Reviewing Pokemon's Human Characters - Kalos

Ah, Generation VI. Generation VI was when I truly, really got back into Pokemon, I feel. I never really 'left', in a sense, but during the period of IV to V, it was a pretty long time and I didn't have a Nintendo DS and was at that stage where I'm a bit too ashamed of my more childish hobbies and had to 'grow up', in a way. It's not until the sixth generation that I ended up buying a DS, playing through the fourth and fifth generation games before slowly eating up everything that was building up to the sixth generation.

And... and I felt like there was something to was left to be desired about the sixth generation. The Pokemon designs were A-plus and extremely solid, though, because they were definitely practicing something that's along the lines of quality-over-quantity. But story wise... like, Kalo''But  story isn't terrible (and I don't think any of the Pokemon main-game stories are terrible) but when the dust has settled and the novelty of the first 3D Pokemon game has worn off, you realize that it's basically the most basic Pokemon game story you could think up of, and the region itself, while certainly pretty with all the 3D models and stuff, are clearly done in a bit of a crunch time and there wasn't a whole ton of replayability other than to catch 'em all. Mind you, I played a ton of my copy of Pokemon Y, so much that I actually had a full Pokedex that was missing a couple of the mythicals. But do the characters themselves stack up? Let's see...


Calem & Serena

• Position: Protagonist
• Japanese Name: Calme & Serena

So Generation 6 was also the first generation to introduce character customization. Your avatar starts off looking like this, and... they're neat, but I think they do make them look intentionally a bit more boring and nondescript in order to make it more appealing for you to switch your clothes, hairstyle and stuff. Calem, as I keep saying, is basically yet another variation of Red or Lucas's design, and since I immediately decided to swap clothes and experiment, I barely remember what Calem's default design looked like other than that fancy 'sunglasses on a hat' deal he's got going on. Serena is a bit more distinctive, although part of it is due to her neat black-and-red colour palette, but she's still ultimately kind of boring. She shows up in the XY season of the anime, and even then the animators decided to give her a makeover halfway through the season. Not a whole ton to say here, they're just a bunch of peeps. Also, while the default artwork for the protagonists still has them with fair skin, XY is the first game where you can select your skin tone at the beginning of the game.

Whichever gender you didn't pick will end up being your 'main' rival throughout the journey, alongside a trio of other kids that we'll cover below. Rival!Calem and Rival!Serena had basically the same personality as the opposite-gender rivals from Generation III, which is to say that they're the default, generically-heroic, generally-competent, but not too competent so they'll need saving by you. 

Shauna

• Position: Rival
• Japanese Name: Sana

In XY, you start off with four rivals, and they're basically filling a trope in like an anime show or something. Your opposite-gender counterpart is basically the 'secondary main character', who's competent but ultimately exists to make you, the main character, look good. And there's these three other kids who are the quirky bunch. Out of them, though, Shauna is easily the most prominent, picking one of the Kalos starters (the one weaker to you) and basically being a super-energetic little friend who's all about 'yay battling' and 'yay traveling' but ultimately is just kind of directionless. There's no real shame to that, though, Shauna's just here to have a good time. You really don't battle her a lot, and the last battle you have with her has her with a piddly three Pokemon. This region of Kalos, based on France, is meant to be the most 'beautiful' of the regions, and that sort of design philosophy does bleed into the character designs themselves, which look pretty snazzy. Again, I'm not particularly well-versed in fashion, but I really do like Shauna's getup here.


Tierno

• Position: Rival
• Japanese Name: Tierno

I'm not going to lie, when I saw a fat kid with a Vanillite on his shirt, I thought that Tierno is going to be that guy. That guy in all cartoons and anime where his whole deal is that he's fat and he eats food a lot and he's fat and he loves to eat. Thank god that it's actually a subversion here, and Tierno's whole deal is that he loves dancing. Generally I think that they're trying to expand a bit more on the generation 5 you/Bianca/Cheren dynamic of finding different pathways in the Pokemon world that's not just being the best battler and the champion, and Tierno's dream to become a Pokemon dancer is an interesting one. He's ultimately kind of a side character and we don't really see his career take off or anything, but his starter Pokemon is a swords-dancing Corpish and all his Pokemon are more or less based on Pokemon that can learn swords dance, feather dance and petal dance. He would really like Oricorio, debuting a generation later, then.


Trevor

• Position: Rival
• Japanese Name: Trova

Trevor is otherwise known as the one I don't remember. Calem/Serena is the rival you fight a lot, Shauna is the pink and energetic one, Tierno I really remember due to the subversion in his objectives, and Trevor... Trevor just wants to collect data on his Pokedex, and there's a backstory where he was essentially left behind by his parents who keep going out to travel and train Pokemon, so it's Trevor's dream to go around and see all the Pokemon in the world. That's an interesting story, but Trevor really doesn't do anything interesting in the games, and not being as bombastic as Tierno and Shauna ends up making him pretty forgettable. I've always thought his official artwork makes his hairdo look really big. His Pokemon party seems to be pretty random, having started off with Pikachu and Flabebe, and later on growing to have fossil Pokemon. 

