(hope this hasn't been done) Ranking the mainline villains

[the Alolan naturalist]

Hey everyone,
I thought it'd be fun for people to rank the main series villains and explain their choices if they want. Feel free to add spinoff villains too if you feel strongly about any of them. I guess this post is a SPOILER ALERT for people who haven't played through some of the games. Anyways, here's mine, from worst to best: (note: I'm considering Maxie and Archie from ORAS because they are more fleshed out than in RSE)
-Maxie: I haven't played OR, but from his cameo in AS and the pokemon generations series, I think he is really boring. He is portrayed as this stern, serious man, which is incongruous with his plan which is pretty dumb (evaporating freshwater would cause humanity to die off anyways).
-Cyrus: I know he is a popular villain, but I feel like his motivations are too philosophical for what the game does with them. I'd love to see a more mature, darker take on them. As presented, he seems like a sad edgelord to me, and I don't see how he would have a whole team following him.
-Lysandre: Another villain with a shockingly apocalyptic scheme that is somewhat philosophical. I find his motivations fascinating, but his story is kind of lackluster, despite an interesting (and insufficiently explored) friendship with Sycamore. Being a rich CEO also explains how he could get his whole operation started, something team aqua, magma and galactic don't really explain
-Archie: while still ridiculous, I find his plan less idiotic (I mean, flooding the world would actually provide habitat for water pokemon). Furthermore, I find his personality so much more enjoyable than Maxie's. he is boisterous and campy and wears a funny pirate outfit, and I like that because those games work better by not taking themselves too seriously
-Colress: More of a mad scientist than an outright villain, I find colress interesting because he is random and opportunistic, taking advantage of team plasma to advance his research and then moving on when he fails. I find it hilarious that he is just chilling in Alola as though he wasn't the culprit of a terrorist attack in Unova
- Giovanni: The OG villain. I don't even find his personality that amazing, but I love that he's just a mafia boss. He doesn't have lofty plans to change or end the world, he's just running a crime ring. He is a very believable villain, and the ?retcon? of Silver as his son adds depth to his character
-Lusamine (SUN). I am so impressed by how dark SM were willing to go with Lusamine. She is manipulative and obsessed and super abusive to her kids, and her villainous motivations are believable (if deranged). I am a huge fan of SM's plot, having higher stakes than team rocket's, but not as megalomaniacal as the other teams'. They tried to redeem her in USUM, but that was a huge character downgrade for her in my opinion. Her motivations didn't make as much sense.
-Ghetsis: I hesitated between Ghetsis and Lusamine for my top spot, but Ghetsis HAS to be the top villain. He also has that duplicitous nature and super abusive parent thing, but I like that he was shown playing the long game (raising N for years, building a huge castle in the shadows, pretending to be merely one of seven sages) and that he exploits a very legitimate question (the treatment of pokemon by trainers) to hide his plans (not to mention that he is a total cult leader, with the appropriate flair for theatrics) . I think he's the perfect bad guy.

Sorry if this was a bit long. What are your rankings?

 

[Aleimon Thimble]

-Maxie: I haven't played OR, but from his cameo in AS and the pokemon generations series, I think he is really boring. He is portrayed as this stern, serious man, which is incongruous with his plan which is pretty dumb (evaporating freshwater would cause humanity to die off anyways).

-Archie: while still ridiculous, I find his plan less idiotic (I mean, flooding the world would actually provide habitat for water pokemon). Furthermore, I find his personality so much more enjoyable than Maxie's. he is boisterous and campy and wears a funny pirate outfit, and I like that because those games work better by not taking themselves too seriously

I agree with most of the things you said, but not this part. Expanding the landmass to provide more living space for people and animals actually makes a lot of sense. In fact, in the Netherlands we have created an entire artificial province for this reason. Something similar would totally work in the Pokemon world. Although Maxie's plan to get a volcano to explode is dumb, his end goal is not exactly villainous. A less extreme version of Maxie would not be a villain, but a respected civil engineer who would create a large new island with living space, battle facilities, Pokemon reservations, et cetera. Maybe that way Groudon would have even obeyed him...

