LUSAMINE IS AN UNREDEEMABLE ABUSER

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[ HEAVY SUBJECT AHEAD (obviously) ]

Lusamine, as displayed in SMUSUM, is an unrepentant, horrific child abuser that cannot be redeemed.

I don't understand why some people constantly argue against this fact, but I do know that "Lusamine is a lame villain" or "Lusamine can be reedeemed" is something that comes up a lot, and so I want to make sure that anyone who interacts with this journal knows exactly where I stand.

Gladion is an abused child. His "affection" for Lusamine is that of an abused child desiring something from their parent that does not exist. The only reason Lillie/Gladion do anything for her in any of the games is Japan's firm stance on filial piety (loyalty to your parents), and if the story had been written by anyone who actually understood and respected abuse victims, this would not have happened.

SMUSUM says that it the burden of the abused to care for/change their abusers, and that is not true nor do I respect such a view.

In short, Lusamine is unredeemable and a nasty abuser, and while Gladion has mixed feelings about her (as abused children do), he is played with the foundation of not forgiving her, excusing her abuse, or being willing to be her carer -- because it is not on his shoulders to care for the one who's damaged him.

If you want to read a very good break-down of Lusamine and her abusive nature, Scrawlers on Tumblr has a good take, and WrightlySo also does.

I'll post both of those rundowns here in the comments, just in case something happens to the links.

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POKEMON SUN AND MOON: MENTAL ILLNESS, CHILD ABUSE, AND GROWING UP

In the most basic sense, Pokemon Sun/Moon follows the usual mainline Pokemon game formula: you start out as an adolescent trainer getting a small Water, Grass, or Fire-type Pokemon from a scientist named after a type of tree. You use this Pokemon to beat a series of trainers, fight a morally dubious organization, get tangled up in events involving a legendary Pokemon, defeat four strong trainers, and defeat one VERY strong trainer who holds a position of high importance in the region. Some dialogue happens and the credits roll.

In the midst of this basic structure is the story of Lusamine’s family, which can only be described as a tragedy.

Shortly after beginning your story as “generic player character avatar who has recently moved to the Alola region,” you encounter Lillie, an enigmatic girl, who needs you to help save her little Pokemon (later identified as Cosmog) she calls “Nebby” from a swarm of other Pokemon on a rickety bridge. You help her with this, earning her trust. You then learn that Lillie is trying to keep Nebby hidden within her bag and has been staying with the region’s local scientific expert, Professor Kukui, as his assistant. Kukui doesn’t know where she came from and she doesn’t want to reveal any more information about Nebby or her past.

Over the course of the first half of the story, you get little details here and there about Lillie’s past.

1. Lillie doesn’t have the self-confidence to be a Pokemon trainer.
   
2. Lillie seems dedicated to trying to heal other people’s Pokemon.
   
3. Lillie is impressed by other people buying and choosing their own clothing.
   
4. Lillie gets nervous around members of the Aether Foundation, a local humanitarian society dedicated to protecting Pokemon.
   
5. Lillie is self-deprecating, perceiving herself as being passive and useless.

A little bit later after you meet Lillie, you meet Gladion, a mysterious boy who’s been living on his own for some time along with a dangerous, artificial-looking Pokemon he calls “Type:Null.” Gladion informs you that he intends to get stronger and refuses to give more information about himself. You find some time later that he’s working as an enforcer for Team Skull, the bandit team of the region who spends much of their time causing property damage and stealing Pokemon. As the game progresses, Gladion eventually informs the player that Team Skull is after Nebby, and he tells the player that the player should protect Nebby and Lillie.

After you finish the first half of the island challenge, you and your relaxed-buddy-rival Hau stop by the Aether Foundation HQ, Aether Paradise. While there, you get told by a kind female Aether employee named Wicke that they’re basically the ASPCA for Pokemon. Shortly after, the player and Hau finally meet Lusamine, who proclaims her love for all Pokemon.

