May is and always was great imo. She’s better than every other Pokégirl expect Dawn and maybe Serena (on a good day) to me. She’s just a very entertaining, very fun character with good development. I’d argue that every other Pokégirl except Dawn was sidelined when the show didn’t focus on their goal as well; she’s not special. And even then I remember a good handful of AG fillers -plus a movie- going to May. That’s more that I can say for others.
I don't think Haruka's battling style was focused on brute strength. If that had been the case, she wouldn't have won various Contests in Kanto and Houen, much less made it into the Grand Festivals. She clearly knew how to create dazzling attack combinations, which is why she got as far as she did.Bendicion said:
She seemed pretty much like a Mary Sue type of character and never really struggled much in her contests. It always seems like she passed the appeal rounds without any big problems.
...while entirely disregarding the "being cruel to your Pokemon actively makes them weaker and distrustful of you" that the anime had been pushing for nearly a decade and went right back to after DP as though it hadn't been undermining its own message for the previous four years.
Considering that she was in two grand festivals and in both had a lower rank than Dawn, i don't think that is the case with May
Different eras have different standards. The writing of Kanto would never be accepted by the fanbase nowadays, with him just being handed most of his badges, all of the gym leaders being seriously unprofessional and problematic, aside from the Cinnabar gym all gym battles being awful, and the Pokémon he never trained but just left rot at Oak being the stars at the League (Krabby won a 3v3 on its own for example). Back in those days Ash was the sole main character, and the travel companions were secondary to him. Misty never got much development, neither did Brock or Tracy. May was the first time they actually put a goal in for someone other than Ash that they actively did something with. Ash prioritising his own training over her contests, while in retrospect quite bad of him, can be seen in that same light, they were still transitioning and trying with giving someone other than Ash spotlight, but he was still very much the main character.
Fairly sure that one was from DP.
The Trade is fine, the Ping Pong thing on the other hand....
Necessary evil. It made no sense for Dawn to have two pure normal type Pokemon. Especially coming from May having a Munchlax and Eevee
I'm not sure how anyone could've watched AG and came to this conclusion, especially regarding Haruka's screen-time or her supposedly being treated as a "side character" when in reality she got the most attention and development back then aside from Satoshi: Masato only got maybe one or two focus episodes per year from 2002 through 2006 and that's being generous, Takeshi didn't do much better, and even the Rocket-dan weren't receiving much development aside from Musashi, and that was usually during Contest episodes for the most part where she played second fiddle to Haruka and Haruka's rivals.Bendicion said:
I personally wasn't very fond of some of those opponents, particularly Saori who I thought was reminiscent of a Mary Sue. In some ways she reminded me of Shirona, except that Shirona's status as a Champion at least justified her prodigious battling skills. Saori on the other hand was a blatantly contrived character designed to beat Haruka.
A big problem was that TR were kind of doing what they do in normal episodes, padding the contests with their comic relief so the writers didn't need to develop the heroes' efforts. Even worse when they brought in Harley, and too much screen time was devoted more to antagonists using dirty tactics against May rather than her being given proper competition to overcome. (I always kinda felt sorry for TR in the AG contests too, they never won ONE contest, and by the end of them were reduced to an underling for an even campier dud than them, that kinda felt like their lowest point).