#confirmed that it is in fact post pla volo

[dittydipity]

giratina and volo (pokemon masters ex, 2024)

[neon-moon-beam]

Breaking Down The Known Ways Ingo Could Have Gotten To Hisui + My Theory Based On The Most Likely Option

There’s really only a few options within the Pokémon canon currently that would be responsible, so I thought I’d break them down. I organized the scenarios from least likely to most likely. This doesn’t mean I absolutely 100% without a doubt believe the most likely option is what happened, just that I see the most evidence for it and have built a bit of a theory around it.

This took me a long time to put together due to the research involved, editing to be as succinct as I could make it, the fact that I have a life outside of Pokémon and being online, as well as being a bit burnt out on PLA. It was around 8 pages in Word; much longer than any of my previous posts! So be warned that this is a longer post.

I was working on this before the PLA Guide Book was released. The “XX Years Ago” isn’t factored in because not only would it likely not impact any of these scenarios, but we don’t know what numbers the “XX” was supposed to indicate, and the concept art hasn’t been confirmed yet as being canon.

I did, however, make a compilation of evidence suggesting Ingo has not been in Hisui for a decade or more, and if you haven’t already, you may want to read it as some of the information in there factors in to some potential scenarios in this post.

That being said, I don’t want to discuss theories or headcanons with people. I prefer to post for people who may want to read it, but to be honest, I don’t have the time, energy or desire to engage like that. If you disagree, that’s fine. Just please make your own post instead of adding to mine.

Bl*nkshippers dni—I will block you.

Major plot spoilers ahead.

One of the Pokémon (other than Arceus) with time-travel or dimensional travel capabilities sent him back:

First of all, Dialga and Palkia are out of commission prior to, and during the events of PLA thanks to Volo’s actions, so one of them using time or dimensional travel is out. As the game is now, there’s a lack of anything considered outside of the Hiusi PokéDex making it unlikely it was any of the others, such as Celebi or Hoopa. Ingo saying he’s from “another world” is probably because the few things he does remember are so different from Hisui that it seems like one; it might not be a literal statement. We also have no evidence that it was a Pokémon not seen in the game that sent him back, and it would be unsatisfying and even a cheap move for them to tell us later that a Pokémon we don’t see was responsible. We also don’t have any motive for a random Pokémon to have done this to him. This is the least likely way he got to Hisui. I don’t think I really have to explain this one further.

Volo Personally Sent Him Back In Time By Accident Or On Purpose:

This one has nearly no evidence for it. Again, it might help if you read my post about how long Ingo has been in Hisui in order to get a bit more background on Volo’s creation of the Rift and the implication of his interaction with Ingo. 

Let me first point out two things: First and foremost, fan interpretations of Volo have started to go far beyond anything we can actually confirm with PLA. He’s bitter, a little entitled at times (he believed Arceus should appear to him based on his status as a descendant of the Celestica and his insistence on meeting it) and he has some moments where he’s unhinged, notably the closer you are in the plot to the fight with him, but there’s little evidence to suggest he’s a sadistic edgelord who wanted to inflict as much suffering as possible on the world.

The second is we don’t know too much about Volo’s backstory, his motive, or what happens after the events of PLA. The last we hear of him is that he told Laventon he was defeated by the player character, to continue the Dex, and it would be the last time they would meet. He says he will meet Arceus no matter how many “years, decades, or centuries” it takes him. Is this meant to be taken literally? There’s a lot suggesting Cogita may be immortal and/or a time traveler, so is Volo the same (and what is their relationship to each other and Cynthia)? Cogita also doesn’t seem too concerned about Volo being out there, both before and after his defeat. There’s a lot that could be going on here, but we aren’t shown in-game so far, and as this post is about how Ingo could have arrived in Hisui, I won’t be going into that here. The takeaway from this is we don’t know enough about his motives, or if he would even have ever known Ingo in another time, to determine whether or not he would have had any reason or motive to specifically send Ingo back in time to Hisui.