Viola

• Position: Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Viola
• Type Specialization: Bug

We're going into gym leaders now. The fact that they had to make overworld models for them ended up making unique trainers somewhat of a premium in the sixth, seventh and eighth generations. And we're starting off with Viola, the first gym leader in Kalos and the leader of Santalune Gym. She is a photographer, carries two cameras around, her gym is cool and she uses bugs. And... that's about it? Viola's design is pretty neat, but ultimately just kind of there. And in a region that prides on making its characters as pretty as possible, Viola looks a lot more like just some random lady in the street compared to some of the generic trainers, even. I dunno. Kalos's gym leaders still works off of a 'the gym leader has a day job' deal. And while I am happy that Viola's a bug photographer (a very interesting niche in real life) her character is pretty paper-thin and the gym battle against her is pretty forgettable.

One thing I missed that all of the previous and subsequent games had is having rematches with gym leaders and important characters where they show up with level 70-80 full teams, showing the true potential of these gym leaders if you didn't fight them as your first gym. I feel like Galar, Unova and Alola's games did this the best, with Galar and Alola having their gym leaders essentially be the Elite Four, and B2/W2 featuring the Pokemon World Battle Tournament. But Kalos? You can rematch the gym leader in the Battle Chateau, but all Viola ever brings are two Pokemon -- Vivillon and Masquerain, and none of them even had any sort of neat moves to catch you off-guard. Also, I've always found it particularly disappointing that XY introduced all of these Mega Evolutions, but barely any NPC use them -- I can probably count the NPC's who use Mega Evolutions on one hand. They could've made the rematches so much more memorable by giving Viola a Mega Pinsir, or giving Ramos a Mega Venusaur, or giving Wulfric a Mega Abomasnow... honestly looking at the original list of mega evolutions in XY, it really does look like each mega evolution can easily be corresponded to one of the gym leaders, elite four and other important NPC's. But nope.

Grant

• Position: Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Zakuro
• Type Specialization: Rock

Hanging out in Cyllage City is Grant, who is a rock climber. And he dresses in a pretty neat but kind of a boring way, although unlike Viola those gemstones that he embedded in his hair (how did you even do that?) does actually make him look a bit more distinctive. Grant himself uses both of Kalos's fossil Pokemon, but is otherwise a generically sporty, likable gym leader dude you meet only once in your adventure. I dunno. You also meet most of the gym leaders in Kanto, Johto and Hoenn once, but somehow they manage to leave a bit more of a lasting impression? I did like that Grant modeled his gym after a rock-climbing challenge, though, that was pretty cool. It's neat to have a Rock-type gym leader that's got a definite theme to his design, though. And, again, while I'm not going to repeat it every time we see a darker-skinned character, you can definitely see that all the characters post-Unova have a better balance of all skin tones. 

Korrina

• Position: Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Corni
• Type Specialization: Fighting

Finally we get a gym leader who I have something more to talk about! See, all of the previous Fighting-type experts -- Chuck, Marshall, Maylene -- are all generic martial arts dudes, and almost all that we're going to see afterwards are also generic martial arts dudes. Korrina is perhaps the biggest subversion, being modeled after a roller blader and she's got a very neat, energetic artwork. If this wasn't a franchise about sending out your pet jedi wolf-men to fight, I would totally see Korrina as a cool action fighter that zips around the battlefield and uses kicks to beat bad guys up. In-universe, Korrina is apparently famous for the fact that her legs are powerful enough to smash rocks. She's a walking Rock Smash HM!

She's more than just a gym leader with a roller-blading themed gym, though. Korrina is also the main NPC in the game that leads you to unlock the secret of Mega Evolution, leading you towards a massive Lucario-themed tower that's the place where residents of Shalour City train to unlock the secret of Mega Evolution -- and it's so neat to have the successor of this ancient clan be so energetic and modern-looking. You fight Korrina twice in the game, first in the gym and later on on top of the Tower of Mastery where Korrina unleashes her own Mega Lucario at you.


Ramos

• Position: Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Fukuji
• Type Specialization: Grass

The gym leader of Coumarine City is... an old dude who loves gardening. That's honestly all that there is to him, although for an old gardener I really do like his design with his cute hat and scarf. He mostly just makes plant puns and old man puns, I really don't remember much else about him. He was also disappointingly a pushover as the fourth gym leader -- XY had this long, long stretch between Grant and Korrina (or is it between Korrina and Ramos?) where you explore and can level up a whole ton, making Ramos's team of a Jumpluff, Gogoat and a disappointingly un-evolved Weepinbell really a pushover.


