Pokémon anime

Since when was Rosa in the anime? (Besides the BW2 animated trailer.)

Edited by Lymantria on Feb 19th 2024 at 8:25:38 PM

[nvm]

Edited by Lymantria on Feb 19th 2024 at 8:25:43 PM

Okay did some checked and it turned out that Trailer was her only animated appearance. sorry, guess my memory isn't as sharp as before.

oh yeah forgot about bea being a huge ass in the anime appearance. so weird

there was also misty getting pissed enough at casey to grab her by the collar but i forget the context

It's fitting that the Fighting gym leader would be so arrogant, and Bea was actually an alright female rival for Ash.

She really wasn't though. She was an alright rival for Riolu but realistically speaking she would have gotten folded if he had just used the same team he did for Korrina. Having her beat Dragonite and Gengar would have been a good way to show her threat level but... I guess the writers weren't confidant she could actually do that because they make Ash use the two weakest members of his party (one of which only has not very effective moves) and treat it as if she's this insurmountable obstacle that Ash has to figure a way around. Instead of just using Gengar and spamming Psychic.

Personally, I would have given a different Galar Gym Leader spotlight. There's two that come to mind. Piers and Melony. Both are stated to be Champion-level opponents in the games (Piers gives Raihan a good fight without using Dynamax and Melony has consistently beaten him) so both of them would be good opponents for the newly crowned Alolan Champion. Both of them are good against one of Ash's heavy hitters at that point in the series so it wouldn't make sense for Ash to use them in his team and coincidentally both of their type specialties are weak to Ash's Riolu serving the same function as the rival that Riolu needs to get stronger and surpass.

Bianca was Ash's only real female rival and not only do they only battle like once, she loses before she can actually face Ash in the actual league.

The other weird thing is all the rivals Ash lost to in the leagues were males. Considering they were all anime exclusive characters, couldn't 1 of them be made female?

Richie, Harrison, Tyson, Tobias, Cameron and Alan were all male. Then even in leagues he won like Alola, two of the final big battles were Gladion and Kukui, also male. And with the exception of Cynthia, the final big battle in JN was against Leon, a male.

The few female characters Ash battled in leagues were secondary or third tier battles before he got to the finals. Weirdly the Sinnnoh league was entirely male dominated, with Ash's opponents being Nando, Conway, Paul and Tobias (and Barry was there), and not a single female battler in that tournmanent.

I don't think the writers did it intentionally, but it's noticeable how they kept strong female battlers out of Ash's leagues or major opponents.

The lady with the Bellsprout back in Indigo was a really memorable opponent, and in the dub the trainer who knocked Gary out of the League was female.

Ash has gone through his phases where he's been pretty incompetent as a kind of reset.

How many times has he actually lost to a girl trainer? He beat Giselle off the top of my head.

I know he lost that fight with Misty in the epilogue, but other than that?

Fantina in Sinnoh beat Ash in a brief training battle before they officially held a gym battle (notably, Fantina's Drifblim in Diamond and Pearl is introduced as a Drifloon and evolves during this battle). Ash also had to rematch Lenora in Unova. Of course, the ever-infamous Whitney in Johto also beat Ash, and he had to rematch her (albeit in a 3 vs. Miltank rematch held on a farm).

Edited by 6f5e4d on Feb 20th 2024 at 7:55:30 AM

He lost to Hunter J every time but she fought dirty, and lost to Cassidy and Butch when their Pokemon were made super-aggressive. I dunno if he ever fought any of the female team admins.

Okay, but what about regular trainers?

These are all either criminals or gym leaders.

Since the bulk of the characters only appear once, that's kinda hard to gauge? I know Misty beat Ash in the Whirl Cup and tied with May in a Pokemon contest during Blaziken vs Sceptile.

He did lose to a few filler characters that were female. In middle Hoenn he loses to a girl using Grovyle and Slugma, it's actually the first ep of Advanced Challenge where Treecko learns Bullet Seed.

But as said they're just filler characters so like nobody is going to remember or think about them unless you rewatched certain eps a bunch of times.

Methinks Bea was some bad attempt at rehashing the Paul/Ash rivalry not unlike Trip in BW, but failed because just like Trip before, Bea didn't really come off as a borderline invincible trainer that Ash couldn't overcome due to needing to be better but instead as a middle-of-the-road trainer that Ash kept losing to because he insisted on throwing out barely-trained babymons against her more experienced team

In the games, the tougher Pokemon don't get as much experience as the weaker ones. If this was more like the games, that could be Ash's logic.

Ash only lost to Bea once, the second was a tie.

And it was the only time he loses in the World Championship as later battles he keeps winning.

Also to Red Hunter, Marnie only show up once in the anime for her and Ash’s PWC battle.

x4: My take was that it felt like they were writing it like a Gym defeat (where normally it'd be a roadblock to getting to the League unless Ash made a comeback). Think I had a problem with how WCS was handled in general.

Unless I'm forgetting something, I don't think Dawn ever beat Ash, every time they battled it was a tie or they just stopped. Iris beat Ash in BW, Misty just recently again in MPM, and Serena just had a practice battle with him in her last ep.

Does anyone think there’s a reason why, as pointed out here, near the ends of Gens 1 and 3 in the anime, almost everyone (Misty with Togepi, Tracey with Marill, May with Munchlax, Brock with Bonsly, James with Mime Jr.) got Pokémon from the then upcoming gens that they retained in the following series, but not Ash himself? (If he had, I’m not sure which ones they’d be, but still.)

Hmm, that makes at least some sense.

Edited by Lymantria on Feb 23rd 2024 at 12:21:38 PM

I mean look at those types of pokemon, they're not especially battle-centric pokemon Ash would get. Munchlax was likely out because Ash has Snorlax, so they gave it to May. The rest are all the usual baby pokemon mostly.

Honestly looking back I'm surprised they didn't have Misty capture Marill instead of Tracey showing up with one. Since Tracey was so short lived on the cast Marill barely had any presence on the cast, whereas if Misty had one it would have lasted for all of Johto.

If Azurill was out in gen II, I am she would have it instead of togepii. But yeah it's weird she never had a Marill, seems like the perfect pokemon for her to showcase (Azumarill is my favorite water type).

As discussed upthread, they got rid of Brock for the Orange Islands because they thought Americans would think he looked racist (a move criticized by Dogasu as “too little, too late”), then brought him back when nobody complained. So maybe they thought Tracey and thus his Marill were going to last longer at first.

Edited by Lymantria on Feb 23rd 2024 at 12:55:17 PM