d_s_t_e's Wattpad Reviews

PC Zero Continued: Brine

* Spoilers everywhere

Brine is a water marked Pikachu. She has special water powers, which she controls through the use of special bracelets. Abandoned by her parents with only a riddle as to where she can find them, she has no family or friends, although she seems oddly fine with that. 

The only thing that Brine wants over the course of the book is to find her parents. They had told her that she would find them once she found the bracelets that would let her control her water powers. When the shining warriors first meet her, she's just about to embark upon the trial. It's no small challenge, but she is able to win, gaining the desired bracelets. Upon meeting Manaphy, though, she learns that the Undine were thought to be extinct. There are no clues about where her parents might be.

Up to this point, there has been a good balance of conflict regarding Brine, but, at this point, they go down to absolutely nothing. She has a brief period of feeling unconfident about her new powers, but from that point on she's just performing awesome feats as needed.

There's nothing else in her plotline until the very end of the book, when Undine appear to try to fight for the oceans. There is brief conflict in that she tries and fails to talk to them. Finally, she manages to get the whole story. She learns that the Undine have orders not to talk to Pokémon, that she's a "crossbreed" and therefore not one of the Undine, and that her parents were most likely killed because that's the punishment for mating across species. All of this seems like absolutely terrible news, but there isn't even an internal conflict here, since Brine accepts it seemingly right away. Is it admirable that she uses all of this as motivation to work towards a world where all races can live in peace? Of course, but it would have even more of an impact if this was coming out of an emotional struggle. The fact that her reaction is so small seems to indicate that her conflict wasn't even very important to her.

The fact that this comes so close to the end of the story also means that she spends the majority of the book without much reason to aid in the shining warrior quest at all. To make matters worse, she never seems to develop any kind of relationship with any of the other characters. She has a couple of brief conversations with Crystal, but it would be a stretch to say that a friendship developed from that. That means she doesn't have much effect on any of the other characters beyond the help that she provides through her awesome water powers. It also doesn't give her many opportunities to develop or even to shine for being the character she is.

A lot of reviewers have said that Brine is a problematic character. I agree that there isn't much to her plotline as it currently stands. I think that it should definitely be reworked in some way. Perhaps she should learn the truth about her parents directly following the first trial and have a plot in which she struggles to deal with the difficult truths, perhaps with help from a friend she makes among the group, and tries to find a way to reconcile the Undine with the other races. Perhaps her trial should be moved to be the very last one, with the other five characters being present for a majority of the book before she comes in to solve all of their problems and blow us away with her awesome powers. There are a lot of possibilities that the author could explore here, but, as the matter currently stands, there isn't much to be said for Brine's plot line.