Clemont & Bonnie

• Position: Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Citron & Eureka
• Type Specialization: Electric

Clemont here is the gym leader of Lumiose City, the huge central city that's the big city to explore with a lot of alleys and features, but the first time you arrive at Lumiose City half of the city is shut down thanks to a blackout. Clemont himself is a frumpy inventor, walking around in that bodysuit and having a backpack that can unleash Dr. Octopus style limbs patterned after an Aipom's arm and a Heliolisk's face-and-neck. If it's not already obvious, Clemont's ace Pokemon is a Heliolisk. His whole gym is the somewhat-obligatory 'quiz gym' that keeps showing up in nearly every game now. 

In the games, Clemont hangs out with his little sister Bonnie, who sort of hangs around her big brother and I thought it was cute, that this dude tries his best to be this gym leader but he also has to babysit his little sister. I only really mention Bonnie here because she and Clemont are part of Ash's group in the XY anime, and I think Clemont is trying to be worthy of properly taking over the position of gym leader of Lumiose City? I haven't actually given the XY anime a look, and should probably do that. It's actually the only season of Pokemon that I haven't seen a single episode of. 

Valerie

• Position: Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Mache
• Type Specialization: Fairy

Valerie here is an interesting one. Generation VI is the first time in nearly a decade that Pokemon is introducing a brand-new type, and the Fairy-type is either received with open arms or treated with derided contempt due to the stereotypical viewing of it as a 'girly' type, or that it's nonsensical. Because 'Fighting' and 'Dragon' embodies parts of the real world so well, huh? But as the first gym leader of a brand-new type, Valerie does have some expectations put on her, and I love her. She's this serene-yet-kooky little lady who's always smiling and dresses up in an over-the-top kimono with a glorious set of colours. While I did complain that the first couple of gym leaders in the region are kind of plain, from Valerie onwards we're in full Kalos fashion pageant show, and there's nothing I don't like about Valerie. Her chunky platform shoes? Her weird corset with flowing ribbons? Her huge kimono sleeves? The pattern on those sleeves? Even that weird hair thing works particularly neat on her. She's mostly static in the game (she's unable to turn and always faces forwards, because the designers made Valerie and Wulfric into this huge, static model that can't spin sideways without cutting into walls) but her anime and manga counterparts, as far as I can tell from screenshots, is pretty expressive. 

Her gym is modeled after a giant dollhouse or something, which I do think is pretty appropriate, and it's noted in-game that Valerie came from Johto (read: Japan) and goes off to Kalos to look for even more beauty. And, hey, she ends up being a successful fashion designer in Kalos, if the large amount of random Furisode girls what show up all over Kalos is anything to go by! Her team composition, I feel, is also pretty neat -- Sylveon, Mawile and Mr. Mime are a neat sample size of the currently-available fairy types.

Olympia

• Position: Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Gojika
• Type Specialization: Psychic

And I know Valerie is supposed to be the fashion model, but damn Olympia's cape is majestic. Her personality is a bit thin, being a mysterious Psychic-type trainer that moonlights as a fortune teller, but between Olympia's glorious character design and her glorious gym, she's really memorable in a completely different way. Let's talk about her first, yeah? That dress, those rings that seemingly float around her wrists, that ridiculously impractical hair (which, if her concept art is anything to go by, seems to imply that she's keeping it in that ring shape with her psychic powers and the hair can split apart if she's emotional) but best of all is that cape, which seems to have the cosmos itself displayed on it. That's such a very cool visual, and while space isn't something that the Pokemon games really explore, it sort of reinforces the theme that the Psychic type is meant to have a space connection.

And her gym? Hoo boy. You first enter what appears to be a small room with furniture, but as you enter it the walls and the floor burst open to reveal some sort of bizarre, psychedelic Doctor Strange style wacky dimension that's a bunch of pathways in space or some shit. Look it up in the many youtube let's plays, it's great. It's a bit of a shame that Olympia, like most gym leaders in this region, is a total pushover. Again, she only has three Pokemon (Meowstic, Sigiliyph and Slowking -- none of them save maybe Sigilyph has any connection to space) and I remembered her levels being pretty low for when I reach her. She's the seventh gym leader! She should be a bit stronger than this, surely?


