Personally, I'd like to say that Kalos Villains appealed to me more than Unova's. Although their purpose was kinda shaky, their overall structure and style was similiar to Team Rocket. The thing cool about Team Rocket is, and I don't care if people are gonna disagree with me here - their pokemon were evil as well. Even though Team Rocket were criminals, and they claimed to be using stolen/enslaved pokemon, it was undeniable that all of Team Rocket's forces were having personal connections with their pokemon. Although bit stereotypical, it was appealing to me that TR's executives would use Golbat, Houndoom and Arbok or Machoke, Electrode and Honchkrow as well. All of those pokemon, do have the trend of being cocky and have intimidating persona, so they were the pokemon who wouldn't care to hurt other, and weaker minded/hearted pokemon and in fact, those pokemon would appreciate a trainer who asked them to do criminal work. It introduced a very interesting point of view, because contrary to popular belief, it showed that some Pokemon do not want peace -
Some pokemon believe that only the strong ones have the right to survive and live free. And, those pokemon will not care if they are controlled, in fact, they will embrace it, if it can make them acheive a good position and make them more powerful. It was all making good sense to me.
And it was all reiterated once again in the Team Flare's Pokemon, while it was also improved with few additions. Lysandre's pokemon represent my aforementioned idea of mindset pretty well, especially Pyroar and Gyarados, since those are new faces, BUT they show that the ideology did not die even after the impactful happenings of B/W.
So here I want to touch on Team Plasma, and how their ideology made no sense to me. Their alleged leader, N wanted all pokemon to be free, did he not. But the whole Plasma were in fact catching pokemon, and N did not mind them doing that! Like, dude, don't you see your own fallacy? And the whole Team Plasma, they were either straight up lying to you, or even worse, believing in their own bullcr*p. They were using pokemon they caught, "forcing them to fight" and saying that pokemon should be free all the while! At that point I was like wow, are they serious with this?! It honestly makes little sense to me. And N didn't deny it, he rightfully joined Team Plasma in the end to become their Leader. But wait, did he even realise what was Team Plasma doing? At that point I didn't even know what to think of that damn hypocrite. It was just one big clump of insanity, and to me it didn't make almost any sense.
Aqua, Magma and Galaxy were also styled on Team Rocket although their resolve was different and also a bit weaker than Team Rocket, since it didn't make enough sense in the worldwide spectrum, and the ties in those teams were not as strong, some members were even being deceived and did not realise their actual purpose, like in Galaxy. To me, Team Rocket knew that they are making an impact on the world and what's important, they didn't deny that responsibility, they did not question their own motives not for one second. They were all having similar mindset, and they all liked the kind of life they were having. That, is to me how a good crime world looks like and that is the only way how it makes sense. Galaxy were following their Leader, but they did not know that their Leader was not caring about them at all. That issues some major fallacy in the end.
For Magma it was nicer because it made sense to me how for ex. fire pokemon like Camerupt were joining Magma. Fire pokemon wanted the world to become more suited for them, so they didn't care about other pokemon types being uncomfortable with that situation. That, again sprouted the ideology of pokemon that do not mind to be caught, trained and used, if it was for that higher cause. However, Magma and Aqua's goals were iffy in the whole world's spectrum, and not elaborated in the end. My main issue with them was that, ok, I get it that they wanted to make the world cater to their liking and become the ruling faction in that process, but was it necessary to be evil in order to acheive that? Well not really. It's like if you like heat, then you should go sit in front of a heater. But they wanted to force the heater, a pretty much immovable object, to move in front of them instead. It's tedious and dumb, because at the end of the day, you can achieve what you want without resorting to crime really. And having that goal does not justify your criminal behaviour either.
That all being said, I enjoyed Team Flare but especially I enjoyed Lysandre because he brought back that structure and ideology of Team Rocket, and it was much needed after the clusterf*ck of B/W
While I do not claim that his ideals and purpose were very good, I at least appreciate the fact that he again was a person not afraid to use Pokemon to reach his goal and showing us that
Pokemon can be friends even to villains, that they can overlook your flaws and that they will even follow you to their demise if they believe in you. It shows that Pokemon world can have many depths to it, and it can be all interesting and very touching.