In contrast, expanding the sea even further does not make a lot of sense. Not only would it decrease living space for humans in an island nation that does not exactly have a shortage of water, it would also decrease biodiversity in the Hoenn region, since there's only a handful of different sea Pokemon to obtain. Yeah maybe you would attract more exotic fish species to Hoenn, but what would you sacrifice?

 

[the Alolan naturalist]

I agree with most of the things you said, but not this part. Expanding the landmass to provide more living space for people and animals actually makes a lot of sense.

I would definitely agree that expanding landmass is not a bad thing in and of itself (well, there's always the environmental impact I guess) but the reason I think his plan is dumb is that Groudon doesn't just create land, at least in the ORAS storyline, but rather evaporates water by making the sunlight more intense. This would cause a life-threatening drought on land too.

I also think Archie's plan is dumb mind you, I just figured that this dumbness could be explained by the idea that he cares more about water pokemon, since he is team aqua after all, but I agree that it's still not great. Humans could still survive by going up the mountainous areas, but for sure it would cause a lot of issues. Writing this, I just realised that both Groudon's drought and Kyogre causing the water levels to rise are two main effects of real world global climate change!
If I'm honest though, I only rated them differently because I think Archie is way more fun than maxie ahah.

 

[colours]

I feel like Cyrus was pretty much the best villain that the main series really ever had. He was legitimately scary, outright unnerving and just.... dark. Keep in mind that his whole plan was to become a god, and he was completely serious about it, too.

Archie and Maxie come second here because they actually both achieved what they set to do. That is -- they were steering the world into a path of utter destruction by both drought and rain simultaneously -- and if it wasn't for the player's intervention, the whole world would've likely been destroyed. RSE really painted a clear picture of what would happen if a main series villain really got what they wanted and the consequences of it.

Everyone else was... okay, I guess. I honestly didn't think a whole lot of the other main villains really left that much of an impression on me. Lusamine is ok, but all she wanted to do is play with Nihilego or whatever in Ultra Space so there's that. Lysandre is actually pretty dark, but the general sloppiness of XY's plot dampened his ambitions, I feel.

 

[w1f1pa55w0rd]

1. Cyrus: I think a lot of people think Cyrus should take the top spot, and I think it's well-deserved. Cyrus is the darkest villain in Pokemon because you can actually understand what he wants, but the reasons for his intentions aren't really too clear. There's a house in Sunnyshore where you can find Cyrus' family and stuff. Also, his goal was so close to being accomplished, and in the end, he technically got what he wanted, because he was stuck in the Distortion World. He was also really dark and was so nonchalant, it got creepy.

2. Ghetsis: Ghetsis was a really fun villain to interact with, and though his motives were really cliched, his behavior and character made up for it. Also, his resurgence in BW2 also gave some cool backstory to his relation with N, and he was overall just a really dope villain. What I found interesting was that he was willing to wait for years to see his plan unwind. He has to be one of the smartest villains there is.

3. Giovanni: In my opinion, probably the smartest villain (aside from Colress), because this guy was in it for the money and nothing more. But the plot of the Kanto games (sans LPGE) made his character pretty bland, and though his intentions were the most realistic and mundane, the aspect of a criminal overlord was pretty cool. Also, the fact that he was a gym leader made everything so much cooler, because playing it for the first time, I never expected something like that to happen.


4. Lysandre: It was obvious Lysandre would become evil, and again, his goals were really cliched, but his motives were interesting. The idea of eternal beauty was a first for a Pokemon game, expressed so overtly. However, I felt that Team Flare was a bit too zany and kind of stupid. But yeah. Lysandre was a genocidal maniac, but only in hindsight. It felt much more lighthearted when you played the game, but in retrospect, he was going to quite literally kill everything.

