6th Gen Lysandre: The Hero Kalos Deserves

[Pinkie-Dawn]

I've grown a fascination towards Lysandre's goal in Pokémon XY. I don't think he would be considered as a villain but more of a tragic hero and here's why. Lysandre loves his world and its beauty, and he was disgusted on how it's being destroyed by human greed, giving birth to Team Rocket and Team Plasma, when the population grows and wars breaking out. He knew that his limitations as a human wasn't enough to end it, so he had no choice to resort to using the ultimate weapon to destroy/immortalize every living being on the planet, save for a few, in order to end all wars and bring the planet's beauty back its natural state. This is a reflection to what's currently happening to our world in terms of natural resources and the ongoing wars over them. This means that Lysandre was the real hero this whole time, and you the player ruined his goal, making you the true villain of the game, for you have doomed the Pokémon world for another war in the near future and the rise of another team organization for the next main Pokémon games. Do you believe Lysandre was the hero Kalos deserves, but not the one it needs right now or do you think I'm crazy for considering an antagonist a hero and going way too deep on his morals?

 

[Nah]

I agree that Lysandre is a tragic hero/antihero (whichever is the correct term). All he really wanted was to save the world from humanity's destructive side, which sounds like a hero type thing to me, but what makes him not fit the usual definition of a hero is the whole genocide thing. I wouldn't say that the player character is the "true villain" though. It's more like a conflict of two opposite ideals, neither of which is necessarily wrong.

But man, I just wish that Game Freak would've actually developed this part of the story; it had potential to be the best Pokemon story to date.....and then they dropped the ball....so hard.

 

[mew_nani]

I think you're suffering from Stockholm Syndrome a bit. The guy was a lunatic who hated humans for some unknown reason. I mean sure he hated people like Team Rocket but that's not enough justification for committing mass genocide on the planet. He was really deluded, thinking by putting everyone out of their misery and leaving just his team alive it would make everything better. His team goes around causing problems for everyone; it's a safe bet they'd do the same if they were the only ones around. But he's still just a flat character with some vague motivation for killing everyone, a lesser Cyrus. I'd feel a bit more sorry for him if his entire character couldn't fit in just two meager sentences.

 

[Cerberus87]

From my travel journal:

Lysandre's motives remind me of that recent movie, Elysium. Resources are limited, so let's get rid of all the ugly people in the world and build a new utopia. It's a classic theme, and it's understandable why Lysandre does that, if you read his notes in the labs. Interestingly enough, there are quite a lot of people like that in the world. People who view the poor as beggars who hold back the progress of the gifted ones, people who want to get rid of the filth (criminals, addicts, mental patients)... And these people, unlike Lysandre, sometimes aren't recognized as villains by the society. I bet many people would like for a Lysandre to exist so that he builds a weapon that magically wipes out all the undesirable people from the world.

I don't think Lysandre was right because, if you compare with the real world, you can't say population is a concern yet. There are resources for everyone. What happens is that there are billionaires eating surplus sharing a planet with poor starving people. That's a problem of distribution. I sincerely don't believe that, if the poor had access to a share of the rich's money, there would be a problem in supply.

Lysandre's POV is shared by many people in the Western world who think the poor are lazy and don't want to work for their achievements. In every Western society, and in some Eastern ones, too, there's always that group that's viewed as the "scapegoat", without whom the problems of the country would magically disappear. In the USA and Western Europe it's the black people, Latino and African immigrants, in my country it's the northern people, and so on. The thing is, no one wants to be poor. The poor aren't poor because they are a lazy bunch who enjoy living in poverty. Heck, you can bet poor people work harder than rich capitalists more often than not.

GF saw this and were very clever in their story choice. This shows they pay attention to the world around them. The execution wasn't so great, but the underlying themes were. Lysandre is a rich character, but not one I sympathize with, because he ends up simplifying things and he doesn't believe in mankind.

 

[Xairmo]

Mass genocide is not an option a hero would consider. Furthermore, it was just outright conceited with a nougatty center of hypocrisy. Lysandre was so concerned about war and preserving the world - stopping these big companies from taking all the resources and their governments that wage wars over them. But wait, wasn't he was the head of a, presumably, multi-billion dollar corporation. He is the 1%. He's the type of person most responsible for the current state of things, and he still had the audacity to think he was a "savior" sent to start some sort of New World Order. And to achieve this goal he started the very same kind of criminal organization/team that he so despised. He was like the personification of "Do as I say, not as I do". I think AZ is much more the character archetype you were describing. He sought peace, and for a time fit the cookie cutter of the hero - but the loss of his beloved companion blinded his judgement and led him astray. The fact that after wandering for thousands(?) of years until he'd made ammends and his companion returned to him is even more proof that he fits the role.

 

[KostK2Boss]

Man, these threads keep popping up! It's not like I have real-life stuff to do today, so I might as well reply.

I just replayed Pokemon Y and I carefully read through the plot this time, to make sure I didn't go hard on Lysandre the first time. As stated above, the whole genocide thing comes out of nowhere and it totally conflicts the comedic hijinks nature Team Flare had presented thus far and also the overall cute and fluffy tone of the whole game. It tries to throw a dark and edgy twist at the end just because Black and White had a darker plot, except those games had a more consistent tone all the way through.

Now I get that the world of Pokemon looks cute on the outside but actually hides some pretty messed up stuff, so it could be possible that corruption, poverty and unemployment do exist. However, they can't exist in such a large scale, that mass genocide is the only possible solution, otherwise it would have shown. But wait! Lysandre himself admits that while the world is not Sodom and Gomora right now, he is certain it will become eventually, so he thought he might as well kill everyone now to save us some time. That's a really grown-up thing to do, right? Do something cruel and irreversible based solely on a hunch?

And you can't even use the typical anti-hero defense that he is so blinded by his ideals that he doesn't see what he's become. There's metaphorically blind and then there's clinically blind. Did he even spend 5 seconds interviewing those idiot Grunts of his before he said "Yes! These fine men should repopulate the planet." or did he figure that if he didn't like his new world he could just destroy it again?

 

[Warugaji]

He was meant to represent the dangers of extremism and how any evil can be justified with enough prior thought. Most real-life villains don't see themselves as villains. This angle shows that the Pokemon franchise is growing in terms of maturity :)

I don't think this means that Lysandre was not a villain, though. He was just a villain who chose to justify his planned atrocities, rather than to face the emotional fallout of his own actions. In actual fact he was a coward ;)

 

[NeuronRage]

This means that Lysandre was the real hero this whole time, and you the player ruined his goal, making you the true villain of the game, for you have doomed the Pokémon world for another war in the near future and the rise of another team organization for the next main Pokémon games. Do you believe Lysandre was the hero Kalos deserves, but not the one it needs right now or do you think I'm crazy for considering an antagonist a hero and going way too deep on his morals?

This is actually the basis of what I think will happen in future games- "another war in the near future."

Now parts of me sympathize with Lysandre and I felt with him at many points during the game. He's an idealist that I am as well. With others in power (actually, who is IN power in the Pokemon world? There seems to be no political system) he felt the world was inadequate, as I feel the real world is, and therefore I can relate to his feelings. However, I have too much of a heart to end all life and kill everyone on the planet, so I will push for reform in a more peaceful way. Back on topic, though, he seems like a Hitler-esque character, and killing everyone is not cool, and I probably wouldn't even do that even if I was going to push for world domination. There are other ways to accomplish your means, Lysandre. Sometimes the ends do not justify the means.