Wulfric

• Position: Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Urup
• Type Specialization: Ice

In a bit of a pattern after the past couple of generations, the eighth gym leader feels almost as an afterthought since you face him after dealing with the world-ending main story and evil villains. Wulfric is a fun dude, though, and not just because his name reminds me of a certain Skyrim character. He's this jolly old man with the most glorious jacket that he doesn't put his arms into, One Piece style, and it seems like he had intentionally shaped his facial hair to look like a walrus of sorts. And yet Wulfric's personality is a big softie, a nice old grandpa who spends most of his time caring for the lost Pokemon in the nearby Pokemon Village, sort of a secret village that is guarded by what is essentially the Lost Woods from the Legend of Zelda. Wulfric himself is a huge softie, he takes care of orphaned Pokemon, he cries at the end of Brycen-Man movies, and even admits how the ice type is 'extremely hard and terrible fragile at the same time' and lampshades how depending on your team he could be a total pushover. And he is, but I do like to think that it's less because the game designers did a goof and more because Wulfric just doesn't care about fighting super-seriously and just wants to have a good time.


Siebold

• Position: Elite Four
• Japanese Name: Zumi
• Type Specialization: Water

Now we go to the Elite Four, and, like Unova's Elite Four, you can challenge Kalos's Elite Four in whatever order you please. I usually beat up Siebold first, who is supposed to be a chef! I'm going to assume that his Pokemon cooks alongside him and he doesn't actually turn that Clawitzer into a lobster bisque that can feed an entire city. He's basically an artiste in both cooking and pokemon battles. There really isn't a whole ton to him beyond that, but I did like his design and his name. Sadly, though, Kalos's Elite Four really suffers from them having only four Pokemon at any one time, which makes them easily the easiest Elite Four to fight and farm through. Siebold's Pokemon is an interesting combination of various water-types. Not all of them edible (unless there's a barnacle dish somewhere out there I'm not aware of) and not all of them have any sort of obvious application in cooking.


Malva

• Position: Elite Four
• Japanese Name: Pachira
• Type Specialization: Fire

Malva is the Fire-type Elite Four, and she has a very fetching costume! Very fashionable, from her pink hair to those red sunglasses to the little diamond holes cut into her skin-tight pants. Malva is actually a member of the villainous Team Flare... which is something that doesn't really come up in the game's storyline at all. You'd think that it would be a cool feature to have one of the most powerful trainers in the game be openly or secretly supporting the evil terrorist team, but other than being angry at you when you first meet her in the Elite Four, Malva's role as a member of Team Flare is never explored in the game at all. She's also the main reporter in the 'Holo Caster' feature, which is sort of like an on-demand news service, but, again, I forgot the Holo Caster was even a thing in XY. Ultimately it would be really cool to have a member of the villains as this extremely public figure that's actually an embedded agent in society or something (the manga did explore this a lot more), but ultimately Malva ends up as kind of a missed opportunity. I also remembered her team as being the easiest and most fragile to beat up in the Elite Four.


Wikstrom

• Position: Elite Four
• Japanese Name: Gampi
• Type Specialization: Steel

"Verily am I the Elite Four's famed blade of hardened Steel, Wikstrom! What sweet, glorious pain and joy now rock my mighty heart? My will, which even shakes spears, trembles at so fine a battle as this! I am undone!" Unlike Team Plasma, who only dresses like medieval knight, Wikstrom (Sir Wikstrom?) is a full-blown knight in plate armour, with a fancy hair, cute little eyelashes under his eyes, and fights with Steel-types. Of course his ace is an Aegislash, that makes a lot of sense. It's so jarring to see a very medieval knight hanging around in Kalos, especially since a vast majority of Pokemon characters and lore takes place in an explicitly modern setting. There's not much to say about Wikstrom beyond that since this is yet another Elite Four whose members aren't involved in your story at all, but Wikstrom is easily the most memorable of Kalos's Elite Four because he talks like a 90's Thor comic.


Drasna

• Position: Elite Four
• Japanese Name: Dracanea
• Type Specialization: Dragon

Drasna isn't super-interesting, just a nice old-looking lady who apparently hails from Sinnoh and is enamoured by the tales of the mighty Dragon-types of that region, and became a Dragon-type expert herself. I kind of like that Drasna looks so relaxed and chill, compared to the relatively stern image of basically all the other Dragon-type users other than Iris. Drasna herself doesn't really have much of a personality beyond having a very fancy set of (presumably real?) dragon claws accessories. Something I really do find interesting is that other than her Druddigon, Drasna's team features dragon-types who look very unconventional -- the bird-like Altaria, the bat-like Noivern and the sea-dragon Dragalge. Hell, if Diantha didn't use a Goodra, I bet she'll be using it too. That's a pretty interesting contrast to someone like Lance or Iris, who uses non-Dragon-types that visually look like dragons.