Moving on, Volo doesn’t seem to have much control over the Space-Time Rift. Despite having Giratina make it, he had to wait for Dialga and Palkia to come through it, which seems to have taken a few months at least. If Volo was able to transport people and Pokémon from the Rift at will, why not just pull Dialga and Palkia out immediately? And more importantly, why bring one man he’s never met before back in time? Volo wanted to remake the world as he desired, but he never mentioned wanting to rip people from their friends, families, and homes and throw them across time and space before then. If he had wanted to do that and had the ability to, there should have been more people other than Ingo, and Pokémon not native to Hisui appearing. He also seems to have no idea how Ingo got to Hisui, as evidenced by him asking if Ingo thought his memory loss had to do with the Rift. Considering no other characters (save for the player character to a degree that’s debatable) have amnesia, and the Rift itself is obviously not just inflicting amnesia on people in Hisui, this is likely Volo discreetly trying to get information. He’s probably aware by this point, if not all along, that the player character was sent by Arceus to stop him. There’s a lot of overlap between the player character and Ingo; amnesia, unexplained arrival in Hisui from somewhere unknown, natural affinity for catching and training Pokémon, gets along easily with Nobles (Ingo is made a Warden, the player character is given a Celestica Flute to call them at any time and quells the frenzied ones with ease). Volo may have been trying to determine if Ingo had also been sent to Hisui to stop him. It’s not likely he was trying to get a kick out of faking concern and sympathy for someone he had secretly inflicted pain upon.

Faller Theory:

I’ve talked about why Ingo most likely isn’t a Faller here, so I won’t delve into the details of that post here, but I do have more to add regarding gimmicks in the mainline games, Ultra Wormholes, and more comparisons with Anabel.

Besides the lack of Ultra Beasts and any mention of Ultra Wormholes, from Gen 6 onwards, each Gen seems to have a gimmick that has only been seen in either the region it was introduced in, or has only made it to the next Gen and then disappeared. Mega Evolution, introduced in Gen 6, has not been seen since 7. So far, Z-Moves have not been seen outside of Alola. Dynamaxing has been left in Galar; it did not make it into BDSP or PLA despite being in the same Gen, but the plot of SwSh also tells us why Dynamaxing is exclusive to Galar. There is an Ultra Wormhole in the back of the  Dynamax Lair in the Crown Tundra, but this was likely to allow the Ultra Beasts to be obtainable in SwSh (which more or less just handed us these things), and it seems likely that Gen 7 and SwSh happen at the same time as each other. The Pokémon in the Den have no bearing on the plot itself, are optional, and the Ultra Wormhole in the Den doesn’t affect anything, nor are there any Fallers mentioned in regards to it.

So with that said, Hisui’s gimmick is Space-Time Distortions. They’re not Ultra Wormholes; they’re a result of Volo using Giratina to make the main rift. The ones that appear in addition to the main one, or even after the main one closes, are sort of like aftershocks. Unless they do a DLC for PLA that incorporates Ultra Wormholes and Ultra Beasts, they’re absent from Hisui. It would be a bit of a cop out to have a character arrive in Hisui this way with literally no mention or indication that a mechanic we’ve seen in games before was how they got there, and many people would be disappointed by the omission of the Ultra Beasts if this were the case.

A lot of people have compared Ingo to Anabel, but his appearance in PLA is markedly different from hers in Alola; Anabel appears happy and has her original team with her, and her memories are far more gone than Ingo’s. In fact, Looker tells the player more about Anabel than Anabel herself. She doesn’t even know she’s a Faller. Ingo, meanwhile, looks absolutely miserable even if he’s positive and supportive when speaking to people. He remembers more as time goes on, from having a Fire-type partner Pokémon, to “someone who looked a lot like” him, to the fact that training and battling Pokémon was the norm where he came from. And he never forgot the train stuff even though there isn’t a single train in Hisui to remind him. There’s far more focus on who he was prior to arriving in Hisui and the fragments of his backstory than there are on Anabel’s past.

While people can be in Ultra Wormholes for a short time with little consequence (as evidenced by the player traveling through them in Alola), there’s one more point to consider: Ingo did not have his Pokémon with him, despite the fact that their PokeBalls were almost certainly on him in whatever point in time he was snatched from (he did arrive in his work uniform, after all). All the options discussed in this post, save for one, would have essentially sent him through time with whatever he currently had on him, including his Pokémon. For them to not be with him, suggesting they were intentionally left behind by whatever or however he time traveled, and having memories that are still there but mostly inaccessible compared to Anabel (and Mohn) seems to indicate however he time-traveled was not an Ultra Wormhole.

The Space-Time Rift (Or A Space-Time Distortion) Alone:

Let me start this off by talking about the player character for a bit. The game shows us as soon as it’s booted up for the first time that Arceus itself sends the player character back in time to Hisui. All the other characters believe them to have fallen from the sky, out of the Rift. However, the game never actually confirms Arceus sent the player character through the Rift.

