What mysterious creatures… Pokemon sometimes leap right out of the grass to help people in trouble, did you know?

I like the sound of that, NPC!

Alright, so now that I have normal speed, exploring is important! I go into the big cheese’s house.

Apparently when not doing pokemon battles the island is also all about sumo to please their guardian, which is fine if you’re a guy but it’s a sport that hates women so much they’re not even allowed to touch the ring. Possibly island sumo isn’t a pile of misogyny, but if so, they really should’ve been explicit by including a woman.

Some mysterious black things with pink crystals are infesting the bathroom. That’s adorable.

The game actually lets me explore pretty far from Hau and it’s only when I make a break for my house that it forces me back to battle.

The capture animation is really weird – I have no idea why they decided to superimpose a giant gold pokeball on top. Also annoyed it tells me what’s super effective and what isn’t – I like the rare moments when you first encounter a new pokemon and have no idea what type it is.

Yungoos!

My brother says this pokemon is based on Trump but, aside from the unlikeliness of such a topical reference, I just don’t see it. It’s a stripy mongoose.

It wanders around in a never-ending search for food. At dusk, it collapses from exhaustion and falls asleep on the spot.

So does it only appear during the day? Or is the idea I just stepped on a sleeping one?

It eats beans the same as any other pokemon, though. Also, I either haven’t unlocked the brushing minigame or I have to battle a lot more for it.

First non-rival battle. Alolan rattata has a weird mustache, apparently.

Second: My Pokemon! Papa caught her for me when I was born! So she’s always been with me! So, why is it a L3 caterpie then? This isn’t even one of the tiny children, this is a schoolgirl who looks like she’s as old as my avatar or even older.

Sorry, game. I do agree it’s cute to think of her growing up with her caterpie and loving it so much, but maybe that dialogue wasn’t the best fit for the second battle in the game. Also, maybe you should’ve stuck with just preschoolers for the first couple battles.

Really wish it wouldn’t do the blackout/reset thing when you hit someone telling you you can’t go further. Why can’t the scene be continuous?

Not too sure about the dramatic scene narrowing when approaching trainers. Getting ambushed by someone you missed is part of the fun.

(And really – it’d be okay to have if only they let you turn things off, you know? It can’t take that much more coding to let you turn things off.)

Festival time! Let’s ignore that and talk to all the NPCs.

Woman: If you treat your Pokemon wrong, the guardian deity will strike you down with lightning! But the children laugh when I tell them that.

So like I said, I like what I’ve seen on the pokemon treatment front. Here, we see that either pokemon actually are protected by a higher power or that good treatment is important enough to the adults that they’ve made up stories to scare the kids into compliance. Even the fact the kids don’t take it seriously just suggests that mistreatment isn’t going on in the first place, and there’s another kid talking about how rockruff behaves when it loves you – they seem aware and attentive to their pokemon’s feelings.

Tapu Koko just loves Pokemon battles. Watching them and having them.

Also, there’s much more of a ritualized combat aspect here, rather than a beat-em-up, which works better with this being about friendship and some incidental violence rather than throwing your pets into the meatgrinder for your own glory.

It’s said that ancient peoples rode over the waves and seas together with their Pokemon to settle the Alola region.

With all that in mind, this stands out – the likely way to read the sentence is that humans used pokemon so that the humans could colonize the islands, especially since I understand the pokemon here are meant to be based on island species, but you could also say that both the humans and pokemon colonized it, as we’ve been told that new pokemon species appear really fast. Given these are based off a string of volcanic islands, you could argue that, as in the real world, the islands started off pretty barren and most of the diversity found now came from colonists.

Going up to Hau results in a growl from Litten :( and a discussion of how the festival is centered around us having a pokemon fight. Lillie seems surprised to hear this. I guess she didn’t hear the discussion before this.

Kukui: We battle in the name of Tapu Koko, pitting our best moves against one another in friendly competition to please our guardian. Woo!
Lillie: So you two will be taking part in the battle? I don’t like seeing Pokemon fight each other, since they so often end up getting hurt… But it seems like this is an important event, so I’ll be sure to watch you both.

Poor Lillie. It’s really uncomfortable when you add the weight of tradition to things – if this was a neutral event, it’d be okay for some people not to like it, and even debating its value would be possible. But when something’s a beloved cultural institution, all sorts of other emotions get wrapped up in it. Hala even comments on how absolutely everyone on the island shows up to this festival.

Hala: Your Pokemon have fought for you, so show them the same care in return, Bonnibel. Allow me to heal them for you this time.