5. Colress: The most hidden of all the villains (IMO), he was the smartest and most intelligent of them all. Ghetsis was the face of Team Plasma, but Colress was the true genius. He put up with the ambitions of Ghetsis for his own gains, and never truly cared about what Team Plasma was trying to achieve. His general demeanor and respect for the player was also a refreshing touch to the usual "oh, you're a stupid kid" statements.

6. Guzma: I know, he should've been higher on the list, but with the other villains, there's an element of nostalgia, but with Guzma, there's not too much to remember. I think that though Team Skull did reflect its theme of stupid, petty street thugs, Guzma too fell under that category. While most other villains were very intelligent, I felt Guzma was... not so. In fact, Plumeria seemed far smarter than him. Then again, Lusamine was the main evil person, while Guzma was kind of a scapegoat.

7. Archie/Maxie: I combine these two because I saw them as similar. In both games, they basically did the same stuff but had different dialogues and actions that differentiated them. Archie was unique and interesting, and while Maxie was the intelligent silent villain, I feel there were others that did it better than him, such as Cyrus.

8. Lusamine: I see a lot of people like Lusamine, for whatever reason, but I don't. Why? Because it was obvious she was the real villain from the start, and that the Aether Foundation was a scam. Also, I hate Lillie and the fact that the plot revolved around her deranged mother with very questionable and dubious goals made everything really stupid, because the reason she was doing all of this was also pretty weird. Also, she cryogenically froze a bunch of Pokemon, and the exact reasons for this were also absent. Honestly, I just think she became psychotic and deranged after she lost her husband.

9. Archer: Not too much is known about him, because he barely appears, and the fight with him wasn't really too hard.

 

[Kieran]

Lillie haters, look at the end

10. Lillie: Yeah, yeah some people like her, but she's arguably the worst of the villains of the Pokemon universe, I think we should let her fall off the bridge in the starting to save the creators some trouble of erasing her from existence when the riots start, and fans demand that she's removed from their memory.

Seriously, stop being childish and get over the hate on a bunch of pixels, I don't see why it is even necessary to even bring your hate on an anime character on unrelated threads on PC.

 

[tokyodrift]

Lillie haters, look at the end

10. Lillie: Yeah, yeah some people like her, but she's arguably the worst of the villains of the Pokemon universe, I think we should let her fall off the bridge in the starting to save the creators some trouble of erasing her from existence when the riots start, and fans demand that she's removed from their memory.

How do you even classify Lillie as a villain though? She literally hated battles and couldn't do anything for herself. You're reaching really hard and missing....

 

[w1f1pa55w0rd]

Okay, okay sorry. T'was meant to be a joke...

 

[Rivvon]

I find it fascinating that multiple people are considering both Ghetsis and Colress villains to be judged separately, but not N! I think that in and of itself makes him the best villain the series has--because he doesn't fit into any mold and in some cases people don't even think of him as a villain because of his moral ambiguity. In general, the gen 5 villains play off each other perfectly, reflecting the games' themes and offering legitimate complexity of motive and overall character that none of the other villains provide. They are by far the most successful series villains.

As for the worst, part of me wants to say Giovanni because of his simplicity, but he at the very least is successful in said simplicity: he is a straightforward villain, with an easy-to-digest motive that doesn't cause any issues within the plot (no matter how barebones) of his games. In other words, boring is not always bad (although overused is a whole other issue). I'm not actually as impressed with Cyrus as a lot of people above seem to be, but similarly to Giovanni, he poses no issues within his games, and his relationship with Saturn has a lot of potential to be expanded in hypothetical remakes. Maxie and Archie are much-improved in ORAS, and although their goals are wonky, their change of heart and expressive quirks make them enjoyable. Guzma is ultimately held back by the massive narrative shortcomings of SM/USUM, but like Maxie and Archie is enjoyable despite this.

