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Your controversial opinions

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Esserise said:
Yeah, see, that (and the other sidebar with Drednaw on Route 9) was dumb writing, because it had nothing to do with their actual, established motives. But overall, those motives made sense and fit with the setting, so I honestly don't know why they wasted time on making these scenes more complicated than they needed to be. Wanting to get in the way of other Trainers so that Marnie can get an advantage is a perfectly sufficient and organic reasoning for having them play the role of low-stakes, situational roadblocks; they didn't need to faff about with "protecting Silicobra" or whatever.
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My interpretation was that not wanting to wake Silicobra was just an excuse to try and hide their real, less noble motives. Note how they let the old lady through, but not the player and Hop. It's not really because the old lady is quieter, like they claim, it's because she's not a Gym Challenger.
 
Puddle said:
My interpretation was that not wanting to wake Silicobra was just an excuse to try and hide their real, less noble motives. Note how they let the old lady through, but not the player and Hop. It's not really because the old lady is quieter, like they claim, it's because she's not a Gym Challenger.
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I suppose, but there's plenty of other times where Yell grunts are shown blocking a path (without inducing a cutscene) where they're not really trying to hide what they're doing - just blatantly cheering for Marnie and forcing you to turn around. Also I recall them being pretty upfront about their intentions when harassing the Rotom Bike guy - saying that they wanted to "borrow" his bike so they could chase Gym Challengers around in order to waste their time and energy.
 
Esserise said:
I suppose, but there's plenty of other times where Yell grunts are shown blocking a path (without inducing a cutscene) where they're not really trying to hide what they're doing - just blatantly cheering for Marnie and forcing you to turn around. Also I recall them being pretty upfront about their intentions when harassing the Rotom Bike guy - saying that they wanted to "borrow" his bike so they could chase Gym Challengers around in order to waste their time and energy.
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Hmm, good point. Unlike previous teams, Team Yell doesn't stike me as being particularly well-organised, so maybe instead of agreeing on a strategy beforehand, its members all go off and do their own thing. Some like to disrupt Gym Challengers under the guise of incompetant wildlife conservationists, while others prefer to take a more direct approach. They're really just a bunch of hooligans so it kind of makes sense for their behaviour to be inconsistent.
 
Okay, before I actually go any further with my opinions (one of which is related to the current topic and one which isn't), I think it's necessary to remind people that just because a character (or characters in this case) is an antagonist it doesn't mean that they're a villain. A villain is a character who does, well, evil or at the very least highly dangerous stuff that puts other people in jeopardy while an antagonist is merely a character that opposes the protagonist regardless of moral alignment, since a protagonist is merely whichever character is a given story's central focus. This means that it's entirely possible to have a villainous protagonist and a heroic antagonist or even have them both be good or both be evil, so long as they actually oppose each other. In Pokemon itself, rivals are technically antagonists, since their goal of beating the local League is always directly in conflict with your goal of doing the same, but of course rivals are never villains (with the exception of Silver) and are at worst jerks. But they're still antagonists in the narrative sense.

Where am I going with this? Well, because I keep seeing people call Team Skull and Team Yell the worst "villains" for not being "evil enough" when... these guys clearly weren't meant to be villains at all. Team Skull are a bunch of jaded washouts who were unable to complete the Alola Trials in their youth and have nowhere else to go, with the actual villains being the Aether Foundation and Lusamine. Team Yell, meanwhile, are clearly just a bunch of over-enthusiastic fans for Marnie. Yes, both teams are antagonist because they oppose the player, but that alone isn't enough to make a character a villain, as I stated above.