It’s much more likely that after Arceus handpicked the player character it transported them to Hisui in a more unique way. We see Arceus’ realm at the start of the game, and it looks nothing like the Rift, and when it uses its powers to send the player character to Hisui, and the times it does something via the Arc Phone, its power is shown as a golden light. However, Arceus can make rifts identical to the one made by Giratina, as its seen warping through them during the fight with it. It could have made a much smaller rift to send the player character to Hisui, and immediately closed it back up. It’s unlikely that Laventon saw a much smaller rift above Prelude Beach and confused it for the Rift above Mt. Coronet. It doesn’t make sense, and later he is able to differentiate Space-Time Distortions, which have small rifts in the air above the area, from the Space-Time Rift. It’s much more likely that he never saw the actual transportation method, just the player character hitting the ground.

Also consider that the player character wouldn’t just have fallen out of the Rift at the top of Mt. Coronet; they would have shot halfway across Hisui to land at Prelude Beach. Laventon just sees them drop from the sky after his Pokémon take off towards where they’ll land (potentially his Pokémon were signaled by Arceus to do so). He likely only really saw the split second before the player character hit the ground. In a world where there isn’t any type of aircraft and most people do not keep Pokémon, let alone fly on them (Braviary being an exception) and with no flying Pokémon at the scene, what other explanation does Laventon have other than the player character came out of a hole in the sky that appeared recently that has everyone concerned? The Rift is strange to the people in Hisui, and so is the player character. People are interpreting events in the only way they can. Also note that some of the people who are sure the player character came from the Rift are some of the same people who wonder if the player character is a monster in human guise, has magical powers when the Rift worsens, and after the battle on Prelude Beach, Kamado questions if the player is a “divine being”. We all know the player character is just a regular person from Hisui’s future who has a natural talent for raising and battling with Pokémon, and that Arceus itself sent them to Hisui. NPCs can also be wrong that the time-traveling was done via the Space-Time Rift Volo had Giratina open.

While Akari/Rei shows some concern that if the Rift is closed, the player character won’t be able to go back to their “world”, the only options the player is given to respond with is that they don’t know if that’s true. After Dialga and Palkia are captured and the Rift closes, they look up at the now-regular sky and smile. Why would they do this if that rift was their only way home? It could be that they realized that since neither Dialga nor Palkia were the ones speaking to them through their phone, someone else sent them and the Rift really wasn’t the cause of their arrival in Hisui.

Ingo himself isn’t exactly a reliable narrator during the point the player travels with him. He seems to remember even less than the player character about where he came from, and when Volo questions him, he says it’s better to ask the player character because he himself doesn’t “remember a thing”. While he doesn’t think the Rift is the cause of his memory loss (and possibly by extension, his arrival in Hisui), his sudden appearance and lack of memory is almost exactly like the player’s. The only thing he’s missing is an altered phone and a direct order from Arceus. He doesn’t remember anything prior to “standing there” and being found by the Pearl Clan. Neither he nor anyone else mentions him falling from anywhere, or even finding him in a state that suggests he fell (which calls into question if the concept art for Ingo made the final cut). You’d think Ingo himself or someone in the Pearl Clan would mention if he had been found in need of cleaning up, if not medical attention. We aren’t shown the player character falling from anything either, so presumably they don’t remember the exact way they traveled, but the moment the actual game starts, they’re on the ground being found by Laventon.

Something else that doesn’t add up here is if the Rift or a Space-Time Distortion was responsible for Ingo’s arrival in Hisui, why aren’t other people and Pokémon appearing? Why just one man? While there are Pokémon that can only be caught in Space-Time Distortions as well as items, these are all things that are part of Hisui’s past or future (as well as starters and their evolutions needed for the PokeDex and locked until after the Disaster Looming mission). The Sinnoh fossils are obvious, but the evolution items also make sense considering the Pokémon that need them were first discovered in Sinnoh but the items don’t exist in Hisui yet (begging the question of how they evolved in the wild—maybe they wandered into a Distortion and found the anachronistic items on their own?), including Porygon Z, which is why the Porygon line can be found in them. Yet we don’t see a single other NPC out of their time or place, nor Pokémon native to other regions that are not part of Hisui’s PokeDex.  That makes Ingo’s appearance seem a bit more deliberate, rather than simply bad luck.

Arceus Handpicked Ingo The Same Way It Handpicked The Player Character

This section gets more into theory, but I do try to back my theories up with what is, in some cases isn’t, in PLA.

This is probably the most likely via process of elimination. It’s unlikely to be an unseen or new gimmick or Volo, and the Rift and Distortions are not bringing in other people so that only leaves Arceus deliberately sending him back to Hisui.

