I figure I'd rip off CK and do my own version of a thematic analysis of a game. Why WA4? Cause I recently replayed it and its fresh in my mind and people seem to have this misconception of what the game is actually about. I'm not trying to praise WA4's theme here, or any characters, so much as speak of things on a more conceptual level and how it goes together!
That said, lets get started!
(and yes, I do intend to put this on the DL Site, everything after the hyphens)
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Wild ARMs 4, a game often praised for its gameplay due to the unique Hex system, and the way it handles fights within it. Whenever someone praises this game, its almost always for this reason. Not surprisingly, whenever someone bashes Wild ARMs 4, its almost always attacking its plot, characters, and more so than other games, its actual theme. The former two are completely subjective and I am not here to deal with that, but the theme? Well, yeah, you're entitle to your own opinion...but the issue is, many will often misrepresent the game's theme. Before we get started, I wish to quickly recap the series themes overall.
Not unlike Final Fantasy, a series Wild ARMs seems to wish to emulate in terms of series progression overall, each Wild ARMs game has a different theme. Wild ARMs 1 (and Alter Code F by extension), and this is the one I feel most uneasy on due to my lack of memories on specifics in the game, was about that searching of ones self. Wild ARMs 2 dealt with the definition of the word "Hero" and explores both its positive and the negative connotations. Wild ARMs 3 dealt with the concept of memories, and Wild ARMs 5 was racism plot nonsense that any sort of concise mentioning of it makes it sound like cliched garbage, whether that be true or not.
If you look at Wild ARMs games, they tend to deal with their themes on a rather large scale. Its not just a simple concept like, say, Final Fantasy 6's "Hope" but rather, the game beats you over the head with it constantly, and thus it strikes me that yes, the writers did want to explore the theme rather strongly. Wild ARMs 4 is no exception here. So what is Wild ARMs 4's theme?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjBO8gCzhmYSounds accurate, right? I mean, the song is entirely about Kids and Adults fighting, bickering and trying to say whose the real cause of problems in society. So WIld ARMs 4's theme is "Kids vs. Adults!" right?
...no, actually, its not. That is where the problem with WA4 analysis comes from. The theme is not something so simple as a confrontation of Kids and Adults duking it out, with Kids being the "Good Guys" and the Adults being "Bad Guys." Now make no mistake; this Kids and Adults thing IS the theme of WA4, but not something as simple as people put it. Someone said "Kids vs. Adults" is an accurate description of WA4's theme, but not in the way people think of it, by which he meant that the "vs." is not implying confrontation but rather, "What is the difference between the two terms?" Putting it that way, I agree, and THAT is WA4's real theme: THe definition of those two terms. Basically, we are back to Wild ARMs 2's theme, only instead of "hero" you can say "Adult", and by extension, to define Adult, one must define what a "Kid" is. The problem is when people say "Kids vs. Adults!" they almost always mean "Your team is full of kids, they're fighting the bad oppressive adults!" which as I said is NOT what the game is about. Actually, that song did make me recognize a facet of WA4's theme I hadn't considered when playing the game, but its very much there now that I think about it, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Lets start from the beginning to analyze this theme shall we? We start the game with Jude in a tree, a very typical "childish" activity. Its not long until we learn Jude is the only child in the village, and he's adored by all the adults there, but at the same time, often reprimanded for, well, kids things, like not doing homework or getting into trouble. It starts tossing out these terms out of the gate. Here, we see Adults as authority figures with Jude just trying to act on his own and have fun. The Adults, his mother especially just want what is best for Jude, but Jude being the child that he is, doesn't really care that much, he just wants to kick back and have fun. Right here, we come to our first major indicator of what Kids vs. Adults actually is:
Freedom vs. Responsibility. A Kid is free to do whatever they want and act entirely on Will. An adult, meanwhile, is expected to act a certain way and to fulfill a certain duty. In short, Children are driven by "Will" and Adults are driven by "Duty." Now, I know you may be thinking this is looking too deeply into it, but the thing is, WIld ARMs 4 OPENLY MAKES THIS POINT late into the game, and is rather consistent about it. To further establish it...
