Pokémon Horizons Casts Toshiya Miyata for a UNITE Crossover

Pokémon Horizons has cast Toshiya Miyata, a member of the Japanese idol group Kis-My-Ft2, as the leader of a new in-show music act called Shining Oceans. He arrives in episode 141, a crossover with the mobile game Pokémon UNITE that airs in Japan on June 19 and drops the anime’s main cast onto the game’s signature setting, Aeos Island.

That booking comes wrapped inside a month-long promotion. Through June, the episode plugs straight into a Pokémon UNITE event, including an on-air puzzle whose answer is hidden in the broadcast and converts into a reward code players redeem in the game.

What Episode 141 Puts on Screen

The episode, titled “Ready Go! Unite Battle!!”, sends Liko, Roy, Dot, and Ult, the young travelers known in the show as the Rising Volt Tacklers, to Aeos Island, the home arena of the official Pokémon UNITE game. The idol group lands there to play a live concert for the island’s residents, turning a competitive map into a stage.

Mid-show, the two sides square off. The Rising Volt Tacklers challenge the visiting performers to a Unite Battle, and the idol leader takes his team into the fight alongside Sirfetch’d, the leek-wielding fighting Pokémon known for its stubborn bravery. Professor Rin, the genius scientist tied to the game’s lore, also turns up in the animated version of the setting, a wink to players who already know the map by heart.

It is a quiet milestone for the franchise. Shining Oceans is the first idol team to appear in Pokémon Horizons, and the episode leans into that, splicing song breaks and stage choreography between the moves of a fast, point-scoring brawl.

The June Game Event the Episode Feeds Into

The broadcast is timed to a Pokémon UNITE collaboration that runs across the whole month. The game pipes in characters and Pokémon from the series, hands out themed cosmetics, and stages a battle mode based on the show. The full schedule, posted on the Pokémon UNITE news and announcements hub, lines the game drops up neatly with the anime calendar.

The treasure hunt is where the two products lock together. Starting June 19, the official Pokémon UNITE social account posts quiz questions, and the answers are buried inside the new episode. Solve one, and it converts into a gift code for the game. Watching the anime, in other words, is the walkthrough.

Why an Idol From Kis-My-Ft2 Leads the Bill

Casting Miyata is a reach for an audience the franchise does not always touch. As a singer, dancer, and television personality with Kis-My-Ft2, he carries a following built on concerts and variety shows rather than monster battles. Putting him at the front of the show’s new idol team is a clean way to nudge J-pop fans toward an early-evening cartoon they might otherwise skip.

The role also fits where the series has been drifting. An idol act gives the writers a built-in excuse for song numbers, glittering concert visuals, and dance routines, all of which clip well for social feeds and short-video platforms where most casual discovery now happens.

For the marketing team, a guest voice with an existing fan base is far simpler to sell than a brand-new animated character. A name like Miyata’s arrives with its own promotional reach, which is part of why anime productions across the board keep recruiting pop stars for one-off appearances.

It helps that the role looks self-contained. The episode plays as a standalone adventure, so a guest can headline a single outing without bending the season’s main arc. That makes it a low-risk experiment in how much a celebrity name moves viewership, and an easy result to read once the numbers land.

A MOBA That Could Use the Spotlight

The promotion’s real target is the game. Pokémon UNITE is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA, a team-based genre where two squads of five push lanes to score points), developed by TiMi Studio Group and published by The Pokémon Company with Tencent Games. It launched in 2021 to a roaring start, then settled into a long, slower stretch.

• 200 million-plus downloads across all platforms by the middle of 2024.
• $82.7 million in mobile gross revenue by the game’s third anniversary.
• 2021 still marks its monthly revenue peak, well above anything since.

The install curve tells the story plainly. Tracking of Pokémon UNITE’s global download trend shows monthly downloads sliding from nearly ten million at launch to a small fraction of that by early 2025, with active-player estimates falling alongside them.

So a splashy anime crossover is not just fan service. A guest idol, two fresh playable Pokémon, a limited battle stage, and an episode that doubles as a quiz feed are exactly the sort of event built to pull lapsed players back for a few weeks and refill the queues.

Pokémon’s Cross-Media Playbook

None of this is a one-off trick. Pokémon Horizons launched in Japan on April 14, 2023, then rolled out region by region as a streaming property, and the franchise has steadily wired its anime, mobile games, and merchandise into one feedback loop. Even a title whose mobile spending has cooled since 2021 still earns a marquee animated tie-in.

1. April 14, 2023, Japan: Pokémon Horizons: The Series premieres.
2. December 2023, United Kingdom: the series arrives on BBC iPlayer.
3. March 7, 2024, North America: it reaches Netflix.
4. February 7, 2025: season two, The Search for Laqua, lands on Netflix.
5. January 6, 2026: season three, Rising Hope, begins.

The same logic runs through the rest of the business. Trading cards have grown into a collectors’ market of their own, where a single Pokémon card sold for a record 16.5 million dollars, while the mainline games stay tied to Nintendo’s Switch hardware, with the anime sitting in the middle as the shop window. By June 30 the gift code hidden in the new episode expires, and the game will count how many viewers it managed to pull back.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Does Pokémon Horizons Episode 141 Air?

It airs in Japan on June 19. International streaming follows on the platforms that carry the series, with English-language releases generally arriving after the Japanese broadcast.

Who Is Toshiya Miyata?

He is a singer, dancer, and television personality and a member of the Japanese idol group Kis-My-Ft2. In this crossover he voices the leader of Shining Oceans, the show’s first idol team.

What Is the Pokémon UNITE Crossover Event?

Running from June 4 through the end of the month, it adds Skeledirge and Quaquaval as playable Pokémon, a Captain Pikachu cosmetic, a limited battle stage against the show’s heroes, and a social-media quiz tied to the broadcast.

Where Can I Watch Pokémon Horizons in English?

In North America the series streams on Netflix, where it debuted on March 7, 2024. In the United Kingdom it has aired on BBC iPlayer since December 2023, and later seasons have continued on the same platforms.

Do I Have to Watch the Episode to Get the UNITE Reward?

For the quiz reward, yes. The answers to the “Spot-Spot Quiz!” are hidden inside the new episode, and solving them produces a gift code to redeem in the game. Other rewards, like the cosmetics and new Pokémon, do not require watching.