It really comes down to Lysandre and Lusamine for worst. Both have asinine motives and poorly-handled resolutions. But I have to say Lusamine is the worst, for several reasons:

1. Lusamine felt like she was taking way too many pages out of Ghetsis's book: she's an abusive parent who tried to groom her children for her own benefit and pulled a plot-twist on the player by turning out to be the bad guy all along. But where Ghetsis had appropriate buildup and motive for these points, Lusamine had none. Which ties into
2. Lysandre's motives, as shaky as they are, are still more sensible than Lusamine's. Not only does he not feel like a rebranding of an older character, but wanting to wipe the world clean in order to stop crime and poverty is far more understandable as a villainous motive than "I think the aliens are prettier than my kids and despite being the leader of a multi-billion-dollar high-tech company dedicated to keeping Pokémon safe I'm not intelligent enough to understand that letting the aliens run amok will cause harm to the Pokémon I'm dedicated to protecting."
3. SM Lusamine and USUM Lusamine are basically two different characters, and both are narrative failures. USUM Lusamine's motives are far, far, far more sensible--while playing, I was actually filled with anticipation that her potential as a villain would finally be realized! But then the awfully-paced, no-build-up-whatsoever climax occurred and the entire game fell to shambles. She was this close to being the evil villain with unique motives that she should have been, but instead made a fool of herself for nothing as no character got a resolution to their character arc. Lysandre's character may have been filled with contradictions, but at least his narrative blunder only occurred once.

In shorthand: Lysandre certainly had his shortcomings, but he was far closer to being a fantastic villain than Lusamine, and I appreciate his attempt to be unique more than SM/USUM's attempt to essentially poorly retell the gen 5 plot with some elements of gen 4's Spooky Space! and an Arceus reference added in.

 

[the Alolan naturalist]

It really comes down to Lysandre and Lusamine for worst. Both have asinine motives and poorly-handled resolutions. But I have to say Lusamine is the worst, for several reasons:

1. Lusamine felt like she was taking way too many pages out of Ghetsis's book: she's an abusive parent who tried to groom her children for her own benefit and pulled a plot-twist on the player by turning out to be the bad guy all along. But where Ghetsis had appropriate buildup and motive for these points, Lusamine had none. Which ties into
2. Lysandre's motives, as shaky as they are, are still more sensible than Lusamine's. Not only does he not feel like a rebranding of an older character, but wanting to wipe the world clean in order to stop crime and poverty is far more understandable as a villainous motive than "I think the aliens are prettier than my kids and despite being the leader of a multi-billion-dollar high-tech company dedicated to keeping Pokémon safe I'm not intelligent enough to understand that letting the aliens run amok will cause harm to the Pokémon I'm dedicated to protecting."
3. SM Lusamine and USUM Lusamine are basically two different characters, and both are narrative failures. USUM Lusamine's motives are far, far, far more sensible--while playing, I was actually filled with anticipation that her potential as a villain would finally be realized! But then the awfully-paced, no-build-up-whatsoever climax occurred and the entire game fell to shambles. She was this close to being the evil villain with unique motives that she should have been, but instead made a fool of herself for nothing as no character got a resolution to their character arc. Lysandre's character may have been filled with contradictions, but at least his narrative blunder only occurred once.

In shorthand: Lysandre certainly had his shortcomings, but he was far closer to being a fantastic villain than Lusamine, and I appreciate his attempt to be unique more than SM/USUM's attempt to essentially poorly retell the gen 5 plot with some elements of gen 4's Spooky Space! and an Arceus reference added in.

This is really interesting, if anything because it's pretty much the opposite of my reasoning lol. I enjoy reading completely different takes. To me Lusamine's greatness as a character in Sun lies in the fact that she could be a real person, who because of trauma (her husband's disappearance, which coincided with her sighting of nihilego) became dangerously obsessed and fixated on one thing. She is abusive and manipulative, but not in the same way as Ghetsis. Ghetsis used flattery and hypocritically put N on a pedestal whereas Lusamine treated her kids as an afterthought, kind of, it feels. I don't even think of her as a villain in USUM, I feel like they set her up as one and then reveal she's actually "good", probably playing off of our expectations from SM. I do agree that plot it was really poorly executed.