Look at the team briefly. Why is Jude on this journey? To help Yulie. Why? Because he wants too, nothing more. Yulie's in trouble, he sees he can help, and wants to. Then look at Raquel; oldest character in the team, but still considers herself a child. She's traveling the world cause she wants to see beautiful things, to remind herself the war didn't destroy everything the world has to offer, and with her limited time left to live, she wants to make the most of it. She is only able to take this Drifter lifestyle since she's not rooted in any sort of responsibilities.
Now lets shift to the Adults. Why is Brionac obsessed with getting Yulie? The answer is...cause they were told too. That's their orders. They don't have any reason to care about Yulie, their job is to follow orders, and their orders from the Congressional Knights are "Capture Yulie Ahtreide alive." That is the only thing keeping them coming after you. There's no personal vendettas, no personal things to gain from it, what have you. Now again, remember, I'm talking about Brionac, not the Congressional Knights; the latter has their own agenda, and I will get to that later. Brionac extends as far as even Lambda, the primary antagonist, who again, is only chasing Yulie since his "superiors" told him to.
Lets make one thing clear; I am not saying that Adults are like Robots, who can only follow orders. What I mean is that an adult has certain responsibilities that come first, and they act based on that, rather than their own personal will. Look at Jeremy for example. Like the rest of Brionac, he's trying to catch Yulie since he was told too, but he definitely isn't afraid to take things far and get personal almost to the point of killing her. He needs to be reminded that his mission requires she come back alive from Kresnik the first time. What we have here is someone who follows orders, but sometimes lets his personality get the better of him.
The game does not want to display that one is better than the other here, so much as how the two are clashing. Naturally, making Kids the antagonistic characters is hard to do, as the idea of "kids = evil" just spits in the face of an obvious symbolism of "Children are Innocent" which I think is pretty clear in ANY game, and Wild ARMs 4 is no exception, and its morally just unsound. The nature of dealing with a theme that strongly delves into defining Kids and Adults demands that you have two factions primarily built around those kinds of characters, in this case, all the Heroes are kids and all the villains are adults. This is obviously where the "Kids vs. Adults!" misconception comes from, but it was also a necessary evil in establishing this.
Now that we have the whole "What drives both sides" aspect out of the way, lets look at what the two terms mean symbolically. As usual, Children represent Innocence, and the Future. So Adults should represent Past and Corruption, right? Actually, no, cause an Adult is NOT the opposite of a Child. An Adult is the inevitable step that follows Child. As such, an adult actually represents the Present, and perhaps, more of a morally conflicted state rather than corruption. Why do I say this? Well, the child stuff is all pretty clear as its usual stuff so I won't waste your time on it; just about any story that uses children in any sort of symbolic sense uses them to represent one of those two things. Very few games use Adults as any sort of representative aspect, meanwhile, mostly because Adults are so various, its hard to make them symbolize anything, especially since your heroes usually are Adults, or at least characters on the verge of Adulthood. Wild ARMs 4 is unique in that regard in that they make it clear your team is nothing but Children, and while Arnaud will not stop claiming adulthood, he's still very clearly a child.
First off, the Adults = Present aspect. When you look at the Adults, they are constantly reflecting on the past and thinking of the future, but often acting in ways that are dealing with contemporary problems. They talk about making a "better tomorrow" but in truth are more concerned with problems as they happen now, dealing with things as they come to them. They are consistently talking about how "No, the war is not over!" or "humans are weak!" or whatever. The game seems to give this perception of Adults exist to maintain the present for the sake of the future generations, which is the children, who in themselves will become adults and be forced to take on those responsibilities. Furthermore, when you think about it physiologically, there's some fitting aspects too. Children are clearly physically inferior than Adults as a whole, but they have a large potential to grow, and thus, potential to eventually surpass the Adults. A Child surpassing an Adult is a strong indicator of how strong that Child will be as an adult. Children keep wanting to get better and better, and when you think about it, does not Leveling Up in WA4 suggest that? Adults, meanwhile, are in their peak physical state, and are not worried about growing but rather, maintaining their current stature. They are about are the ones who control what is happening now.
