6th Gen Lysandre

Do you remember Lysandre when playing Pokemon X and Y? What do you think about him?

I wonder if he is a good guy or a bad guy?

Lysandre right now is one of the most underdeveloped villains in Pokemon to date. He wishes to kill all humans except for his own team because... resources? He cries about the poor Pokemon he has to kill to achieve his murderous dreams while completely failing to realize his team is filled to the brim with bad people and petty thieves, and apparently in the anime he's researching Mega Evolution and Zygarde for some reason.

Unfortunately those are pretty much all the details we get on him, and as a result he's one of if not the most mishandled villain in Pokemon history. He's obviously a madman and hates humans, and either doesn't care that his team is morally bankrupt or is oblivious to it, and he likes Pokemon and is friends with both the Champion and Professor Sycamore. That's all the major character traits he has, and we never get a good reason for him wanting to kill all the humans (really? You're gonna murder everyone over a lack of resources, a thing that has never been an issue in Pokemon EVER?) His genocide attempts happen at the last minute without much foreshadowing, and he's still treated sympathetically even though he just tried to murder everything on Earth. He even gets to use Mega Evolution even though it's supposedly a rare thing that hasn't been used in hundreds of years.

The only good traits he has is that he has two really rad battle themes.

mew_nani said:

Lysandre right now is one of the most underdeveloped villains in Pokemon to date. He wishes to kill all humans except for his own team because... resources? He cries about the poor Pokemon he has to kill to achieve his murderous dreams while completely failing to realize his team is filled to the brim with bad people and petty thieves, and apparently in the anime he's researching Mega Evolution and Zygarde for some reason.

Unfortunately those are pretty much all the details we get on him, and as a result he's one of if not the most mishandled villain in Pokemon history. He's obviously a madman and hates humans, and either doesn't care that his team is morally bankrupt or is oblivious to it, and he likes Pokemon and is friends with both the Champion and Professor Sycamore. That's all the major character traits he has, and we never get a good reason for him wanting to kill all the humans (really? You're gonna murder everyone over a lack of resources, a thing that has never been an issue in Pokemon EVER?) His genocide attempts happen at the last minute without much foreshadowing, and he's still treated sympathetically even though he just tried to murder everything on Earth. He even gets to use Mega Evolution even though it's supposedly a rare thing that hasn't been used in hundreds of years.

The only good traits he has is that he has two really rad battle themes.

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I disagree, google how many environmentalists, animal rights activists and the like have blown up oil refineries, whaling ships, oil pipelines, spiked trees, etc, etc, etc because of what they want and actively or almost killing literally dozens, sometimes hundreds of people for their own wants, sounds literally exactly like Lysandre's motives. They wanted something wiped out no matter how many human lives were lost and that's really the only motivation they had, just like Lysandre, except his was on a global scale. And let's be honest, how long would it take any of us to find some angsty teen's reddit espousing how all humans are the worst thing to happen to the planet and should be wiped from the face of the earth? Not very! :D So from a story telling perspective, yeah, it wasn't very fleshed out, but in real life there's not really much more to it than "OMG! This cute little fox has to live 5 miles down the road from where it wants to live, LETS BLOW UP THE OIL REFINERY WITH 250 WORKERS INSIDE!!"

Howmander said:

I disagree, google how many environmentalists, animal rights activists and the like have blown up oil refineries, whaling ships, oil pipelines, spiked trees, etc, etc, etc because of what they want and actively or almost killing literally dozens, sometimes hundreds of people for their own wants, sounds literally exactly like Lysandre's motives. They wanted something wiped out no matter how many human lives were lost and that's really the only motivation they had, just like Lysandre, except his was on a global scale. And let's be honest, how long would it take any of us to find some angsty teen's reddit espousing how all humans are the worst thing to happen to the planet and should be wiped from the face of the earth? Not very! :D So from a story telling perspective, yeah, it wasn't very fleshed out, but in real life there's not really much more to it than "OMG! This cute little fox has to live 5 miles down the road from where it wants to live, LETS BLOW UP THE OIL REFINERY WITH 250 WORKERS INSIDE!!"

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Lysandre isn't an environmental terrorist though. Team Aqua and Team Magma are environmental terror groups, and both concentrate their efforts on expanding the sea and expanding the land respectively, with both doing so because they believe it'll better the environment. Team Flare doesn't focus on that; they even sabotage an environmentally friendly power plant.

