Operation Starfall – The Weird Anti-Bullying Movement
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have three different paths. There’s your standard Victory Road, there’s the Path of Titans which I started on, and then there’s Operation Starfall, or Starfall Street, which the game sometimes refers to it as. This path involves battling your way through five bases, confronting the bosses and, well, just fighting them. The bases all follow various themes and are filled with kids bunking off school. Along the way, you are joined by Clive, who is CLEARLY Directer Clavell, the director of the academy, and wants to know why these kids are all not doing lessons. You’re also digitally joined by Cassopeia, who is sending you on this journey and paying you in LP.
Really, the bases aren’t hard. You have to fight 30 Pokemon all of the same type using the roaming battling Pokemon feature and the first three Pokemon in your team. Once your Pokemon have automatically battled and beaten 30 Pokemon, you then fight a boss, which works just like a normal trainer battle. The only difference is that their last Pokemon is a massively altered Revavroom that has an element matching the boss and their other Pokemon. The Revavroom can’t be one-hit killed, but still takes super effective damage as normal. There are five of these bosses, using the types Dark, Fire, Poison, Fairy and Fighting, in that difficulty order. You generally need three Pokemon that are all super effective against these types, for the automatic battles. This is fine with the easier bosses, but getting 3 level 60 Pokemon ready to take on the Fighting boss can be a pain if you currently only have one. Or, somehow, like me, have no real fighting counters in your main party.
With each base you beat, the more you find out about their background. Team Star was founded when a bunch of kids gathered a bunch of other kids, put together some awesome costumes and Pokemon, and challenged their bullies head on. ‘Something’ happened, and all the bullies ended up dropping out of the academy. But rather than return to school, Team Star remained within their bases and basically dropped out of school themselves, although they more likely just went truant. At first, Team Star are kinda made out to be bullies themselves, but over time, we discover that they were bullied and then fought back against their bullies.
The quest line ends with you battling Director Clavell and then Cassiopeia. It turns out Cassiopeia is Penny, the Eevee-loving student you help at the very beginning of the game. And not only is she helping you defeat team Star, it turns out she secretly FOUNDED Team Star. I mean, it’s not a huge revelation, mostly because, after every battle, Cassiopeia drifts off wistfully about each Team Star boss, and she’s clearly the victim of bullying and wants to fight back against her bullies as well, but, well, it’s a thing. And, of course, she uses an entire team of Eevees. In fact, Director Clavell is probably a much harder battle, since Penny’s Pokemon all spam Baby Doll Eyes at you, giving you a free attack.
It all ends with everyone getting off pretty lightly. Even though Penny has been hacking money from the Pokemon League to pay you. The Team Star bases are converted into special Pokemon teaching centres and everyone just has to do community service. Team Star doesn’t really disband, but is converted into a force of good, and all the students start going back to their lessons.
The story doesn’t really go very far, but it does lean heavily on the theme of not battling others, of protecting your friends and being a good person. I think I much prefer that over the more generic storylines in the other paths. It actually feels like a school-based thingy, rather than a kid just wandering around the wilderness fighting people. Okay, that is still what you’re doing, but I think the lessons learned are better.
After all, we shouldn’t bully each other, and we should treat our friends well and protect them. Treat each other the way you’d want to be treated, alright?
Anyway, that’s one more path complete. Now all I need to do is complete Victory Road and I’ll finally be able to go to that damn crater.