess I’m baffled, so, What?

Guzma: So you’re one of the kids on her island challenge? You don’t look like Hala’s grandson.

Oh, game game game. And you were doing pretty good at not making it obvious you wrote the script for the boy protagonist. “Grandkid”/”grandchild” is the gender-neutral. That avoids the problem of him identifying me as female in the first sentence and then realizing I’m not the boy in the second one.

Kukui introduces me as a new arrival to their lovely islands. Discovery! New experiences! Adventure! She’s loving every minute of it!

The discovery part, maybe. The roadblocks preventing me from doing those things, less so.

Kukui: Bonnibel and her Oricorio can unleash some real powerful moves.

Why did they think the whole insert-top-pokemon into the sentence thing was a good idea?

So if you think you’re the strongest Trainer on these islands, Guzma, why don’t you battle her?

So when it’s two Skull children you’re all “I’m super badass and gonna killsteal” but when an actual adult shows up and tells you to put your money where your mouth is, suddenly you’re all “so like, I could totally win, but I’m making this child to it instead”.

Guzma: Tch! This move fanatic is getting me all riled up! We then zoom in on his eyes, followed by my bracelet. You’ve got a Z-Ring, huh, kid? This is technically true. Why even bother with the island challenge? What’s the point of it?

It’ll make me strong/That’s what I want to find out

Wow, this is quite possibly the worst dialogue option yet.

Because I want to play the game, game! How is this so hard to understand? I want new pokemon and new places. The leveling is secondary to that. Hell, you added in an island that levels up my pokemon for me – I barely have to do anything to get L100 pokemon now. And I’m not confused by what else the journey has to offer.

I guess, of my two options, That’s what I want to find out – not that I’m unsure, but that the point of this is to see things I don’t already know.

Ha! You don’t even know why you’re doing it.

Ugh, do so! I just explained this!

Watch closely, Kukui. Someday, I’m gonna destroy you. But first, I’ll destroy everything you care about!

Guzma, kismesis tip – the guy shoving a child into your path to avoid fighting probably doesn’t care about the child.

He spikeyboxes: Wanna see what destruction looks like? Here it is in human form–it’s your boy Guzma!

My boy Guzma has only two pokemon. Jesus, Guzma, get your act together.

He opens with a golisopod, L31, which eventually swaps to a L30 ariados, and then back of course.

While I’ve been enjoying the fact all the trainers generally look upset to horrified by their loss, Guzma is really knocking it out of the park.

Guzma!!! What is wrong with you?! he spikeyhowls at himself. That is absolutely the correct response to losing to this precious dittochild. Now’s the time for your vaunted team to let loose and destroy everything! He calms slightly back to a normal text box. It was Bonnibel, right? I’ll remember you…as someone I’ll be happy to beat down anytime!

Aw, I love you too.

The enemy children then tell me not to mess with the guy because You don’t want him to get serious! and then run.

Bystander: Team Skull will have to go lick their wounds now! Getting beat by a child just doing her trials.

And here we see another downside of the more realistic idea that pokemon training is something that requires constant effort and most people don’t bother. It means that it actually isn’t much of an accomplishment for a kid to crush an adult’s team, in which case, why am I playing?

Kukui: Woo, Bonnibel! Those were some nice moves! I can feel my soul shaking!

I bet this makes so much more sense if I ever used z-moves.

Speaking of, I then get another z-crystal, this time specifically for my starter pokemon so at least it doesn’t mean losing a fun exploration area.

So what happened to Lillie? You lose her somewhere, Bonnibel?

Oh god right what if she’s left the library and got lost?

Lillie: I’m right here.

Aw, good job Lillie! Nothing bad happened while you were off-camera. She’s with Cosplay Witch.

Kukui: And Hau is…probably at a malasada shop somewhere, yeah?

There, somewhere else, the bottom of the ocean…everyone’s somewhere!

Oh no Lillie looks sad! You and the professor fought those horrible Team Skull thugs, Bonnibel?

Well, kinda. The professor fought with words while I fought by actually fighting.

Just thinking about it makes me worry… They sound like a scary group…

That’s fair.

I mean, they’re not a threat to me, but that’s like saying if you’re a blackbelt, random hoodlums aren’t that intimidating. I’d say a lot of people’s eh response to Team Skull is that everyone has at least halfway decent pokemon, at least sufficient to protect against wild pokemon, and they’re classing, quite fairly, Team Skull as being about or less dangerous than a random wild pokemon.

