Pokémon Horizons: What The HELL Happened To Roy?

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Honestly, Roy and Liko's relationship works well. The story, in a grander scheme, works better imo. I think the anime is more focused on the team - the Rising Voltacklers - rather than the individuals themselves. I really like the take the Pokemon Animé made: The story is great, the characters are lovable, and the antagonists are threatening.

As an ash fan I welcome horizons forming its own identity by doing something different

I seem to remember just a short while ago fans were asking if Roy wasn't overshadowing Liko. Now the situation is inverted. People need to be patient with this type of storytelling. He'll get some episodes focusing on him again real soon.

I think Liko is the primary protagonist and I think Roys story will be intertwined with Likos. I like him though. He seems more interested in battles than Liko. Though I really like Liko and Dots relationship more than hers and Roy

As a male fan I have no problem with a female protagonist. I do hope Roy can get some more screen time in the future though.

I think I have a few theories on why Roy is getting downplayed in Horizons. 1) Is that Roy wasn't originally written into the series when it began production, which would explain why he wasn't in the first couple of episode (Goh was introduced in the first episode of Journeys). They might have added Roy later because they needed a character for young boys to relate to. 2) Perhaps Roy wasn't intended to be marketed as the dual protagonist with Liko. Unlike with Goh in Journeys, where at least half the episodes were focused on him, Roy seems to act more like Ash's friends from the past series. Maybe fearing that the older fans wouldn't like the male character being sideline to the female character, they decided to market Liko and Roy as equal protagonist to appease the older fans, not taking into account that Roy wasn't written to be an equal to Liko. 3) Maybe after seeing how popular Liko was compared to Roy, the writers for Horizons started to shift more of the story towards her, instead of giving them both equal screen time. 4) Or maybe we are getting ahead of ourselves and we might get to see more Roy focus episodes in the future. It felt like yesterday that the complainant was that Roy was getting too much of the focus instead of Liko. Personally, I rather have Liko be the main character with Roy being sideline, because I rather see a female character be the protagonist, which is something new, instead of another series being lead by a male character. On a side note, I think if anyone is the Chloe of Horizons, it's Dot. Not in terms writing or character, but because from the looks of the marketing, it seems like Dot is supposed to be part of a unofficial trio between Liko and Roy. Kinda like how Chole was treated as part of a trio between Ash and Goh.

Royboy is our joyboy that we have been waiting for years.

They seem to be pushing up Dot a bit more too, it's like they're trying to do an anime version of the manga where they've got all three starter-mon kids going at the same time, and Dot at least does have something going for information gathering, and they seem to be forcing her to be the "first buddy" character, probably because it's been the boys club for so long with Ash. I know I'll probably get some hate for saying this: Unlike some of the female led shows coming out, this one doesn't push the unnecessary boundaries, and shows Liko as a human that makes mistakes, and isn't surrounded by huge plates of plot armor. The Horizons team seem to be trying something, get shat on for it, or start getting lost interest, try something slightly different, blow people's minds, then the audience finds something to shit on them for again. Essentially, Roy is basically a MacGuffin for the ancient balls, hasn't displayed any shipability, and yeah... basically just the "here's a boy" character; however, they have given some good rival moments. Of course I'm still enjoying it, I honestly enjoy Lico as the MC, and my older ass sees Friede as my insert character...

You literally said to all... But I did go from saying "Gosh I wish Roy wasn't there.. Liko can handle things".. to actually enjoying his presence. It's funny tho, it seems like just yesterday everyone was saying Liko's Goals were too weak compared to Roy's, and now things are reversed.

I really feel like this situation was reversed during the first arc. Roy seemed to be doing a lot more than Liko. He got a new Pokemon before Liko and there was a focus on Roy befriending the Wattrel. He also was more focused on trying to get stronger. Liko, on the other hand, seemed a bit passive and unsure of what to do. Only once the plot got really got going later on did the focus shift away from Roy to Liko in my opinion. Even now though, Roy is still set on finding the black Rayquaza, so that's something. And since the whole group is focused on one mission right now, it's kind of hard for Roy to be doing anything else, so of course the focus would shift to Liko who's directly related to the immediate plotline. I personally haven't felt anything wrong with direction of the characters so far, but I'm pretty easy to please and typically not an overly critical viewer.

Its obvious, the anime is having separate arcs focused on one of the dual protagonist's goal. The pendant arc will focus on Liko, while the Paldea Academy school arc will heavily focus on Roy's battle arcs to get strong enough to catch Rayquaza. They haven't forgotton Roy, the anime, is actually trying to wrap up Liko's arc adventure so they can shift the focus on Roy's. You save the best for last.

I knew before the anime even relesed that that liko would be the main protagonist and roy will be a companion with occasional moments when he's the focus. Theres nothing wrong with that, ash literally went through 7 generations that way and no one complained. Lets face it, liko is the ash and roy is the serena, dawn, may, misty of the group. They are both main protagonists, but the focus would be mainly on liko, same way the anime was with ash and his companions in the past generations And no, go was never a main focus like ash was. There are episodes of go being equal or the main focus to ash like the eternamax and project mew episodes (and i expect roy to have the same treatment in future episodes) but cmon, ash was still the main guy of the journeys series.

I mean, even if Roy may have gotten "shafted" from the ancient PokéBall thing, he still has Fuecoco's goal to help him be like Charizard. And I do agree with you that focusing on one thing at atime is probably for the best for now, especially considering the messy execution of Pokémon Journeys. Also, out of curiosity, have you seen The Amazing Digital Circus? I feel obsessed with that at the moment. Another also, are you getting Super Mario RPG? I've been waiting a very long time for that remake and now we're only less than 2 weeks away from having that game in our grasp!

I think that the writers did really good job with the plot, even if there are a lot of connections to Eureka Seven anime.

Didn’t everyone say exact the same thing about Liko until episodes 20-21? It honestly felt like fans were saying that she was playing second fiddle to Roy up until that point

yeah he's good at playing off of people, he's the battler despite being considered more secondary. and i wouldn't be surprised if he gets more development when there's more chance for high-stakes battles since that's his expertise. it's really nice to have the shojou and shonen swapped around and i think complaining about that too hard is weird imo

People need to be patient

I think it's more likely that Pokemon's anime studio is recovering from decades of Ash/Satoshi fatigue. They want to build the story around a character who is entirely different from the typical shounen protag, because it opens the story up to lots of new, untapped scenarios.

That's why we need to see how things go. The season barely ended. The twist and turns might make sense once we uncover the full season.