Let’s talk about something else: how did you feel about Contests in AG?

[Sham]

Since every thread discussing Serena where people express their opinion on her with a non positive connotation seems to magically get locked every time let’s focus on another Pokegirl

In my humble opinion May’s contest goal was wasn’t done correctly in the slightest. She constantly won most of them and rarely ever lost. It was always be jarring to me how she would have 25% of her points lefts but be able to turn the battle around in the last couple of seconds. One of the biggest offenses to this is the episode where she used Eevee against Brock. It’s part of the reason why I wasn’t all that upset when Dawn defeated her because most the Contests in AG were fixed unless Drew was there to beat her. Obviously Hoenn contests were a nice alternative to whatever Misty was doing in OG and fun to watch but it had many issues that was soon perfected in DP.

 

[Pokegirl Fan~]

I found May passing through the appeal round unrealistic especially early on as well as that one time where Harley and Team Rocket tried to sabotage her performance.

 

[RafaSceptile]

Since every thread discussing Serena where people express their opinion on her with a non positive connotation seems to magically get locked every time let’s focus on another Pokegirl

In my humble opinion May’s contest goal was wasn’t done correctly in the slightest. She constantly won most of them and rarely ever lost. It was always be jarring to me how she would have 25% of her points lefts but be able to turn the battle around in the last couple of seconds. One of the biggest offenses to this is the episode where she used Eevee against Brock. It’s part of the reason why I wasn’t all that upset when Dawn defeated her because most the Contests in AG were fixed unless Drew was there to beat her. Obviously Hoenn contests were a nice alternative to whatever Misty was doing in OG and fun to watch but it had many issues that was soon perfected in DP.

One of the problems with AG contests is that they were pretty much the Kanto Gym Battles, in the sense of being a new thing that was not executed exactly well in a lot of those gym battles/contests. However, Drew make a lot more interesting the contests because he was such a good rival.

You can feel how better the Gym Battles were in Johto in comparison with Kanto, and the same happened with DP contests in comparison with AG contests.

 

[Bendicion]

May suffered from bad writing, its a shame really. Yeah she had a goal I guess but the execution of the Hoenn contest were rather bad. Way too many CotD characters that played a one time rival like Kaito Dusclops and Medicham-chan.

 

[Sham]

May suffered from bad writing, its a shame really. Yeah she had a goal I guess but the execution of the Hoenn contest were rather bad. Way too many CotD characters that played a one time rival like Kaito Dusclops and Medicham-chan.

My goodness I forgot about how many COTD contests in AG had. It’s a shame none of them were featured after their respective Contest especially Grace

 

[janejane6178]

I watched it when I was a kid, but I remember having fun watching the contests. So its all that matters

 

[Bendicion]

Drew a "good" rival? Thats news to me. Drew was rather a motivation trigger for May than a good rival. Yes by definition he is her rival but they almost did NOTHING with him on a greater scale.

 

[RafaSceptile]

Drew a "good" rival? Thats news to me. Drew was rather a motivation trigger for May than a good rival. Yes by definition he is her rival but they almost did NOTHING with him on a greater scale.

Yes, a lot of people consider him a good rival, and for some people even better than Zoey

 

[Bendicion]

Yes, a lot of people consider him a good rival, and for some people even better than Zoey

No, I feel like Harley was a bit better but introduced a little too late in the Hoenn part of the series.

May was included to obviously promote Contests in the anime but her character never got much focus on the cast and the writers pretty much got bored and abandoned her quickly. They would even cut out May’s contests to focus on Ash training Swellow or snorunt evolving to Glalie rather than focusing on her battles. Ridiculous.

 

[RafaSceptile]

They would even cut out May’s contests to focus on Ash training Swellow or snorunt evolving to Glalie rather than focusing on her battles. Ridiculous.

This sounds like what Goh does in Journeys, but for some reason Goh "stealing" Ash's screentime is a problem but Ash "stealing" other Main character's screentime is not a problem

 

[Pokegirl Fan~]

This sounds like what Goh does in Journeys, but for some reason Goh "stealing" Ash's screentime is a problem but Ash "stealing" other Main character's screentime is not a problem

Double standard but im not surprised with this fanbase.

