Thorny Floragato!? The Mysterious Flower Pillar - Pokémon Horizons Episode 51 Review - It's Hard Being The Big Sister

This week's episode of Pokémon Horizons is a nice transition from all of the recent action-packed Terastal Course battles. While those battles were good, Horizons really shines with the more laid back episodes like this one, and it's nice to see the kids having a chance to bond more with their Pokémon.

It’s amusing how the kids are excited to do their homework for Jacq. Dot’s actually enjoying camping this time around! It’s nice to see them being able to take care of themselves from setting up their tents to cooking for themselves too. It seems that Roy’s in charge of cooking as shown in the last few minutes of the episode. Will the person in charge of cooking change, or will it always be Roy? Come to think of it, going all the way back to Brock, the designated chef of the group has usually been a male supporting lead, hasn't it?

I feel bad for Floragato. She normally gets a lot of Liko’s attention, but now that there are more Pokémon for Liko to take care of, she's been relegated to being the older sister of Liko’s party. That means she won’t get as much attention from Liko as before. I mean, she did get jealous often when she was still a Sprigatito, but it feels like her jealousy is still a prominent part of her personality now as a Floragato. I do like that her jealousy hasn’t just gone away, it’s still a part of her. While this is a nice source of conflict for Liko and Floragato, I didn’t like how Liko still didn’t figure out the cause of Floragato’s bad mood. It feels like Liko’s character progression of wanting to understand Pokémon’s feelings took two steps back at some point. All she got from this episode was that Floragato was in a bad mood, and then she wanted to see the flower pillar so that she can cheer up. She never realized that the lack of attention towards her partner Pokémon was the reason. This does feel like it’s going to be a set up for a future episode, though. I also like how Floragato’s Pokédex entry of having hardened fur depending on the mood is implemented here. It’s prickly when she’s upset or in battle mode, but when she’s calm, it’s soft.

If there is one thing I would’ve liked to see, it would've been having Hatenna be utilized more. Hatenna can sense emotions, so it would’ve been great for her to be the voice of reason to help Liko understand why Floragato was so moody. Alas, she was only used as a source of tension. In fact, are we even getting a Hatenna-focused episode? Other than her debut episode and episode 38, Hatenna hasn't received too much focus. I think that’s a bit of an issue I have with the kids’ non-partner Pokémon, in that they don’t get all that much focus while their partners have a plethora of characterization. Like, when was the last time Wattrel got focus? How about Tinkatink?

One of the worries I had for the third arc did come into play here: Terapagos getting lost. I was concerned that it getting lost would be used as a source of conflict, and this episode did just that. What I worry about even more is that I know it’s not going to end in this episode. Oh no, it’s going to be used to set up conflict for future episodes. I can feel it, and I am not going to like it.

Now that the nitpicks are done, let me talk about the things I liked in this episode. The first was Liko and Roy roasting Friede. They called him Professor “Actually-Doing-Research” Friede and Professor “Doing-His-Job-For-Once” Friede. Damn. They burned him so hard that he became a Pineco in this episode (Friede’s voice actor Taku Yashiro voices the Pineco in this episode as mentioned in the credits). It’s nice to see the kids being comfortable enough to take jabs at him. The second thing I liked was the debut of Toedscool. They’re so goofy. I also loved the bait-and-switch of them being a potential conflict. Toedscool are timid Pokémon, so I did feel like they wouldn’t attack Liko. I also liked that Liko understood that they wanted the vines to be cut, and that this was how she found out that they’re the cause of the mysterious flower pillar, as it’s just a way for them to remove their flaps. I thought this was a fun way to introduce them. I really loved the animation of how they were walking. They always did have goofy running animation in the games, and I’m glad that it’s still funny in the anime.

Overall, this was a nice episode, but I think my gripes outweigh the positives—which isn’t bad. I just hope that Liko will finally come to understand what causes Floragato’s bad mood in a future episode, and that it actually gets resolved one day and not in a haphazard way. What were your thoughts on this episode?