Anyway, my maybe-controversial-maybe-not opinion that is directly related to the whole debate above, the REAL worst villain the franchise has ever had is Chairman Rose. No, him being "well-intentioned" doesn't make him not a villain, since his actions could have very well caused a freaking apocalypse. His motivation is also beyond stupid what with his wanting to solve an energy crisis that won't rear its head until literally a millennium later because... well, because. Yes, Team Magma and Team Aqua also had dumb and overly destructive plans, but the difference is that their games are actually AWARE that they're stupid and play it up for all its worth, especially in the remakes, which results in Magma and Aqua being more like the fun and funny Saturday-Morning-Cartoon-type of villains with how over the top and ridiculous they are, Rose by contrast feels like he was meant to be taken seriously, and it just doesn't work: I can't take him seriously because his plan is stupid, he's too boring to laugh at or enjoy, the previous factors combined mean that I cant sympathize with him despite the games trying to be "oh look at this poor man he is so TORTURED by the fact that he FEELS he has no choice", like... shut up, and he's not even enjoyable in a "love to hate" kind of way like Ghetsis is because SwSh's story goes so out of its way to really try and make Rose likable that he lacks the monstrous factor required in a love-to-hate villain.

It's a huge shame too, because SwSh otherwise has an extremely enjoyable cast of characters, to the point that to me the characters are the games' strongest point. Rose is literally the only one I didn't enjoy (well, him and Sordwart and Shielbert, but the latter two I don't tend to count due to them being post-game).

Another potentially-controversial-potentially-not opinion I have that is completely unrelated to any of the above is that I really dislike that Pikachu is occasionally given fangs. It just looks awful, and it feels like a really tacked on, really forced way to try and make Pikachu "cuter", but it completely falls flat due to the fact that Pikachu's design was clearly not meant to have sharp teeth. Seriously TPCi, just because fangs worked to make Skitty and Zorua cuter it doesn't mean they're gonna work for everything else: Skitty and Zorua's designs work with fangs because they are respectively a cat and a fox, two animals that have sharp teeth in real life. Pikachu, meanwhile, although not really resembling a mouse that much, is still clearly a rodent, and thus is at its cutest when the rodent aspects are played up, as shown here: Pikachu adorably cleaning itself like a mouse. In short, don't try to ape other Pokemon's design features to try and make Pikachu "cuter", not only does it not work, but Pikachu is already doing pretty well with what it has.
 
Ghost Diplocaulus said:
Anyway, my maybe-controversial-maybe-not opinion that is directly related to the whole debate above, the REAL worst villain the franchise has ever had is Chairman Rose. No, him being "well-intentioned" doesn't make him not a villain, since his actions could have very well caused a freaking apocalypse. His motivation is also beyond stupid what with his wanting to solve an energy crisis that won't rear its head until literally a millennium later because... well, because. Yes, Team Magma and Team Aqua also had dumb and overly destructive plans, but the difference is that their games are actually AWARE that they're stupid and play it up for all its worth, especially in the remakes, which results in Magma and Aqua being more like the fun and funny Saturday-Morning-Cartoon-type of villains with how over the top and ridiculous they are, Rose by contrast feels like he was meant to be taken seriously, and it just doesn't work: I can't take him seriously because his plan is stupid, he's too boring to laugh at or enjoy, the previous factors combined mean that I cant sympathize with him despite the games trying to be "oh look at this poor man he is so TORTURED by the fact that he FEELS he has no choice", like... shut up, and he's not even enjoyable in a "love to hate" kind of way like Ghetsis is because SwSh's story goes so out of its way to really try and make Rose likable that he lacks the monstrous factor required in a love-to-hate villain.
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This is pretty much the common bead on Rose, at least within the online fandom.

Personally, I think people read too intensely into what's going on with him. Like, I don't feel like the game is ever saying "Oh he feels TORTURED, he doesn't think he has a choice" - that's Lysandre and his Single Tear, not Rose. Rose is flippant, vain, and impulsive. Leon outright calls him up, twice, on his impatience for dealing with something that isn't really a pressing issue. The narrative is clearly aware that what he's doing is outrageous. And when you battle and defeat him, he's like, "Ah well, shame I missed the match and all that, but if you want to go up top, go ahead, Leon's probably done by now." He really was just overconfident and overly enthusiastic about his own ideas. (He's a billionaire...) Same with the interpretation of the story as a climate change metaphor. Galar's energy needs are never pitched to us as something so serious; Galar is repeatedly shown to in fact be rather well-provided for.

