The Big Al said:
Cheating =/= Stealing genious.
That whooshing noise was the sound of the point flying over your head.
And no he doesn't cheat. It'd called icing your opponent which has been a strategy since there have been games. Saying that he cheated is like saying saying calling a time before a field goal is cheating or bluffing in poker is cheating.
No, he cheats. He played an embarrassing story in the middle of a battle to distract May so Cacturne could land a hit on Bulbasaur. I'm sure if the judges had realised where the recording was coming from, he would have been penalised. At Saffron, he lied to May to try and stop her being able to enter the contest. (As a side note, Lilian also cheated by sneaking May in, so it's not just the bad guys who do it.) I suppose you could say that giving her false information and advice on multiple occasions merely constitutes "icing" her rather than out and out cheating, but it's still very underhanded and unsportsmanlike, and good characters like Max, Ash, Brock and Drew are rightfully outraged on May's behalf whenever Harley does it.
*Smacks Jo-Jo with a giant paper fan again* Get off your high horse. We want a sad ending.
Tough. You're not getting one. Deal with it.
Also will the world split in two if Harley wins? Chances are it won't.
Harley winning goes against the tone of the show. Kvetching because the anime is not conforming to your exact, in this case unrealistic, demands is not a legitimate complaint.
So May loses a contest. Ash got shrunk to the size of a doll for losing a gym battle. What's Harley going to do to May?
Ash got shrunk to the size of a doll and then came back and won the badge. May can't do that; if she loses a contest, she's lost and has to move on. It's alright for her to lose if it's against people like Drew or Savannah, people she's friends with, because they aren't villains and can be relied upon not to rub it in her face afterwards (well... I guess Drew might a little bit.
). Which is why the only way I think Harley will ever beat May is if he
doesn't go on to win the whole contest.
Mew2 said:
Cheating does, however, indicate that he might not have the skills to be a good coordinator, despite the evolutionary level of his pokemon. It also is beginning to make me wonder just how Harley managed to get five ribbons in the first place.
That's an excellent question. I think that Harley is the same kind of co-ordinator as Jessie: very imaginative and creative, which lets him score high on appeals, but gets too bogged down trying to sabotage his opponents and thus neglects his own battling skills, which costs him in the final rounds. Since he's a villain, it's safe to say he's unlikely to ever learn from this mistake. He strikes me as someone who always blames his opponents for his losses, never himself.
Don't forget that almost half of Ash's Kanto badges were "pity" badges. Harley may have done some underhanded, but still legal, things to get some of his five ribbons for the Hoenn Grand Festival. That could explain why a low level Squirtle could have defeated a second stage pokemon.
I like to think that Harley got the rest of his ribbons, if not in an entirely legal way, than at least more legally than his efforts against May.
But maybe I’m biased.
We do know for a fact, though, that Ariados is a recently-caught Pokemon, which evens the playing field between it and Squirtle a little bit. And May has now proven twice that she's a better battler than Harley, and that she is capable of thinking fast and getting out of a sticky situation.
