X, the main character of the story, suffering from depression, loneliness and trust issues.
So at the beginning of the story were introduced to this image, a boy who has been living in his room for some time, rarely going outside, suffering from depression and loneliness. This kid is named Xavier or "X" and he used to be a strong talented trainer at a very young age until the news media arrived, crowding him, confronting him with too many questions. This is where his fear of not just the news media but his inability to trust adults at first stems from, his childhood and we see that he's become a recluse several years later. His friends have tried getting him out of the house but it's not working and this is not only hurting his friendship with his childhood friends but also his Pokemon. It seems like he won't ever get out of the house until one fateful day, his town is attacked and destroyed by the stuff of legends, Xerneas and Yveltal. The group of childhood friends escape and this is where the story really begins.
So one of the things the story tells you early is just how unsafe the Kalos region is to these kids. They literally can't go to anyone for help and this doesn't stem from X's fear of adults actually, it stems from the kid's first encounter of an adult in the next town over at an inn, a seemingly friendly old lady who calls Team Flare, the villainous organization responsible for the destruction of their home town. This is actually a pretty cool way to set up the premise. It shows not only are the kids very vulnerable no matter where they go, even in small towns, Team Flare controls practically everything and this alone is why Adventures take on Team Flare is the most scary. They are basically Pokemon's answer to the Illuminati and the thing is we do actually see a more intimidating side of Team Flare even further through their leader, Lysandre.
Something is very wrong here...
So Lysandre is often portrayed in the games and anime as this visionary who wants to destroy the future but he's never really portrayed as intimidating or scary. This is where Pokemon Adventures comes in when the group of kids meet Prof. Sycamore at Lumiose City. I really like how Prof. Sycamore's portrayed here. The kids are having a hard time trusting adults from their last encounter with an adult and Prof. Sycamore seems to understand that these kids are a bit unsettled. He already wins most of their trust easily except for X and it's here that you really see Sycamore's character, he's trying to earn X's trust through befriending Pokemon. However as the story progresses, you really start to realize he's definitely one of the younger more naive Pokemon Professors not realizing his friend, Lysandre is the leader of Team Flare. In fact it's Sycamore who sends the kids to Lysandre so he can fix Trevor's Holo Caster when in actuality Lysandre comes there to retrieve the photographic evidence from Trevor that he took from the destruction of their hometown. It's here that you can really tell that Lysandre is quite the intimidating figure through Trevor's point of view alone. He realizes something is really wrong here when he notices that Lysandre looks awfully similar to the figure in the photo. What I like about this scene is that everything Trevor seems completely normal. Everyone is just having a good time, relaxing, from his friends to Lysandre but Trevor knows that something is very very very wrong. This "peaceful" scene has a very intimidating tone under it and you can see it through Trevor who is just stumbling in fear. It's this scene alone where Lysandre walks and acts like a friend that easily cements Lysandre as quite the intimidating villain in a few seconds and we only see this continue later on. Lysandre of course realizes what Trevor is doing and stops the group of friends with his Pokemon. You realize that the kids really can't do anything. You have the kids who are like beginner hero level and you have Lysandre, which you can clearly see through his own Pokemon, whose at master-class level. I like how Kusaka shows this huge difference in strength without words, just through the fact that the group of friends really can't do anything because of the plain obvious.
FRIENDSHIP MOMENT! DON'T YOU SCROLL PAST THIS PIC!
Luckily Diantha the Pokemon Champion herself comes to their rescue, warding off the smiling Lysandre like it's nothing and so continues the adventures of X, Y, Trevor, Tierno and Shauna, traveling across the countryside. So an obvious and important theme of Pokemon has always been friendship. The theme of friendship has been continually explored in Pokemon Adventures to a number of ways and here it's nothing really new but it understands what Pokemon is about and you can really see it through X's, Y's, Trevor's, Tierno's and Shauna's friendship through a number of adventures across the Kalos countryside such as going on a road-trip, enjoying a festival where they meet Eevee, having lunch in the Lost Hotel. This scene here is one of my favorite moments as there's actually a lot going on with this scene. You can really tell from this scene that these two girls are two long-time childhood friends. Not only are Tierno and Trevor relieved that the danger is over and everyone's safe but X here is actually smiling once more, a sign that his depression is slowly breaking down. And also who can forget Cassius! He is just the best Brock Pokemon has ever gotten since... well... Anime's Brock!
