I wanted to put together some thoughts that I have regarding the passage of time in Pokemon Horizons. I’m a writer by nature who likes to pick out tiny details and examine them to the fullest. Horizons has thrown hints at us multiple times to suggest that time has been passing within the series. And now with a solidly defined time skip having happened, I thought it would be fun to look back and piece together how much time has passed until now!
Before I do that though, I want to preface with a few things:
All of this is purely speculation based on loose evidence provided to us throughout the series. I’m not claiming anything I say as definitive fact. This is merely for fun. Everything I say could be completely wrong.
The passage of time in the Pokemon anime is a tricky topic. After all, time “passed” in Ash’s series without ever really passing; weeks or months would be stated to have gone by, but Ash himself was explicitly stated to be forever-10-years-old and on an eternal summer vacation. Despite that, growth and the passage of time seem to be important themes at the base of Horizons (i.e. the 100-year tale of Lucius, the generational parallels between Amethio and Liko and their ancestors, how time has impacted Gibeon, etc.). These themes weren’t relevant in Ash’s series (at least, not in the same way), which is why time was never a focus. That’s not true of Horizons though, and that’s why I think it’s at least worth discussing.
I understand that the characters don’t seem to grow/mature much physically throughout the series—even after the time skip. Realistically, if a significant amount of time has passed then the characters should be physically aging more than they are. My argument to that is that this is a long-running anime that’s ultimately a marketing tool for the most successful multi-media franchise in the world. They likely want to keep character designs consistent for as long as possible so they can market them on products, goods, and in advertising. If their designs gradually changed every 20 episodes or so to signify physical growth, that would be much harder to accomplish.
With those things in mind, let’s get to it! Note: This post is very long and contains spoilers for Pokemon Horizons episodes 001 - 089!
