How do you feel about Ash and Sawyer's rivalry?

[Blastmaster]

It was okay. It was definitely an interesting idea to have Ash be the "dominant" rival for once, but the execution needed more even pacing and more fleshing out. Sawyer's main shtick of analysis and note-taking was inconsistently shown, and the pacing problems have been covered here already. The rivalry also felt a bit... saccharine? Even friendly rivals need some sense of drive rather than just all smiles and support. Sawyer should've shown signs of frustration at his constant losses to paint the idea that Ash was a major motivation for him.

That said, I still agree that Sawyer beating Ash in the league would've been at least a little more bearable than Alain. If Ash HAD to lose to someone it should've been him.

 

[Leonhart]

That said, I still agree that Sawyer beating Ash in the league would've been at least a little more bearable than Alain. If Ash HAD to lose to someone it should've been him.

I personally never thought of Shota as being on par with Satoshi, not even after all his off-screen progress. I thought that it was bearable that he did as well as he did against Satoshi in their Kalos League match, but the thought of him hypothetically beating Satoshi there doesn't sit well with me. As overrated as Alain was in XY&Z, he was the only acceptable choice as Satoshi's "dream killer" from my viewpoint.

 

[Xuxuba]

People were literally rioting over the possibility of Shota defeating Satoshi on the League back when he was first introduced.

I am pretty sure him losing to a less experient trainer than Alain would have only made people be more salty at the outcome.

 

[SerGoldenhandtheJust]

People would have been salty either way if he lost doesn't matter to whom. Atleast if he lost to Sawyer for the first time in the league with the whole Sawyer trying to catch up and finally surpass Satoshi arc, it would have been better writing than him losing to Alain yet again. That was **** writing

 

[Kazuniya]

Should have been introduced way earlier, I think that's my main complaint. I think if he were established as a rival much earlier in the series, it would be easier to swallow his progression and growth and the rivalry with Ash would have felt a bit more legit. As it is now, to me it feels like the writers were just like 'oh ****, Ash doesn't have enough rivals' so they came up with Sawyer and leveled him up off-screen until he could pose a serious threat to Ash.

I don't dislike him, but it could have been better.

 

[Twilight-Kun]

Sawyer's growth is quite believable, because we know he's capable of defeating gym leaders just as well as Ash can, so it's not like he goes from "loses to level five pokémon" to "destroying elite four trainers" overnight

 

[SH65]

People would have been salty either way if he lost doesn't matter to whom. Atleast if he lost to Sawyer for the first time in the league with the whole Sawyer trying to catch up and finally surpass Satoshi arc, it would have been better writing than him losing to Alain yet again. That was **** writing

Really because I feel like the writers were doing the samething for Sawyer they do for Ash teaching him theirs always someone better, but you can take that lost and learn from it.

 

[satopi]

Complete apathy but a better rivalry in structure and substance than Ash and Alan’s rivalry.

 

[AznKei]

I like it. Kinda a remind me of Ryu (Ash) & Sakura (Sawyer) relationship from the Street Fighter series, the latter wanted to improve and be as good than the former. Ironically, both Ash & Ryu are dense when it's about to understand the girls/womens feelings towards them.

 

[Leonhart]

Really because I feel like the writers were doing the samething for Sawyer they do for Ash teaching him theirs always someone better, but you can take that lost and learn from it.

I did think that the lesson that they were trying to show is that you need to work hard to overcome obstacles, but it didn't translate as well when it came to Shota because we only saw small glimpses of him throughout the Kalos saga, so his development was sporadic. It's one of the flaws of the series focusing so much on Satoshi's group while not giving as much screen-time to rivals and recurring characters.

 

[AuraChannelerChris]

Could've been worse.

Sawyer could've been a Hau.

 

[LilligantLewis]

Complete apathy but a better rivalry in structure and substance than Ash and Alan’s rivalry.

I think that's true, but I think that's mainly because Alain was just meant to be the league rival. People misunderstood who he was. After all, he did meet Ash only in the final year of the anime, which is when the league rival usually debuts. The only difference this time was that we previously knew of him on our own from his specials. But from Ash's perspective, he was just the league rival, not the series-long rival

Series-long rival: Gary, Paul, Trip, Gladion
League rival: Ritchie, Harrison, Tyson, Tobias, Cameron