An instance that well establishes this is the fight with Lambda. When Jude defeats Lambda, Lambda's relationship with Jude takes a complete 180. He goes from basically being a complete enemy to saving the team despite his battered body, and encouraging them to move on, believing the future is in their hands. Here we see Lambda basically submitting he's done his job, and that since Jude has surpassed him, the future being in Jude's hands is not really a bad thing, and he is willing to let these children create this new future. Now, you could argue Lambda, with all his prediction powers, had this all planned out, and it was really a huge Xanatos Roulette, right? Except WA4 openly discounts this, as Farmel thinks that's exactly what happened, but Lambda states that no, he seriously tried to stop Jude at every turn, Jude just managed to overcome all his obstacles and in effect was a variable he did not consider, and its only after seeing how strong and determined Jude was did Lambda realize that he needed to change his ways.
Which leads to my other point that Adults are not symbolic of corruption. Lambda himself is not actually a bad person when it comes down to it. Many of his followers follow him because they believe in his vision, and his vision is making a better Filgaia. His problem, of course, is as Gawn openly states, Lambda has this tendency to "rush results", which the whole "force evolution" thing is a symbolic example of, as he's trying to rush Nature itself. To branch from this, just about every single Adult on Ciel spits in the idea of Adulthood being an example of corruption. They all had strong, good motives, and never even compromised their beliefs. The issue there, of course, is that their research ended up creating a deadly weapon (the ARMs) instead of a device to recreate the world. One last example is a pretty obvious but at the same time forgettable one in Archibald. Archibald is a good man, with no strings attached. Yes, he's one of those Miltiary Soldier Adult jerks, but even in Ciel, its very clear he's not a bad man. After Tony screws up big time, he's the one who tells the Troops to retreat, and even apologizes for the mess, indicating that everyone (including the civilians) getting to safety is more important than their mission. Later on, we find he's leading the construction of Halim, to make up for his previous transgressions, and when Jude attacks him, he's fully willing to take the hit head on. He never once stands in the way of the way of the team, fully recognizes his errors, and wants to do his best to help others.
So what if we look at each character individually and recognize what the whole "What does being a kid and adult mean to their characterization" aspect?
Jude, first of all, is a Kid in every sense of the word. Youngest character in the game, grew up sheltered from the rest of the world making everything he says have that childish naivete, and he's got a lot to learn. The game very much is Jude's coming of age story, in a sense. He's learning the harshness of reality first hand, but his determination lets him persevere. Jude actually very rarely says bad things about Adults; in truth, its more he has absolutely no understanding of how an adult thinks. His interaction with Gawn was there to establish that Jude thinks on pure childish merits, and does not think in any abstract manner. The most obvious example is Good vs. Evil. Jude says a simple Good is helping others, Bad is hurting others. Gawn then tosses out the flaw with that claim of "What about hurting someone for the sake of helping others, like a soldier who fights his hardest for the sake of his family at home?" As expected, Jude doesn't have an answer.m Gawn's answer to Good vs. Bad...we'll cover that when we get to him.
Yulie, meanwhile, is sort of a vacuum in all this. She's not a Kid or Adult when you think about it. What do I mean by this? Well, she's got some maturity, but this game establishes that Kids and Adults can vary on maturity a lot so that's irrelevant. No, what Yulie has is the fact that she never had a true Childhood. Her entire life was spent in a lab and she feared each day. Her idea of friends has been for a while people who shared the same exact fears as her, and she's been watching other children disappear sporadically each day, fearing she may be next. Yulie represents that control factor, and she doesn't quite know what she is in that regard, so she sort of bounces off everyone else, relying on them. Even Jude whose younger and naive as hell is able to give things Yulie didn't consider, the most obvious is "Stop saying 'sorry' when people help you and say 'thank you!'" By the end of the game, Yulie has finally gotten in touch with her "inner child" that has been suppressed and she's able to actually start growing up. She finally is able to do the things she wants, not what others want or expect of her, and wants to help people.