Oh my god he actually just chided me for running around with injured pokemon. Wow. And there’s even the “this time”, emphasizing that I should do better from now on.

(…but I fear the game won’t actually ever take the training wheels off and let me have rival battles without full healing.)

I also don’t have to have that rival battle and can go run around, so, let’s see what else is in the grass!

Pichu – Despite this Pokemon’s cute appearance, those who want to live with one should prepare to be on the receiving end of its electric jolts.

Ah, more stuff that’s focused on coexistence.

Indeed, Popplio was paralyzed. Apparently one has to use medicine, so I still didn’t get a chance to actually groom during the minigame.

Ah! I got to groom Pikipek. Now she loves me more!

Caterpie! And L5, the same level as the metapod I saw earlier.

It’s easy to catch, and it grows quickly, making it one of the top recommendations for novice Pokemon Trainers.

And yet someone who’d had it since birth hadn’t even gotten it halfway to metapod level. I mean, if she’d just had it out I could think that maybe her pokemon never battled, or, since I wouldn’t even know the level, that it didn’t want to evolve. But she’s a trainer and still so low level.

Back at the festival, talking to Lillie again: So you’ve also become a Pokemon Trainer now… Haven’t you, Bonnibel? A Trainer who fights together with Pokemon…

I’ll try my best at togetherness this time around – especially after having just done the self-centered asshole run last time.

There is, though, no play with pokefriends and not battle option. Rival battle, then.

For all life on the islands and for those who undertake the island challenge with joy in their hearts…we pray for your protection…for them and all Melemele. May this Pokemon battle be an offering to our island’s guardian deity – Topu Koko!
Before you stands Hau – grandson to the Kahuna.
Before him stands Bonnibel – one who has met with Tapu Koko.

It’s at this point the peanut gallery chimes in: What?! And while I deeply appreciate regular people actually reacting to the main character’s legendary destiny thing, this continues oddly, with What a curious little thing Tapu Koko is! Hah, that’s just typical of it! You guys are really not sounding very respectful.

Mom: Pikipek! Take care of my little Bonnibel!

This kind of thing is always weird. Like, the very fact it’s programmed to check the order of my team means they know people will be swapping around their teams so the starter isn’t necessarily first. But then the dialogue generally makes more sense to be said to a starter. At least I did head home to heal so she saw Pipipek – otherwise, she’d be somehow singling out that one despite only meeting my starter.

Hau: As long as we both have a good time, then I think we can call it a great battle, eh?

Acknowledge the pokemon dammit! See, this is what I was getting at. All you have to change here is one word.
As long as we all have a good time, then I think we can call it a great battle, eh?

There! As long as the humans and pokemon are enjoying themselves at the party, who wins and loses isn’t so important. This shouldn’t be that hard. It’s like the fact that godawful “people and pokemon” phrase was used even by N in BW.

This is so important because no one ever says they’re a bad person. Who someone really is isn’t seen in what they directly say, it’s seen in how they say it. And for whatever reason, the pokemon games consistently screw this up and have good sentiments screwed over by dismissive wording.

But then again, Hau is apparently a rather coddled kid who obviously just became a trainer, so he may not be a paragon of perfect human/pokemon relationships. And if we must have non-Gary friendly rivals, a plot arc about the rival realizing he’s taking his pokemon for granted rather than really caring about them as equals would be new.

Hala: Bonnibel Hau! Bring forth the power of your Pokemon!

Anyway I do like the whole ceremonial aspect of this.

Oh my god he has two pokemon damn it Hau.

Pichu – L6. Switch Pikipek L5 for L6 caterpie
AI doing okay at the start, with a bunch of charm. On the other hand, it’s also tail whipping despite lacking any physical moves. I’m not sure if this is a random AI or if Hau is set to focus on status effects – he does seem like he’s not that bloodthirsty.
L4 Yungoos finishes it off

Litten is L7. DAMMIT HAU. Train your pokemon!

Do really like that you can go right to pokemon cuddling after the battle ends. That’s exactly how you’d expect a trainer to behave and it’s exactly how I want to do things in the game.

Then cutscene time.

Hala: Hoo-ee! Another great battle this year. I bet Tapu Koko liked it, too.
Hau: Phew… That was awesome, Bonnibel! That was a really great battle! I had a blast fighting you!

Now this is a more acceptable example of talking just about the human. Hau and my roles were the same in this. And unlike “both”, “you” could even have been plural here, though I doubt it.

Hala: It was a good battle. With this, even Tapu Koko…

Ko-ko-kooo!

