Queen Cynthia
Dignified Queen of Sinnoh
You made some very precise observations!I think all of the dialogue we got so far made it clear why Liko was unhappy. As the episode already established, Paldea is an ordinary sight to Liko so to her it's not that special of a place. That's one reason. She wanted to go to a different place to see new horizons, and she explicitly says in ep1 she came to Kanto hoping to find something (new? different?), but another big reason is also because she had no reason to stay at home.
In episode 1, when Anne asks Liko if she will be going back home, she says her parents are too busy. We see that her father apparently works at home due to his occupation, so he would be around...physically, so for Liko to choose to stay in Kanto instead must mean she'd just be ignored or neglected by her father, so why would she go back there?
When Alex says Liko's mom is away due to work, Liko says "She must be busy, too", and she's obviously accustomed to hearing that. On her first day back home, Liko refuses to sleep in her own room and once again tells Alex that since he and mom are too busy, she may as well sleep on the airship. Even Friede is like "Oy Liko" when she says that.
From Liko's own dialogue, saying "I'm home!" and "I'm off!" they established she already views the airship as her new home.
The morning after, when Liko talks to Orla and Mollie, one of them says "You must be pretty close to your father" to which Liko says "no, not at all".
It seems pretty clear that Liko doesn't have the closest bond with her mom or dad. She's friendly to them and stuff, but that's about it. They hired Volt Tacklers to bring Liko back home without ever notifying her about it or even asking if she was okay with it. The parents who are apparently overprotective want Liko to stay home, meanwhile they're never around and are too busy to deal with their own daughter. It's pretty unfair of them to ask that from Liko, given the kind of parents they are, so I feel Liko's anxiety and frustration were highly understandable. Why should she be denied a cool new experience only to satisfy her parents who kinda, but not really, care about her.
I think my biggest criticism of the ep is the fact that Alex let Liko go so easily, despite being supposedly overprotective and worried about her. Friede told him about Explorers off-screen, so he knows there's people chasing Liko, and yet he just let her go easily without insisting that she stays home.
I'm not too bothered by Sprigatito's behavior because it wasn't a serious conflict. Sprigatito has obviously grown more attached to Liko than in ep1, so a brief moment of jealousy is nothing too wildly out-of-character for a capricious cat.
Plus, Liko must be emotionally attached to her grandmother very much, which makes sense because that is often the case if kids are neglected by their own parents.