Then a wormhole opens up and an eldritch-horror-jellyfish-Pokemon pops up and attacks. Once it’s repelled and disappears, Lusamine ominously states that she will find a way to love that Pokemon, too. When Hau and the player happen to bring up Lillie around her, Lusamine ominously says that children should obey their elders.

Eventually, Team Skull becomes such a huge nuisance on your journey that about ¾ of your way through the island challenge, you’re tasked with breaking into their base in Po Town and defeating their leader, Guzma. Guzma takes the beating with some annoyance, but this is only a minor setback for his greater plans.

When the player returns from Po Town, they find that Lillie has been kidnapped by Team Skull and taken to Aether Foundation headquarters. Gladion arrives and informs them that Team Skull has been working for the Aether Foundation to steal Pokemon.

In truth, Guzma has been working directly under Lusamine.

When you go to confront Lusamine, some choice details come out:

1. Lusamine is Lillie and Gladion’s mother
   
2. Lusamine became obsessed with beauty and the Ultra Beasts, hiring Team Skull to gather Pokemon for her to freeze in crystal to keep them “beautiful” while Lusamine neglected and emotionally abused her children (in order to keep them “beautiful” through obedience).
   
3. Nebby and Type:Null were created by the Aether Foundation to gain access to and capture Ultra Beasts, respectively
   
4. Gladion fled with Type:Null to stop the Ultra Beasts
   
5. After Gladion fled, Lillie found out that Lusamine’s plan to use Nebby to open up wormholes would eventually kill Nebby, so Lillie fled with Nebby, as well.

Lusamine then denounces Gladion and Lillie as her children and uses Nebby to open the wormholes regardless. Lusamine and Guzma get sucked into one of these wormholes and Ultra Beasts get unleashed all over Alola, causing havoc and mayhem wherever they go.

After this, Gladion goes off to try to stop the Ultra Beasts however he can. Lillie states her intention to try to stop her mother from causing further damage and save her from herself.

The rest of the game is largely about Lillie helping the player to get to Lusamine while gradually gaining the confidence to eventually confront her mother.

Lillie changes the way she dresses, opts to be more outgoing, and gathers the courage to cross a similar rickety bridge from the beginning of the game without the player’s help.

It’s during this period of time that the player and Lillie stop by the small Exeggutor Island. There, Lillie confides in the player that she still has ambivalent feelings about her mother and herself. Lusamine wasn’t always bad, but once she stopped caring about anything but the Ultra Beasts, it basically destroyed Lillie’s identity and sense of agency. The player has inspired Lillie to overcome this fact.

In the end, the player and Lillie go to a sacred altar: there, the player and Lillie play some holy flutes, and Nebby evolves into the game’s legendary Pokemon: Solgaleo for Sun, Lunala for Moon.

Lillie and the player then travel through the wormhole into Ultra Space to stop Lusamine. There, Guzma tells the two that Lusamine is so far mentally gone that she terrifies him. Despite this, Lillie is determined to confront her. Despite Lusamine basically being mindlinked with the Cthulhu-esque Ultra Beast called Nihilego, Lillie calls her out for all of her horrible actions and her years of abuse.

After this, the player has to battle a Lusamine-Nihilego hybrid…

…’s Pokemon. You don’t actually get to fight the hybrid. Missed opportunity.

Regardless, you defeat Lusamine, and Lillie calls out to her mother one last time. The hybrid tries to strike at Lillie, an act that could presumably kill her, when Lillie calls for Nebby. Nebby takes down the hybrid, separating Nihilego from Lusamine.

The battle is over. Lusamine is defeated, but she’s alive. Lusamine even remarks that Lillie suddenly looks beautiful, indicating her love for Lillie may still be there.

The world is saved from the Ultra Beasts. Nebby takes the player, Lillie, Lusamine, and Guzma back to Earth.