Emma, Cassius & Grace
So if your wondering why I'm saying Cassius is like Anime's Brock that's because he acts like a big brother or a father-figure to many of the kids, not just the five group of Adventurers but also to orphans including Emma. He essentially replaces Looker from the post-game episode of the XY games and the thing is he's not an Adventures-exclusive character. He actually appeared in the games as Kalos's very own PC admin and honestly I think most of us would've forgotten about Cassius if it weren't for the Pokemon Adventures manga giving him a huge role. Compared to Bill who's very work-focused, he's quite chill and down-to-earth. Another important character of course Emma. She is similar to her game counterpart but in the manga, there are some noticeable additions to her character. Emma works for Cassius, a PC admin, and not Looker. Unlike Looker from the games where Emma helps out in organizing paper work, Emma feels like a burden to Cassius. Unlike her friends, she has no clue how computers work and this is why she's set out to get a job, to feel useful. That's her character angle essentially, she wants to feel useful to Cassius which is why she's taken on the job to become Essentia later on in the story.
Y falls into depression due to her mother's disappearance, notice how she's sitting in the exact same way as X is in the previous image.
So one of the things you get by now is that Y's relationship with her mother, Grace, is pretty complicated. Early in the story, Y has become more and more distant from her mother's controlling ways, becoming more independent by focusing on becoming a Sky Trainer, not a Rhyhorn racer. You also understand from Grace's end that she's just doing what she believes is the best for her daughter and you can see why she's so confident in her own abilities, leading and organizing the kidnapped townfolk of Vaniville Town to escape Team Flare's grasp. While she's trying to escape, Y is actually falling into a deep depression after finding out her mother might be gone forever as the last thing Y told her mother was that she doesn't care if she comes back from her trip. She feels guilty for saying that and soon this depression turns into anger when a rival Sky Trainer, Yvette, berates her mother. You can tell that a lot is one Y's mind and she's supposed to be the big caring responsible sister-like figure here.
Xerosic and the Team Flare Scientists.
So Team Flare. Gonna be blunt here, I thought they were the weakest villains from the games and although they were easily the best villains in the anime, that's not really hard to do and I felt that Team Flare's storyline in the anime ended in a rushed manner. Then you have Pokemon Adventures take on Team Flare. They are easily the best and most awesome take on Team Flare... but that still does not change the fact that the Team Flare Scientists are just boring. Even Kusaka saw them nothing more as henchman to test the protagonist's battling skills. To get an idea how boring the Team Flare Scientists are, Xerosic, one of the weakest Lieutenants I've seen, is easily ten times more interesting than any then the Team Flare Scientists. So if the Team Flare Scientists are still as boring and generic as their anime and game counterparts, what makes this Team Flare so special? Behind-the-scenes, we see the leadership of Team Flare through three specific people. Lysandre, Xerosic and Malva. These three people alone are why Team Flare here is so interesting. Xerosic isn't really a mad scientist, he's literally just a regular scientist who wants to make new scientific discoveries which is why he's so loyal to Lysandre who showed him out Inkay evolves. However as the story progresses, we see that Lysandre grows more and more disappointed in Xerosic's failures, slowly devolving into a generic henchman and the thing is Xerosic kind of knows this and wants to do everything he can to not become some generic henchman. There's Malva, she is a powerful member of the Elite Four that is absolutely loyal to Lysandre and you can tell that Lysandre trusts her more than any Team Flare member, trusting her abilities with the task of hunting down a dangerously powerful legendary Pokemon. Finally there is Lysandre himself. Not only is he quite intimidating as mentioned before previously, you can see why so many Team Flare members are loyal to him. He shows confidence in himself and his minions, he stands tall with pride and pretty much never shows astonishment throughout almost the entire story which makes one particular scene very special later on. He represents the idea of a leader that the masses would blindly and gladly follow and this is something that greatly disappoints a rather interesting take on a character, AZ which I'll talk about later.
THIS IS THE PINNACLE OF POKEMON EPICNESS! I FREAKING DARE YOU TO ARGUE THAT THERE'S ANYTHING BETTER THAN THIS SCENE! I FREAKING DARE YOU!
