What do you like about Nemona
Gahhh, fuck me, that's a bit hard to summarize.
But I have been meaning to do a write up to explain it to people in my personal life. Maybe this is a good excuse to get around to doing so. I'll try to cover the important stuff while not getting as deep into specifics as I honestly could. It'll still be an informal short essay, though, lol
In Pokemon SV, the player enrolls in a fancy Academy on a remote island nation of sorts (inspired by Spain). They meet Nemona after choosing their starter Pokemon, and Nemona offers to the school's director to adopt a starter herself to 'coach/mentor' the player character.
You see, unlike any other 'rival trainer' before her, Nemona is already a Champion. Before your character sets foot in the Paldea region, Nemona has already gone through the entire song and dance of Gym Battles and all that, and attained the highest rank a trainer can in the region. She's completely obsessed with Pokemon battling and has become bored of being 'the best' because no one wants to battle her, for various reasons. So she views you, a newcomer, as an opportunity to test herself as a 'mentor/senpai/big sis' figure as well as essentially 'New Game+-ing' herself for sheer love of the game that is Pokemon battling.
People consistently call her 'the girl Goku', but I ain't seen Dragonball Z, so I can't comment on that much. But she is a very enthusiastic, cheerful, determined, battle hungry person who is very into self-growth and self-improvement. At the end of the day, she wants a true rival, someone she doesn't need to hold back with, and who she can look to as a consistent figure in her life. She is very eager and hyperactive about connecting with people through battling.
A lot of people who play the game get offput by her, and she gets branded as a 'yandere' archetype (ie obsessed with the player character to a horror-inducing degree). She gets meme'd as being 'creepy' and 'obsessed' and all that, depicting her eagerness as mental illness and a bad thing.
(gif from a fan animation)
When her behavior stems from positive emotions and a desire for mutual growth and connection, not specifically ownership or possession -- to Nemona, a person who just obeyed whatever she would want of them would defeat the point. That's not what a rival does -- they push back, after all. Within the context of the SV plotline, she is bored of being Champion all by herself, and wants to train someone else to reach her same level, which is why she is so invested in you, the player character, following you around everywhere and being that 'big sis' archetype. There's some selfishness in there, for sure -- she wants a proper rival for herself, someone she never has to hold back with -- but given her social obligations and reputation within the Academy/region, she also I think wants to prove she is capable of handling herself as a mentor figure, prove to herself that she didn't become a Champion by luck or accident (if she can help someone else do what she did, then it wasn't just a fluke, she really does know what she's doing, etc.), and also help prove to her fellow students that she's really not as intimidating as they think she is.
And yet, people both in AND out of the game are quick to write this intense, protective behavior off as 'insane' and 'creepy' -- and as someone who very regularly got called a 'creep' through to the end of college for literally just trying to make friends,' I almost take it personally when I see people label Nemona as a 'yandere' type. It has its comical use and all but I still find it kind of hurtful in a way.
Because that's the thing -- if you pay attention to what little story there is in SV (it's not exactly a complex narrative), Nemona's character is essentially a metaphor for neurodivergent/queer people who have hearts bursting with affection and passion for their hobbies yet who struggle with loneliness and isolation as they put off most people from keeping them around.
But at the end of the day, Nemona is just neurodivergent, her special interest is Pokemon battling, and she is simply desperate for human connection -- and battles are just the way she feels most comfortable doing that.
And the world would be a better place if people like me or Nemona were able to become self aware at a young enough age to start managing our behavior, (which she is shown to be learning to do!) while ALSO having a general population that is more open-minded and understanding to the idea that 'oh huh that person's brain is electrically overcharged and they love people and hobbies maybe way way more than I do but that's FINE as long as they're not hurting anyone'
As a youth, I just... kinda got great grades, made honor roll, etc. And it felt like I wasn't really trying? So adults around me thought I was 'gifted', or 'naturally talented'. But in reality, I think I was just neurodivergent, and since I struggled to make friends, and physically wasn't able to see them outside of school due to various factors, I just... ended up focusing on my schoolwork instead. So that's one way I relate with her retroactively -- she is a model student, yet ironically has a bad reputation amongst many.
(HOWEVER, Nemona comes from a RICH family and I came from a poor one, there was some big racial tension dynamics at play in my early gradeschool years, familial breakup shit, soooo there's some very different dynamics at play there)
Another thing I adore about her and connect with in a way no one else in my life does -- she loves one-on-one competitions with others through battles. I don't love physically fighting people, I'm a super non-violent person in reality. But I love fighting games, it's my favorite genre. And there's specific philosophical elements to enjoying fighting games that I think most people don't click with that she and I do.
She is here to GROW, to learn, to improve, to have fun regardless of winning or losing, because the act of spending time engaged with another person, figuring each other out, testing yourselves mutually, is enjoyable and edifying regardless.
