Anabel: The Salon Maiden Turned Ultra Beast Hunter

She waits at the top of her tower for someone to finally give her a real challenge. Anabel runs Hoenn's Battle Tower, holds the title of Salon Maiden and only shows herself to Trainers who can rack up wins by the dozen. A decade later, the same woman reappears on the other side of the world in an International Police uniform, with no memory whatsoever of how she got there.

Contents

• Hoenn's Battle Tower and the Gauntlet That Leads There
• The Profile: A Battler Who's Bored Stiff
• Ten Years on the Other Side of an Ultra Wormhole
• The UB Task Force, a Unit That Would Rather Capture
• Anabel: The Anime's Telepath
• In the Manga, the Head Frontier Brain of the Battle Frontier
• Anabel at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

Hoenn's Battle Tower and the Gauntlet That Leads There

The Battle Frontier only opens once the main adventure is wrapped up, and the Battle Tower is part of it. Anabel waits for Trainers there and awards the Ability Symbol to anyone who manages to take her down: it's the only honorable way out of the place.

But first you have to run into her. The game only puts her in the player's path on the 34^th win, then on the 69^th — which, in Single Battles, means at least five sets for the first encounter and ten for the second. In between, the tower lines up nothing but anonymous opponents.

The level scale then depends on the mode you pick. In "Level 50," her whole roster is set to that level; in "Open Level," she climbs somewhere between 60 and 100 depending on the highest-level Pokémon on the opposing team. The stronger the challenger, the stronger she gets.

The Profile: A Battler Who's Bored Stiff

Her tower rarely asks her to pull out all the stops. Anabel mostly hopes that the rare Trainers who make it to her won't disappoint her, which says a lot about the caliber of the battles she usually fights.

The character is introverted, and thoroughly professional well before she joins the International Police. That seriousness even leads her to neglect her own health, a flaw the rest of her story will confirm in no uncertain terms.

Her constant calm contrasts with the chronic panic of Looker, her deputy, who calls her "Chief Anabel." When it comes to Pokémon, her favorite is Snorlax: the mobile game added her on February 15, 2023, as a sync pair with a Snorlax that can Gigantamax, in her seventh-generation outfit.

😴 Anabel's favorite sleeper has its own section: see our Snorlax products.

Ten Years on the Other Side of an Ultra Wormhole

A decade before the events of Sun and Moon, Anabel emerges from an Ultra Wormhole and washes up, unconscious, on one of the beaches of Poni Island. Two International Police agents, Looker and Nanu, pick her up on their way back from a mission.

When she opens her eyes again, almost nothing is left: her first name, the region she comes from, the memory that she watched over a tower, and her Trainer's eye. Tests reveal that her body is saturated with Ultra Wormhole energy, the aftereffect of a very long stay between worlds.

That charge makes her a Faller, in other words a living magnet for any Ultra Beast. The games never tell her. Still, she joins the International Police of her own free will and rises fast enough to end up outranking Looker, her senior, who is far less gifted than she is on a battlefield.

The UB Task Force, a Unit That Would Rather Capture

In Alola, she takes charge of the UB Task Force, which the French games call the P.L.O.U.C. (short for "Pôle Lié aux Opérations Ultra-Chimères"): a confidential unit the International Police devotes to tracking down creatures from other worlds. Her doctrine is capture, not elimination, which leads her to call on the Alola Champion, also a Faller after crossing into Ultra Deep Sea.

The two agents set up in a room at the Route 8 Motel, and that's where the Enigmatic Card summoning the player comes from. Anabel lays out the situation, then tests her recruit herself before sending them off to ask for Beast Balls from Wicke, and gets her superiors to agree that Nihilego won't be used as a guinea pig.

While the player rounds up the Ultra Beasts one by one, she secures the inhabited areas and wears herself out doing it; Looker, worried, fabricates a false lead to keep her away from Guzzlord. In Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, she is no longer on duty: now just a vacationer, she blocks the way to Poni Coast for the length of a capture, then can be found again at the Battle Tree, where she can either battle the player or fight alongside them.

Anabel: The Anime's Telepath

The Advanced Generation series brings the character over almost unchanged, moving Hoenn's park to Kanto, a park the French dub renames Zone Extrême for the occasion. The French dub also calls her by her English name, Anabel, to avoid a clash with the other characters named Cathy in the French version.

This Psychic-type specialist reads Pokémon's emotions and speaks to them telepathically, a gift she has had since childhood without knowing where it comes from. A few words are enough for her to calm a furious Beedrill, and pulling a twig from between the scales of a rampaging Gyarados is enough to soothe the sea monster.

Her first battle against Ash is over quickly: she wins three knockouts to one, carried by her bond with her Pokémon. The rematch comes down to darkness: a blackout triggered by Pikachu cuts her off from her Espeon, which she can no longer make out in the dark; she then hands over the Ability Symbol and shakes the winner's hand, as tradition dictates.

In the Manga, the Head Frontier Brain of the Battle Frontier

The manga makes her one of the seven Trainers recruited by Scott to run the Battle Frontier, and puts her at their head. Rather than throwing out the intruder who crashes the press conference, the seven force a deal on him: win all seven Symbols before the park opens its doors, seven days later.

Against the masked swordsman Guile Hideout, who routs her colleagues, she locks the swordsman down with a Thunder Wave launched by her Raikou. The bandit's counterattack is underhanded: lured out of the Dome by a fake summons and then hypnotized, she is made to battle Emerald against her will at the very top of the tower, collapses from mental exhaustion and is used as a bargaining chip, and it's Latios who finally brings her to safety.

Two arcs later, a few years after the Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire arc, she is in Alola wearing the International Police uniform. Her Mismagius wears down a Blacephalon freshly escaped from a wormhole, but the creature breaks out of her Poké Ball at once: ordinary models can't hold this kind of opponent. Along the way, she admits she is a Faller from having seen these monsters in Ultra Space, and openly accuses the Aether Foundation of bringing them into Alola.

Anabel at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Anabel in the Pokémon games?
  She runs the Battle Tower at Hoenn's Battle Frontier, with the title of Salon Maiden, and awards the Ability Symbol to Trainers who beat her. Ten years later, she turns up in Alola as an International Police agent.
• How do you face Anabel at the Battle Tower?
  You need to string wins together: she appears at the 34th, then at the 69th. In Single Battles, that means at least five sets for the first encounter and ten for the second.
• Why does the French anime call her Anabel?
  The French version of the series already has several characters named Cathy. Keeping her English name, Anabel, avoids any confusion between them.
• What is a Faller?
  Someone whose body is charged with Ultra Wormhole energy after a stay on the other side. That energy attracts Ultra Beasts, and Anabel doesn't know she is a Faller herself.
• What is Anabel's favorite Pokémon?
  Snorlax. The mobile game even confirmed the pairing in 2023 by adding her as a sync pair with a Snorlax that can Gigantamax.

In short

Anabel is one of the rare characters the series has allowed to grow older. The tower keeper who was bored at the top of Hoenn has become an investigator on the trail of creatures from another world, with a ten-year blackout in between. The game never gives her memories back, nor does it tell her what the crossing did to her: she hunts Ultra Beasts without knowing she attracts them.