I think XY insists upon itself the most. XY tries to tell a serious story about war, human greed, limited resources and tragedy. However, it barely focuses on that and when it does, it's bare bones. You don't get much time to know AZ and he just trauma dumps on you at the second encounter. The villains, Team Flare, are group full of comically evil and vain rich kids who paid for the ticket to survival. And yet, their ringleader, Lysandre, wants to kill everyone except his team because he despise greedy, evil people, and wants to make a world a better place. His motivation conflicts with actions and also, no one really challenges his points. As for your friends, the only plot relevant ones are your gender counterpart and Shauna, and that's because they show up with you while raiding Team Flare's base. Everyone else are pretty one dimensional and don't contribute to the plot, aside from Korrina giving us a free Lucario and helping us obtain mega evolution. It just feels like GF wanted to combine story elements from Gen 4 and 5 together, with both Team Flare and Team Galactic being comical teams with serious leaders and goals and N and AZ being tragic characters that are used by the villains in some way, but it ends up missing the mark by not giving them enough depth and focus.