But why Ingo? What does he have to do with anything? And why doesn’t he have a phone or clear mission?

We don’t know for certain that Arceus ever spoke to him or gave him a mission, but the player character doesn’t really remember their encounter with Arceus either, at least not at the beginning. They seem to not know or understand who is sending them messages about meeting every Pokémon in Hisui; just that it’s something they’re supposed to do without real incentive (presumably the incentive would be to be sent home afterwards, but this remains to be seen). Ingo, however, doesn’t seem to know what his purpose in Hisui is and even says so directly at one point. This seems like a Chekov’s gun that has yet to go off—PLA already forces the player to travel with Ingo and hear what he has to say with no option to speed through the text, and considering how short the game itself is compared to other mainline Pokémon games, there really wasn’t room for embellishments. Why have Ingo himself wonder about his purpose in Hisui if he’s just been carelessly thrown back in time by coincidence or bad luck?

Ingo is drawn to having Pokémon battles despite his memory loss, and even comes up with a few battle types at the Training Grounds after the Daybreak mission. This is most likely him remembering what he enjoyed and his job prior to being sent to Hisui, but it also seems that Hisui may be behind other regions when it comes to both living with and training Pokémon (some of the Old Verses suggest Hisui was abandoned by people for a time) . Other NPCs mention regions where people are living with Pokémon and battling for fun. The people in Hisui rarely keep Pokémon themselves as the idea seems strange and dangerous to them, and even fewer battle with them. Battling is usually done to protect oneself or a village from wild Pokémon. While some of the Galaxy Team know how to battle, most other people in Hisui with Pokémon, notably in the Diamond and Pearl Clans…don’t. They send out multiple Pokémon at a time while the player can only use one, and taking turns is more dependent on speed, and so someone with three Pokémon to the player’s one can in theory, get in at least 6 turns if the player’s Pokémon is slower. It’s frustrating at times to get used to if you’ve played other Pokémon games before PLA, and often it feels unfair. It certainly would not hold up outside of Hisui during the time PLA takes place, and clearly down the line Sinnoh ended up having normal battles.

The best kind of person to send to teach people who have no idea how to battle would be someone from a Battle Facility. A regional Champion could work, but it’s possible to become Champion simply by being overleveled and/or using type advantages as a strategy. You can win using revives over and over after inflicting a status move, or even to the point of the other Pokémon running out of PP and using Struggle, to outlast the other trainer! With all that Gen 5 added in terms of held items, battling can become very complicated (especially evident if you’ve ever watched an online tournament). A Champion may also not be the strongest trainer in a region; they’re just the strongest trainer to complete the Gym Challenge and oust the previous Champion. Stronger trainers may not take the Gym Challenge for whatever reason, and considering how much more difficult battle facilities tend to be and how much skill they require, your best bet for someone who can rival or even surpass the Champion in skill is there. Ingo is one of the best Battle Facility heads out there, if not the best for Singles. Since Hisui isn’t ready for Doubles or Multi Battles yet (Pokémon can’t even hold items and don’t have abilities, and many moves haven’t been created or discovered yet), it wouldn’t make sense to send back someone who specialized in those to start off teaching people the basics of Singles.

Remember how Ingo doesn’t have his Pokémon with him? Neither does the player character. One reason for this is because the player is supposed to project/self-insert onto them. It would kill the challenge and fun of the gameplay to allow the player to do something like transfer their team from BDSP to PLA; they’d likely be overleveled for everything, or not able to be transferred if they’re not in the Dex. But from a story perspective, if the player’s and Ingo’s Pokémon had traveled back with them, it could potentially change the future in a bad way for non-Hisuian Pokémon to show up (and Arceus wants the player to meet every Pokémon in Hisui at that time, not ones that haven’t made it to the region yet). Considering Pokémon trainers always have their Pokémon with them, something had to deliberately separate the player character and Ingo from their Pokémon.