Nebby wants to stay with Lillie, but Lillie asks Nebby to stay with the player because Lillie isn’t a proper Pokemon Trainer yet.

As the game comes to its conclusion after the player becomes the region Champion, Guzma disbands Team Skull and moves back home. You can talk to him after the game to find out that he came from a home with extreme pressure to succeed, with some dialogue implying that his father physically beat him– Guzma wanted to be strong, yes, but he wanted the love and respect that Lusamine seemed to provide him for getting Pokemon for her. He’s got no one to really trust, now, and he has no plan of what to do with his life after all this.

Gladion evolves Type:Null into Silvally, freeing it from the power-restraining helmet that caused it so much discomfort. He thanks you for helping his sister and saving his mother. After the credits roll, Gladion takes over as president of the Aether Foundation and plans for it to help Pokemon for real this time.

Gladion speculates that Lusamine went insane because Gladion and Lillie’s father, Professor Mohn, was lost in a wormhole experiment gone wrong. Lusamine never mentally recovered from the loss.

Lillie gives thanks to the sacred Tapu Pokemon, who helped fight off the Ultra Beasts while she dealt with her mother. She celebrates the end of the player’s island challenge with Hau and Professor Kukui. Lillie confirms that her mother is now in a mental hospital, and she seems to be making some progress.

But Lillie can’t just be a passive observer for things anymore: she can’t just stay on the island as Kukui’s assistant.

To that end, Lillie decides to leave for Kanto, the location of the first Pokemon games. She’s headed there both to get the researcher Bill to help with her mother’s treatment and to go on her own Pokemon journey to become a respectable trainer. Lillie states she was inspired to strike out on her own as a trainer in part thanks to the trainer’s own actions. I personally like to think that Lillie will take Nebby with her some day

The credits roll, focusing on a shot of Lillie with a fully evolved Nebby, both of them at peace.

That’s where the story leaves us.

Lillie is trying to help her mother get better, but she’s also focused on moving on with her life independent of her family.

Gladion is cleaning up after his mother’s mess, but he never says he forgives Lusamine for what she did.

Guzma’s pretty much broken and driftless.

Lusamine may very well be in a mental hospital for the rest of her life, and even if she recovers, her children would be justified in never forgiving her. Even worse, Lusamine may have to face severe legal penalties for kidnapping Pokemon and endangering the entire Alola region.

There isn’t a clean, neat ending in Sun/Moon where everything is wrapped up and everyone is forgiven. The player helps two children of an abusive parent stop their abusive parent from destroying the world.

Of course the kids are gonna need time to recover. Given how badly they were treated, and given the fact that their mother kidnapped multiple Pokemon and almost killed everyone in their region, they would be perfectly justified in never forgiving her or talking to her ever again. Hell, Lillie even has some trouble forgiving Gladion at first for leaving her with Lusamine alone.

Lillie and Gladion are survivors of parental abuse from a mother who will probably spend the rest of her life in either a mental ward or a prison cell.

From a franchise where the other most seriously addressed issues parental issues before this point were Gen 5’s unambiguously manipulative Ghetsis, who uses his foster-son to steal Pokemon and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and Gen I’s absent Giovanni, whose relationship with his son Silver is never directly addressed as a character motivation in any game in the series, Lusamine’s issues with her children are heavily focused upon and surprisingly nuanced.

This isn’t to say that the game is absolutely perfect. One glaring issue [...] is that Lillie’s callout against her mother’s abuse is done while Lillie’s face can only be described as a decidedly pouty “ >BI”. Not a face of pure anger, not a tearful remorse, not a face of grim determination… A pouting face. Could’ve been handled a little more seriously.

It’s a complicated story of mental illness, child abuse, and growing up in spite of both of those things. Even looking back now, I’m shocked that we got a story like this from the usually child-friendly-to-a-fault Pokemon franchise.

….Which is why, honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised when they backpedaled on that and effectively neutered the entire story in the updated remake that came out a year later, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.