Risa: the athlete who stopped daring to run, and the Eevee who gets her going

Risa isn't a Trainer, a champion or a scientist: she used to run, and she doesn't anymore. Yet the movie "The Power of Us" hands her its main thread: a high school student who agrees to catch a Pokémon to make her little brother in the hospital happy. That favor leads her to an Eevee, to a city that has lost its wind, and to a final stretch only she can run.

Contents

• An Athlete's Career Cut Short
• In Fula City, a Photo and a Lie
• Catching Eevee With a Borrowed Pikachu
• The Fog, the Eternal Flame and the Final Run
• What the Movie Builds Into Her Character
• Risa at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

An Athlete's Career Cut Short

Before the story begins, Risa is an elite athlete who is still in high school. A leg injury cut short the sports career that lay ahead of her, and everything the movie shows plays out in the aftermath. Like Koko, she's one of those human protagonists a feature film entrusts with its story without giving them any Trainer experience.

The detail that matters fits in one line: the injury itself has healed. What's left is no longer physical — she simply doesn't dare to run anymore. So the block isn't a backdrop set up at the start of the movie; it's the obstacle the entire plot works to remove.

One day after school, she visits her little brother Rick in the hospital. He asks her to catch one very specific Pokémon; she refuses at first, since she has no experience whatsoever with that sort of thing, and it's a pair of red sunglasses promised in return that seals the deal.

In Fula City, a Photo and a Lie

Soon after, Risa arrives in Fula City. A girl named Kellie crashes right into her and knocks her empty Poké Ball to the ground; so Risa has to explain to a stranger that she's looking for a Pokémon she only knows from a photo. Kellie points her to her uncle, Callahan, introduced as the man who can help her.

Callahan studies the photo and sends her off to the nearby mountain. Risa follows his advice to the letter: after watching the Pokémon Catch Race held in town, she heads for the forest he pointed her to.

Once there, Pokémon Rangers tell her two things at once: the area is off-limits, and the species she's looking for doesn't live there. Callahan lied to her, and that anger will remain a thread of her character right up to the final act.

Catching Eevee With a Borrowed Pikachu

The next morning, she goes to the hotel where Ash is staying — he came in second in one of the city's races — and begs him to help her. That's the moment the quest stops being a big sister's indulgence and becomes a two-person job.

The two of them head to a plain a short distance from town and finally find the creature from the photo: an Eevee. Ash lends her Pikachu to fight the battle, and it takes a tough fight before the Poké Ball finally clicks shut.

What follows keeps her in town rather than on the road: she helps the locals clean up the Wind Festival grounds with Ash. There she runs into Callahan again and confronts him to his face about his lies, but he slips away — he has to give a research presentation in Toren's place.

🦊 Risa's partner has its own section: check out the Eevee products.

The Fog, the Eternal Flame and the Final Run

Risa follows Callahan to Toren's lab. During the presentation, a smoke bomb stolen earlier by Team Rocket goes off and blankets the whole city in fog. Panic spreads among the residents, Risa's Eevee hurts its leg, and she takes it to the Pokémon Center with Toren and Harriet.

The next day, the wind has stopped blowing in Fula City: the eternal flame has been stolen. Toren tracks the thief using his Smeargle's ink, all the way to an abandoned building on the mountain. The group gets there just in time to stop hunters from seizing Zeraora and the wild Pokémon that Margo, the mayor's daughter, had been protecting — she was the one who had taken the flame.

The explosion of the stolen solution then sets the mountain ablaze. Risa stays behind to treat Zeraora, then Ash urges her to return the flame to its pedestal to summon Lugia. She hesitates, until she sees her Eevee push past its own injury; her fast pace and Rick's unexpected help do the rest, and the Legendary Pokémon puts out the fire.

What the Movie Builds Into Her Character

Her bond with Rick is the cornerstone of the character. She visits him often, and for his sake agrees to catch a Pokémon even though she knows next to nothing about them; the trust goes both ways, too, since she lets him guide her through the woods.

Her loss of self-confidence came right after the injury, along with the end of her athletics career. It's Ash's unpredictable spontaneity that forces her to adapt and, in turn, to overcome her fear: the movie doesn't give her a solitary breakthrough.

What remains is a frankness the script puts to the test several times: Risa is honest and hates being misled, which makes her easy to like, and she tackles problems head-on — Callahan first, then the Pokémon hunters. The Pokémon Trading Card Game even features her on several cards, concrete proof of a character with no badges and no full team.

Risa at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Risa in Pokémon?
  A high school student and former elite athlete, the heroine of the movie "The Power of Us". A leg injury ended her sports career, and the movie tells how she finds the courage to run again.
• Which Pokémon does Risa have?
  An Eevee, found on a plain near Fula City and caught with help from Ash, who lends her Pikachu for the battle. It's the Pokémon her brother Rick had asked her to catch.
• Why doesn't Risa dare to run anymore?
  Her leg injury healed long ago, but it took Risa's self-confidence with it. The block is psychological, not physical, which is why it takes her the whole movie to get past it.
• What role does Risa play at the end of the movie?
  She's the one who runs to return the eternal flame to its pedestal to summon Lugia and stop the fire on the mountain. She makes it just in time, carried by her fast pace and by her brother Rick's unexpected help.
• Who is Callahan to Risa?
  The uncle of Kellie, the girl who bumps into her when she arrives in Fula City. Introduced as the man who can help her, he sends her to look for her Pokémon in an off-limits forest where the species doesn't live, and Risa calls him out on it openly.

In short

The movie closes her journey with the Wind Festival's closing ceremony, which she attends with Ash and the others. Risa matters less for her team — a single Pokémon, caught before our eyes — than for the arc she carries: a reluctant catch, a lie that makes her angry, an injured Eevee getting back on its feet, then a race she thought she would never be able to run again. Every step serves to get an athlete moving again, and that's what sets her apart from the movie characters people remember for their Pokémon.