In Pokémon Horizons, Scarlet is canon

polygon.com:

Pokémon Horizons: The Series, the latest season of the Pokémon anime and the first to star protagonists other than Ash Ketchum, has finally premiered in the U.S. via a 12-episode drop on Netflix. It’s a big deal — Ash finally became the very best, and now we have to leave him behind. But the new Pokémon trainers are just the beginning.

[Ed. note: Slight spoilers for Pokémon Horizons episode 10 follow.]

After introducing us to the new protagonists and the basic story setup, Pokémon Horizons takes events to the Paldea region. There, in the city of Mesagoza, is a school; in Pokémon Scarlet, it’s called Naranja Academy, while in Violet, it’s Uva Academy. Although there are two versions of the school in the games, there can only be one in the anime. And the winner is… Pokémon Scarlet.

For U.S. anime viewers, this might not be a surprise. Horizons isn’t the only animated Pokémon series to feature Paldea and Naranja Academy; there’s also Pokémon: Paldean Winds, a four-episode miniseries released on YouTube last year. But Horizons was released in Japan at the beginning of 2023, before Paldean Winds, and its status as part of the main Pokémon anime series means it’s the one setting the tone, if you ask me. Us Americans just had to wait a year to get the official word on which version is the canon one.

Like with any new generation of Pokémon games, prospective players had to decide which version to buy when Scarlet and Violet came out. And a good portion of Pokémon fans have strong opinions. Both games have hot professors, so that was a matter of personal preference. Violet has the cooler legendary, in that it’s a dragon with wheels and the wheels actually work (unlike Scarlet’s, which has wheel-like structures on its body but uses its feet to run). Me? I picked Scarlet. Have you seen Professor Sada?

The matter of which school you’d be attending wasn’t high on the list of pros and/or cons for either version. But the school does affect how your character looks through the