The show strips away the gym-badge formula that has defined Pokémon for thirty years. Liko and Roy aren't chasing a predetermined path or a predetermined story, they're following a mystery that actually requires them to move across the entire world, not just the next town with a badge. The sense that anything could happen, that the scope is genuinely open, is what the franchise has been missing since the original series ended. This is what happens when Pokémon stops asking "will they win the next gym?" and starts asking "what are they actually looking for?"

Liko is a shy girl from the Paldea region who heads to Kanto to enroll at the Indigo Academy and train to become a Pokémon trainer, with the Grass-type cat Nyahoja as her first partner. Before she leaves, her grandmother hands her a strikingly patterned pendant meant to protect her. A secretive group called the Explorers seems to know something about that pendant and comes close to taking it. Friede, a trainer who rides a Lizardon, steps in with his band of adventurers, the Rising Volt Tacklers. After more run-ins with the Explorers, Liko joins his crew for a journey across the regions. Alongside a boy named Roy, she sets out to uncover the mysteries of the Pokémon world and the power hidden inside her pendant, meeting figures like Captain Pikachu and Amethio along the way. The result is an action fantasy adventure that launches a fresh chapter of the franchise.