So yeah, X, Y, Shauna, Tierno and Trevor meets lots of people, most notably Cassius, Emma, Prof. Sycamore the Gym Leaders, Elite Four, Mega Evolution Guru, Diantha and to a lot of fan's surprise, Green the very first rival of the Pokemon series. No one was expecting that but that was quite a surprise. So one of the more haunting scenes is how it displays the subject of death again. It's pretty interesting actually as the whole idea that "stone = death" came from the Pokemon anime and this is actually now sort of canon to an extant in the Pokemon XY series where if your life force is drained, your turned to stone be it through Yveltal's Oblivion Wing or the Ultimate Weapon itself and we actually see more of that in the XY chapter. Those Pokemon aren't breathing, they are actually dead or in the very least in a temporary state of death in the same way Ash was from the movie until they regain their life-force, just not through tears. Things get even more worrying for the XY crew, not only do they still have a somewhat difficult time trusting random strangers, Essentia can disguise herself as any person in a quick-instant. There's actually this one scene from the Pokemon Center that's quite a shocker, you can definitely sense a feeling of coldness there, that something is wrong and when the comic panel changes the view, wow. Essentia is actually quite a scary presence. Really wished they utilized her in the main story of the XY games. Things get more dire as Zygarde later appears, the strongest out of the three Aura members, and is later captured by Team Flare. Not only that but Team Flare has found a much larger source of life energy at the Pokemon Village where Mewtwo and Blaine reside peacefully. So at this point, if you don't care for spoilers. I think you can get an idea that Team Flare is actually very well-organized, that they need to be put to a stop and that's what the XY crew does soon, teaming up with Diantha and Green (rival) to put an end to Team Flare in a plan to save not just the Kalos region but the world. Lysandre's plan is pretty insane as it involves ending not just life on the Kalos region but also much of the world and the crew actually does pretty well against Team Flare's forces, Malva being a stand-out for being a challenge even for Diantha. It's when the expanded XY crew reaches to Lysandre that they reach problems and that is Lysandre's controlled Zygarde itself. Zygarde is a freaking beast of a Pokemon, defeating Mega Mewtwo, Mega Gardevoir and Mega Charizard Y like it was nothing. So what does X do when the odds seem against him. He turns the odds against Lysandre in one of the most logical loopholes in Mega Evolution. This is freaking ingenius and never really occurred to me before. He grabs the other Mega Evolution Rings and items and places them on him, turning his team of Pokemon into a team of Mega Evolutions! This is freaking in-genius for the simple fact that this does not actually break any rules. This isn't like how Pikachu shocked Onix or Nidoqueen where it makes no sense. This makes complete sense which is why this scene is just so insane! But of course there has to be some kind of downside to it and apparently, at least for this canon anyway, it's that the excessive usage of multiple Mega Evolutions is draining X's own life energy away.
"Why..."
And what I like about this is that even Lysandre, who is depicted as this outstanding confident leader, is taken by complete surprise, praising the man for what he was able to accomplish. Even with this however, Lysandre also plays smart too. He knows that Zygarde is kept busy by the Mega Evolutions, so he uses his own Pokemon to strike at the Mega Evolution user, quickly ending this battle until they are stopped by Mega Gardevoir and Mega Charizard Y. I like this final battle. There's just counter-strategy topped with counter-strategy topped with counter-strategy, a lot of things here make a lot of sense and what ironically becomes Lysandre's downfall is Zygarde himself. Zygarde is unable to support it's own weight as it's cells are falling apart and Lysandre falls to an ironic fate. The image above is quite powerful, we see just how loyal Malva is to the end, attempting to save Lysandre from an inescapable downfall. Lysandre has nothing to hold onto, he is free-falling to those sharp rocks and in an ironic twist, the next scene. It appears that Lysandre who kept talking about being the "chosen ones" is bleeding a lot, unable to move, hinting that he may have become a cripple. It's quite a shocking and ironic end to Lysandre who boasted power and skills of that of a leader. Lysandre himself can't process what happened, only saying "Why?" And this marks the end of Team Flare.
AZ is far more fleshed out in the manga that he is in the games, for starters he talks to Lysandre.
Easily the most interesting and mysterious character of the Kalos region, a character that anime fans really wanted to see is AZ and he is a INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT character to the Pokemon games universe. He is literally responsible for the creation of the Mega Evolution timeline, that's how important he is! While timelines really aren't a big thing in Pokemon Adventures, AZ still plays a very important rule as the king who created the Ultimate Weapon, Team Flare's ultimate goal, that ended a great war a long time ago in such a destructive way. This take on AZ is easily better than the games version for the simple fact that he's far more fleshed out. For starters, we actually see him interacting with Lysandre, talking to him, calling him a fool for repeating his very own actions that he saw as nothing more than mistakes. We see him actually join the party of childhood friends during the bus, surprising them on who he is. At the very end of the story, we see him explaining what he truly thinks of the people of the Kalos region. He puts it bluntly that he sees the people that X, Y, Trevor, Shauna and Tienro saved as nothing more than disappointments, people who blindly follow a single person without a second thought, and he proves this in how none of the people welcome them as heroes, just troublemakers. To the reader however, we've already seen more than that, how some Team Flare grunts don't even seem to care about Lysandre's plan to save others but instead are doing it for the money. The funny thing is you can see it on the look on the people's faces who are listening to AZ, the fear on those faces that says that he may be right. He wants to end it all with the Ultimate Weapon until Y reminds him that he would be no different from Team Flare. AZ is glad that Y convinced him otherwise and he finally makes peace with himself for all the destruction he caused long ago. To his surprise, the Pokemon that left him, Floette, finally comes back, embracing the Pokemon in tears as everyone smiles.
Everyone's Home.
The story ends with the group of friends coming home. It's quite a powerful scene above, so much has changed. Y doesn't hate her mother anymore, she reunites her with a loving embrace and X stands there at the back, still positioned as a bit of a loner, but this time he's smiling with his friends. X is no longer the depressed kid he was before and Y no longer is distant from her mother.