Solana: Fiore's heroine, or your partner if you play as Lunick

Solana is the heroine of the first Pokémon Ranger only half the time. The game lets you choose between Lunick and her, and whichever of the two you pass over doesn't leave the adventure for all that: they come back as a teammate, out in the field. What remains is a Fiore Ranger who captures without Poké Balls, teaches the trade to the rookie, and falls into the trap of a legend with volcanic consequences.

Contents

• A Heroine You Can Also Meet as a Teammate
• The Capture Styler, the Partner Bond and Its Limits
• Ringtown, Patrols and the Everyday Job
• Summerland: The Four Challenges, the Volcano and a Wounded Groudon
• Gordor's Power Styler and the Three Legendary Beasts
• In the Anime and Manga
• Solana at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

A Heroine You Can Also Meet as a Teammate

The first Pokémon Ranger hands the lead role to Solana as soon as the player chooses to play as a girl. She then works as a Pokémon Ranger in the Fiore region, with a Plusle as her partner, while her friend and rival Lunick makes his own way with a Minun.

Choosing between the two rewrites nothing at all. The plot is identical either way: the only things that change are the partner Pokémon and who comes to lend the player a hand during missions.

The consequence is unusual for a heroine. Passing over Solana doesn't remove her; it turns her into a teammate: she then joins the player on some of the missions, from the first day on duty to the final showdown, which gives her a dual status, heroine or teammate depending on the playthrough — an arrangement Lunick shares exactly in this spin-off game.

The Capture Styler, the Partner Bond and Its Limits

Among Rangers, Poké Balls have no place. The Capture Styler captures by drawing loops around the target Pokémon, and it calms the Pokémon down instead of locking it up: the goal isn't to keep it, only to enlist its help for the length of a mission.

Solana takes it upon herself to explain the device to the rookie. Every loop drawn during a capture fills the Partner Gauge, and once it's full, a Poké Assist button calls in your own Pokémon — or one you've already captured — to help with the capture in progress. She covers the rest too: the device tracks where its wearer is, shows the Pokémon's data on the top screen, lets you suspend your game, and its Browser logs every capture under a numbering system shared by all of Fiore's Rangers.

The partner rule, for its part, is laid down by Spenser, leader of the Ringtown base. A Ranger is allowed only one partner Pokémon, and that partnership depends on an emotional bond: the Pokémon isn't there to keep you company, it's there to help with the work.

Solana applies the rule before anyone even spells it out. During a patrol, a jealous Minun harasses Larry's Taillow; once the Taillow has calmed down, she realizes the culprit mostly feels lonely and suggests the rookie make it their partner. She's well placed to help out afterward, since her Plusle is the same type.

A Ranger Net mission, however, pushes this principle to its limits. A Deoxys changes form as its aggression rises and falls, switches to Attack Forme and darts into Krokka Tunnel; the base leader has already failed to capture it, the next attempt fails too, and Solana discovers that some Pokémon are incapable of forming any emotional bond at all. Her solution is nothing technical: she advises talking to the Deoxys during the capture so it understands that no one is attacking it and that the Rangers aren't its enemies. The Pokémon shifts from Defense Forme to Speed Forme, returns to its Normal Forme, lets itself be approached — and is then released.

Ringtown, Patrols and the Everyday Job

Solana starts her service in Ringtown under Spenser, in a region the Go-Rock Squad has put on edge. Yet the job isn't just about missions: patrolling is part of it too; it reassures the locals, and it allows Rangers to enter their homes.

Lyra Forest shows just how short-staffed they are. Its deepest part, the Labyrinth Grove, is a true maze where a Ranger is normally posted to warn hikers — except that the Go-Rock affair has everyone tied up, and an old man got lost there because no one warned him.

The division of labor gets very concrete there. A little girl is in tears because one of her two Jigglypuff has run off toward the back of the forest: Solana stays with the child while the player goes to bring back the Pokémon, then walks the little girl home before heading off on a mission to Summerland.

Olive Jungle delivers the scene that best reveals her approach. Plusle and Minun are having fun bouncing on the belly of a sleeping Snorlax; she scolds them, then thinks better of it, realizing they may have been trying to clear the path, apologizes for yelling, and asks them to think about how the Snorlax feels next time.

She's the one who asks the player about loneliness, and she answers with a family comparison. Between the chief, Professor Hastings and the other Rangers like Murph, you're far too surrounded to ever feel lonely — her way of saying that the Ranger Union serves as a home for those who have left their own.

Summerland: The Four Challenges, the Volcano and a Wounded Groudon

In Summerland, Cameron tells the legend of the four challenges of the Jungle Relic. Rangers have been testing themselves there for years — Spenser and Joel took them on when they were younger — but the legend forbids completing the fourth, or disaster will strike. It's Solana who suggests going to take a look.

The entrance is hidden deep in the jungle, beneath a stone statue where a concealed switch reveals a staircase. Inside stand a statue of Entei and three trial chambers — wind, water and destruction — none of which lets you save, and each of which keeps its stone seal until the Pokémon guarding it has been captured.