To my knowledge, Lysandre hates people because he attempted to be generous to people who took advantage of his wealth. His view actually seems more communistic in nature, if that makes any sense; he thinks there aren't enough resources for everyone because some people are poor and some are rich, and his brilliant idea to fix this is just to kill all the humans so only his team remains alive. The problem is that this is Pokemon, where actual resource scarcity isn't much of an issue, and he's still treated sympathetically despite trying to murder everyone and almost succeeding.

mew_nani said:

Lysandre isn't an environmental terrorist though. Team Aqua and Team Magma are environmental terror groups, and both concentrate their efforts on expanding the sea and expanding the land respectively, with both doing so because they believe it'll better the environment. Team Flare doesn't focus on that; they even sabotage an environmentally friendly power plant.

To my knowledge, Lysandre hates people because he attempted to be generous to people who took advantage of his wealth. His view actually seems more communistic in nature, if that makes any sense; he thinks there aren't enough resources for everyone because some people are poor and some are rich, and his brilliant idea to fix this is just to kill all the humans so only his team remains alive. The problem is that this is Pokemon, where actual resource scarcity isn't much of an issue, and he's still treated sympathetically despite trying to murder everyone and almost succeeding.

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You're being WAY too literal. Animal rights groups also aren't (necessarily) environmentalist groups, but they have been known to do the same thing. Real life isn't like the cast system of a Final Fantasy game where only this group will blow something up but that group won't ever do it because they're a different group. I was simply making the comparison that other groups have about as much motivation as Lysandre did in the game. Just because Lysandre isn't an environmentalist doesn't mean he wouldn't also come to the same conclusion of wiping out people because the world would be better without them.

Howmander said:

You're being WAY too literal. Animal rights groups also aren't (necessarily) environmentalist groups, but they have been known to do the same thing. Real life isn't like the cast system of a Final Fantasy game where only this group will blow something up but that group won't ever do it because they're a different group. I was simply making the comparison that other groups have about as much motivation as Lysandre did in the game. Just because Lysandre isn't an environmentalist doesn't mean he wouldn't also come to the same conclusion of wiping out people because the world would be better without them.

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I get what you mean, assailing targets because they hate humans and ultimately want to do them in, but in game it felt more like a shocking swerve. Team Flare was just a goofy team wearing gaudy suits and doing Team Rocket things up until the last third of the game when Lysandre just outright tells everyone he's going to murder them all and nobody but you and your friends try to stop him. He's not like Cyrus or Ghetsis where you can tell immediately something's a bit off; he's just all nice and friendly up until the end and then he starts bawling because all the Pokemon have to die so he can kill all the humans. He doesn't come off as a crazy man hell bent on erasing everything, or a heartless monster intent on ruling the world. He comes off as a bit of a crybaby to be honest, and because his stated goal is to kill everyone you can't laugh at it like you could Maxie or Archie when they summon their respective legendaries and THEN realize they slipped up. It might have helped a little bit if he was given more character development and time but instead they spend that time trying to make him sympathetic and say he had a point. As it is, I can't really take him seriously, but I can't just laugh it off like I could with other evil teams because of the fact that he tried to murder everyone with even less justification than the last guy who tried to end the world.

Speaking of the game trying to say he had a point... In retrospect I can't help but notice that the main game seemed to revolve around that concept of resource scarcity. Earlier in the game the former king of Shabboneau Castle is revered as a good person because he gave away all he had, but the current owner of Parfum Palace is seen as greedy and selfish by your friend just for having a fee to visit his castle, even though he's actually a decent if scatterbrained guy that panics out over losing his Pokemon and throws you a fireworks show for finding it. And then at the end Professor Sycamore pities Lysandre and mentions that there may not be enough resources for everyone in the future. My main issue with it is that in general there doesn't seem to be any resource scarcity apparent anywhere in the Pokemon world. Even in Orre, perhaps the poorest canon region, people seem to have a somewhat decent standard of living and an even higher level of technology than we do. The main problem there isn't a lack of space or food, but Team Snagem and Cypher pretty much owning the region and corrupting Pokemon into heartless creatures. Kanto and Johto mostly lack clear cut paths and are rich in areas that are almost completely wild, but there doesn't seem to be a lack of food or jobs anywhere. People are able to fly around the world with the aid of a Pokemon, and several Pokemon produce food and drink on their own like Chansey and Miltank, and the world in general seems to be much more rural and much less populated than ours. Why is resource scarcity a major problem all of a sudden, even though we havn't seen a region affected by it yet?

mew_nani said:

Why is resource scarcity a major problem all of a sudden, even though we havn't seen a region affected by it yet?

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It may simply be that the writers of the game wanted to reference the problem of finite resources in the real world, even if it seemed at odds with the rest of the canon as you say. Perhaps they reasoned such a breach is a small price to pay for getting the player to think about the subject at least.

Elysieum said:

It may simply be that the writers of the game wanted to reference the problem of finite resources in the real world, even if it seemed at odds with the rest of the canon as you say. Perhaps they reasoned such a breach is a small price to pay for getting the player to think about the subject at least.

