Koko: the boy raised by a Zarude who becomes one himself

A human child raised by a Pokémon, and the movie takes the idea seriously. Koko grows up in the jungle believing he's a Zarude, until the day his own body reminds him that he isn't one. His story begins with a car accident and ends with a move that no one, himself included, imagined he could use.

Contents

• Al Molybdenum, the Healing Springs and an Accident
• The Zarude Who Left His Tribe
• Ten Years Later: Guardian of the Forest, and Different
• Milyfa Town, the Pendant and Dr. Zed
• Jungle Healing, the Scene That Settles Everything
• The Name, the Outfit and the Card
• Koko at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

Al Molybdenum, the Healing Springs and an Accident

Before he was called Koko, the character was Al Molybdenum, the son of two researchers at the Biotope Company. Chrom and Phossa Molybdenum run the lab and study the Healing Springs, water said to cure anything, hidden somewhere in the Forest of Okoya.

Their work pays off around their son's first birthday: the water doesn't draw its power from itself but from an energy housed in the Heart Tree. Since the tree is home to a wild tribe, the couple puts everything on hold and first looks for a way to approach it without harming the Pokémon.

One of their subordinates has no such scruples. Zed wants the Springs at any price, whatever the cost to the Pokémon, and chases the family down to seize the pendant where the data is stored. The night chase ends with the car going off the road, then an explosion; the parents barely have time to shut their baby in a capsule with the pendant and entrust it to the river's current.

The Zarude Who Left His Tribe

The movie opens with the discovery: a lone Zarude finds the infant at the water's edge, the pendant still around his neck, and brings him back to his own kind. The tribe flatly refuses to let an outsider live among them.

The Pokémon then makes the opposite call: he exiles himself from the group to keep the child, even if it means ending up alone in the middle of the jungle. He builds a nest for two, raises the baby as his own son and gives him a name: Koko.

In the years that follow, his trips to Milyfa Town, on the edge of the forest, lead him to an old abandoned Biotope Company site, where a photo shows the child with his real parents. He chooses to keep quiet and raise Koko as a Zarude — a silence that will hold for ten years.

🌿 The jungle has its stars: check out the Pokémon plushies.

Ten Years Later: Guardian of the Forest, and Different

At ten, Koko and his Dada serve as guardians of all the Pokémon in the Forest of Okoya, still on the fringes of the tribe. The role works, but the boy can plainly see that he looks like no one around him.

Two shortcomings haunt him: he can't use moves or extend vines. The day he leads a Flygon with an injured wing to the tribe's Healing Springs, the Zarude attack him, his father has to step in, and the argument over his origins breaks out right after.

He runs off, slams into a big pipe at the Biotope complex and falls unconscious into the river. Ash and his Pikachu are the ones who fish him out and take him to the Pokémon Center in Milyfa Town.

Milyfa Town, the Pendant and Dr. Zed

Waking up in a world whose rules he doesn't know, Koko slips out of the Pokémon Center before being caught. His friendship with Ash forms within a few hours: the town, its customs, its amusements, and a jungle boy who seizes the chance to help the residents' Pokémon in distress.

That evening, the sight of a father and his son convinces Koko to introduce Ash to his own. The confrontation that follows forces a confession: Zarude finally admits that his son is a human, takes him to the old Biotope complex and gives him the pendant and the photo found ten years earlier.

At the lab, Dr. Zed fills in the picture — the boy's name is Al Molybdenum, his parents died in an accident, and he was believed to have vanished with them. Then he uses him: a tracker planted on him without his knowledge, and the lab's mecha heads straight for the Healing Springs. Koko gets in the way, is captured, and only escapes the truck he's locked in thanks to Team Rocket stepping in, alongside Ash and his Pikachu.

Jungle Healing, the Scene That Settles Everything

The battle moves to the Heart Tree, where the tribe chooses to defend its territory and where the Biotope scientists turn against their own boss. Zed takes the controls of the mecha and admits along the way that he is responsible for the Molybdenums' deaths.

Koko attacks, fails, and it's his father who takes the blow meant for his son. The Springs can no longer do anything for him: the Heart Tree's energy has been damaged, and Zarude collapses, saying he was happy to be his father.

The boy then clings to a move he has seen only once, years earlier. Declaring that he is his Dada's son, and therefore a Zarude, he uses Jungle Healing himself — a Grass-type move, to everyone's astonishment — and saves the only parent he has left.

The Name, the Outfit and the Card

Everything about him speaks of adoption rather than lineage. His sleeves are made of rings that echo Zarude's, and white markings run across his face as well as his chest.

His name works the same way: Al Molybdenum comes from his parents, Koko from his adoptive father. The second one won out, including in the card game and the movie's credits.

The character even got his own card as soon as the movie came out in Japan: a Sword & Shield promo released on December 25, 2020. For a movie hero with no team or badge to his name, it's the most concrete trace he has left.

Koko at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Koko in Pokémon?
  A human boy raised in the Forest of Okoya by a Zarude that found him as a baby on a riverbank. He appears in Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle, and for a long time believes he's a Zarude himself.
• What is Koko's real name?
  Al Molybdenum, the name given to him by his biological parents, Chrom and Phossa Molybdenum. "Koko" is the name chosen by the Zarude who took him in and raised him.
• Can Koko use Pokémon moves?
  He uses just one, Jungle Healing, a Grass-type move, to heal his mortally wounded adoptive father. Until then, his inability to use moves or extend vines was precisely what set him apart from the Zarude.
• Why did Koko's parents die?
  Zed, a subordinate who wanted to pursue research on the Healing Springs with no regard for the Pokémon, caused their car accident. They had time to place their baby in a capsule entrusted to the river, along with the pendant containing their data.
• Does Koko join the Zarude tribe at the end?
  No. The tribe does invite him to come back with his father, but he'd rather set off on a journey to help humans and Pokémon grow closer, with his Dada's blessing.

In short

The ending doesn't close the chapter, it opens one: Biotope, the Zarude, the forest's Pokémon, Ash and Koko replant together what Zed destroyed, and the tribe's Elder acknowledges that this bond between humans and Pokémon rests on a boy who is both at once. Invited to rejoin the tribe with his father, Koko asks instead for permission to travel so he can carry on this work. His Dada grants it: it's the only way to end this story without betraying either side.