Hala: Ho! You heard it yourself! Tapu Koko’s song of approval.

It’d be nice to get an idea of if that pretty much always happens (and means nothing) or sometimes happens (so this means something, but not that I’m the best ever) or pretty much never (so I’m definitely on the special destiny train). I don’t really mind whatever it is, it’s just that everyone else (except Lillie, probably) does know, and I’d like to share their context.

Oh, I nearly forgot! I think it is time you take this, Bonnibel.

Z-ring. I know nothing much about this beyond that it seems to exist to sell more toys.

Your Z-Ring, a mysterious armband that can draw at the power that lies deep within Pokemon… It can bring forth their Z-Power!

So that sounds rather like mega evolution, which had some suggestion it might be more strenuous on pokemon than was safe. And with the bit I got from the demo about it only being usable once a battle, I’m a bit concerned. Fighting anime and such are always very much pro-drawing-out-your-hidden-power, but from a biological standpoint, limitations are generally there to keep you from hurting yourself and getting around them is usually triggered by the perception that you’re doomed anyway so you have nothing at all to lose.

ALSO it looked stupid in the demo. Very Power Rangers posing. I mean, that’s not my main consideration, I thought mega evolution looked cool and still didn’t use it, but I’m just saying that as temptations go it’s not exactly doing a very good job of it. And why am I doing poses like I’m contributing something when it’s still based on their own power? The togetherness thing would work far better if the idea was I was gifting my pokemon some of my own energy, so that I’m doing more than just give orders in battle.

We kahunas can make them by refining stones like the Sparkling Stone that you received from Tapu Koko. Although until you collect more Z-Crystals during your island challenge, you will not be able to draw out the Z-Power of your Pokemon. And yet you have already received that Sparkling Stone… It seems Tapu Koko took quite a liking to you… or perhaps it has a mission for you.
Island challenge? / Every island?
Kukui: Four islands! The island challenge is about aiming to be the strongest Trainer – the island challenge champion. Woo!

At that, we break apart. Then in the cutscene, we see Lillie, hanging back, then stops walking completely. I go back to talk to her.

Lillie: Tapu Koko is amazing, isn’t it? I hope I can meet it again someday and thank it for saving Nebby…
Me too / Oh yeah?
Lillie: You know, Bonnibel… It did save your life, too. And it even gifted you that sparkling stone… even though you’re a stranger to this place.

Wow, they are very chiding in this game. I suppose Lillie has a point, but it just feels wrong to be that grateful to be kept from getting wet (I mean, you can argue that falling into water from a good height is still quite dangerous…but if I was falling that fast, hitting two arms that were accelerating in the opposite direction would be even more dangerous.).

Prof. Labsafetyfail says time for us kids to go home now. Geeze, let me have some fun at the festival!

Lillie: Then I suppose this is goodbye… Are you not one of us kids, Lillie?/

I return home to find Mom is saying Honey I’m home at the cat.
Mom: Oh, Bonnibel! You’re back already? I thought you’d want to stay in Iki Town longer… Especially right after that great battle!

My stupid cousin strongarmed me home, Mom! Tell him he’s not the boss of me! He doesn’t even know how lab coats work!

Ooh, I was just captivated to see my own girl fighting in such perfect sync with her Pokemon!

For once this actually does seem deserved. I worked hard to prevent any of my pokemon from fainting.

Mom says she’s exhausted and going to bed but now we’re on the balcony and she’s distracted by the sky. So just like my mom. Or now she’s talking about wondering what’ll happen today, so, new day? The combination of time mechanics and days passing is super weird. I wonder if what would’ve happened if they actually had it so that you could only play up to that point per day. Riots, probably.

Mom: If only I could make all these boxes shrink small enough to fit in Poke Balls, like Pokemon do…
Uh Mom, I picked up multiple “pokeballs” that held items, items fitting in pokeballs is clearly canon.

Someone’s at the door. Mom mentions that Kukai will just barge in, but I see no sign of anyone and head out to find it’s Lillie!

Lillie: Oh. Um… The professor said…

LOOK EVERYONE LILLIE ISN’T CAPITALIZING THAT WORD. She’s also been pretty good about the whole “sparkling stone” business.

One day all of the capitalization will be correct. One day.

“hey there, Lillie! Bring me that great new Trainer. Woo!” So I’m here to show you the way to his Pokemon lab, if you’ll come with me. It’s, um… It’s this way.

Mom pops out to offer me pocket money and be glad I have a friend.