I'm aware this is a rather deep and controversial view of Yulie, but that's what I got.
Arnaud is that arrogant kid who thinks he's older than he is. In some sense though, he is the most adult member of the team, due to looking at things from a very rational standpoint. He knows when he's being childish, for example. What makes him not an actual adult of course is that he has no real purpose. He's sort of living however he damn pleases, and has no responsibilities. He doesn't even have a goal in life until late in the game where he wants what's best for Raquel...and there we have it the whole "Will vs. Responsibility" thing again, as Arnaud WANTS to help Raquel, not that he's obligated too. IN some sense, one could say he tries to convince himself he's with Yulie and Jude initially because they're clearly children, and believing himself to be an Adult, he feels obligated to watch out for them until their safety is secure, though I do not think anything in the game supports this, and Raquel's joining means this viewpoint is short lived at best.
Raquel is basically a child who has no chance of growing up. Her time is short, she has convinced herself there's no point in trying to think of a future since she has none. There really is not much to say about Raquel in truth since the game has her saying everything rather outright, and I covered it mostly earlier with why she's acting, so I'll just say "see above."
What about the Adults then? Well, Lambda I think I covered rather well, but I would like to tag on that for all his being iconic of the "Adults" of the game, he breaks down crying near the end when his plans aren't going his way...a very immature action and Jude calls him out on it. Here, we see something unexpected in WA4, an actual SIMILARITY between Children and Adults, and that for all that the game has been displaying this very "Children are Red, Adults are Blue" (black and white gives a good/bad connotation, which as I said, WA4 seems to specifically AVOID) viewpoint, suddenly we see something the game sort of glossed over...possibly on purpose. That being maturity and conduct; a child is capable of acting mature just as an adult is capable of being immature.
Brionac I covered, but there are some things I'd like to toss out, that being they further establish that while Adults won't "Grow", they can "develop" and still change. In Hugo's case, he first comes in with this ultra-confident attitude of basically you can't win, but when he loses, he submits he was "defeated by the better man." So this cocky jerk suddenly showed he can take defeat like a man. No excuses, no trying to save face, just a humble acknowledgment of inferiority. When Farmel is defeated, she learns that she too has a lot to learn about companionship and trust, and its not just "being there to protect them" but rather also having faith that they will be there for you. Its all cheesy and what not, but its there. Then we come back to Jeremy who exists to show what happens when an Adult tries to grow beyond their current limitations. Taking enhancements and practically turning himself into an ARM of himself, he's pretty much completely jumped off the rocker and has lost all sense of humanity, and by extension, all sense of the distinguishing features of Adulthood. All the other Brionac Members, upon defeat, either die in the process or accept their defeat.
...that is except for Tony, but given Tony is mostly there for comic relief and to be an incompetent member of the "bad guys", there's not much to be said about him. Well, ok, Tony is also a further example of why people constantly say "ITS CHILDREN FIGHTING ADULTS!" but if you're going to use Tony as your proof, you may want to reconsider your stance.
Now, there's 3 characters who need to be discussed alone to get across the points further, as they establish characters who mix traits of both, and further establish it.
First off, we have Gawn. Gawn is that oaf character who befriends the team and betrays them. He's clearly an adult right? Well, mentally and physically, yes, but in spirit, he's still a kid. He actually understand where children are coming from, rather than simply tossing them aside, and likes hanging out with them. The problem is that he still regards himself as an adult, so the responsibility aspect kicks in. At the same time, though, he tries his best to delay this factor if you pay attention. You can claim he's all just doing it for a MASTER PLAN for Lambda's sake, but if he was, he had plenty of better opportunities to capture Yulie earlier on than when he did. The reaction I got is he did not realize who he was traveling with at first, but when they mention Brionac, you'll note he reacted in fear. Why would he want to split up with the team at that point if he was trying to capture them? Well, ok, maybe he had to contact Lambda, but then why does Gawn go out of his way multiple times to warn Jude not to do things that Jude does? The answer I can think of is that Gawn really does not want to go through with this, but having acknowledged his adulthood, he feels obligated to do so. The less he's with Jude and Co., the less his responsibilities will plague him. Gawn is also the one who actually stands up to Lambda, indicating the problems with his stance and calls him out on his "you rush things" factor.
