Should there have been a female companion who challenged Gyms like Ash?

[SceptileBlaz]

On twitter I saw people make an edit with Hilda as Ash's BW companion instead of Iris, and in the description they said since Hilda is tomboyish that she probably would have challenged Gyms if she were Ash's companion that saga. That made me think, should it have happened?

The writers never had a main girl do Gyms while Ash was doing them, probably because it would feel a bit repetitive. We saw Dawn battle Maylene, Cilan battle Skyler, etc...so seeing companions battle Gym leaders has happened before. But of course never for the main girl in the series. In the beginning of Hoenn May was expected to do Gyms too and even got a badge case but she changed her mind and decided to do Contests.

It seems too late now because we don't even have a female companion in the series in the current saga, but should it have happened in the past? I see a lot of complaining about nearly all the female companions being coordiantors and how so many of them were stereotyped into that role, but we don't have enough female battlers on the cast. What do you think?

 

[Pokegirl Fan~]

Sure, but it'll never happen because female companions aren't allowed to have battling goals anymore, if ever.

 

[AznKei]

I would like to, but it's not going to happen as long Ash is there, he's gonna hug the spotlights of such a goal and strip almost any interesting things going on with the female companion. As for Dawn who battled more as main girl, we're not on that era anymore.

I rather see Ash gone or have him appear as a rival that appears in very few episodes, so we can have more depth with the main girl challenging gyms and competing at the Pokemon League.

 

[Zoruagible]

If they can get it to work and Ash's goal for that saga doesn't suffer for it, sure.

 

[EmeraldArcanine]

I wish. It honestly sucks that the anime nowadays seem to give girl protags the "feminine" options to battles (Contests/Showcases), as if only male protags can have battle based goals or something. >.<

 

[Sceptile Leaf Blade]

Sure, but it'll never happen because female companions aren't allowed to have battling goals anymore, if ever.

Still more than the male companions with a battling goal, I think Kiawe is to this day the only one. I think it's more that they want to avoid redundancy with Ash than there being an outright bias against girl companions. Doing one gym battle before him is fine, but if it happens eight times in one region it's going to get repetitive to see the two main characters do essentially the same thing all the time. Unfortunately for the main cast they're just stuck with Ash being the main character and him always already doing all the main battle-related things.

I do think we need more female battlers in the series overall though, outside the main cast. Alola did a decent job with half the Kahunas being female and half of the class being female, but the league still ended up being male dominated in the final couple of rounds. I'd love to see more females get a role that characters like Gladion normally get. They kind of had this thing with the Electabuzz girl in Johto but that didn't go anywhere. The closest might be Bianca in BW, although I'm not too far in yet to see if that actually goes anywhere, and even though she's a far more interesting and fun character she does get shoved out of the spotlight by Trip who just shows up more often.

 

[Leonhart]

I think that having any of Satoshi's companions challenge Gyms at the same time as Satoshi wouldn't have worked that well. From my own standpoint, I think Gym battles are barely tolerable as it is, so having two cast members participating in them wouldn't have appealed to me. I only would've been fine with it if Satoshi had stopped challenging Gyms himself and allowed his female companion to take the reins.

 

[Deleted member 384931]

That wouldnt work. Not because she is female, that would be awesome but because :

A) you have to get 8 badges. Unless they collect the same badges, 8x2=16 badges.
B) Ash would get the most focus anyway
C) it would make focus episodes boring since they would go about training/evolving pokemon twice

 

[game3524]

No, it would be redundant. If you want more females to battle then dropping the badge quest entirely is the way to go. I have said it before, but it is a shame that the school setting got wasted in SM. A Pokemon "academy" is one way how you can get more serious female battlers without stepping to much on Ash's toes.

I do think we need more female battlers in the series overall though, outside the main cast. Alola did a decent job with half the Kahunas being female and half of the class being female, but the league still ended up being male dominated in the final couple of rounds. I'd love to see more females get a role that characters like Gladion normally get. They kind of had this thing with the Electabuzz girl in Johto but that didn't go anywhere. The closest might be Bianca in BW, although I'm not too far in yet to see if that actually goes anywhere, and even though she's a far more interesting and fun character she does get shoved out of the spotlight by Trip who just shows up more often.

