Melemele Island Trial Challengers, Class of '96

Pictured here with the first pokemon they ever caught.

I'm still playing with their designs, but I know two things: Guzma's always been a lanky little string bean, and that Kukui Neville Longbottom'd hard somewhere in his teens.

A lot of people have wimpod as Guzma's first pokemon, but if he grew up on Melemele island, I'd think the spinarak that becomes his ariados is more likely. Wimpod isn't available on Melemele island.

I imagine the two of them were pals at some point, and that they started their adventure at the same time. Guzma only wanted to use his favorite type of pokemon, whereas Kukui wanted to find as many new pokemon as possible and try them all! They're friendly rivals, and liked to challenge each other and have fun. Guzma's always been a second- and third- place winner, but he never really minded it. Overall, he was a generally swell kid, not really a bully or anything. They were both super excited to take on the island trials when they turned 11.  

Somewhere around the second or third island, Guzma starts to notice he's lagging behind and beginning to struggle. He didn't mind it before, but now Kukui's pulling ahead of him and he feels like he's getting left behind. Kukui suggests using other types of pokemon, but Guzma takes that as Kukui calling his team weak. He starts getting bitter, and the rivalry gets less amiable.

I was talking to kirbychan234 the other night, and we agreed that Molayne becomes Kukui's friend around this point. He's also taking on the Island Trial Challenge. Kukui and Molayne are totally on the same page as far as nerdy interests go. They both want to push each other to become stronger. And Molayne's much more prodigious-- he's a much more challenging rival too. They become new broskis and fly through the rest of the trials together. Once those two meet, their skill shoots up exponentially as they bring out the best in each other.

A combination of Guzma's lagging team and his new aggressive attitude means Kukui's lost a lot of interest in him as a friend. They drift apart. They see each other around sometimes, but they're not really on good terms anymore. Kukui's made tons of new and exciting friends on his journey that capture his attention more. Eventually they lose contact. Kukui becomes a super successful researcher, marries an awesome lady, starts building a pokemon league, even. He's vaguely aware that one of the kids he used to know has some criminal ties now, but that was someone from a long time ago. He's still not really sure why that friend changed in the first place.

Guzma, on the other hand, worked his butt off to beat the island trials with the team HE wanted. It took him a long, LOOOOONG time, but he finally did it. He wants to be a Trial Captain now, feels like he showed everyone how hard he's worked for it, kept going after getting beaten down over and over, but gets rejected because he only barely scraped by in his win. The consensus is that he doesn't have what it takes to be a worthy challenger to anyone.

He stews on that rejection for 20 years and here we are.

(A side headcanon-- I feel like they started their adventure the same year as Red and Blue/Green. If they were 11 in 1996, that would make them 31 now, which seems about right for their appearance and behavior in the game.)

At some point in the future, I'd really like to try taking these designs and drawing them in an early Ken Sugimori style. Horizontal lines. Horizontal lines everywhere.

Guma, Kukui (c) Gamefreak