I also think that while impulsiveness isn't the most convincing of flaws to incur something so apocalyptic, it's still at least suggestive of an attempt to find something more human and relatable than there was with older, pre-Gen 5 villains in the series.

The whole cat-and-mouse thing with Oleana and the key to Rose Tower is really bizarre, though, I will say that.
 
My controversial opinion for the day is that some characters like Cynthia and Marnie, while popular thanks their battling prowess or story or such, may have become as super popular as they are due to their designs as well. As in, how some people like them because they see them as eye candy.
 
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Ghost Diplocaulus said:
Okay, before I actually go any further with my opinions (one of which is related to the current topic and one which isn't), I think it's necessary to remind people that just because a character (or characters in this case) is an antagonist it doesn't mean that they're a villain. A villain is a character who does, well, evil or at the very least highly dangerous stuff that puts other people in jeopardy while an antagonist is merely a character that opposes the protagonist regardless of moral alignment, since a protagonist is merely whichever character is a given story's central focus. This means that it's entirely possible to have a villainous protagonist and a heroic antagonist or even have them both be good or both be evil, so long as they actually oppose each other. In Pokemon itself, rivals are technically antagonists, since their goal of beating the local League is always directly in conflict with your goal of doing the same, but of course rivals are never villains (with the exception of Silver) and are at worst jerks. But they're still antagonists in the narrative sense.
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I'm glad someone brought this up. An antagonist isn't always a villain, and vice-versa. I think a more accurate name for the "villainous teams", now that Team Yell has broken the mould, would be "antagonist teams" or "antagonistic teams".

I actually quite like Chairman Rose as an antagonist (I didn't used to consider him a villain but perhaps you're right about that - he did start the Darkest Day on purpose, after all). I think it's refreshing that Pokemon is beginning to experiment with antagonists that aren't completely evil - first with Lusamine, and now Rose. Alas, Rose isn't as memorable as Lusamine, and his motivations are admittedly a bit ridiculous, but Pokemon antagonists having ridiculous motivations is pretty much a tradition by this point.
 
Team Aqua wanted to flood the world to create a better world for Pokemon, unaware that they'd also drown. Rose is hardly the stupidest antagonist in the series.

Team Skull and Team Yell, while not villains, could still be considered criminals as both of them have engaged in criminal activity such as theft, assault, and loitering.
 
BackSet said:
Team Aqua wanted to flood the world to create a better world for Pokemon, unaware that they'd also drown. Rose is hardly the stupidest antagonist in the series.
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I think the point Ghost Diplocaulus was trying to make, at least partially, was that Rose is meant to be taken seriously and not be seen as a stupid antagonist for the sake of humor, unlike Archie for example.
 
Puddle said:
I actually quite like Chairman Rose as an antagonist (I didn't used to consider him a villain but perhaps you're right about that - he did start the Darkest Day on purpose, after all). I think it's refreshing that Pokemon is beginning to experiment with antagonists that aren't completely evil - first with Lusamine, and now Rose. Alas, Rose isn't as memorable as Lusamine, and his motivations are admittedly a bit ridiculous, but Pokemon antagonists having ridiculous motivations is pretty much a tradition by this point.
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The reason Rose didn't work as a "morally complex" villain for me is the fact that they had him do the exact same thing that Pokemon's previous mustache-twirlers have done in releasing the local Legendary to go on a destructive rampage, so trying to make him morally complex in the face of his heinous actions just falls flat. I get that the reason they had Rose go as far as he did is because they wanted the plot to have high stakes so we could have the epic Legendary-infested Kaiju battle, but unfortunately, there are some things that narratively don't mix: if they wanted to make Rose a morally complex villain/antagonist, they should have lowered the stakes of the plot, but if they'd rather not do that, then either make Rose a full-on bad guy or just don't make him responsible for the Darkest Day at all and have Eternatus be the sole big baddie or something.

