So if you played BW unspoiled, which back in 2010 I played BW japanese rom on an emulator before release and got to Lenora's gym despite my pc running it at 10fps.
Anyway to a kid, and at the time; Team Plasma and N were asking pretty interesting questions about the Pokemon world. Sure it's still a saturday morning cartoon plot, but the themes of BW's writing were a deliberate attempt to step up from RSE's and DPPt's fairly generic take over le world. BW grounded pokemon down, the gyms were sometimes purposeful locations, you had friend rivals but then this green haired mystery antgagonist who appears with a new team everywhere he goes. And can talk to Pokemon.
N is so cool. N is my favorite rival and always sticks out in my head, Gary was special but N was really trying to challenge my thinking.