The complain is about the double standard of the fandom (¬_¬), everybody praises a Gible with almost zero battle experience beating a Shuckle AND a Dusknoir and have no problem with Ash deciding to use it against a trainer that HE KNOWS had a Darkrai, but, on the other hands, they despises the idea of an Oshawott with 3 gym battles being used ONCE against a Hydreigon that is not even legendary.
I get it, and the only reason is that many fans were expecting Oshawott to evolve because he was getting a good development when he learned to control aqua jet, but now that merchandising manipulates the anime to keep the otter unevolved and face an hydreigon (who was portrayed as a very powerful fully-evolved pokemon since its debut) is getting into some people's nerves. There was no problem with Gible since no one expected him to evolve soon, his main goal was dominate draco meteor, and TheFonz is right when he says Gible didn't have as much time as Oshawott to experience gym battles; as I said before, Gible should've got this gym match agaist Volkner instead of Pikachu, but the rat is mandatory.
As for their movesets ... they´re almost the same:
- Hydro Pump and Draco Meteor are the strongest (or almost strongest) of their types
- Tackle and Rock Smash are both crappy moves
- Razor Shell and Dragon Pulse are the same redundant attacks that turns out to be signature moves.
- Dig and Aqua Jet are the only differences.
I'm not talking about th move's power but the type variety:
Gible has dig and dragon pulse, 2 different types that get stab, has draco meteor, a very powerful move that also gets stab, and rock smash that's not shown as weak as it should be because of the games (in fact, in the anime is a good move), and gives him coverage against ice-types.
Oshawott on the other hand has 3 water-type moves, ok they get stab but since oshawott is a single typed pokemon getting 3 moves of the same type will give the otter serious problems against pokemon like Jellicent or Ludicolo, since he doesn't have a coverage move for them; and tackle, really?.