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Review PG16: The Beauty Eternal

I like Lysandre. He's an interesting, complex character who wanted to be the savior of the world, but experience and bitterness made him fall from grace. And even then, he still saw himself as a hero, albeit one who had to do something bad for the greater good.

The games executed that poorly, though there was only so much they could do when his turn happened long ago, and he wasn't a major focus. The anime showed that off through flashbacks, and this episode shows off his caring side and technological genius. But I'm still laughing at how they kept in the part where Lysandre talks about wanting to end the world with Diantha. I mean at least here Diantha seems to notice this red flag a bit more, but this guy is supposed to be a charismatic business mogul, he could have at least phrased his idea to sound less nihilistic and creepy.

One thing I noted is how the Holo Caster casts full-sized, realistic and colored holograms. In the games (and anime? I only remember Alain using one as a phone), they were these dinky little things that just broadcasted a little bit of the person, but all blue and scratchy. It was a gimmicky, but ultimately less impressive XTransceiver. I can see why people were impressed with this version.
 
This was a very interesting episode. I like to see the world being expanded upon. There's so much to work with, since XY had a weak story. I liked it, I really did.

Also, a friend noted that at least SOME company, albeit fictional, is responding to shortages by making more.
 
Lysandre was awesome.

Episode catched his great personality and ambitions he had in the XY anime. Already a plus in my book. Decent starting episode. Hope for a good Flare plot like the goat one in the XYZ series in the next two episodes.
 
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Well that episode was fantastic.

I'm very disoriented by the wildly fluctuating quality of these shorts. The Chase, The Reawakening, The Scoop, The New World, The King Returns, and this one were all excellent. The first half of The Old Chateau was great too, although it phoned in the second half. The Frozen World was decent. The rest were trash. I guess on the bright side, at least I've liked about half of them.

Anyway - I'm a big Lysandre fan, though I have a complicated opinion about the story of XY as a whole. I really love the ideas and the major characters in it, but they're constantly presented in such a strangely laconic, somewhat haphazard way. I don't know if it's because they were too busy with the core work, or if they've changed their storytelling style altogether (SM for instance are quite a bit more similar in expositional style to XY than to ORAS than I was expecting), or maybe it was a mix of both, but anyway - with that in mind, I'm not surprised that I like this episode so much. Not only does it give extra meaningful screentime to a character I quite enjoy, but it gives the story of XY a little more of the substance that it needs in general. And Lysandre as a showboating presenter in public is a pretty amazing touch of additional characterization.

I am somewhat irked that they used Y as the basis for this - it's admittedly not a huge difference, but I just find the dialogue from the X version of the Café Soleil scene to be more authentic and believable in context than the Y version. Compare:

> Lysandre (in X): "Everything beautiful should stay that way forever. I would make this world unchanging and eternal so all beauty will last forever."

> Lysandre (in Y): "Everything beautiful should stay that way forever. I would end the world in an instant so that beauty never fades."

The former is an interesting line. It's still pretty clearly a villain line, but it's at least more subtle and morally grey than the Y line. Making the world unchanging so as to preserve beauty is obviously a motive that you could question, but there is room to argue its benefits as well. Whereas "ending the world so that beauty never fades" is... something only a complete psychopath would say. How. In the hell. Is that line supposed to seem in any way compelling, appealing, or even baseline reasonable to Diantha? Does it even pass a casual common sense test? If you want things to stay beautiful forever, then how do you accomplish that by... destroying it all? I mean I guess you've technically succeeded by drastically reducing the criteria that defines "forever" but... it's not really a victory, is it? Or to put it another way: If Y-Lysandre thinks that he can preserve the world's beauty by destroying it in one fell swoop, then by extension, does he believe that he could preserve Diantha's beauty by murdering her on the spot? And how would she likely respond to him if he told her that?

Oh and speaking of Diantha - her appearance in this, while brief, was nice. They got a perfect voice for her, and honestly I don't hate Diantha as a character, even in the games - it's true that they don't really do anything worthwhile with her, but the few scenes that she does get reveal some interesting angles of her perspective. Although, I was thinking about it lately, and I've got to say that all in all, I don't think any of the Champions have been very interesting as characters. Blue and Alder are the only ones with any real backstory or development, and Blue's clearly a special circumstance. Iris gets some characterization, but even then, it's not much more than Diantha gets. OG Steven is pretty much worthless, NuSteven is a bit better (but that's largely due to the newer graphics allowing him to emote), Wallace is an afterthought, and Cynthia and Lance... well, they're okay and they do manage to get some small character scenes, but their personalities don't stray far from "I love and trust my partners and always do the right thing and am generally an all-around nice, helpful person." At least they have a fun hobby and costume fetish, respectively.

