* Spoilers everywhere. Go read the book or give up now.

Pokémon Chronicles: Zero starts out (after a brief section of prologue) by introducing the first person narrator: a Piplup named Crystal who lives with her adoptive mother and many adopted siblings. Her life seems fine, but she tells the reader that she has a deep longing to see the world, one that is at least partially based on some kind of mysterious impulse or instinct.

"...there were deeper reasons for me wanting to explore the world, reasons that I myself couldn't fully understand. For the most part, I felt as though I had to for some reason, as if there was something major and dramatic waiting for me out there..." – Prologue: Let's Begin!

She soon gets her opportunity in the form of an opening at a nearby school and sets out on a journey, soon being joined by her friend (and sometimes-rival) Megan the Cyndaquil.

This is a pretty vanilla beginning. It does its job, of course. It introduces the main character, shows what her goal is, and quickly introduces interpersonal tensions and potential dangers to come, but there is nothing particularly unique or interesting in these plot mechanics. A character leaves home to go on a journey because she wants to go on a journey, a very common story. As I said, there's nothing wrong with that... except that I think it could be so much better.

Why? Well, because Pokémon Chronicles: Zero is not actually the story of a Piplup who goes on a journey in order to satisfy her longing for adventure. The story isn't actually about Crystal at all. Stick with me here. This will all make much more sense after I drop some literature knowledge.

The Conflict

In fictional literature, there are several different types of conflicts. The main conflict of the story could be person vs. person (you might have been taught it as man vs. man, but I'm choosing to be more gender neutral). This type of plot involves a protagonist who is opposed by an antagonist. You could imagine Batman vs. the Joker. Batman is the main character, the hero of the story, who is opposed by the villainous Joker. Batman wants to save Gotham City; the Joker wants to destroy it.

Some other types of conflict include person vs. nature (books like The Hatchet, where the main character must survive in the harsh wilderness), person vs. self (in which the entire main conflict is an internal one, like A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge is his own worst enemy and undergoes a journey in which he finally becomes a better man), person vs. society (pick your favorite dystopia), and more.

So, on to the obvious question at hand. What is the main conflict of Pokémon Chronicles: Zero? Crystal is our main character, right? So we switch person for Pokémon and say that it's Pokémon vs. ...? Who or what is opposing Crystal in her goals? Suzie the Kangaskhan, the Pokémon who adopted her, offers some slight resistance to the idea of Crystal leaving but mostly endorses it wholeheartedly, even offering her a lot of very useful supplies that she'd kept especially for the occasion. Megan argues with Crystal and seems combative, yet she is also clearly described as a friend. Even more than that, she does nothing to prevent Crystal from leaving on her desired journey and even ends up travelling with her, which provides help.

At the end of chapter one, Crystal meets her first real villain, a Zweilous intent upon making her a meal. This would certainly oppose her goals, so is the conflict Pokémon vs. Pokémon? No, this particular villain actually turns out to be a very minor character in the book as a whole.

So what am I saying? Am I trying to tell you that this book has made the fundamental error of not even having a proper conflict? No, although that certainly would be the case if you made the mistake of thinking that Crystal is the first half of our conflict label. And that mistake would be perfectly understandable given how this book begins.

Luckily, though, there is something else in the beginning. That tiny little prologue section that I mentioned earlier. Behold the first paragraph of the book:

"The land of Heroica: a world blessed by angels, is now veiled in darkness. The wind stops, the sea is wild, and the Earth begins to rot. The ancient catastrophe, a plague known as the Anima, is rising." – Prologue: Let's Begin!

That's right, I'm going to deduce the main conflict of the book by working backwards. The second part of our conflict label, the antagonist of the book, is clearly whoever or whatever is causing this terrible plague. This is also backed up by the description of the book itself, which certainly should be attempting to introduce the main conflict. So we can guess that the conflict is someone/something vs. nature, assuming that the plague is something natural in origin.

