How exactly is he "into" her though? He hasn't reciprocated her feelings since he doesn't even know that she likes him, and thus far I don't see what implies that he's got romantic feelings for her. The biggest shipping hint from him so far has been his cheek scratching in my opinion, and even that is more of a sign of him being embarrassed or nervous when Serena gives him too much attention or a compliment imo. The ship is one-sided right now. :x
Come on Lorde. Have mercy on the new guy
But yeah. I do agree with you mostly. The ship is almost completely one sided by now. Even if the thing that the gift signifies something deeper in Japan is true, it still only means that there are hints of hidden and unknown feelings in him which would still take time to develop. So as of this moment, the ship is one-sided.
Looks like Serena is making a commitment haircut next episode
i.imgur.com/YZebL5q.jpg
Focusing more on coordinating, less Ash?
Is the ship sinking?
This is one of the major reasons why I feel that the writers decided to include XY059- to show that Serena's feelings are still strong as ever. If you are going to give me the excuse that, "Oh you are talking about XY059. She will change after XY060", then you are deluding yourself. If they really wanted to do such a thing, it would've easily been done after XY047, XY050 or XY053. So many opportunities to kill it off, but they chose to confirm it further instead. So be sure, the ship is still reinforced.
As far the next few episodes go I think we have a chance for a lot of good hints from Ash. From what I've seen building up to her tripokelon debut. Serena has been putting an unfair/extreme amount of pressure on herself to win this. She's already told Ash at least once that I can remember that she doesn't want to fail him. Now that her mother just gifted her a new dress I'm she'll be putting an even larger amount of pressure on herself. Based on a couple of previews we've seen coming up, it looks like there's a good chance Serena is going to come crumbling down emotionally after her debut, which i think most of us agree will be a loss. From the haircut to the pushing of her pokemon way too hard I believe we gonna see a short "Serena goes into a dark place arc." Its my hope that the biggest one there helping her pick up the pieces and reassuring her is Ash and we get some good hints from him starting to show how he cares for her.
I am inclined to agree with you on the part of Serena pushing herself too hard, and going in the wrong direction as a result. She has been putting immense pressure on herself to deliver- as mainly seen in XY059. So this failure is going to hit her hard, and we know that too because she cuts off her hair. On top of that, we know that XY064 is an episode where she is seen to push her Pokemon too hard in an effort to win. I do expect that Ash would pull her up here. He already mentioned in XY059, "You are doing just fine, Serena" in the beginning scene of the episode. So I'm pretty sure that he might try to tell her that she is doing wrong, or also convince her in XY064 that she might be doing things the wrong way. Now i still think that a CotD would be the one giving these lessons to her, but Ash might reinforce those on her. So it would be interesting.
Nevertheless, I expect we might see something small at best in XY060, and something slightly bigger than that in XY064. We have better chance of seeing nicer hints after XY067, which I speculate is the midpoint between the Courmarine Gym and the Lumiose Gym.
What if everything was the same about the entire XY anime series, except instead of Ash being dense he was a total player?
What did I just read?
But I think that might be an interesting story. I expect it to go along the lines of No Strings Attached. LOL
