The Pokémon Horizons anime has just debuted yet another Paldean Gym Leader, Iono, including the streamer-themed character in a way that's both clever and logical given what the series has to work with.

Last episode saw Liko get her pendant stolen, and her memory erased, leaving the poor girl lost and confused in the big city of Levincia, without any knowledge as to why she was there. That made it difficult for Friede and the others to track her down, so Dot called in a favor. Dot is well-known online as the streamer Nidothing (Gurumin in Japanese), and it turns out that she has a connection with fellow streamer Iono. Convincing Iono to collaborate as part of a scheme to help locate Liko, Iono embraced the idea fully, even turning up the heat by taking this game of "find the person" and making it into a chase.

Iono Recreates Her Gym Test from Scarlet and Violet

Iono's game in the anime is a close match for her gym test in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, where the player must identify a man on the street (who turns out to be Director Clavell) in a Where's Waldo?-esque manner. People search for Liko in much the same way that the player has to hunt down Clavell, and although it quickly changes into a chase scene, this actually ends up helping to jog Liko's memory. This follows on from the episode starring Brassius, another Paldean Gym Leader, which similarly featured a challenge based on the gym test from the games.

It made perfect sense for Dot to know Iono, since both are streamers with a sizable following, and collaborations like this are pretty common among real-life streamers. As a plan for finding Liko, it actually worked quite well, as Liko was drawn to the disturbance caused by the event. Dot leveraging her connections was also a fairly significant character moment for her, as it proved that Liko and Roy have made some progress in befriending Dot, who has otherwise been very reluctant to leave her room, especially if anyone else is around. Dot was even able to maintain her own secret identity with this plan, carefully addressing the audience from a point where she couldn't be seen.

The airship may be setting sail for the Galar region soon, so it seems likely that Iono may be the last Paldean Gym Leader to make an anime debut for a while. Iono and Brassius have made interesting choices for the first two Gym Leaders, since they aren't the first level-wise in the game, but rather had more direct connections to the events of the plot. With a relationship established between Iono and Dot, though, Pokémon Horizons could see her return at any time, since she's just a phone call away.