While I thought his obsession with Beauty was cool, I feel like Lysandre is less original because he's yet another "let's awake/capture the box legendary to change/remake the world" which was also a feature of gen 3, 4 and 5's plot.

 

[Rivvon]

This is really interesting, if anything because it's pretty much the opposite of my reasoning lol. I enjoy reading completely different takes. To me Lusamine's greatness as a character in Sun lies in the fact that she could be a real person, who because of trauma (her husband's disappearance, which coincided with her sighting of nihilego) became dangerously obsessed and fixated on one thing. She is abusive and manipulative, but not in the same way as Ghetsis. Ghetsis used flattery and hypocritically put N on a pedestal whereas Lusamine treated her kids as an afterthought, kind of, it feels. I don't even think of her as a villain in USUM, I feel like they set her up as one and then reveal she's actually "good", probably playing off of our expectations from SM. I do agree that plot it was really poorly executed.

While I thought his obsession with Beauty was cool, I feel like Lysandre is less original because he's yet another "let's awake/capture the box legendary to change/remake the world" which was also a feature of gen 3, 4 and 5's plot.

She could be real, but so could every other villain. Environmental extremists exist in real life; people who are willing to do anything for money exist in real life; people who use words, fear-mongering, and brute force to gain control over others exist in real life. The important thing is whether or not it makes the story good. I didn't like Lillie, so why should I help her? If her mom locked herself up in the Discount Distortion World, well, good! That meant it would be less likely the UBs would continue to escape, not to mention with how awful she is towards her kids, she kind of deserves it. If anything, we should have been cleaning up the UBs that were already running amok in Alola rather than chasing after Lusamine and waiting until the post-game to look for them. How convenient that this extraterrestrial threat just waited patiently for us to complete the Pokémon League before deciding they needed to destroy the region... (Although admittedly this last point is a problem of the story progression rather than of Lusamine, but I do feel it takes away from her impact as the games' villain.)

If somehow wanting to obtain the legendary in some capacity makes the plots "too samey," then the same applies to SM Lusamine: Nihilego may not appear on the box, but Lusamine wanted it (and even combined with it) and narratively the UBs hold enough destructive power to be on-par with legendaries. Even further in regards to comparisons, Lusamine's obsession with beauty is another thing that I felt made her unoriginal. Her obsession with everything beautiful was an excuse to not like her children (who look exactly like her "beautiful" self and her "beloved" husband) but didn't tie into anything else, so it comes off as just that: an excuse, a shoehorned convenience, rather than anything meaningful. Whereas Lysandre not only did it first, but he desired a metaphorically beautiful world which branched into his motive to return the world to a clean slate as it was becoming ugly, "tainted" by bad people.

I'm not inherently against similar beats being reused, but they need to be done so in a way that is fresh and beneficial to the narrative as a whole. Lusamine's awful treatment of her children makes her compelling in a bubble, because even if you don't care about her kids at all, what she does is still detestable and you don't want to see her get off scott-free. But the whole point of an antagonist is to directly oppose the protagonist as they try to resolve their conflict, but she's really only acting as an antagonist to Lillie, not the player. I'd say this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, issue with SM overall, as it causes a huge disconnect: why are you even bothering with this when the region at large--and perhaps even the world--faces an even bigger, more immediate threat? Lillie's character arc is supposed to lead to her becoming independent, but the player still has to do every little thing for her until five seconds before the credits roll and Lillie finally decides she will leave on her own to find a cure for her mom. If anything, Lille should have dealt with Lusamine on her own, or at least attempted to before dragging the player along. Lusamine's success as a villain, and SM's plot as a whole, relies far too heavily on how much the player enjoys the inept and intrusive Lillie, but even for Lillie fans, Lusamine's character still leaves a lot to be desired as her "character development" is far too abrupt and out-of-nowhere, as Lillie hasn't done anything to warrant the change of heart--it's the player who saved the day. It really doesn't help that she had much, much stronger potential in USUM that was completely wasted.