Going along with this is the seemingly temporary amnesia. The player character doesn’t seem to remember as much at the start. Most of the answers you can select are some form of “I don’t know”. (However, being able to say you don’t know what a Pokémon is, from a developer standpoint, is to allow returning players to skip part of the tutorial while new players can get more context. Every Pokémon game is always going to be someone’s introduction to the series.) As the plot progresses, you have more options to know or remember things, and they seem to happen more starting around the time Ingo begins to recall things. After Electrode is calmed, Ingo returns to say he remembered a bit more about where he came from, and the player is allowed to say the “world” they came from was similar. They’re also allowed to say to Volo that Arceus’ name sounds familiar, and at the end of the Daybreak Mission, they remember Gyms and/or Contests. It seems their memories were temporarily locked away, likely because they would have just tried to get back to where they came from rather than complete the mission, or at the very least, potentially said too much and altered the timeline. The things they remember and tell people about are harmless; people living together alongside and training Pokémon, places for people to test their skills…all things that are in present-day Sinnoh. Contests and Gyms could potentially already be starting in other regions, considering Hisui seems to have fallen behind others during the time PLA takes place.

As for Ingo not having an Arc Phone or clear-cut mission, this one does not have a clear answer, let alone hints. What makes sense to me, is that Arceus dropped them in the places they needed to be to best complete their missions, and as Ingo seems teaching people to battle and live with Pokémon, not completing a Dex, he didn’t need a phone to guide him around (he is an adult, after all), or to do things like open the sealed caverns for the Lake Trio. You can also make the argument that Ingo never got sidetracked from his mission, whereas the player gets roped into helping NPCs with what sometimes seems to be menial tasks, and saving the region wasn’t stated to be part of the mission either. Arceus does remind the player after the Disaster Looming mission that they still need to seek out all Pokémon while the game itself considers everything past this point postgame and even rolls the credits. By finishing the PokeDex, the player ends up showing people how to live with Pokémon as well, but gets off track multiple times. Ingo seems to be taking a direct route, possibly even an express to his destination once the player helps him remember a few things.

Dropping the player character in the middle of Jubilife would have caused suspicion, panic, and likely got them instantly booted from the village, so Arceus dropped them just outside it and orchestrated things so Laventon, who was already putting together a PokeDex and is a lot more open-minded than most people in Jubilife, would be the person to find them. The player character is canonically 15, so they’re still a kid. They weren’t actually hurt when they fell, but Laventon didn’t know that initially. Most people would feel bad for not helping an injured kid/leaving them out in the wilderness, so this could have been to ensure Laventon would help, or if somehow someone else got to them first, they’d be taken in and have a better chance of meeting him.

Ingo mentions “standing there” before being found by the Pearl Clan, suggesting he no sooner arrived in Hisui and was taken in by them, but he doesn’t say where. My best guesses are either right outside the Pearl Clan Settlement or near a site sacred to them in the Coronet Highlands given how quickly he seems to have been made Sneasler’s Warden. Wherever it was had to be close to Pearl Clan sites to ensure he was found by them specifically. I have a theory that the Pearl Clan was chosen over the Diamond Clan because Sneasler did not have a Warden at the time. Again, in-game evidence suggests he hasn’t been in Hisui for over a decade, but even if he has been, the Pearl Clan seems to be treating him as an outsider still. Besides his skill with Pokémon, why make an outsider a Warden so soon? If he had ousted someone as Warden, or it had come down to him and someone else, you’d think we’d be hearing from Pearl Clan members how an outsider was chosen fairly quickly over someone born into the Pearl Clan and possibly trained for years for the position, the same way people talk about how it came down to Irida and Palina for leader and their opinions over the final choice. With no mention of this at all, it would seem Sneasler did not have a Warden for some time (as there’s also no mention of a Warden having died or otherwise left the position) and there was nobody in the running for a replacement. And if Sneasler accepts the strange man who prefers to keep his Pokémon in balls and has a natural way of living with them, then the Pearl Clan is more likely to trust him and his way of doing things, which inevitably was going to reach the rest of Hisui given collaboration between all of its inhabitants becoming more and more necessary.

The Conclusion:

Random Pokemon Sending Him: Almost definitely not, unless there’s a DLC or direct sequel that explains how and why this would be

Volo On Accident Or On Purpose: Highly unlikely; what little we know about Volo and his actions doesn’t add up here

Faller: Possible but still unlikely; the gimmick in PLA is Space-Time Distortions, not Ultra Wormholes, and they’d need to put more Alola stuff in via DLC for this to really work out

He Somehow Fell through The Rift Or A Distortion: More likely than the other options, but doesn’t explain why this only happened to Ingo and has a few other plot holes

Arceus: Most likely, more evidence stacks up here than the others but still relies on the theoretical as there’s still so much we’re not told about Ingo’s backstory upon his arrival to Hisui

Thank you so much for reading all of this!

If anyone wants it, I have a master list of my reassurance posts and a few others here, and it’s also currently pinned on my tumblr.

~Moonbeam