>>58013838
>>58014563
In the manga this plays out the most with the Hoenn gym leaders, which actually leads to extremely stupid infighting for a bit as half of them end up thinking Team Magma are the good guys while the other half thinks Team Aqua are the good guys. Ruby and Sapphire themselves only face Team Magma/Aqua respectively but they never end up siding with either team (at least not based on the teams' values) with Sapphire opposing ecoterrorists on principle, but Ruby just being ambivalent to it all because he just moved here and doesn't care. Both of them are more upset about the parts where Aqua/Magma members keep torturing random people well Ruby used to be upset about it but then RS writing goes full retard by the end and seemingly reverses his position on that

Flannery fits this whole idea the most because when Team Aqua comes to her town to shut down Mt Chimney, it's the Magma admin Tabitha who comes to help her save the volcano. Between that and them both being fire type trainers, she listens to his Team Magma shill speech and develops a crush on him.

But the whole ideological conflict just comes off as retarded when it's a bunch of grown adults saying shit like "I like water so Team Aqua's idea of more water is le good". It would make more sense if the 10 year old protagonists are the ones coming to those dumb types of conclusions when picking a side. Especially since both Team Aqua and Magma themselves are both stupid as fuck organizations who think fucking up the environment won't lead to disaster.