Mom: Looks like it’s finally your time to shine, sweetie!

And this suggests I did not back in Kanto – she’s not simply happy I’m settling in and finding friends, she’s happy that things are actually better here than they were.

Lillie: You…have a very nice mother, don’t you?

It concerns me that Lillie finds this worthy of remark.

We should get going. I’ll show you to the Pokemon Research Lab.

So Prof. Labsafetyfail really is a legitimate professor.

Trying to go down the other path makes you run into a tauros.

Tauros: Moo-ar!

Indeed, tauros friend, indeed.

Some dude, presumably the trainer: Enough already, Tauros! Calm down! You’re going to hurt somebody!

Either that tauros was never formally captured or it can get out, because the guy does nothing else to deal with the fact there is a furious bull standing in the center of town.

So, can’t got through there. Not sure how I feel about these sort of silly roadblocks – I guess we’re still in the early game, so they’re more acceptable, but I really hope this isn’t going to be standard for the whole game.

Lillie: You can only reach the professor’s lab by treading through the tall grass here. He says he can research moves better when he is so surrounded by Pokemon.

I think he meant in the sense it means no one can bug him for a starter pokemon. Although I’m not sure it does much here, since it seems like everybody has one already.

Since I’m not a Trainer, though, I have to rely on using Repels all the time. You do know that using Repel keeps Pokemon from attacking, right?

Only if they’re lower than your highest level pokemon, though, unless that’s been changed. Always been a weird mechanic, since it means they’re useless as protection and only able to deal with nuisances. Or does this mean Nebby is really high level? Given how widely pokemon stats can vary, I suppose you could have an extremely high level weakling, and Nebby sure seems like a glass cannon sort, but not being able to use a move properly is generally associated with youth and low levels. And I assume I’m going to get one eventually and fans don’t like weak special pokemon, but it could be a larvesta situation where it evolves at a super high level into a powerhouse.

Also, the guy’s place not actually impossible to get to without crossing tall grass there’s a ledge you can jump right there. It’s getting back that the problem. (And, with that in mind, actually kind of a weird setup for a game that’s so handholdy – usually it’s the opposite, once you’ve proven you can get through an area you get a shortcut back.)

A-and about Nebby… Oh. I mean…Cosmog. Cosmog seems to be a very rare Pokemon. It came from far, far away.

Hm. “Far far away” is usually gamespeak for haha fuck you, so maybe we won’t be getting one anytime soon.

Lillie: It seems to have a very strange power… It used that power to save me once when I was in danger. But some…other people want Cosmog for themselves, to use that power. That’s why only the professor and Kahuna Hala and other people I can trust know about it… Can you keep a secret? Can you not tell anyone else about Nebby or what happened on that bridge? Please…

We already had this conversation, Lillie. You said “don’t tell because it’s a secret” and I agreed that yes, something being a secret is a totally legitimate reason for you not wanting people to talk about it.

Trainer: Let’s go! Kneecaps!

WTF?

His only pokemon is a grubbin.

After win: I gotta catch more Pokemon! Pokemon with cool knees are so neat. Grubbin doesn’t have knees you weirdo.

Ooh, rattata!
When the sun goes down, it becomes active. It runs around town on a chase for good food for the boss of its nest–Raticate.

So communal rats? Maybe something like the naked mole rat? It’s dark/normal, interesting.

You can rotate pokemon in the pokedex entry, but you can’t rotate them up – so you can stare at the top of rattata’s head all day long, but you’ll never be able to see its butt.

Wingull! I don’t know why but I’ve always found wingull incredibly boring.

Fishermen keep an eye out for Wingull in the sky, because wherever they’re circling, the ocean is sure to be teaming with fish Pokemon.

More about humans living with pokemon, but also very, very firmly that it’s being done like we do with animals. Pokemon are food, not just friends.

Options for handling pokemon are really nice – I can look at its stats and take items before boxing it.

Slowpoke!

Alolan home cooking involves frying Slowpoke tails and then simmering them into a salty stew.

Um. Well, now we know where all the demand for those slowpoke tails Team Rocket was stealing came from.

I finally approach the lab building, which is covered in shoddy repairs. Inside, Prof. Labsafetyfail is doing something.

Kukui: Give it everything you’re got! My body is ready! Woo!

Dot dot dot.

Lillie: Ahh… There they go again… The Pokemon Research Lab has its own, unique charm, as I think you might agree. I’ve actually been, um, imposing on the professor here for the past three months. I’m not much of an assistant, but it’s the least I can do to pay him back for letting me stay. Maybe I’d be more help if I were a real Pokemon Trainer, too…
(Rockruff barking)
Lillie: The professor… He never stops researching moves. Not even… inside the lab itself.