Working backwards, as I said, the next question is: who or what is opposing nature, the antagonist of the story? The answer is revealed in the paragraph after the next: "When the world is in darkness, six warriors will come..."

It doesn't say that an extraordinary Piplup will come. It says six warriors will come. Each one of them is introduced as being equally important. Each one of them must pass trials and win an amulet, then work together as a team to "return light to the world". This book does not have one protagonist. It has six.

I'm going to let that sink in for a moment.

Yeah, so all of you out there who read this book and wondered why it was so long and complicated and why so much attention was given to so many characters should now be starting to see the answer. This book didn't set out to deliver a simple person vs. person conflict (or even Pokémon vs. Pokémon). This book is setting out to give us group vs. society (because it is ultimately revealed that various societal forces have caused and exacerbated the bestia crisis... but I'll get to that later).

Back to Plot

What is my big point here? My point is that the main conflict of the book fails to be adequately reflected in its plot structure. It leads us to believe that Crystal is the one main character, the single one who drives the plot and upon whom everything depends. It does this by starting on her story, by emphasizing her experiences, and most of all by making her the first person point of view character.

I would like to point out here that the author himself obviously knew on some level that there was more to the story than Crystal. That prologue bit that I just quoted, the thing that makes the hugest difference and effectively saves the prologue as a whole, is written in third person perspective. It describes knowledge that Crystal doesn't even possess, dipping into the thoughts of the only character nearby who is capable of delivering it to the reader. Why? Because the author knew that it was vital to the story. It's vital to the story, and it isn't coming from our supposed main character.

The book does this at many other points as well, revealing bits of story that can't be told from Crystal's perspective because she isn't present or lacks some necessary knowledge or insight. On a basic level, you could call these potential point of view issues, but what really gets to me is the greater truth that they are pointing to. The author included them because they were important, so important that he was willing to bend and break out of the perspective he had set up in order to write them. And they are important because the story is about more than Crystal.

Don't get me wrong. Crystal is important. She's one of the six warriors mentioned; her place in the quest is a vital one. In the ending, we even see that she ends up being the one to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the world. She does end up being the one character who is most necessary to put the bestia crisis to an end... but we have no possible way of knowing or seeing that for 99% of the book.

This means that the events of Crystal's life are not always the most important ones that are occurring in the book. In fact, I would argue that they are not the most important for a large portion of the time. In the beginning I just mentioned, we see Crystal's home life and her vanilla adventure motivations. As I said, there's nothing wrong with this beginning. It works. But where do the journeys of our other five main characters begin? Would any of them make a better beginning?

What if the book started with a flashback to the day that Megan's parents were brutally murdered in front of her eyes? This is a scene full of excitement and a powerful driving force for her as a character. It would hook the reader quite effectively while also accomplishing some very important work for the plot. For one thing, it would give the reader a sympathetic first impression of Megan, a character who seems very dislikeable at first and rather difficult for some readers to want to root for. While her motives certainly aren't the best, a careful reading of the one small scene in the book in which Megan reveals her backstory actually makes them completely understandable and throws her entire character into a whole new light. The problem is that it is such a small scene that it can be easily missed or forgotten about or not read carefully enough in the first place. Actually having this scene in the book would resolve that problem entirely and also be far more interesting (showing as opposed to telling). Another plot service would be provided if the scene continued to the point at which Suzie the Kangaskhan steps in to help Megan... but chooses not to adopt her, as she has with countless other children, including Crystal. This scene would make Megan's rivalry with Crystal much more clear and understandable, as well as show us where some of Megan's many personal insecurities have stemmed from. If executed correctly, it could also make the reader start to wonder why Suzie the Kangaskhan has really made this choice, perhaps indicating that there is something odd about her and the children that she has adopted.

