Pokémon HORIZON: The CoroCoro Sun & Moon Manga - Featuring Rockruff

[Shadao]

I'm sure you have heard the news about this new manga coming to CoroCoro. A Sun & Moon manga featuring a young boy named Akira going around the islands of Alola with his Rockruff. It is drawn by Tenya Yabuno, who also worked on Digimon (which is why our character looks the way he does). Announced like a month or two ago, I'm surprised no one has made a thread to this yet.

This front promo on the Japanese website shows our cast, which includes our Sun & Moon Girl (slightly altered from the game design) and Professor Kukui. There are more preview scans on the Japanese webpage here.

Now that's all fine and dandy but recently, a leaked scan of one of the manga pages has been floating around the Internet in the past few days. Whether or not it's authentic remains unknown, but the leaked page is consistent with the art design of this manga. And I say this because it features a surprising cameo of someone you wouldn't expect to see...

Spoiler: Leaked Horizon Manga Scan

Hello there, Satoshi and Pikachu of XY&Z. And yes, it's Ash. Particularly Ash in his XY&Z design rather than his Sun and Moon design. I have no idea what's he's doing here or why he has his XY outfit.

 

[Arceus the Dragon]

That looks very interesting. Maybe we are seeing the next male companion for the series?

 

[LavenderCase]

I was beginning to wonder if we would hear about the manga today. That leak is very interesting. Any translation available yet?

 

[Hidden Mew]

First of all, that picture is adorable and I love the focus on Rockruff. It's just so precious and I really hope Ash captures one in the new series. Second of all, the female lead in the background looks a lot like May. I think it's because of her hair. That's pretty neat.

The leaked pages do look authentic. I'm not sure if it means anything in relation to the new series, but it's kind of cute and surprising at least.

 

[Yuri3221]

It's really hard to read from the quality of the scan, but the text in box around the picture of Ash is along the lines of "yes, pocket monsters, Pokemon for short. The mysterious creatures that can enter a pokeball." The last sentence I can't see the kanji clearly enough on one of the verbs, but it seems to be "verb Pokemon is a Pokemon battle!"

Very rough translation, feel free to correct me.

What I get from that is it's an introductory page, kinda like the intros at the beginning of Pokemon movies where they show the Pokemon world and occasionally show characters that aren't actually playing a part in the movie. My guess is Ash doesn't actually have a part in the story, they just are using his image in a representation of the world of Pokemon.

 

[Keshav]

That will probably be XY Ash's last appearance in any sort of official media.

 

[FANG-TAN]

Looks like it'll be a fun series. Seems like we have a Goggle Boy in the Pocket Monsters franchise now.

The Sun/Moon girl's altered design reminds me of how different Mitsumi (Diamond-Pearl Legend) looked from Hikari from the games and anime.

It's really hard to read from the quality of the scan, but the text in box around the picture of Ash is along the lines of "yes, pocket monsters, Pokemon for short. The mysterious creatures that can enter a pokeball." The last sentence I can't see the kanji clearly enough on one of the verbs, but it seems to be "verb Pokemon is a Pokemon battle!"

Very rough translation, feel free to correct me.

そう、ポケットモンスター縮して「ポケモン」! モンスターボールに入ることができる不思議な生き物…。そのポケモンを戦わせるのがポケモンバトルだ!!

It says: Yes, Pocket Monsters, "Pokemon" for short! The mysterious creatures that can enter Monster Balls... To make these Pokemon fight, that's a Pokemon Battle!!

From the looks of it, Satoshi is only a fun cameo during that Pokemon World-esque exposition panel to represent trainers that battle with their Pokemon, he's not actually in the scene. If you look closely, the people that are actually battling are the S/M girl expy and some large dude with a Hawaiian shirt. I doubt he'll have a role later in the manga, this reminds me more of the PiPiPi ★ Adventures manga, where the anime characters occasionally make minor cameos.

 

[ManUtd22]

Well I am not a big fan for manga
I only care about the Anime
but I loved the cute boy and cute girl