Lusamine I'm kinda ambivalent on, but she at least does have the saving grace of her "Motherbeast" form being an awesome design (shame we don't actually get to fight it, though) plus the fact that it's heavily implied that a lot of her behavior is being negatively influenced by overexposure to Nihilego's toxins, so it's easier to buy her being a complex person while making her over the top at the same time. Rose has no such advantages.

SpinyShell said:
I think the point Ghost Diplocaulus was trying to make, at least partially, was that Rose is meant to be taken seriously and not be seen as a stupid antagonist for the sake of humor, unlike Archie for example.
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Yes, this. I'm glad someone actually payed attention to what I said.
 
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FinnishPokéFan92 said:
My controversial opinion for the day is that some characters like Cynthia and Marnie, while popular thanks their battling prowess or story or such, may have become as super popular as they are due to their designs as well. As in, how some people like them because they see them as eye candy.
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I mean, there's an entire culture on 4chan devoted to fetishizing the female character designs, so I'm gonna' say this is more than just an opinion.

BackSet said:
Team Aqua wanted to flood the world to create a better world for Pokemon, unaware that they'd also drown. Rose is hardly the stupidest antagonist in the series.
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And really, Rose wasn't even all that wrong - if humans could safely harness Eternatus's infinite power, that would be nothing short of revolutionary. But he got greedy and rushed into it without the proper precautions, and it blew up in his face.

BackSet said:
Team Skull and Team Yell, while not villains, could still be considered criminals as both of them have engaged in criminal activity such as theft, assault, and loitering.
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Team Skull has also straight-up killed Pokémon, according to Hau at one point.

SpinyShell said:
I think the point Ghost Diplocaulus was trying to make, at least partially, was that Rose is meant to be taken seriously and not be seen as a stupid antagonist for the sake of humor, unlike Archie for example.
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Yes, but I'd question both the degree to which Rose is really meant to be taken as someone very serious (he walks around with a dad bod and turquoise shorts, for crying out loud), as well as the degree to which Archie and Maxie are actually effectively deployed as sources of humor. In the originals, at least, I'd say they are painfully banal and also that the narrative is not really all that "ironic" in pitching their arguments.

Like, I'm telling you guys, Leon sits there and says out loud, "Rose, buddy, what you're talking about is completely bananas." Not once does RSE try to hang such a lampshade on what Archie and Maxie are intending to do. When Eternatus goes amok? Rose is like, "Oopsie daisy! Can you come help me out, Leon?" Whereas when Groudon and Kyogre run wild? It's "What?! It's raining far harder than we envisioned? You're in danger? That can't be... That's just not possible..." as if they honestly thought that they knew what they were doing.
 
Esserise said:
And really, Rose wasn't even all that wrong - if humans could safely harness Eternatus's infinite power, that would be nothing short of revolutionary. But he got greedy and rushed into it without the proper precautions, and it blew up in his face.
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And then Eternatus got caught by some random kid and all its potential was wasted obliterating league challengers.
 
Team Rocket is my favorite evil team because of their simplicity. Basically a Japanese mafia seeking money and power through any means necessary. Their simplicity is also what's allowed some variations of them (like Team GO Rocket and Team Rainbow Rocket) to be established so easily: when something's simple, it's easy enough to add new elements to it. Basically, those variations have just changed the methods which they use to gain more power, while maintaining their motivations and goals pretty much the same as before.
 
ShieldFan said:
Every single villain team should mirror Team Rocket and follow its path: there should be an amazing and smart leader like Giovanni and a bunch of admins (Proton, Petrel, Ariana, Tabitha, Shelly, Matt, Courtney, Mars, Saturn, etc). I remember the old good days when I was scary to face Giovanni and beat him. Team Plasma, Team Flare, Team Aqua and Team Magma were also good ones. Hey Gamefreak, don't forget the old good formula.
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Dude, "every villain should mirror the original" and "don't forget the old good formula" is not a good philosophy for creative development.
 
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