That would be a much better beginning, but I'm actually going to argue in favor of another one. Why? Megan has a very compelling backstory, but she isn't the most important character in terms of the plot, either, at least not in the beginning of the book. Megan's personal antagonist is the Pokémon who killed her parents, which means that her interests don't align with those of the main plot. Whose interests do align with the main plot while also providing the perfect opportunity to set the stakes? Lucca's. Lucca comes from the place that has arguably been hit the hardest by the bestia crisis. He's seen its effects firsthand and tells Crystal early on that he wants more than anything to change the situation of the world so that everyone has the bestia they need. That's our main plot. Lucca also has a direct connection to the villain who will eventually raise the stakes higher than any other character in the book and provide the final battle, which resolves another issue I had with the plot structure of the book.

As the chapters of this book were still being published, I honestly thought that the plot had reached its climax in the battle against Panzer. This is because Panzer is the villain most tied to Crystal and brings about the point of largest conflict for her personally. Since I saw her as the main character, I expected the plot to be following her personal conflicts. This also meant that when the book didn't end afterwards, I started to feel as though the book was definitely too long, a feeling that I think was shared by other readers. At the same time, though, I could tell that the true final battle was the one that raised stakes the highest of all, so a part of me really didn't want the author to just get rid of it. I realized in writing this review that the problem isn't that the book didn't end with Panzer's battle or that it failed to establish an adequate connection to Crystal in the final battle. The problem was that the book never should have been framed as following Crystal's story because it wasn't.

What I believe this book needs to do is follow the plotline of group vs. society, which means that it needs to emphasize Crystal's personal conflicts only in as much as they affect the larger plot. In order to solve the bestia crisis, all six characters are needed. They need to stay alive as a minimum goal, so anything that threatens the life of even one member is an important plot element. They also need to stay together, so any threat to group unity is a plot element. They need to complete the trials, and, since each one is built for one particular character, the focus character of the trial should obviously take on special importance until that trial is complete. Finally, they need to complete their quest and restore the bestia, which means that FinVarra should indeed be the most important villain of the book, since he threatens this the most.

In terms of the villains, it should be clear to the reader that each one has a particular importance in the greater conflict, especially because there are a lot of them. Obviously, anyone who is trying to kill the main characters is a threat to the quest, but it's much more interesting if the villain also represents a piece of society, our antagonist. As the story stands right now, it's not totally clear that society is the main antagonist, perhaps because the author hasn't really thought of it in that way.

It is revealed fairly early in the story, though, that the world naturally produces enough bestia for all of nature and for Pokémon attacks. Azeth the scientist explains this to our protagonists and doesn't understand why such problems are happening given this. There are also hints, even from the prologue, that the leadership of the Pokémon world is seriously flawed and is causing many problems. Shelly and Lucca's plotlines especially emphasize this, as do characters like Mother Bun, who is using up bestia at a staggering rate in a misguided attempt to preserve her part of the world. It's also increasingly suspicious as we learn that all the shining warriors of the recent past have met untimely ends, and it seems as though there are societal forces that are actually working against them on their quest. The fact that there even need to be shining warriors on a regular basis also hints at a larger issue, which is a really interesting take for an adventure book, on a side note. The biggest reveal of all comes in the ending, when the main characters learn that the world was set up in this way for a reason that has everything to do with Pokémon and the way in which they structure and run their societies. I think it would make a lot of sense for the story to be gradually leading us to this ultimate conclusion, revealing more and more of society's negative influences and impacts along the way until the big reveal. Perhaps the book is already trying to do this, but it didn't seem very smooth or clear and so definitely needs improvement if so. Structuring in this way would also prevent me from getting bored or wondering what the point is of having yet another villain character pop up. It would allow for either providing a greater relevance for a character or make it clear to the author that the villain in question is unnecessary and can be scrapped.

Essentially, my argument is that, by restructuring the plot to intertwine with the actual driving conflict, the book will either shrink to its proper size in order to focus on that conflict and nothing extraneous or actually earn its length by making every part of the book important, relevant, and compelling.

In the chapters to come, I'm going to focus on each of the six main characters of the book in terms of their individual (currently) sub-plots, how they do or don't intertwine with the main plot, and especially how they do or don't represent a complete character arc, which is a problem now and becomes an even bigger one if they are to be treated as true main characters.