In all this rambling, I guess the ultimate point I'm making is that Gawn is that lone Adult figure who understands Children, and as such, can be an actual mentor to them. He actually tries to learn about them and teach them rather than suppress them. Going back to the Good vs. Bad thing Gawn tossed at Jude, Gawn had his own definition, that being "A good person is someone who follows their beliefs." When you take that view, Gawn following Lambda makes sense, as by Gawn's definition, Lambda is a "good person"...but then, so is Jude. Gawn is conflicted, but ultimately his loyalties were with the Adults, for all that he's very clearly cheering on the kids.
The next character is, naturally, Kresnik. Kresnik like Yulie has a hard time identifying as a Kid or Adult, but unlike Yulie, does not have the physical stature to push him greatly towards one end. Being surrounded by Adults and working with them, Kresnik initially identifies as an Adult of course, but by the end of the game, he's clearly siding with the kids. How does that work? In short, Kresnik never WAS an adult, as his goals were NOT based upon responsibilities, but rather, what he wanted. He wants to protect Yulie cause she's his little sister and he promised her. To his fortune early on, his duties fall perfectly in line with that. From his perspective, being with Jude is dangerous and he wants to get her so he can be there to protect her outright, and so long as she's not with him, Brionac will chase them. To him, Brionac is dangerous and its unsafe to go against them. Once Jude beats Kresnik, of course, Kresnik is hit with a reality check of how Jude's team may be strong enough to go up against Brionac and keep Yulie safe, as well as how Yulie clearly sides with Jude. As someone who wants what's best for Yulie, who is he to go against her wishes? When his "conviction" gets challenged, he loses all identity of himself, and loses the will to do really anything. What's his new conviction afterwords? Acting solely to aid Yulie in help saving the world. After the Jeremy stuff, his role is basically just there to show Jude one more aspect of growing up, and that's understanding that you CANNOT always help people out, so you need to compromise at times for the best possible outcome. Sacrifices must be made, etc.
In short, Kresnik represents that transitional state of Adulthood and Child. He's waffling between driven by Duty and driven by Will. There are times after-all where he clearly acts on Lambda's behalf only because Lambda is his boss, despite how it goes against Yulie's wishes, to further exemplify that no, he's NOT just driven cause "YULIE NEEDS HELP!"
Last character I will deal with is Hauzer. Hauzer is a weird one because I couldn't quite figure out how he fit into this theme...but I think I finally figured it out. Hauzer is what happens when someone grows up without actually growing up. He's seen the horrors of war, he's dealt with a lot of harsh realities...but he's kept a naive idealistic viewpoint and never actually shifted to the side of rationality and compromise. This is why Jude and co. fight him so hard in the very end, because unlike Lambda and the rest of Brionac who are acting on what they feel is their duty, Hauzer is acting on what he wants. He WANTS to rid the world of war, and his method is to kill all humans, because HUMANS WANT WAR. He feels betrayed and is taking it out on everyone else. He's very much an anti-thesis to this idea of "Will is always good!" because he's driven by will, and his will turns out to be bad.
Its a stretch, to be honest, and I'm still uncomfortable with it, but that's the impression I got.