Kukui, that fucker, bursts into full-body laughter. You think? I don’t know. Exchanging a few moves in battle is the quickest way to get to know someone in my book. SHE DOESN’T BATTLE YOU INCONSIDERATE ASSHOLE. HOLY SHIT YOU ARE THE SECOND WORST PARENT SHE’S EVER HAD.

He then says later he’s gonna go climb a mountain instead of apologizing. I hope my bone bat eats you.

I’ve gotta make sure the Pokemon League gets finished and everybody has a chance to find their own perfect move!

Your plan is dumb and you’re dumb.

He tells me to keep working hard and goes. Lillie, because she is nice, says, Bonnibel… Be sure you’re not pushing yourself too hard. Witch Cosplay nods and notes I must have finished the other trial, then directs me to the next.

Acerola: If you get lost on your way, ask a police officer for directions. They’re here to serve, right?

Well I mean, they must be getting paid to do something, directions seems as likely an answer as any.

She then takes Lillie away to shop.

I head off to that roadblock. It opens and I’m informed the next trial will be a ghost one…then I hit another cutscene.

Hapu is here again.

Well met! I was seeking you.

Why do you talk differently from everybody else?

She says now I can ride her horse, which I assume will also unlock some HM I’m missing that likely relates to that bunch of rocks up ahead.

I was just so taken aback by Lillie and how lovely she is that it escaped me.

………..

Then she leaves again.

So evidently horses are really slow but can walk on sharp rocks.

Oh, new geodude! Who immediately selfdestructs. Next one knocks out my precious slipper pokemon, which in turn nearly knocks out the third and then I get it in an ultraball.

Oh hey, rock/electric! That’s different.

If you accidentally step on a Geodude sleeping on the ground, you’ll hear a crunching sound and feel a shock ripple through your entire body.

Uh…so they’re more delicate than usual?

Oh hey, my cubone’s evolving. Let’s see the picture again.

Its custom is to mourn its lost companions. Mounds of dirt by the side of the road mark the graves of the Marowak.

This just raises more questions!

Like I said, marowak is apparently ghost/fire, yet still has its solid body just like a ground-based one and now we learn it also digs into the dirt to bury…other marowak, who are also ghosts? Original model marowaks? Its non-marowak friends who get their graves referred to as marowak ones as a possessive descriptor? Doesn’t this thing evolve by friendship? I mean, if it were evolving by trade or something, there’d at least be a connection between evolution and loss of a previous bond that could fit with mourning dead friends.

And she sure seems perky when I’m feeding her heart beans. Maybe the pokedex is describing her future behavior? So these guys form super strong bonds, die (because Alolan cubone are just regular non-ghost-type cubone) and evolve into ghost/fire, then eventually everybody else dies and they’re sad and dig graves.

(Also the bone moves are all still ground type? So now this pokemon’s signature moves don’t match type, and the signature moves are based on an item that’s part of them, but they’re still not ground.)

…also hey, my geodude also just evolved.

They eat rocks and often get into a scrap over them. The shock of Graveler smashing together causes a flash of light and a booming noise.

So they don’t “eat rocks”, they eat specific, and reasonably rare, rocks. You don’t see bison fighting with each other over mouthfuls of grass, after all.

Also, it evolved at L29. Do graveler normally evolve then? Or maybe it’s earlier but because I caught it at L28? I honestly never paid attention to them in the original games.

I head down toward the beach.

There’s a police officer and a whole lot of slowpoke.

You can look but you can’t touch! Er…actually… You can touch, but you can’t catch! All of the Slowpoke on this beach are managed and protected by the Alola region!

Has it occurred to you that hacking off their tails would be “touching” and not “catching”? I don’t think you’re very good at this.

Also, why this beach, why these pokemon? There were slowpoke on the first island’s beaches and I caught them just fine. Maybe this is the lazy version of conservation where you just protect one population to start with and that way you never have to keep track of overall population numbers. If all the other slowpoke get wiped out, then you’ll know something went wrong but still have a breeding population to repopulate from.

Also, a torkoal just appeared! Oh, torkoal. You really should’ve been magcargo’s evolution.

If the fire burning within its shell goes out, it will die. Those who wish to raise one in their home must always keep something flammable at hand.

That sounds rather depressing, but this is pretty much the same as saying that you have to feed your pets or they die. The main difference is that you don’t need to worry about a torkoal getting poisoned by the wrong food, or its food getting stale, and in a pinch you can just walk outside and grab some branches.