To be fair, what else are labs for?

Lillie: Looks like we’ll have to patch the roof again…
Then she goes on to say he probably destroyed the labcoat she just washed. Poor Lillie.

Inside is a huge fishtank with a luvdisc and corsola. It looks awesome, but how is that surviving all this?

Kukui: Hey there, Bonnibel! Thanks for getting her for me, Lillie!
Lillie: Of course. However I can be a help… I am supposed to be your assistant, right?
He starts babbling about moves, then asks for pokedex. Now he’s saying the pokedex is indeed rotom’d.
Lillie: It is a peculiar pokemon, with a body make up of something like electricity.

Also it’s a ghost, Lillie. Pretty sure the “something like” that isn’t quite electricity is “ghost”. I understand that the concept of ghostness somehow being an element is painful, but we have to acknowledge what passes for reality here.

Lillie: It can take up residence in machines.
Kukui: Yeah, buddy! And to put that crazy skill of Rotom’s to work… It’s the next generation of Pokedexes, but it’s only complete once Rotom has gone into this body specially developed for it! A whole new way for people and pokemon to communicate. Woo! And there’s only a few of these beauties out in the world so far!

Speaking of the first movie, remember how the pokedex there already could translate pokemon speech? But no one really cared. Anyway, rotom are rare, so it’s unlikely this could ever be scaled up to mass production levels. Even a few could be really useful, so it’s a pretty important discovery, but such a limited resource should be focused on the one thing only it can do (the whole talking to humans business) instead of whatever the point of putting it into my pokemon factoid checklist.

Kukui: Here, boy! I powered up your favorite ‘Dex!

…And now I have a floating dex saying it’s nice to meet me, presumably because unlike some people, I didn’t call it
“boy”.

Look, I get it. He’s talking to it like a dog, not deliberately trying to invoke how black people were talked down to. Except the entire point there was to talk to them like they were dumb animals, so there’s really no escaping that it’s horrible to say “this is a speaking, intelligent individual” and follow it with “here boy!” It’s not that it happens to look bad because of an accidental shared word, it’s that it’s the bad thing itself.

I wonder if the Japanese version has a different speaking style for all this. I know they generally say “human” and not “person” in animes that involve nonhumans, which would fix at least half of the dialogue problems right there, plus they have a lot more levels of formality so there’s the possibility he’s talking to the rotom in a way that’s casual without being this casual.

Kukui: See, Bonnibel? Now Rotom can talk right to you! From what I can tell, yeah, it looks like Rotom has taken a liking to you!
Lillie: And this will help how exactly?

I don’t know what Lillie’s exact objections to this are, but I kinda feel this is sketchy too. This requires a pokemon to run? Just so the machine I don’t even really need functions slightly better? I mean, there are animals that like doing work, so it’s not necessarily bad to have one working, but, what happens if Rotom didn’t take a liking to me? How much say do they have in this, especially when as you admit, there’s currently problems getting enough running?

Kukui: Bonnibel hasn’t been here in Alola too long yet. So I decided to give her this special Rotom Dex to help her navigate around.
Thank you very much / Nice to meet you, Rotom

This is an awkward one – I mean, he did just give me something that’s evidently quite valuable, and he’s doing so because he’s concerned about me. But most of what he’s giving is Rotom itself, so…

Kukui: You can see where you’re headed just by looking at Rotom, and if you give it a little tap, you can even check out the town Map!

And here’s Hau. A-lo-la! The salty breeze sang to me and brought me here to you!

You know, a warrior-poet style rival could be a nice change. But now he’s busy being awed by the concept of lofts, so, I don’t think that’s where it’s going.

Lillie: No, it’s not! It’s private! The professor has been kind enough to let me use it…
Kukui: If you see a person or a Pokemon who needs help, you just help them…

Yeah, but Kukui, the fact you view them as different does suggest you have a similar divide in kinds of help you give them. Otherwise, you’d just say, “if you see someone who needs help”.

Hau then remarks on my pokedex – evidently hasn’t seen one before. So they’re really, really rare – Kukai doesn’t have one of his own and nobody else around does either. There should probably be more explanation for why he thinks I should get one, or, why not have me just run into a rotom that possesses my pokedex? It’s not like rotom needed specially designed versions of the other machines they possess.

And now, this is more than long enough, so we’ll pick up with Rotomfriend tomorrow.