So we can see that there's quite a bit to do with Kids and Adults in the game and it gets a bit mired down by the fact that Adults are mostly antagonistic while Kids are the heroes, but that as I said was a necessary evil. The game tries its hard to say "No, Adults are NOT evil, and are NOT out to get you", more just everything is seen differently from the eyes of both. Even with all this...I am not convinced this is a full exploration of the theme. Why? Well, lets look back at another point I made:
Children are the Future, Adults are the Present. That's only 2 facets of Time, when as we all know, there's generally regarded as 3 moments, the 3rd obviously being past. Its easy to pull off a Future vs. Past and not have a Present, just saying "the present is symbolized by the struggle of both", but Future vs. Present does not work without that past element. So what symbolizes the Past? Well, despite popular belief, there's 3 stages to human development that WA4 deals with, not two, the third one being hidden and less obvious, but its very much there once I thought of it, and analyzing it is integral to the theme, and its completely consistent with everything we saw. Its something that did not occur to me until, oddly, that Simpsons' video above, where at the end, a 3rd faction jumps in.
That being the Elderly. Children grow into Adults who then regress into Elderly. Why did I say "regress?" Well, the Physiological stand point again; while Children have some advantages over adults in physiology, such as potential to grow, Elder do not; their prime as has passed and they are but a shadow of what they once were. And what better way to represent past than with Old People? You'll note pretty much all of Brionac are made up of middle aged adults. There's not a single Eldery figure among them. I feel this was completely intentional as there's a whole set of Elderly folks and they are very different from Brionac individuals, that being the Congressional Knights.
The Congressional Knights act on these old standards, trying to hold onto things that don't exist anymore. They are convinced the war is NOT OVER, and are trying to use Yulie to end this. Contrast this to Brionac folks who while yes, they don't feel the War is truly over, they acknowledge the situation is much different than it is 10 years ago, and are trying to keep things together. The Congressional Knights in some sense are driven by fear. They're afraid of losing what little they still have, and need to keep up the one thing they still have in check, that being political power. They have pretty much no hope for anything, so while they talk about Filgaia's Future, its more in a condemnation sense rather than an actual pushing forward. Unlike Lambda, the Congressional knights are pretty much straight up bad guys. When Lambda kills them off, you definitely do not feel pity for them, and the scene is displayed in a "they had it coming" way, with Lambda giving them their just desserts.
Furthermore, each "faction" is a mirror of the era they represent. The Congressional Knights, with their morally questionable, to say the least, motives and methods, mirror the war from the past, which was harsh and cruel, much like they themselves are. Adults reflect the present, as evident by how there's a lot work to be done to recover, but no real direction, hence a lot of conflict. The Children reflect the future to come, and with how Jude and Co. want peace above all else, when they become adults, one can deduce their era will be a more peaceful one.
From this perspective, it maintains what role each of these age groups have. Children exist to build the future; they must be proactive so they can learn the reality and achieve their dreams. Adults exist to maintain the state of the world, and fix problems as they come, hence a more reactive state. It isn't about changing the world now, but rather finding the problems in it. The Elderly exist as an example of the past; had Filgaia a less war-torn past, the Congressional Knights may have been a more sympathetic lot and less clearly "bad guys" as they are. Furthermore, if the Adults exist to maintain the present for the sake of the children, the Elderly exist to "pass the torch" to the new generation of Adults to deal with the new era. An Elderly person should not be taking action, be it reactive or proactive, but rather, using their wisdom to help the new generation. You'll note in the Simpson's Video, the Elderly folks are completely against both Kids and Adults, and we see the two sides jumping together against a common foe. This is consistent with WA4, where while you're fighting Brionac, you're not fighting their ideals but rather the Congressional Knights; this doesn't excuse Brionac's actions, as part of "responsibility" is the ability to recognize right and wrong and act accordingly, something Lambda learns mid way and does very much when he finally recognizes the Congressional Knights for what they really are: Superiority Complex Driven Jerks.
And of course, there's one last facet of Wild ARMs 4's story we haven't dealt with, that being the logical end of a plot analysis...the ending itself. By the end, we've killed off not only the Elderly Faction, but most of the major adults have been killed off too. A few like Archibald still live, naturally, but in the end, in this major war, the children have won. Why? Well, think of it as being symbolic as in no matter what you do, tomorrow always comes. There is always a future, for better or worse, and nothing you can do can stop it. This is of course a really poor way to look at it, and frankly, I'm more inclined to just say "kids win cause they're the heroes thus the good guys and this is suppose to be a happy ending." Cheap? Sure, but I'm willing to submit an occam's razor here, because that's really what it actually feels like.