We're done with gym leaders and I do know that Kalos is going to be a shorter one, so let's actually look at all the gym leaders' teams and see what, in an ideal version of XY that might have rematches against gym leaders where they have access to mega evolution, would their teams be. And for the purposes of this, I'm just going to use the megas introduced in XY. Viola has a couple to choose from, with Pinsir, Heracross and Scizor all getting mega evolutions. Grant would've obviously used Mega Aerodactyl, since it's the only fossil boy with a mega. Korrina already has Mega Lucario. Ramos is a bit harder, because the available grass-types would be Mega Venusaur or Mega Abomasnow, and since Abomasnow's going to fit Wulfric better, Venusaur it is, I suppose. Clemont could pick between Mega Ampharos or Mega Manectric, but I feel like Manectric fits him a lot better. Valerie already has a Mawile in her default team, so her getting Mega Mawile fits. Olympia would work either with Mega Alakazam or Mega Medicham, I feel. And Wulfric already has an Abomasnow in his default team, so. As for the Elite Four (and I'm trying my best to avoid starters here) some of them already have associated megas in the anime, but I do feel like Mega Houndoom is pretty perfect for Malva; Siebold already has a Gyarados in his base team; Wikstrom could really rock a Mega Scizor (Mega Aggron is all right too) and Drasna seems to like non-standard-looking dragons, so Mega Ampharos is perfect for her.


Diantha

• Position: Champion
• Japanese Name: Carnet

I really get the feeling like they're trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice by making Diantha basically kind of an analogue of the wildly popular Cynthia... but she's easily the most boring of all the champions we've had in the history of the franchise. Her design is neat enough, but nothing particularly spectacular (particularly in Kalos,  where everyone dresses all fancy and shit). She's all white, but there's just something that I feel is kind of off with her having those shorts next to the wide-brim coat and long sleeves. I dunno. Diantha is a movie star, supposedly, and she also shows up like twice or thrice as you go through the storyline of Kalos, but is a major step back compared to Alder or Cynthia or Steven, since Diantha is so far removed from the storyline and barely helps you that I don't even remember meeting her at all. Likewise, the battle against her is also very dull, with her team being the biggest challenge in the game but really not amounting to a whole ton. At least he uses six Pokemon, with mixed types and some of them have unexpected TM moves? I dunno. Dianthaa was completely unmemorable to me.


Professor Sycamore

• Position: Pokemon Professor
• Japanese Name: Platane-hakase

The professor of this region is yet another one that's just "oh, pretty".  I remembered when Sycamore's design was revealed and the internet practically exploded in "professor daddy". And ever since Juniper, I guess the pokemon professors have been moving away from stuffier-looking older professors into being younger and hipper, I guess? Sycamore is certainly a pretty cool looking design, he's got real fancy hair, and he's actually the first pokemon professor you can fight in-game, holding the three Kanto starters. I've always thought that he was pretty boring, though, kind of just there and kind of generically likable, and certainly eclipsed by Kukui in terms of younger, hipper professors. 

Team Flare Grunts

Whether you like or dislike them, Team Plasma was a bit of a mouthful considering they had a pretty complex (for Pokemon) backstory and eventual execution in the games' stories. So I guess with the more simple, down-to-basics theme of Pokemon XY, they ended up having Team Flare as basically just a bunch of criminals who go around doing crimes to make money. Yep, that is certainly a very understandable motivation! They also want to make the world 'beautiful and better', and wants to eliminate everyone who doesn't follow their standards... but, see, one thing about Team Flare is that all of their members dress so well. Look at those grunts with those really fetching sunglasses and blazing red suits. Look at those admins with the killer white-and-bright-red combo. Team Flare is hands down the most visually-appealing team in Pokemon's history, so I really can buy that they're basically obsessed with prettiness.

Team Flare's grunts and admins use a bit of a variety of Pokemon, something that's a lot more neat compared to literally all of the previous teams... but they do favour around eight families of Pokemon, most of them either dog-like (Mightyena, Houndoom, Manectric) or cat-like (Liepard), but they also use the Scraggy, Croagunk and Zubat lines. They're perhaps a bit more variable in their usage of Pokemon partners than the past three evil teams, but it's still kind of boring and honestly a bit of a theme disconnect that they don't go for more over-the-top pretty Pokemon.


Lysandre

• Position: Team Flare Leader
• Japanese Name: Furadari (Fleur-de-lis)

Lysandre has the best theme music. He's also got a really smooth looking black-and-red suit, a very interesting fiery hairdo, and generally looks pretty cool. At one point he dons a bunch of extra mechanical doodads to help him catch either Xerneas or Yveltal. And... it's kind of a shame that Lysandre as a villain is kind of... just there. As much as people argue on the merits of N or Ghetsis as a villain, it's clear that the writers for the fifth generation at least tried to tell a story, it's just whether the story is told well or not. The same thing is true for Guzma and Lusamine in the next generation. And comparing Lysandre to the villains of the first four generations, he doesn't really end up coming off as that flat of a character, but he has the misfortune of being the main villain of a game when the fandom has, on average, grown up a bit more and expect a more complete story from their video games.