 

[wobbanut]

I liked the AG contests, they were an interesting substory to the anime, and I liked Drew and Harley, even if it took a while for me to warm up to Harley. Battle Frontier was torture, though. I don't mind that Jessie didn't win any ribbons during Hoenn's contests because she did do some trickery to compete, but she was starting to get better by Battle Frontier, and I was frustrated when she didn't win any because I'm a Team Rocket fan. I'm glad they finally changed things by the Sinnoh region. I was delighted when Jessie finally started winning, even if she didn't get far in the finals.

 

[mysticalglacia]

I liked them. For better or worse they were quite simple while still feeling fresh and therefore they were effective in giving us something new after OS. Some conclusions to battles were kind of stupid especially when most of the time, as aforementioned, May would asspull her way out of a loss. There’s also the issue of the writers not feeling invested at times and cutting away to random scenes of Ash training or TR schemes, which felt very weird. But as a whole, I found them entertaining.

May, for all of her miraculous wins, actually did feel like a character progressing and evolving in her goal. Drew and Harley were great, so no complaints there. The characters really carried the base concept tbh.

 

[Dynamic_Fusion]

Contests in AG were Good Concepts but with Mediocre Execution that became Good Execution near the End of AG with the Kanto Contests and achieved perfection in DP with Dawn.

 

[Bendicion]

May, for all of her miraculous wins, actually did feel like a character progressing and evolving in her goal.

In hindsight she was incredibly boring compared to the Pokegirls we have now. She's neither conversational nor had the best character arc. Most of May's Contest wins were BS too. Also outside of contests, May generally doesn’t do ANYTHING and is sidelined along with Max and Brock.

 

[Leonhart]

I wasn't fond of them at the time, although in retrospect some of my favorite Contests were ones from AG. That said, they had some flaws, such as Haruka doing a little too well in the Appeal rounds. Hikari fumbled with them which was realistic, but Haruka's Contests didn't have the same sense of realism when it came to Appeals.

 

[Dragonsoldier77]

Honestly, pretty bad. I honestly find the concept of contests in the anime to be bad in general, but AG definitely had it worse because it felt exactly like a normal battle and nothing really wowed me. Most of the thing may did felt pretty underwhelming tbh.

Drew i actually liked as a character, but honestly harley got old pretty quick and i wished he was jusf a cotd rather than a recurring ‘rival’. Then may also got the ash style dream killer at the end with solidad.

 

[TheWanderingMist]

Contests in general are just battles with a weird qualifying round, and as long as you have a way around that, you can just brute force your way to victory. That said, AG definitely had the worse Contests, except for that one where TR borrowed Aipom, which might have been in Sinnoh anyway.

 

[SerenaRulez]

I loved the Hoenn and BF contests but more because of Harley, Drew and the other rivals than because of May. I did not like how May relied on Squirtle so much for appeals in the BF arc for example but Harley had some really cool appeals.

I felt really bad for Jessie because she wanted to be a coordinator so bad but failed miserably in the Hoenn contests.

 

[Blastmaster]

I remember AG Contests at least getting a little better by Battle Frontier. Harley even got his one and only win against May because he actually played fair for once. Also thought it was kind of clever how they weaved that into her reason for leaving: she leaves the group for Johto because she's been battling too much like Ash.

But yeah, for the most part they tended to be way too hand-holdy when it came to actually punishing her. Way too many instances of May relying on straight-up RNG and still pretty much asspulling or brute forcing her way to victory. It's pretty obvious Sinnoh was where they really tried fixing all those problems. Hell, there was even an episode showing how brute force can just as easily backfire, freaking Carnivine wiped the floor with Mamoswine just by dodging all of its attacks. And they put a lot more emphasis on what the point of the appeals are.

It's pretty much the same problem they had with Ash before DP too. It's like, the writers always seemed to know he's too reckless in battle, but for whatever reason it never costs him anything until the league. It's kind of ridiculous how much of a difference it made just by saying, "What if the person with the good matchup... actually won?"