In any event, with the adult generation killed off, this means that the last facet of the "present" has been washed away, leaving in a sense, a blank slate for the future. So naturally, the ending deals with these children shifted forward 10 years as adults. And what are they doing? Exactly what I said Adults should be doing: Maintaining things such that the future generation has a good world to live in. Jude is living a life in nature, preserving what little is left and trying to help it grow, shown by how he's actually helping injured animals in the forest rather than simply "observing" them. Yulie is a teacher, doing her best to prepare the new generation to be ready for when they grow up, in a sense, preparing the next generation that is to replace hers. Arnaud and Raquel have a child, thereby adding to the next generation, though Raquel dies thereby fulfilling her "I can never grow up" claim. Arnaud, meanwhile, is apparently living happily as a successful restaurant owner and a single father. This seems like a little meaningless thing just to wrap up Arnaud's story, but there's a connection with Arnaud's history that's easy to miss:
Arnaud disrespected his father, and grew up motherless. His father had debt issues, remember, and the only thing Arnaud took from him was some basic flight control to "see his mother." Arnaud now has apparently exceeded his father by becoming financially stable, and thus fully capable of taking care of his own daughter despite being a single parent. Likewise, Yulie and Jude are living lifestyles in parallel to their own upbringing spun in a positive way, though its really pretty obvious, thus not worth getting into details.
So wait, now all the kids are adults? So the idea that "Adults are Evil!" cannot possibly be true then, since the very ending involves our heroes growing into this "evil" state! Unless of course...WA4 was NOT trying to say "Adults are Evil" or even displaying Kids fighting adults, but rather, just illustrating how different they are, and more an evolution of growing up. Jude, Arnaud and Yulie all are living pretty ideal lives and their actions bring about nothing but good things to the people around them. There's no compromises, no questionable motives, they're just good, honest people when they grow up, showing that you don't necessarily lose that when you do grow up. They haven't just grown up physically though; they are all holding genuine jobs, and no longer are following their wonderful dreams, but rather, living their humble duties happily, again showing us that Adults are driven more by their duty than their will. It just so happens that as adults, the characters in question all enjoy what they are doing, and what they are doing is positive.
So the question is, can you say that WIld ARMs 4's theme is Kids vs. Adults? Perhaps, but you must keep in mind that the "vs." is not that of conflict but that of indicating differences. The Elderly factor is not explored nearly as much as it could have been, but its very much there, and in truly understanding the game you need to understand that. When you recognize this and how much the game deals with Kids and Adults in a non-confrontational sense, its rather clear that simply saying its a conflict of the two is wrong. A conflict of all three? Perhaps, with the Elderly being the big losers, but in truth the Adults don't necessarily lose nor do the kids win, more the two come to an understanding of one another, and the Adults are willing to let the Kids handle things from then on, perhaps an early foreshadowing how this generation of Adults is far more tolerant of the next generation than the previous, allowing for a genuine era of peace to begin. Its really focusing on the difference between the two facets, and then uses the Elderly to further establish that things do not end at Adulthood.
Does this mean you have to like this theme of how it delves deeply into defining what a "Kid" and an "Adult" is? Does this mean WA4 did an effective job of displaying it? No, not necessarily it, but its very much there and in spades. To merely say its driven off a conflict when it branches out into so much more regarding the two, and there's plenty of counter examples of Adults and Kids actually working together to acknowledge there has to be some common ground (which is finally proven when Lambda breaks down crying) between the two, I think its just an oversimplification of what is going on. There is no doubt that the theme involves both these terms, but as I have been saying, Wild ARMs 4 is very similar to Wild ARMs 2's theme, only replacing "Hero" with "Adult and Kid."
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Feel free to comment and point out things I missed, as well as things that can help make this clearer, better formatted, etc.