Lysandre's whole deal is that he wants eternal beauty and wants to have a beautiful world, and you fight him a bunch of times through your journey in investigating Team Flare. Lysandre's main plan is to take over an ancient Ultimate Weapon that Kalos used in an ancient war, powered by either Xerneas or Yveltal, and Lysandre wants to use the weapon to eliminate everyone that's not part of Team Flare. Lysandre has a bit of a dumbed-down version of MCU Thanos's mentality, with Lysandre viewing that something like the trainers competing for a limited resource (like the Mega Ring or rare Pokemon) will cause tragedies and injustice, leading to war and conflict... so Lysandre's solution is to kill everyone to vastly reduce the human population. And you stop him and beat him up, blow up his base and, at least in Y, he is presumed to be killed when the Ultimate Weapon blew up in his face. Lysandre's honestly not any more silly than Cyrus, but they sort of fit the lower rungs of the totem pole in being kind of a flat villain. I do really like him for his really fancy outfit.

Xerosic

• Position: Team Flare
• Japanese Name: Xerosicy

Xerosic is a weird dude, being the weird Dr. Eggman style scientist in Team Flare and... he's super pale. And he's only got one glove. And he's got a fancy hairstyle. He still dresses really smartly, though, and while he spends most of the main plot as a generic mad scientist lieutenant, Xerosic's main role is in the Looker Bureau storyline at the end of the game, where he ends up taking over a poor girl with a sci-fi suit and essentially turning her into a super-villain. You and Looker team up to track him down and beat him up, and he ends up apparently having a change of heart at the end of the storyline. Kind of an interesting story, but Xerosic is still a pretty flat character.


Aliana, Byrony, Celosia, Mable

• Position: Team Flare
• Japanese Name: Akebi (Aliana), Bara (Byrony), Correa (Celosia), Momiji (Mable)

If you can't tell already by the sheer amount of words I devote to this franchise, I love the Pokemon franchise. I could name you a lot of the minor characters and like, things like Team Magma and Aqua's admins, or Neo Team Rocket's goons, or the Ultra Recon Squad's members, or the Battle Frontier heads. Hell, on a good day I can even tell you the names of the Seven Sages! But I've never remembered any of these ladies' names, because their personalities are literally interchangeable 'angry, sassy evil Team Flare sub-boss', they don't use any particularly memorable Pokemon, and they only show up maybe once or twice as part of a rather basic team. 

One thing for sure, though, Aliana, Byrony, Celosia and Mable have killer fashion sense. Between the Cyclops visors, the rainbow coloured hairs and the fact that they alternate between skirts, shorts and pants, the Team Flare quartet really end up looking like a wacky sci-fi themed K-Pop band and I mean that in the best possible way. They look really smashing, I remember they exist... I just don't remember their names and they don't have any real personality to speak of. 

AZ

• Position: Ancient Man
• Japanese Name: AZ

The Kalos region has this whole backstory about an ancient war between Kalos and another unspecified region, and the war ended up involving an ancient king, the mascot legendary and an Ultimate Weapon. And said war was done by this king, AZ (Ay-Zed) to resurrect his dead Pokemon partner. It's perhaps the single most tear-jerking storyline in Pokemon ever, and while we've got characters like Alder who mentions having their Pokemon dead in the past or whatnot, AZ is someone who was so torn up by grief. Look at this backstory flashback! Look at how minimalist the storytelling is. "He was given a tiny box." AZ's usage of the Ultimate Weapon ended up giving him eternal life, but his partner Floette ended up being disgusted with AZ killing so many others for a selfish reason, and left him, condemning him to wander the earth, immortal but alone.

Ultimately, though, perhaps in a way that is somewhat of a running theme in the last three generations of Pokemon, AZ's story, while undoubtedly great, does clash a bit with the otherwise modern setting of Pokemon. It's like they thought of this really cool backstory, tied it into Xerneas/Yveltal and Team Flare, but also wanted to have the king in the backstory show up too. AZ so shows up randomly at various parts in your journey, giving exposition and later you get to see him reunite with his Eternal Floette after 3000 years. AZ's story is great, but to an even greater degree than N, I feel like it was a bit shoehorned into a story that he doesn't really feel like he belonged in.

Character design wise, though, AZ is certainly memorable for the simple fact that he is one hell of a gangly giant of a man, towering twice the height of your charcater. The combination of his long scarf-like hair, one visible eye, and, uh, that beanie ends up being distinctive. I also really like that his team of Pokemon consists of seemingly artificial (and presumably undying) Pokemon like Sigilyph and Golurk, and Torkoal, a very long-lived Pokemon if it's anything like real-life turtles. That's neat.