I also cannot stand the way that they pronounce "Lysandre" in English dubs.
 
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This episode revealed nothing about Lysandre's disillusionment with the world.

He is only "complex" in the most superficial sense of the word. At least I'll get to see him die again.
 
To the general public, Lysnadre is such a nice guy! will suck once they ll find out his plan is to kill billions of people.

...or to give everyone immortality. I never did think X made any sense
 
Muur said:
...or to give everyone immortality. I never did think X made any sense
Click to expand...

Nah, his goal in X is still to kill everybody. The weapon's function isn't determined by the Pokémon powering it; it's just using their internal energy as a power source. It can operate as either a resurrection device or as a weapon of mass destruction as long as it has enough power.

I know I know, we have that bit where Mabel wonders "what'll happen to the world" if they fuel it with a Pokémon that "grants/takes life to/from all around it." I don't know if that was an error or a mistranslation or a dropped plot point or what, but what we actually learn seems to prove that it doesn't matter which of the mortality duo are powering it. AZ used either version's mascot to power it in the distant past too, or at least Sycamore theorizes as much, and it still killed people even in X.

I don't doubt that Lysandre did intend to make himself and his followers immortal, though. But again, that would be the case in either version because he can use the weapon to become immortal, as AZ did.
 
Pretty decent episode, as said before it actually does what the games should've done with Lysandre and actually portray him as a charismatic man. He's a good orator, he knows how to play to the audience, and they showcase a bit of his generosity. This is the character they wanted us to see and yet barely did in the games, and honestly I will applaud this short for doing that for the character. There are still elements to him that are deeply flawed in his execution (the aforementioned lack of any attention given to his fall from grace being the biggest one), but at least one flaw was tackled.

Still, there are a couple issues here. While they mostly fix the charisma issue, they still have the "I'm going to pretty much blatantly say that I want to purge the world and everyone will still not call me out" problem that XY had, as Diantha (while at least she kind of takes more notice here) and the board do little to really question him on his words. He may be more charismatic here, but it should still be a red flag when the character almost blatantly says that he'd end the world with a non-subtle tone to it. Voice acting is also kind of iffy, I think they have the perfect tone for most of the characters, but the direction makes them come off just as similarly stiff. Diantha's fine in this area, but Lysandre's in particular there were a few times where it kind of felt like the voice wasn't giving enough life to the character.

Esserise said:
I am somewhat irked that they used Y as the basis for this - it's admittedly not a huge difference, but I just find the dialogue from the X version of the Café Soleil scene to be more authentic and believable in context than the Y version. Compare:

> Lysandre (in X): "Everything beautiful should stay that way forever. I would make this world unchanging and eternal so all beauty will last forever."

> Lysandre (in Y): "Everything beautiful should stay that way forever. I would end the world in an instant so that beauty never fades."

The former is an interesting line. It's still pretty clearly a villain line, but it's at least more subtle and morally grey than the Y line. Making the world unchanging so as to preserve beauty is obviously a motive that you could question, but there is room to argue its benefits as well. Whereas "ending the world so that beauty never fades" is... something only a complete psychopath would say. How. In the hell. Is that line supposed to seem in any way compelling, appealing, or even baseline reasonable to Diantha? Does it even pass a casual common sense test? If you want things to stay beautiful forever, then how do you accomplish that by... destroying it all? I mean I guess you've technically succeeded by drastically reducing the criteria that defines "forever" but... it's not really a victory, is it? Or to put it another way: If Y-Lysandre thinks that he can preserve the world's beauty by destroying it in one fell swoop, then by extension, does he believe that he could preserve Diantha's beauty by murdering her on the spot? And how would she likely respond to him if he told her that
Click to expand...

I have to agree, I think they're planning on doing a The Vision/The Cavern thing where one version's events is followed by the others, but the two should've been switched. The X line would've fit much better with the tone they were setting for the character in this episode, and since they don't do much with Yveltal here, they could've had Xerneas present instead and kept the episode about the same otherwise.
 
Great episode showing Lysandre as the businessman he is in public. Giving a fancy presentation about the latest product developed by Lysandre Labs and making donations... I like these backstories. It would have been really nice if the actual games had included something like this - it would have made Lysandre a better written villain and provide a decent story overall.
 
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