![]() ![]() Bede is the other rival character in Sword and Shield, and is definitely getting his own one of These Things, but all we need to know for the moment is that he’s a cold and ruthless Psychic Pokémon trainer who was endorsed for the gym challenge by Chairman Rose himself, thinks this makes him better than anyone else in the competition (even the two trainers who were endorsed by the Champion), and is pursuing some secretive mission on Rose’s behalf. ![]() His ambitions are important to him, but he also cares a lot about having fun and growing.Īnd then Bede shows up. He’s kind of Pokémon’s ideal of a young trainer: determined, personable, driven by the love of the game and love of his Pokémon. He also does his best to keep the traditional British stiff upper lip, treating his losses as a chance to grow and quickly bouncing back from every failure. He’s visibly discouraged by repeatedly being beaten in your regular battles with him as you travel the region, but works his way through the first three gyms at the same pace as you and remains confident in his abilities. There are some huge expectations invested in both of you, and Hop also has huge expectations of himself. Other characters we meet make a big deal of the fact that Leon, who has never endorsed anyone before, has broken that silence for these two trainers (both of whom he has known personally since their infancy… but, y’know, there’ll be a time and a place to talk about Leon’s blatant nepotism). Subsequent events make it clear that he is, at the very least, pretty solid at this Pokémon training malarkey, when Leon endorses both of you for the Gym Challenge on the basis of a battle between the two of you. He loses none of his enthusiasm or drive when the two of you encounter a mysterious Pokémon in the mist and are both rendered unconscious, although he never seems to be all that motivated to find out what that Pokémon was or why it attacked you. He’s also brave and has a strong sense of duty, insisting that the two of you venture into the forbidden and dangerous Slumbering Weald to rescue a lost Wooloo. He is ready for this he is 100% up for the glorious destiny that awaits him. Unlike the player character, Hop already has a Pokémon when the game begins – a Wooloo – but he receives a Galarian starter Pokémon from Leon alongside us, and according to his Pokémon League trading card he learned how to battle from watching every single one of Leon’s televised matches. As the younger brother of Galar’s Champion, Leon, Hop makes it clear from the very start of the game that he feels he has a lot to live up to, but seems pretty confident that he can prove himself worthy of Leon’s legacy, and indeed surpass it. I’m going to repeat the characterisation of him that I gave in my contemporaneous notes on playing the game: that, in terms of other rival characters from the series, he’s a mixture of Hau’s relentless positivity with Blue’s intense competitive attitude and ambition. It’s sweet, it’s uplifting, let’s talk about it.Īt the beginning of Sword and Shield, Hop is a young boy growing up in the same town as the player, the sleepy south Galarian village of Postwick. The theme here isn’t even all that complicated or particularly unusual in a Pokémon game: Hop’s story is about growing up in other people’s shadows and learning to find your own path and excel in your own way, not comparing yourself to the achievements of others. That means I can just… talk about what Hop does in the story, then say what I think about it, like I used to do back when I was still pretending that my life made sense. Nor (thank Arceus) do we need to get especially deep into the lore of any particular legendary Pokémon to understand what Hop’s deal is Zacian and Zamazenta are relevant to his story, but we can do this without them. ![]() This one isn’t going to be super heavy on sweeping themes and allegory I don’t have, like, a hot take about how Hop’s character arc is actually a commentary on British masculinity, or anything like that. ![]()
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