The first episode of Pokémon: Paldean Winds is a crash course in treasure hunting

theverge.com:

By Charles Pulliam-Moore, a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

The mainline Pokémon anime is sure to eventually delve into much of the magic and mystery shaping the new region Scarlet and Violet are set in. But the new Pokémon: Paldean Windsweb series gets right to the business of showing you just what the young trainers matriculating at Naranja (and presumably Uva) Academy are really getting up to as they embark on their grand treasure hunts.

Paldean Winds’ first episode — “Breathe Out” from director Ryohei Takeshita and writer Teruko Utsumi — introduces Ohara (Cat Protano), Alquis (Paul Castro Jr.), and Hohma (Caroline Spinola), three Naranja Academy students who are all at different points in figuring out what unique goals they want to achieve as part of the school’s Treasure Hunt course work. While Scarlet and Violet give you some sense of how Paldean school children are set loose upon the region to learn unquantifiable things about themselves while adventuring, Paldean Winds fleshes the concept out with more specificity as it follows Ohara and her partner pokémon Fuecoco on their journey to Glaseado Mountain.

While the pair encounter plenty of wild pokémon and important characters from the games like Nemona (Olivia Vidas) and Arven (Henry Mason), the first episode’s story is about Ohara looking to nature for a way to improve her skills as a flutist more than anything else. 

It’s the exact kind of Montessori-esque approach to learning one imagines that Naranja Academy’s teachers would be delighted to see their students taking in order to become more well-rounded people in a world full of magical