#i don't think kusaka screwed up in his adaptation of hop at all

[mala-sadas]

On Pokéspe Hop (and Leon)

*cracks knuckles* Okay, so this is an analysis that’s long overdue. We’ve known for a while now that Hop’s depiction in Pokéspe has a couple of major differences from Hop in the games – namely, that he wasn’t endorsed by Leon for the Gym Challenge, and that he isn’t open about the fact that he’s the Champion’s little brother. About a month ago, we got a new chapter of Pokéspe that finally gave us some insights into Spe!Hop’s character – showing both the way he thinks as well as tidbits of his and Leon’s history that help us start to piece together why he’s different from his game counterpart. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to believe that the reason for those differences comes down to the differences in the relationships that Hop and Leon have with the protagonists and Sonia. Let me explain.

Describing Leon and Sonia’s relationship in the games is a bit difficult; much of the exposition about it is vague, leaving a lot up to interpretation. However, it’s clear that – despite whatever happened during their Gym Challenge – they’re on friendly terms at the beginning of the game, and have been for some time. This can be seen in this optional line of dialogue from Sonia in Motostoke, where she says, “Thanks for always taggin’ along with Hop. I hope you can keep it up. Leon really worries about him, too. He practically raised him, after all.” This implies that Sonia is close not only to Leon, but also to Hop – she knows Leon worries about his brother, and she worries about Hop, too.

Compare that to Sonia, Leon, and Hop in Pokéspe. As Hop explains to Marnie while they’re traveling to Spikemuth together, Sonia and Leon fell out of touch after she quit the Gym Challenge, and they haven’t spoken to each other in years:

Throughout this whole conversation, Hop never refers to Sonia by name, nor does he use gendered pronouns for her – it’s always just “Leon’s childhood friend” or “that person”. This vagueness implies that Hop has never met Sonia – he’s only heard about her from Leon, and Leon apparently never mentioned his friend’s name or gender. That interpretation is further supported by the fact that when Sou, Schilly, and Sonia first meet the rivals, Sonia doesn’t show any signs of recognizing Hop:

So, unlike in the games, where it appears that Sonia is pretty close to both Leon and Hop, in Pokéspe her relationship with Hop is nonexistent and her relationship with Leon hasn’t been maintained since they were kids.

So how does this affect Hop and Leon? Well, this is what Hop has to say about Leon and Sonia’s fallout:

This is a Hop who recognizes, at least to some degree, the façade that Leon puts up to hide his true feelings. He realizes that Leon feels bad about how he left things with Sonia and that his own actions – rejecting Leon’s endorsement and not publicly acknowledging their relationship – probably hurt Leon, too. The line “I guess that’s why” seems like a bit of a non-sequitur, but I believe it’s referring to how he got on this tangent in the first place – talking about the pressure of needing to do well in the Gym Challenge not just for himself, but for his brother too. He feels like he has to do well in the Gym Challenge because if he doesn’t, he’ll be letting Leon down, and he doesn’t want to give Leon anything else to feel bad about.

What he doesn’t say here is why exactly he turned down Leon’s endorsement and isn’t publicly acknowledging that they’re related – that’s something he explained earlier in the conversation. In his own words, the reason why he turned down Leon’s offer to endorse him:

The fact that Hop has been worrying about this explains why he’s worried about putting a burden on Leon – he doesn’t have the same self-confidence that his game counterpart starts with, so he’s afraid that he might mess up at some point and that his mistakes would ruin Leon’s reputation. So, he turns down Leon’s endorsement and doesn’t tell people he’s Leon’s brother to distance himself from Leon in the public eye – which, as far as making sure his performance doesn’t reflect poorly on Leon, seems to be an effective strategy. Marnie worked out on her own that they’re related, but since Hop never talked about Leon, she assumed that they didn’t get along. If other people assume the same thing, and they see Hop do poorly, they’ll just take it as a sure sign that Hop isn’t being supported by Leon.

However, as I pointed out before, Hop appearing to distance himself from Leon probably hurts for Leon, and Hop doesn’t want to hurt Leon. So the fact that he does it anyways just goes to show how deep these insecurities run – that Leon looking bad or getting mocked because of Hop is big enough of a concern for him that he’d appear to distance himself from Leon to avoid it. As a matter of fact, knowing that Hop didn’t want to get endorsed by Leon because he was afraid he would screw up and make Leon look bad brings a new meaning to this line he said back in Turffield:

He doesn’t feel like Leon only offered to endorse him because he’s a talented Trainer worthy of a Champion’s endorsement, so he doesn’t think that an endorser having a prestigious title automatically means that the endorsed Trainer is talented.

In the games, Hop struggles with these exact same insecurities – worrying about his own (perceived) weakness putting a stain on Leon’s good name – but that only happens after his loss to Bede. So why does Spe!Hop feel this way before he even begins his Gym Challenge? Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the text to give us a definite answer. However, based on what we already know, I think I have a pretty solid hypothesis.

As I pointed out before, Hop never met Sonia before going on his Gym Challenge. But the same is true for Sou and Schilly, too. Unlike in the games, where the player character is Hop’s next-door neighbor and best friend, neither Sou nor Schilly is from Postwick. They meet Hop for the first time at the same time Sonia does:

So, if Hop doesn’t have a childhood friend in Sou or Schilly…who does he have? He’s just as friendly with Sou and Schilly here as he is in the games, and considering his relationship with the player there, it seems unlikely that he would have a close friend at home that he has neither mentioned nor dragged into the Gym Challenge alongside him. He doesn’t have Sonia or Professor Magnolia. So that just leaves his family.

Now, I’m not going to make any assumptions about what Hop’s family life is like, since we don’t know anything about any of his family besides Leon. However, it’s safe to say that Leon is the closest family member to Hop in age, and even he’s a good seven years older than Hop (if we’re going by the game timeline). Considering how much Hop admires him, and the fact that he couldn’t come home very often because of his Champion duties, it’s unlikely that Leon would’ve been a good resource for Hop to talk to about his problems. And being much older, any parents or grandparents Hop would have around would be even less likely to understand Hop’s worries.

So, Hop probably grew up without anyone to talk to about his problems, which isn’t healthy from a socialization standpoint. Combine that with the fact that his standard of comparison is his practically perfect older brother, and is it any wonder that he wound up with insecurities?

However, I acknowledge that this is mostly just speculation. Kusaka has the freedom to interpret the game characters however he likes, so the fact that Hop doesn’t have any close friends and the fact that Hop has insecurities before he starts the Gym Challenge aren’t necessarily connected. But it’s undeniable that he had a very different childhood than his game counterpart thanks to the absence of Sonia, his childhood was likely impacted by the absence of the protagonist, and having a different childhood led to him developing insecurities sooner. Because of those insecurities, he turned down Leon’s endorsement, won’t publicly admit that Leon is his brother, and worries about adding to Leon’s troubles – which he really doesn’t want to do because he knows how much Leon is troubled by his fallout with Sonia.

(Someone please give these boys a hug. They need it.)

tl;dr the differences between Spe!Hop and Game!Hop can pretty much all be traced back to the fact that Leon and Sonia’s friendship fell apart after their Gym Challenge and/or that Hop doesn’t have a friend his own age.