Alexa

• Position: Reporter
• Japanese Name: Pansy

We have a bunch of extra random characters now, and Alexa is... she's a reporter, and also Viola's sister. That's all there is to her. She's got a very nice-looking shirt, but is otherwise a pretty forgettable friendly NPC. I really don't have much to say about her, and honestly don't remember them at all. 

Dexio & Sina

• Position: Aides
• Japanese Name: Dexio & Sina
• Type Specialization: Psychic (Dexio); Ice (Sina)

In contrast, though, these two -- Dexio and Sina -- are actually a lot more memorable! Dexio and Sina are a pair that show up as Sycamore's assistants, basically joined at the hip and your senpais in being a Pokemon trainer, and alongside Sycamore are basically the game's way to lob tutorial segments at you. Dexio and Sina also have a little charming character gimmick of showing up with funky weird masquerade ball masks and Kamen Rider mufflers, pretending to be local superheroes called the Defenders of Kalos and help you fight Team Flare. That one small detail alone ends up making them memorable, and I'll be making a small exception to my regular rule that "you need an official Sugimori-style artwork to be featured here". Come on, these senpais of yours are literal superheroes! How can you dislike them?

You meet Dexio and Sina again in Alola, where they're clearly on vacation, and they're there to just pawn off a Mega Ring on you so you can use this generation's gimmick. We don't actually see them battle in the Kalos games, but the Alola games gives them a more fleshed-out team, and Dexio's apparently a Psychic-type expert and Sina is an Ice-type expert. Neato!

Nita, Evelyn, Dana, Morgan

• Position: Battle Chatelines
• Japanese Names: Lanuit (Nita), Lesoir (Evelyn), Lajournee (Dana), Lematin (Morgan)

The Battle Maison basically replaces the Battle Frontier of previous generations, and depending on which mode you take place in, one of these four Battle Chatelaines will face you at a certain point. They're all basically the same designs, with huge chunky dresses and gigantic rose-themed hats. I really don't have much to say here, their artwork communicates the single character trait they have -- Nita's friendly and bubbly, Evelyn's a proud snob, Dana's uncertain, Morgan is aloof and reserved. They have real fancy dresses and funky hairdo (particularly Morgan and Evelyn), that's all I can really say. In your first battle with them they will use a random assortment of Pokemon with no real theme, but in your second battles with them they exclusively use 'lesser' Legendary Pokemon from previous generations -- Nita uses the Unovan kami trio; Evelyn uses the Johto beast trio and Latios; Morgan uses the Unovan musketeer trio and Latias; Dana uses the Kanto bird trio and the Hoenn regis. Fuck the Sinnoh pixies, I guess; even Nintendo realizes they are the least interesting ones of the bunch. 

Emma/Essentia

• Position: Vigilante
• Japanese Name: Matiere / Espirit

Star of the aforementioned Looker Bureau storyline, Emma is a sweet young girl that lived in the dark alleys with her pet Espurr Mimi, an illiterate orphan that ends up being adopted by Looker as her surrogate daughter (although he insists that Emma is just his secretary), and you and Looker basically end up helping Emma and Mimi basically be rehabilitated back into society, and ends up being involved in a series of mysterious female thieves fighting against the residents of Lumiose City. It's actually a pretty underrated and well-written storyline that puts the one-note Looker missions in Alola to shame. While all of this is going on, Emma ends up being unknowingly be subjected to a mysterious mind-controlling suit created by that asshole Xerosic, and all of the mysterious ladies your character fights turns out to be Emma's alter-ego, Essentia, who uses her fancy comic-book-supervillain suit to be like this evil Kamen Rider that runs around the city wreaking havoc. Of course, despite being mind-controlled, the power of friendship with Looker and Mimi turns out to be enough to have Emma break control of the Essentia programming. A very cool story, and while a bit simple, I also really do like the Essentia suit, which really wouldn't look out of place in an anime. 

More trainer classes. Something something 2D artwork. A bunch of classes like "Driver" or the many Battle Chateau classes that's just reused artwork. At some point I'll probably make this a bit of a little gallery for all of the Sugimori (or Sugimori-style) artwork included in the sixth generation games.

That was one thing I really liked about the sixth generation, that each trainer class had their official 2D artwork also show on-screen when you battle them. Part of it is probably the fact that they didn't have the resources to make all the overworld models into moving models like Generation 7 and 8... but honestly, I actually prefer this since this means that for the first time in Pokemon's history, every single one of the generic trainers got a bunch of official artwork.


The Furisode Girls (Furisode) are basically ladies in kimono, and I think it's implied that they are using the kimono created and designed by Valerie. Their designs are pretty cool and I like the variety of looks you have on them, and they show up a lot in like Battle Chateau battles and random repeatable content like the sushi restaurant. I don't really have much to say about them, but I did remember that they had a lot of fan art made of them when XY was booming. Again, they really do emphasize the fact that Kalos is one fashionable region.


