Akari: The Teen Lost in Hisui Who Wrote the First Pokédex

She lands in Hisui by accident and leaves with the first record of species ever compiled. Akari is the female playable character of Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Players who pick her take on a teenager with no bearings in a region that hasn't documented anything yet; players who don't will find her across from them, as a researcher and a regular opponent.

Contents

• A Present-Day Teenager Stranded in Ancient Sinnoh
• Cataloging Wildlife No One Has Described Yet
• The Other Role: The Teammate You Battle at the Training Grounds
• A Kimono in Her Employer's Colors
• Akari Beyond Pokémon Legends: Arceus
• Akari at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

A Present-Day Teenager Stranded in Ancient Sinnoh

Akari wasn't born in Hisui. She's a teenager from the modern era, hurled into ancient Sinnoh through a space-time rift, and it's Professor Laventon who finds her unconscious, washed up at the water's edge.

The professor is traveling with three Pokémon he brought in from outside the region, and those three can't take their eyes off the newcomer. When she wakes up, she realizes they came for her, and that her cell phone has turned into an Arc Phone.

She rounds up the three runaways in no time. Impressed, the professor gets her into the Survey Corps, the branch of the Galaxy Team based in Jubilife Village, and lets her keep one of the creatures she has just caught.

Her canonical name was only revealed on August 18, 2021, during a Pokémon Presents — players are still free to change it, just as they change her appearance. It is rooted in light — akari is the Japanese word for light, while her French name, Lucia, comes from the Latin lux — exactly like the name of Lucas, the playable hero of Diamond and Pearl. Dialogue from Cyllene also puts her at fifteen.

Cataloging Wildlife No One Has Described Yet

Her roadmap boils down to a single instruction: meet every species. It's about obeying Arceus's will as much as putting together the very first Pokédex, in a region where no observation has ever been recorded.

The work happens in the field, face to face with Hisui's wild Pokémon. Noble Pokémon and Alpha Pokémon are on the agenda, and the chain of encounters ends with the god of Pokémon itself.

Like every protagonist, she starts out with one of the region's three first partner Pokémon: Rowlet for Grass, Cyndaquil for Fire, Oshawott for Water. They're the professor's Pokémon, the very ones she caught right after waking up — so the survey begins with the three species that found her.

The Other Role: The Teammate You Battle at the Training Grounds

The game offers two protagonists, and the one the player leaves aside doesn't vanish from the story. If Akari is chosen, Rei steps into the role of pseudo-rival; otherwise, she's the one who becomes a Galaxy Team researcher and Rei's teammate, in charge of teaching the newcomer how to craft items and how to battle.

In that role, her first partner isn't a starter but a Pikachu. She arranges to meet the player at the Training Grounds as early as the next mission, then stops them on their way out of the village at the start of the two missions after that.

A side request devoted to the massive mass outbreaks in the Cobalt Coastlands then takes her to Ginkgo Landing, where she trades what she knows for a battle. There, her Pokémon have 5 Effort Levels in every stat, except Pikachu, which is raised to 7.

Once Dialga and Palkia have been caught, you can battle her again at the Training Grounds once a day, by asking Ingo. Version 1.1.0, however, swapped her old team for the Ginkgo Landing one as soon as the side request is completed: from then on, the original battle can no longer be replayed.

⚡ The partner of her non-playable version has its own section: check out the Pikachu products.

A Kimono in Her Employer's Colors

By default, Akari has fair skin, slate-gray eyes and long blue-black hair — a look the source compares to that of Dawn, the heroine of Diamond and Pearl.

Her default outfit is all about layers: an indigo kimono whose sleeves and collar shade into linen gray, a black T-shirt underneath, a red scarf and a white kerchief around the neck. Below, navy-blue tights disappear into thick white socks, worn with ochre woven-straw sandals.

The outfit displays her employer: the Galaxy Team emblem appears on both sleeves, with a silver badge on the chest, and a black belt holds an ochre pouch at the hips, over a gray gradient. None of it is set in stone, though, since clothes, hairstyle, skin tone, and hair and eye color can all be freely customized.

At the very start of the adventure, she wears none of this uniform: a white T-shirt with a red tag, printed with a Luxury Ball against a backdrop of palm trees and flowers, blue short shorts and black sandals with pink soles. That design reuses the one on an item sold at the Motostoke boutique in Sword and Shield.

Akari Beyond Pokémon Legends: Arceus

The mobile game added her on September 29, 2023, in two outfits. In her default outfit, she's automatically paired with Hisuian Samurott; a second sync pair, with Mime Jr., unlocks once you raise her Friendship Level to 100 in the Trainer Lodge.

Her summer outfit, part of the Summer 2026 lineup, pairs her with Manaphy. The game plays up how unlikely this pairing is: nothing connects the two partners, neither their era nor their home region.

Those same profiles sum up the character better than any long portrait: a Survey Corps researcher in Hisui who aims to be a match for her teammate Rei, and who has a knack for crafting items from whatever nature provides. On the card side, her first appearance came with the Crown Zenith expansion, released in France on January 23, 2023.

Two details round out the picture. Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the first core series game to give its protagonists a voice, and whatever language the console is set to, Akari's voice remains that of Japanese voice actress Tamaki Fujii. In Pokémon Legends: Z-A, her outfit and Rei's are on display at the museum in Lumiose City, in the section devoted to Hisui.

Akari at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Akari in Pokémon Legends: Arceus?
  She's the game's female playable character: a present-day teenager who arrives in Hisui through a space-time rift, is taken in by Professor Laventon, then recruited into the Galaxy Team's Survey Corps. Her male counterpart is Rei, and whichever of the two the player doesn't control becomes the player's pseudo-rival.
• What Pokémon does Akari use?
  As the protagonist, she starts with one of Hisui's three first partner Pokémon: Rowlet, Cyndaquil or Oshawott. When she isn't the player character, her first partner is a Pikachu. In the mobile game, she's paired with Hisuian Samurott, with Mime Jr., and with Manaphy in her summer outfit.
• How do you battle Akari after the story ends?
  Once Dialga and Palkia have been caught, you can challenge her at the Training Grounds once a day by talking to Ingo. Since version 1.1.0, the team she fields switches to her Ginkgo Landing team as soon as the massive mass outbreak side request is completed, and the original battle can no longer be replayed.
• Where does Akari's name come from?
  From the Japanese word akari, which means light. Her French name, Lucia, comes from the Latin lux, the same root as Lucas, the playable hero of Diamond and Pearl. In other languages too, the name given to the Hisui protagonist the player doesn't control draws on the vocabulary of light.

In short

Akari is a two-sided protagonist: a heroine when you play as her, a researcher and opponent when you leave her aside. Either way, the game defines her by the same act — reaching out to wildlife no one has described yet, and turning it into a book that didn't exist before. A teenager lost in the past, tasked with writing the first page of the Pokédex.