They need to give Ash a competent female rival. This series would have been perfect for one since there is no traditional Pokegirl . However, since they can bring back older characters for Ash to fight, the need for a rival may not be deemed necessary by the writers.

 

[Spider-Phoenix]

I agree it would feel redundant thus unnecessary.

What I think could be done is making the girls take part of battling more often.

 

[Red and Blue]

I agree with the people who say having any companion collecting badges alongside Ash would have been redundant and a waste of episodes.

If we want to see a female trainer do gyms in full one way is having the next main character after Ash be a girl

 

[Leonhart]

What I think could be done is making the girls take part of battling more often.

I agree on this. The female companions in general should've battled more, this includes Haruka and Hikari since they usually stuck to battling against the Rocket-dan and in Contests which was fine, but they could've been a lot more active outside of those situations.

 

[SerenaRulez]

I would love to see the girls battle in gyms. I remember when Dawn did that in Veilstone and how much I wanted her to battle at other gyms too.

Serena could've been a gym challenger if the writing staff had changed her character a little bit and made her more competitive.

 

[shoz999]

I would love to see the girls battle in gyms. I remember when Dawn did that in Veilstone and how much I wanted her to battle at other gyms too.

Serena could've been a gym challenger if the writing staff had changed her character a little bit and made her more competitive.

She could've been a gym challenger had they expanded on her original character from the games than change it almost completely.

 

[Mew2]

I would love to see the girls battle in gyms. I remember when Dawn did that in Veilstone and how much I wanted her to battle at other gyms too.

Serena could've been a gym challenger if the writing staff had changed her character a little bit and made her more competitive.

And if the writers didn't want Serena to do a gym challenge for fear of stepping on Ash's toes, they could have expanded on the Battle Chateau (much like they did with Contest and Super Contests in Hoenn and Sinnoh) and had her take that challenge and make the "Kalos Queen" rank be for the Battle Chateau rather than Showcases. It would be the perfect way to have a female player character with a battling goal without stepping on Ash's toes.

 

[Leonhart]

I would love to see the girls battle in gyms. I remember when Dawn did that in Veilstone and how much I wanted her to battle at other gyms too.

Serena could've been a gym challenger if the writing staff had changed her character a little bit and made her more competitive.

In Serena's case, I would've preferred if she had participated in Sky Battles rather than Gym battles. If I had been in charge, she would've had Yayakoma as her first Pokemon instead of Fokko, and she would've captured more Flying-types as the series progressed.

 

[game3524]

If they wanted Serena to be a battler in XY, then they should have stuck to what her role was in the game as a NPC (the rival). The whole shipping angle with Ash could have still been kept and it might actually work out a bit better since the interactions could be less one-sided since both her and Ash would have a common interest.

Of course, this means no Pokegirl for XY. But I think that you could have a lot of fun with a group of Ash, Clemont, and Bonnie. Especially, if they made Clemont a little bit less submissive around Ash and more like Go (an equal).

 

[Leonhart]

Of course, this means no Pokegirl for XY. But I think that you could have a lot of fun with a group of Ash, Clemont, and Bonnie. Especially, if they made Clemont a little bit less submissive around Ash and more like Go (an equal).

The writers could've just as easily included another female character to the XY cast to make up for Serena: Sana would be my first choice. The thought of the Kalos cast including only Satoshi, Citron, and Eureka just doesn't sound that intriguing to me.

 

[game3524]

The writers could've just as easily included another female character to the XY cast to make up for Serena: Sana would be my first choice. The thought of the Kalos cast including only Satoshi, Citron, and Eureka just doesn't sound that intriguing to me.

Oh, they could add another girl if they deemed necessary.

As for the girl, I wouldn't have gone with Shauna, I would have chosen Miette. Putting an extroverted flirt around a dense boy like Ash, and introvert like Clemont, and impressionable little kid like Bonnie could have been fun.

 

[Kuzehiko]

I used to think yes but it would be really difficult to center the spotlight on 2 main characters with the same goal so I don't think it's a good idea to have 2 or more main characters with the same goal. It would end up with the protagonist getting all the victories and the other main character getting Ls left and right to just make the protagonist look better and stronger. I wouldn't enjoy that, so no. The anime should better focus on giving every main character a goal instead of having other companions with the same goal to the protagonist.