The 2025 NAIC has finally wrapped up, with a lucky few players getting a chance at being the very best. One such story comes from a pair of young Pokemon fans who finally broke through into the IC finals with this year's event.

The 2025 Pokemon North America International Championships saw a huge turnout of competitors, with over 3000 players participating. The event covers a number of different Pokemon games, including a junior TCG tournament. This branch of the show saw one particularly sweet success story, with siblings Annabelle and Kenji Oono making it to the finals. Annabelle would beat Kenji to take home the gold of the Juniors, but there's no love lost between these siblings.

Game Rant caught up with the siblings and their parents after the game, all of whom were more than satisfied with the events of Pokemon's 2025 NAIC and the role they played in it. Both siblings agreed that, despite being pitted against each other, they were still able to have fun similarly to their more casual games. After all, they both did their fair share of testing and preparation together before the big game too. Game Rant spoke with the siblings' parents about how they viewed the two youths' rise to a place in the finals.

The way they play is pretty much very similar, like it's very focused. I feel like sometimes they play each other more competitively than they do at opponents of the regionals and IC tables! Sometimes they'll be dancing with their opponent, making jokes and laughing, but it's just super serious when they play each other. The way they played on the stage here is how they play. They're pretty serious.

Kenji settled on a deck pretty early on, and he was grinding on it. Whereas, and this drives us crazy, Annabelle kind of settled on a deck. A week prior to the event, she changed her mind, and she changed her mind again 3 days before the event. 2 days prior, she was finally settled, so she essentially picked her deck on Thursday night. I think she learned from Kenji a bit because then she ended up choosing his deck because of the way he played it. It probably inspired her to be like, 'OK, I like, I like all the moves that the deck.'

Honestly, it was a dream for us, yeah. We talked a lot, just thinking of goals and having visions of what's possible and stuff, and one of them was for them to be in the finals together. Beyond that would be to be on-screen. Truthfully, the likelihood of them going through a tournament with 330 kids being in the brackets and making it to the finals is like...I don't know what the likelihood is, but it's very low. Even this morning, we couldn't believe it; it's just so surreal. So to answer your question, it's amazing.

Going through the top 8 was super stressful. We kind of had to divide and conquer because Annabelle was on the streaming tables and Kenji was in the top 8 zone. I kind of had to go back through the two, and then they were both on the streaming tables. It was hard to figure out what was going on with both, so it was really an exciting, stressful, and just an amazing experience. I'll remember this forever.

A: And the new thing this time with the streaming table was amazing. Everybody I talked to loved it, whether it was our kids or other people's kids. It was just cool to be part of it, you know? The parents, I feel, work almost as hard as the kids, so it's like it's nice to be able to see them like, 'Oh that's how you play' because they play differently at the table than they sometimes do at home.

When we saw that there were over 300 juniors, I was like, 'Just try to get some points, OK?' We know these tournaments are like a roller coaster sometimes. Sometimes it depends on the opponents, other times on the deck—it just doesn't always work out, and we understand that. This was very surreal for us, and I think we keep reminding the kids that, even though it's a competition, I think these guys are where they're at because they do work together. I remind them that 'You guys are all on the same team unless you guys sit down at the table!'

Q: Do you have any fun plans to celebrate now?

A: Swimming and opening more packs by the sound of it! I want to share the deal we made with them if they won the IC final: we're going to Japan! To be fair, I made this deal at the beginning of the season when she'd never gotten to a top 8, so I was being far-fetched like 'If you win 5 regionals or get 1 IC,' which is kind of crazy, right? Now they're coming at me trying to get two trips out of it, but it's good to dream. So yes, we'll be going to Japan.