That 'warrior's path' of self improvement and enjoyment and growth regardless of the outcome of battle is something I very much connect with and it's great to see a character who feels likewise while also having elements of interpersonal struggles in spite of or even because of the way she functions differently than other people. Again, I don't know much about Goku, but I get the impression he is good at making and keeping friends, while Nemona is bad at it.
On top of this, Nemona has extra wrinkles to her character -- she's physically disabled. The game is vague about it, as Pokemon always is. But she wears an arm brace because she throws a LOT of pokeballs with all the battling she does, and she seems to have some kind of issue there, physically. Also, despite how GOOD she is at battling, she is terrible at catching Pokemon, and seemingly at doing the exploration aspects of being a trainer. She canonically has poor stamina and wears herself out easily -- which, given how high-energy she is as a person, probably happens constantly. So it's also strongly suggested that she spends time not just training all of her Pokemon (she juggles multiple teams, yet another fighting-game esque thing I relate with, as I tend to juggle many characters and not stick to a single main or team), but she also trains herself, physically, to try and keep up with her 'mons, but also as a means of self-growth/improvement in general.
I won't post the examples but trust me, there are many subtle but intentional nods alluding to her being physically disabled, and being BAD at core elements of what we expect a Pokemon trainer to be -- exploring the wilderness, catching Pokemon, etc. But she's so passionate about it, she doesn't let her limitations stop her,
So it creates an interesting internal tension imo because she is not only very queer coded, very neurodiverse coded, but ALSO disabled coded. But she hides her internal struggles by essentially avoiding having to confront them, generally speaking (which itself is ripe for narrative development). Sadly, the game never brings this to a head in way (it's Pokemon, so of course it doesn't). But the ingredients are all there, especially when you add characters like Penny, Arven, and Scarlet into account -- as well as implied expectations from her rich family, or from the leader of Paldea, Geeta, who implies she wants Nemona to be her protege. And I haven't even mentioned that Nemona is Class President, meaning she's actively taking on social responsibility for her peers even though she gets shit talked behind her back for being so obsessed with battling and getting in people's faces with her over-eager desire to bond with/battle them.
This right here -- this is the specific core element of her character I personally connect with that, somehow, no fictional character I've met so far has put into the exact right words with enough context for me to believe them.
From my youth to even now as a full grown adult, I have experienced this feeling my entire life, whether with family, at school, at the workplace, even in most online spaces -- an 'invisible wall' between me and everyone else, and for a VERY LONG TIME I had convinced myself it was because something about me was 'broken' and 'not right'. But now, in part thanks to characters like Nemona, and the discussions around/about said characters, I can see that my brain just functions differently from other people, and a I grow and self-teach myself how to manage my own behaviors/expectations, I can better appreciate all kinds of relationships in life without needing to let go of or sacrifice that internal flame that used to threaten to consume most people I cared about -- that fear of being 'too much' or 'too intense' in my own ways (ways better expressed through text interaction than in person, to be fair, but again, MOST of my social life has been online my entire life, so yeah).
Like Nemona, I found people in my life who accept me for who I am, and blablabla all that cliche shit. But in Nemona, as I do with a rare few other characters in media (Vi from Arcane, Luz from The Owl House), I see a specific element of myself I don't elsewhere, and sadly did not see often growing up. A balance between ferocity and determination paired with unending affection and love. A desire to never give up on people, no matter what, and to be open to change both internal and in others. In Nemona's case, specifically, that element of neurodiverse passion matched with sheer loneliness -- that 'invisible wall'.
No matter what, she never gives up, in battles or socially.
I could go on into specific examples but I've said enough here to get the ideas across, I'm sure.
Oh, and as a sidenote, I think she has a great character design -- it's SIMPLE but recognizeable. The combo of color-coded gear (red/white/black, my favorite outfit color scheme), a arm brace, and accented hair. Her design feels like a plausible human being, but with a bit of 'anime bangs' syndrome.
I should probably mention -- I don't like Pokemon SV as a video game! I am like 160k words of fanfiction into telling a Pokemon story and I think the game itself is stinky garbage barely holding itself together with duct tape and a corporate prayer.
But unlike any other generation of the franchise, Pokemon SV presents a cast of characters with defined personality strengths, weaknesses, and varied backstories, who start the game as strangers, and by the end begin to dip their toes into 'found family' territory. For the first time in the entire franchise, I actually give a shit about the characters, about seeing them grow and connect with each other, because the overarching theme of SV's story, what little it has, is about isolation, outcasts, loneliness, and how found families form.
And Nemona's kind of the heart of all of that, the endlessly hopeful, energetic, eager one that will never give up on you, that irrationally throws affection at you, seemingly for no 'good reason' -- because just being a person who tolerates her and her 'too much'-ness is itself reason to be grateful for your presence in a world where she feels isolated from most everyone else simply by being herself.
Maybe this answers your question!
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