#sm011

Overprotective big brother Kaki is too cute, he’s so over the top about it. I enjoyed his mom family quite a bit, and seeing Satoshi get all excited about random every day activities is always fun too. And it’s really admirable to know that Kaki manages to be a powerful trainer despite only really having free time off his home duties during nights (I guess the school helps with that). I saw a few people guess that his ride Charizard is old due to its torn wings, and sure enough, it used to belong to his (late?) grandpa, who was an Island Kahuna.  The side story about the little boy wanting to make a birthday cake for his mom added some urgency to the part where Team Skull attacked Satoshi and Kaki during their delivery duties, I’m glad they got through in time (Satoshi just blew them away lol). So yeah, fun times, however this episode does a couple things to mitigate some potential future story developments.  First of all, Satoshi has now been to Akala Island, and it happened 100% casually too, so the idea about him eventually departing Melemele to do some old school traveling seems unlikely now. Unless Akala is much closer to Memeleme than the other islands it seems like Kukui’s home will stay as the base and he’ll just use Pelipper to instantly get to the “area of the week”, whether it’ll ultimately be better or worse than the previous formula is anyone’s guess at this point. Second, I don’t think Kaki will be a rival, or get much serious development as a trainer in general. His first battle with Satoshi was offscreened, so we can’t see their relationship form through battles which is essential for rivals, and his goal is one of those vague ones (“I want to become the flame of Alola”, referring to what his grandpa said about “be the kind of fire that nurtures, not destroys”), + he has already defeated the Kahuna of his home island (nice Lychee/Olivia teaser btw) in order to prove that he’s worthy of his grandfather’s Z ring, something that could’ve easily been used for on screen development. So yeah, I like Kaki a lot but I don’t know if they’ll actually end up doing much with his character in the long run, which, granted, holds true for everyone but Lillie at this point.