pokespe reread: black 2 & white 2 chapter - closing thoughts! ⬛⬜
we've made it to the end of b2w2! thankfully, i didnt have to wait 6 years for it to finish LOL. as i said before, this is the only arc that i had never actually read AT ALL, so it wasn't really a reread at all. i went in with knowledge from fandom osmosis but i was surprised at just how much stuff i had no idea about!
this honestly ended up being one of my favorite arcs by the end, so i can't wait to talk about it ^^ let's get into it!
first off, i really like the setting of the trainer's school! having an arc take place in a school environment really makes it stand out from the other ones and feel unique :D and having cheren as their teacher is great, as it gives us a direct connection to the cast and events of the BW arc very smoothly!
i'll speak about them a bit later though. first, let's talk about THIS main cast, starting with blake!
i enjoy blake as a character, though i will say i think he could've benefited from a bit more personal focus/character development. he gets a LOT of screen time, but the vast majority of it is just him battling and being a detective and being "mr. perfect" as he's referred to. there honestly isn't much insight into him as a person, and i think that's sort of a shame since the stuff we do get is interesting.
im interested in what the exact intention was for blake in terms of his, for lack of a better term, condition. im not super well-versed in psychological disorders and their intricacies, but from what i can tell him being unable to feel fear or sympathy lines up with psychopathy, though im not sure if other symptoms of psychopathy really fit him. i dont know exactly WHAT he's got going on but he's definitely not neurotypical lol.
im not exactlyyyy clear on what the narrative's opinion of this is? whitley and keldeo have a very strong negative reaction to him saying this, saying that blake has no emotions, and that statement isnt really contested. him letting his pokemon get hurt is portrayed as bad (which tbc i agree with that) but by the end of the story we're clearly supposed to still like him or at least sympathize with him. idk, i get the vibe they want you to view him as someone kind of offputting and dangerous but not bad. which i think is fine. maybe not the greatest thing to pair with him clearly having some kind of psychological disorder but yknow whatever, it couldve been worse ToT
like i said before, i would've liked a little less of blake just being Cool And Awesome and little more emotional/character moments with him, but idk, the fact that he stays still very mysterious by the end is sort of cool too... idk! i think he's very interesting
i also wanted to touch on this whole morality thing with him because it's also something im... a bit confused by. this statement obviously comes across as horrible to me, but im unclear on whether that was the authorial intent or not. like am i SUPPOSED to think that blake was raised by a horrible person who passed down his horrible worldview down to him, or......? shrugs.
while talking about blake, i also want to briefly mention looker because it was very fun getting to see him again and as more of a major character lol. i love you looker
now let's talk about whitley!!!!!!! where to even start.....
i loved whitley, SO MUCH. she was by far the most interesting part of the chapter to me. getting to see things from the perspective of someone who was a part of team plasma is SUPER fascinating, especially a child like her who was involved in it by her mother without any say in it herself.
through her, we get a deeper look at team plasma that feels MUCH more true to real life cults than how it was portrayed in the games, at least in my opinion. in the games, they feel more like your standard Evil Team, just with a cult aesthetic. but here we get to actually see how they're comprised mostly of regular everyday people who have fallen for the cult's ideology. including whitley who, as a child, didn't have any say in the matter.
we get to see how the majority of team plasma justifies their actions, and it's interesting to think about how much of this these people genuinely believe, and how much is just them lying to others and themselves in order to justify their worldview.
whitley is put under so much pressure at such a young age, which isn't anything new for the dexholders, but it definitely Feels different when it's cult leaders and her mother whos a member of said cult who are the ones placing that pressure on her.
THE most fascinating aspect of all this to me however, is whitley's relationship to N.
whitley is shown to have "feelings" for N, but it feels pretty obvious to me that these are not "normal" romantic feelings, but rather a product of her being raised to view him as like, her god-king. whether the romantic aspect is just something she developed on her own or was something she was intentionally conditioned to believe is unclear (i talked about this in this post) but regardless, it's obviously not a normal crush.
N is like basically her jesus - she frequently calls out to him in her mind for help when he's not there, as if he's a divine omniscient being that can hear her calls wherever she is. if it wasn't obvious enough, when something bad but entirely unrelated happens, she says this:
whitley having this all-consuming guilt and feeling like she deserves to be punished just because she gets a crush on a boy (entirely normal thing to happen) is what really struck me with the cult stuff and pseudo-religious trauma. her being expected to dedicate herself only to N and not let herself be interested in boys definitely evokes all the weird purity stuff associated with christianity as well as irl cults. nothing crazy even happened in the dream ToT they didnt even kiss and yet she's acting like she deserves to be executed over it. like. woof
im glad that by the end she gets to yell at ghetsis to his face, SHE DESERVES TO!!! im also glad that by the end even after the small timeskip, she hasn't entirely broken out of her conditioning. she's thinking more for herself and is helping out with returning the stolen pokemon, but she clearly still has that religious worship of N.
i appreciate that since it's much more realistic than her being able to just immediately change her whole worldview. and i like to think that going on this journey alongside N would allow her to start to view him more as just A Person rather than this almost divine figure :)
her relationship with blake is also very interesting to me. i can definitely see her feelings for him being genuine, but i can also see it just being projection. either way, there definitely IS an element of projection - i mean, the first time that we see she might start developing feelings for blake, it's literally her saying that he's "just like N."