The fourth chamber, the chamber of fire, has had its plaque deliberately damaged: the engraved text can no longer be read. The Go-Rock Squad knew two Rangers were coming to take on the challenges and made a Charizard suffer in their path; by capturing it to ease its pain, Solana and her teammate unknowingly complete the forbidden trial. Clyde and Billy only set them straight after the fact.

What follows proves them wrong on every count. The Entei statue vanishes, a tremor signals the eruption of an underground volcano, and lava replaces the water in the ruins. Ranger Aria scolds them for their recklessness and wants to take the case over from them, but Solana refuses to be sidelined: the mistake was theirs, so the rampaging Entei is their problem.

A special mission wraps up the episode by reversing the roles. A rockslide traps Solana, and it's the player who comes to dig her out; the two of them then discover a Groudon in pain, marked with four gashes on its neck. She concludes it has clashed with Kyogre, then retreated to the underground volcano to heal its wounds.

🌋 The legendary beast awakened beneath the Jungle Relic has its own section: shop our Legendary Pokémon.

Gordor's Power Styler and the Three Legendary Beasts

The assault on the enemy base brings down the Go-Rock Quads one by one, and each defeat lets slip a piece of information. The boss has built a Power Styler of considerable strength, a one-of-a-kind device he keeps for himself; Solana seizes the moment to demand the Super Styler stolen from the professor and to ask about the whereabouts of Gordor. The answer comes along with the self-destruct system: the Quads escape through a trapdoor, letting slip that their leader is waiting at the Fiore Temple, Spenser is trapped inside, and she calls Cameron and Elita for backup.

Two doors still block the way, and both are opened by Pokémon. The first bears a flame emblem and gives way thanks to the Charizard rescued in the Jungle Relic, which has come back on its own to return the favor; the second requires specific Pokémon to take their places on sacred pedestals — a Vaporeon, a Jolteon and a Flareon.

On the temple roof, Gordor uses the Power Styler to strip Pokémon of their will. Solana refuses to call it a capture and calls it torture, pure and simple, and then you have to free Raikou, Suicune and Entei from his control one after another, until the Capture Styler starts to smoke.

The ending turns against him: the freed Entei attacks Gordor, and the two Rangers save him. Solana then wants to go after him, but Spenser won't let her — a Ranger doesn't capture humans, and he would rather bet that the man will eventually come to terms with what he has done.

The bet pays off later, during a Ranger Net mission about an Egg stolen from Professor Hastings. Gordor, who has left the Go-Rock Squad, returns the Manaphy Egg himself; Solana describes him as a new man, and she will long worry about what became of the Pokémon, since entrusted to a Trainer in Sinnoh.

In the Anime and Manga

The anime gives her a handful of scattered appearances. She shows up in the episode The Green Guardian, then in the two-part Pokémon Ranger - Deoxys' Crisis!, before reappearing in Sinnoh to hand Kellyn a mission.

Her Plusle has Helping Hand and Thunder Wave there, but most of her strength comes from elsewhere. With her Capture Styler, she captures Pokémon and borrows their Field Moves: Slash with a Linoone, Dig with a Diglett and a Dugtrio, Refresh with an Altaria, Heal Bell with a Miltank, Water Gun with Azurill, Marill and Azumarill, and Rock Tomb with a Trapinch.

The Deoxys she encounters in the series, for its part, lends her Psycho Boost, Safeguard, Psychic and Recover. The manga are far less generous: the adaptation of Pokémon Ranger leaves her with her Plusle, with Helping Hand and Thunder Wave, while Pokémon Ranger Batonnage only shows her in a newspaper clipping that Kellyn pasted into his research notebooks, which Kate discovers in the first chapter.

Solana at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Should you pick Solana or Lunick in Pokémon Ranger?
  The choice changes nothing in the story. It only determines the partner Pokémon — Plusle for Solana, Minun for Lunick — and which of the two will back up the player during missions.
• What is Solana's partner Pokémon?
  A Plusle, which appears in the game as well as in the anime and the manga. Since it's the same type as Lunick's Minun, she's the best person to explain to the rookie what their own partner can do.
• Why are the four challenges of the Jungle Relic a trap?
  Legend has it that disaster follows the completion of the fourth challenge. The Go-Rock Squad, tipped off that two Rangers were coming, made a Charizard suffer in the last chamber: by capturing it to help it, Solana and her teammate complete the forbidden trial and trigger a volcanic eruption.
• What is Solana's Capture Styler used for?
  Capturing a Pokémon by drawing loops around it, to calm it rather than lock it up. It also tracks your location, displays Pokémon data, lets you suspend your game, and its Browser sorts captures under a numbering system shared by all of Fiore's Rangers.
• What happens to Gordor after the Fiore Temple?
  Spenser refuses to pursue him, on the grounds that a Ranger doesn't capture humans. Gordor later leaves the Go-Rock Squad and personally returns the Manaphy Egg stolen from Professor Hastings.

In short

Solana is a heroine whose role shifts: depending on the box checked at the start of the game, she either leads the Fiore campaign or goes through it alongside the one who does. Either way, she passes on the trade, reins in her own Pokémon when they go too far, and owns the mistake at the Jungle Relic instead of leaving it to someone else. It's the portrait of a professional, not of a chosen one.