I continue on and oh god it’s Hau here to be chummy with me. He says he heard about me getting the electric crystal.

You helped him out with testing da kine, yeah? That totem-calling machine or whatever? I guess I was test subject number two!

Objectively the worst captain.

But I managed to get through the trial. Maybe even managed to get a bit stronger, eh?

This should be an opening for the rival battle, but instead he gives me a potion. Why are you so bad at this.

Gladion!

Gladion: You only have one volume, don’t you?

Yeah! See, Gladion gets me.

Haven’t you ever heard the expression that silence is golden?

Love you too!

Hau: Gah! He’s back!

In fairness, Hau doesn’t know he’s in an RPG with recurring characters.

Gladion: Listen, Team Skull is looking for a Pokemon called Cosmog… Do you two know anything?

Hm….

Hau: What?! N-not that we’d tell you!

Dammit Hau. Be more like the ditto child.

Gladion: So you do know something. He looks so totally done with this. Just all why-is-this-my-life. Look… Cosmog isn’t even a strong Pokemon. But it has the potential to summon Pokemon so terrifyingly strong that you don’t even know. If something like that happened, it would be a disaster for Alola…

So hm. It could be the ultra beasts, but there’s also the bit about an heir who the tapu serve, plus if Nebby is the heir, that also makes it galaxy bone bat’s baby and in a game with a call for help mechanic.

Hau is not interested in this. He fixates on something else entirely: A disaster? Like…a real disaster? Yes, words generally mean the same word. Then what’re we supposed to do about it?

Gladion: Protect it! If you do know where Cosmog is or if you do find anything out…just keep it safe! He looks so adorably upset at having to say all this. This is not how he wanted his life to go when he was carefully sewing the blood slash into the chest of his black hoodie. I know I might be working for Team Skull right now, so you may not trust me or care but…I’m going to tell you this just once. You have to protect Cosmog…no matter what! He then starts stalking off, then stops again and decides to continue the conversation with his back to them. I still don’t even understand how Team Skull found out about Cosmog in the first place… This is just a thought, but maybe because it won’t stay in the bag like Lillie says.

Hau, again, chooses to care about something else: What do you mean? No matter what? You just gonna leave us hanging?! God Hau what more do you want.

Now officially 66666% done with this, Gladion leaves, probably to go listen to emo music to try to clean his brain of the fact he just tried to talk to another human being about something that mattered.

Hau: Bonnibel… If they’re really looking for Cosmog, then… Is Lillie gonna be OK?

Hau. It’s nice this finally is registering for you, but we already knew people were looking for Nebby and that Lillie lived in fear of them.

He goes on to say he has no idea what’s up but let’s protect them! Then that he’s going to push forward on the trials to become strong to do this.

I’m gonna complete my island challenge, and I’m gonna get Tapu Koko to recognize my strength, then I’m gonna be the next island kahuna!

Game. No. We all know I will beat everyone up to and including the very gods he worships. You can’t make a compelling storyline about the side character wanting to killsteal some of my heroism.

He goes on to add, I want to make sure more and more people can have fun battling to see who wins or loses! which dammit Hau that doesn’t follow at all. First you’re concerned for Lillie, then you think being a powerful trainer will help with that, then you jump to how as powerful trainer you’ll work on something at once harder and more trivial.

Meanwhile, Rotom says something about if Tapu Village has anything to do with the tapu.

This seems like a good place to stop.

So! I knew kahuna was a real word, and that wasn’t being capitalized. The fact tapu isn’t capitalized made me think this too was an actual concept that had been imported, so I decided to look it up, assuming it had something to do with gods. And it does, but much more indirectly than I thought! It means sacred, but specifically sacred by way of prohibited. This may have something to do with why their areas are ruins rather than anyone repairing them. The use of it as a title for their guardian deities also sounds like it’s being used to say they’re creatures that shouldn’t be interacted with, either in general or, perhaps, one specific prohibition of not trying to capture them.

As Wikipedia says, In Māori society the concept was often used by tohunga (priests) to protect resources from over-exploitation, by declaring a fishery or other resource as tapu (see rāhui). And that would seem to fit very well with beloved legendary pokemon, especially ones that were once used in the past but to disastrous and destructive effect.

Also, the idea of giving the most honored pokemon a title meaning “Uncapturable” seems to really fit the way the NPCs talk about pokemon in Alola, and the way they have a range of ways of dealing that starts at the bottom with throwing them in a stewpot all the way up point of doing elaborate rituals to please them.