i really love how their relationship leaves off. because the guy that whitley fell for doesn't really exist... that persona is not who blake truly is, and we can see once he stops masking that whitley doesn't really feel the same way about his real self. maybe she could, if they got to spend more time with each other, but that's just not how things panned out. and regardless, i definitely Don't think blake likes her back. there was barely much to suggest that he cared about her At All, let alone romantically. (i definitely read blake as aroace ftr)
so i like this ending of them parting ways on good terms. it's definitely a little bittersweet, but i think it's what's best for both of them. :)
i really liked their dynamic throughout, having a """criminal""" and a detective going undercover trying to expose them as the main pair of dexholders is a unique dynamic and was super fun to follow! (gold and silver had something a little similar, but gold wasn't at all undercover when he was trying to catch silver so it's a very different dynamic)
i want to also mention hugh briefly. he wasn't too prominent as a character, but i thought everything they did with him and his sister was good! also i like him being nice to whitley at the end it's really cute
next i wanted to talk about cheren and bianca again! i thought they were utilized really well in this arc. like i said before, having cheren be the class's teacher is a great way both to involve him in the story and connect the new cast to the old cast, while still letting him be more in the bg while blake and whitley get the spotlight.
and bianca, while she again isnt quite as prominent as him, still feels involved just the right amount. i appreciate that they both get chances to shine and also character moments, while again not distracting from the new characters too much.
in particular, i really really appreciated them actually showing the effects of black's disappearance on them. it genuinely made me emotional seeing them both clearly still feeling his absence, and it was a great way both to remind the viewer of what had happened, while also really making them feel the WEIGHT of it. the fact that it gets brought up at "random" moments throughout whenever they get reminded of him is really realistic and well-done in my opinion.
i especially wanted to highlight this moment cause it honestly just broke my heart :( this is another detail that i think was so important to include, how black's disappearance has clearly made bianca more paranoid of something happening to cheren (or just other people in general.) like in this scenario considering there's danger and cheren isnt picking up, it makes sense for her to be scared something's happened, but i'd imagine these kinds of thoughts extend to more everyday situations as well. (and probably happens for cheren as well)
sadness aside though, it's also just nice to see these two after their character development. they both still feel like the same characters, just more confident in themselves, which is nice :)
i was not expecting to be so charmed by colress, i'll be honest LOL. he's way too fun of a villain - entirely deranged and stone cold evil, but with a lighthearted and almost Cute exterior. it's a combination that i always love, and i definitely enjoyed it with him. super fun to watch but also a genuinely intimidating threat - very good balance!!
OHHHHHH N. it was so nice to see him again, after his development. i thought he was written wonderfully here. he's quite different in many ways - not just in his ideology, but the way he expresses himself and the way he interacts with other people.
he still feels like himself, but you can really tell that he's had 2 years to actually befriend people and live in the real world and figure out more of who he is outside of what he was groomed into being. i think that balance was handled well! he doesn't feel like he's just been "fixed" into a "normal person" - again, he's still very much himself. he's just more open and confident now, which is really nice to see.
in particular, learning that N was living with alder and the others for a while, and calls him "grandpa" now just like iris does genuinely made me SOOOO emotional like. oh my god. this is the guy who was told he was a freak without a human heart. who spent his whole adolescence locked away in a castle. he has so many people now who care about him (in an actual genuine way) and that he cares about in return, and it's just. really nice to see :')
the alder thing is especially sweet to me considering N's track record with family. which, speaking of...
DUDE. HOLY FUCK. i did NOT know about this scene so when i got to it i was in like total shock. N extending kindness to ghetsis and still calling him his father even after everything, and ghetsis BEATING HIM BLOODY IN RESPONSE???? DUDE.
i was genuinely caught so off guard by this scene ToT by general standards it's nothing crazy but for pokespe, it's by far the most extreme violence they've shown so far. and the context just makes it even worse... i really really love it though, not just cuz i <3 violence and gore, but because it is VERY effective at getting across just how horrible ghetsis is and how he absolutely is not worthy or capable of redemption. just in case you had any doubts lmao.
finally though, i want to talk about my beloved sweetsies and their long-awaited reunion :)
black and white's reunion is SO sweet, it's so nice to see them finally back together and to know that they get their happy ending after everything <3
it was also brief/subtle, but it was nice seeing how white had improved in the 2 years since we last saw her! her being the one to suggest battle strategies and black praising her for it was really cool, since her battle skills didn't really get a chance to shine in BW (since she was still very new to battling then)
i DO wish we got to see a littleeeee more of them but. it's alright. they got their spotlight in their own arc lol. though i do specifically wish that we got to see more of white and what she was doing in the lead-up to finding the light stone. we get a glimpse of it from what she tells whitley about how hard things were, but i do wish we got to See a bit of it.... but again, it's fine it's fine. im happy with what we got
it was also fun to see all four dexholders interact with each other. i like how both black and white were annoyed by blake LOL
and yeah, that's basically all i have to say! i really enjoyed this arc (and im thankful i didnt have to wait the original 6 YEARS to get through it lmao) and am glad to have finally experienced it, since it was definitely my biggest blind spot when it came to the series this entire time.
next up is XY, which im very excited for! i cant remember if i finished XY as a kid (im pretty sure i did) but i at least read a large amount of it and liked it enough to draw the characters a lot and also create this masterpiece of a comic. i remember SOME stuff but not a lot of specifics, so it'll be great to reexperience it.
i'll see you all then! ^^