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Do we really need Pokemon games to address real world problems like this, especially when it's done this badly? There might have been an aesop in here about being nice to others but the issue of resource scarcity is a huge issue that most kids are not going to understand, and since a lot of people just skipped the story so they could get to the post game any lesson they were trying to teach was lost on most. It's especially bad that they just boiled resource scarcity to "look this guy has more stuff than everyone else, he's bad for not giving it away" and "humans are bad because they have too much stuff and won't share it with other people and they don't care about the environment." Resource scarcity in the real world is caused by a large amount of factors including but not limited to isolation, oppressive government, climate, lack of jobs, crime syndicates and natural disasters. You can't just boil that down to it being people being stingy with their stuff because that isn't really true. If they were going to focus on an aesop it really shouldn't have been that specific one.

Much like Cyrus in DP, Lysandre was the hero the Pokemon series deserved, but you, the player, destroyed his only way to prevent the world from creating another Team Rocket or Team Plasma, thus making you the true villain in XY. It's like how Game Theory treats Bowser as a misunderstood being and paint Mario and Peach as the true villains.

Pinkie-Dawn said:

Much like Cyrus in DP, Lysandre was the hero the Pokemon series deserved, but you, the player, destroyed his only way to prevent the world from creating another Team Rocket or Team Plasma, thus making you the true villain in XY. It's like how Game Theory treats Bowser as a misunderstood being and paint Mario and Peach as the true villains.

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If Lysandre and Cyrus are the heroes Pokemon needs maybe we should just ban heroes. XD

An egomaniac that felt awfully tame considering he was following Cyrus and Ghetsis.

The Gen 6 story just seemed woefully underdeveloped compared to Gen 5's which had a genuine backstory to the villain's plot and presented Ghetsis as extremely unlikeable and wicked.

I loved Lysandre as he was meant to be the villian but he was kinda like N in some ways where he let his ideals show him the way eventhough N relized his mistakes Lysandre never did and sought to make his own beautiful world. I kinda agree with some of Lysandres views and such although he kinda seems like a modern day extremist with perhaps alittle bit too much craziness haha

I never bothered to remember much about Lysandre and why should I if the creators clearly wanted you to focus on the region and exploring with your friends. He honestly felt more like a joke that was supposed to be a self-parody of Pokemon villains. He kind of has some extremist tendencies like Archie and Maxie, he's a bit naive like N, has a sketchy scientist working for him like Cyrus and is obviously evil to everyone except to Professor Sycamore which is just like Ghetsis.

The idea behind Lysandre was solid, but the execution was horrible. In fact, all of Team Flare was like that (you mean to tell me that a member of the Elite 4 is part of the Villain Team and that has no impact on the plot whatsoever? Okay, whatever). For one, the design was a little...well, it wasn't as serious as his motivations which barely ever felt like a threat half the time. The ending plot with him and the Ultimate Weapon finally seemed to raise the stakes, but...it wasn't that difficult to stop him; Hell, when Shauna is instrumental in stopping your villainous plot, you're not that good of a villain.

I loved everything about Lysandre- His motives, design, goal etc.

killing people and pokemon makes you a villain anyone who thinks otherwise have some serious issuses

I hate his hair.

Also it was reaaaallly obvious that he was the bad guy as soon as you met him - like even more so than Cyrus in DPPt. I guess they weren't really trying to keep it a surprise, but that's something I wish Game Freak would do more often.
Anyways, I agree with what's been said above that he was pretty underdeveloped and his motivations didn't make sense. He's a cardboard villain.

Rainbow said:

I hate his hair.

Also it was reaaaallly obvious that he was the bad guy as soon as you met him - like even more so than Cyrus in DPPt. I guess they weren't really trying to keep it a surprise, but that's something I wish Game Freak would do more often.
Anyways, I agree with what's been said above that he was pretty underdeveloped and his motivations didn't make sense. He's a cardboard villain.

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I agree with all the points above. I didn't particularly like his design either; it wasn't terrible, it just wasn't massively appealing.

I think in regards to Cyrus, his main flaw was his development - a great villain always has a hint of reliability to them which allows the user some premise of likability; for me, Lysandre didn't have this unfortunately. I also agree with the above that his motivation seemingly stemmed from nowhere - because he wants to make the world beautiful? Okay... Why? Hopefully this will be filled in with Pokémon Z which is surely around the corner, but at the moment, he's a very lackluster villain for me.

i like him though i agree him and his whole team need more backstory and development.

i feel like his thoughts on the world made perfect sense to me. he thought people were ugly and greedy and tainted the world, he wanted to make a world without most humans in the hopes it would be pure once again. i guess i feel like people are ruining the world myself so i can sympathize with him in that sense. but unfortunately he was a bit of a hypocrite and failed to see how he and his members were also greedy/somewhat self centered.