The Punk Guy (Baddo Gai; Bad Guy) and Punk Girl (Baddo Garu; Bad Girl) take over for the 'Delinquent' or 'Cue Ball' style trainers, and they're... punks with dyed hair and a very fancy studded jacket. The Punk Girls have really fancy partly-shaved hair and a neat shorts-and-stockings combo. They've got a real cool Klink shirt and patched-up jeans, and generally they're actually one of my favourite trainer classes mostly due to the fun dialogue they put in them.

In Alola, the Punk Guy and Punk Girl trainer classes are basically just Team Skull grunts with all their Team Skull paraphernalia removed, and I think at least one of them is pissed off that you keep referring to them as Team Skull.


The Fairy Tale Girl (Meruhen Shojo; Fairy Tale Girl) and the Hex Maniac were the breakout stars among the trainers, I think, and the Fairy Tale Girl is loved due to how utterly creepy that face with dead-fish golden eyes are compared to her otherwise innocent pink Alice in Wonderland clothes. Some of them have utterly creepy dialogue, too, although at least one lampshades that it's all just role-play and for fun. Although, hey, since they consort with the fey, who knows?

The Rising Star (Hopu Toreina; Hope Trainer) is basically the region's equivalent to something like the Jr. Trainer. I really don't have much to say here, they're just young kids who are a bit inexperienced and stuff.


Ditto for the Schoolboy (Sukuruboi) and Schoolgirl (Sukurugaru), which basically would be the same thing as 'Schoolkid' from Hoenn. They're just young kids is all.


I also really don't have much to say about the Roller Skater (Rorasukeito; Roller Skate).. They are Korrina's gym grunts and will actually chase you around the roller skate court. The artwork is always cool for these trainers.

The Tourist (Tsua Kyaku; Tourist) is another class that feels neat, but is also another one that I feel we've seen done under a different name. We've got three variations -- young man, young lady and old auntie, which I think is kind of an Asian trope. I suppose despite the setting of this game might be in Poke-French, but you need some explicitly Japanese representation since it's made by a Japanese company.


One little gimmick that XY bought and subsequently abandoned are Sky Battles, where you fight Sky Trainers (Sukai Toreina) by only using Pokemon who can fly or who are floating in their animations. It's neat, and the Sky Trainers look like they're skydiving even though you always meet them standing on a cliff or something.


The Gardener (Niwashi; Gardener) is there to give Ramos some gym grunts, huh? I can't believe that the Unova games, with its focus on occupation/job trainers, didn't put this in. Oh well.


The Butler (Shitsuji; Butler) didn't make a reappearance in the British-inspired region? Really? Boo. Anyway, the Butler, I believe, shows up the most in the Battle Chateau which is modeled after some fancy rich folk having a hobnob and stuff. Not much to say here. He looks like blonde Alfred.


And... yeah, I'm just going to group these three together. The Chef (Ryorinin; Chef), the Garçon (Gyaruson) and the Owner (Ona). They're basically NPC's you fight whenever you go into the many restaurants in Kalos, coupled alongside the 'Waitress' trainer class we've covered before. Restaurants are a big thing in France, I suppose, and the Garcon is basically just the Waiter whose name is translated since everyone knows what Garçon means. Nothing really much to say here, at this point the trainer classes are all just starting to blur into 'neat artwork, they're sure trainers'.

Also, the ORAS remakes got a bunch of new classes:


The Delinquent (Kowai Oneesan; Scary Miss) and Street Thug (Kowai Ojisan; Scary Man) are basically more punks, and I guess they just didn't have a similar counterpart in the original Hoenn games? I really do like the shade of green-yellow on the Delinquent's hair, and the combination with the blue lipstick makes them look particularly neat. I absolutely love that these tough punks... have jackets with the adorable Minun and Plusle on their back. I'll never get tired of that trope, of tough-looking men and women who are actually proud to flaunt that they like cute things.


They don't really have any trainers underwater in Hoenn, despite having a bunch of diving sequences, so we've got the Scuba Diver (Daiba; Diver) and Free Diver (Ama-san; Shell Diver) as people you meet while diving underwater. They use Water-types, of course, and I really do like the fact that the underwater parts of ORAS's Hoenn ends up feeling more like a proper route instead of an afterthought. I am really kind of sad that they didn't expand more on diving areas, though. It's not that I like the HM Dive or anything, but the idea of exploring underwater regions after unlocking a certain travelling equipment is so cool to me and I'm just sad that we're probably never going to get a proper 'deep sea' region beyond Hoenn. Maybe next generation?

All in all, that's it for the sixth generation. I'll be doing Alola, then we'll stop there because I'll wait until the Crown Tundra DLC has released before touching Galar's new stuff.