"Many different values mix together, and the world becomes gray... That is unforgivable! I will separate Pokémon and people, and black and white will be clearly distinct!"
I'm gonna touch back on this later, but I agree that this is an interesting line and could be very meaningful, and could be read as a counter to my point.
However, I don't agree with the game here, and as I want to explain later: The game IMO thinks itself to be way more thought-provoking than it is. In this example, this posits that people and Pokemon being together is the "Gray Option", however I disagree:
In the context of the game's premise Question, it's Thesis: "Should Pokemon and people be together?" the answer for either is Yes or No, and that saying that training is fine is not Gray- it is Yes, Black or White depending on your view.
Gray would be nuance, which I do not think the answer to the question in the game actually has.
"Black" and "white" aren't fixed concepts - they're words used throughout the story as a figurative expression for two sides of any given topic or divide: people and Pokemon, progress and tradition, truth and ideals, dreams and reality. This concept crops up again and again in the story and the game world in a variety of ways: there are two sides to everything, and different values and ideologies coexist side-by-side.
The one the game focuses on, people and Pokemon, is something that has a very clear answer, there is no in-between on the topic.
The rest is small themes brought up that actually do not end up mattering much. Just because the game alludes at certain themes doesn't mean I have to take them seriously, Reshiram and Zekrom may have cool ideas at their cores but genuinely things like "dreams and reality" do not actually matter to the plot outside of a very loose interpretation.
At best there is Cheren and Bianca who generally are not that important and is basically like three scenes each.
The biggest plot and the one most people care about is N and Ghetsis/Team Plasma, the one the game beats you over the head with. And to be clear, none of the Cheren/Bianca stuff actually really ties into that at all, outside of: Loose interpretations.
So the defining conflict of the games - the struggle to separate Pokemon from people - is shown to be built on sand because it is fundamentally based on a lie, which N comes to realise across the course of the story:
This is bad writing though IMO..
Like if you read a book where it's about if something is right or wrong, and then the answer was just that the people with one viewpoint were fed a lie, that'd be boring, unsatisfying, and generally get it bad reviews.
Because you made a book about Is Thing Moral, and then the answer is The Status Quo is Fine, And The Opposers Are Just Abused-And-Wrong
Which is boring.
"It's about when I first met you in Accumula Town. I was shocked when I heard what your Pokémon was saying. I was shocked because that Pokémon said it liked you. It said it wanted to be with you. I couldn't understand it. I couldn't believe there were Pokémon that liked people. Because, up until that moment, I'd never known a Pokémon like that. The longer my journey continued, the more unsure I became. All I kept meeting were Pokémon and people who communicated with one another and helped one another. That was why I needed to confirm my beliefs by battling with you. I wanted to confront you hero-to-hero. I needed that more than anything."
Again, still bad writing. This is just a fundamentally not interesting arc for the character or way to take the themes of the game.
Why do any people believe things that aren't true? Because they're lied to. This point is made repeatedly in the story; Team Plasma sow doubt and discord, and people are swayed by it.
Having people just be lied to isn't an actually interesting story when the story hinges on a moral question.
You don't have to look particularly far in the real world to see examples of people who believe things that are categorically untrue, so I'm not sure why the idea that a demonstrable reality (Pokemon training is good) should be some infallible sacred cow in the Pokemon world. I really don't understand this idea that fictional characters are, or should be, any more immune to irrational behaviour or groupthink than real people.
Because fiction isn't just "What if this thing was in a book", stories are ways we convey ideas.
Most books that tackle the status quo of a universe almost always side with "the status quo is wrong" for a reason, it's because that is an interesting plot point. Stories where the populace has been lied to
use that as the status quo to be taken down, not as what the world may fall to.
Preventing the status quo from changing is generally just not satisfying, and stories about this (that work) have to be very character focused. It's less about why we are stopping the villain from ruining the world, and more about what this means for the characters, their travels, or other themes.
Now, this is why I focus on the fact that I think BW's character writing (mostly the protag and N) sucks. Because IMO that inherently ruins the story. Now the plot has no reason to exist and the characters don't have an interesting reason to exist either.
It leaves me thinking, "What are we even doing here?" N was wrong, the player had no real input, the plot was just stop Ghetsis at its core, all the themes didn't really end up mattering.
It's pointless.
N's beliefs are truly held - he was deceived by Ghetsis, but his view that the relationship between people and Pokemon is inherently and innately harmful comes from something real. The problem is that it is a truth, but it is not the truth - whether we like it or not, the truth is not singular and it is rarely simple. And those who refuse to consider other viewpoints as equally valid are those from whom conflict springs.
This truth is very simple though.
Because there is only 1 example of any Pokemon being mistreated in the entirety of BW1 and it is Team Plasma. Who are supposed to be the proponents of this ideology.
This question is Black and White.
Alder literally sums this up as concisely
"N, even if we don't understand each other, that's not a reason to reject each other. There are two sides to any argument. Is there one point of view that has all the answers? Give it some thought."
Alder can say this, the game can think it's thought-provoking, but it isn't. There is no reason to have two sides to this conflict.
Sure, there are simple and unambiguous truths, both in this story and the real world. As someone expressed a few posts back, you are under no obligation to attempt to meet bigots and extremists halfway, and it's often counterproductive to even try. But for the most part it's driven home that the mingling of black and white - the grayness N speaks of - is actually the true, desirable state of things, and is stronger by far than a stark black-and-white world would be (if indeed such a world could even exist). Two things can be distinct from each other without necessarily being separate, and two different sides of a divide are not always irreconcilable.
My problem with your whole analysis isn't that I think you're wrong on what the plot should be, but that I think you are putting a lot more meaning into a story that isn't all that meaningful.
Like, ultimately this is a Pokemon game where characters have like 50 lines of dialogue (on the upper end), they rarely have many character traits, and these stories are very linear.
That isn't to say a Pokemon game can't have excellent themes and deliver, that is why I defend Sun and Moon to My Grave.
But ultimately I feel like Gen 5 is fanfic bait rather than an actually well-written story. The game thinks it's saying more than it is, and what it thinks is meaningful ends up having no nuance. The game can have characters say lines that
would be thought-provoking in almost any other story, and fit most stories beautifully, but they're in a story with actually very little nuance.
That's when you pull out the great characters, but I do not think BW has great characters
Genuinely, I'm glad that the story gives you more to chew on, and that you give more to the story- but for me all of this reads dryly and flat. It's a mirage to me.
