Sham
The Guardian of Ruin and Birth
People need to understand that a goal that has a clear competition factor doesn’t mean it’s better and case and point is with malnourished Contests yet you have people claiming it’s somehow better than a type specialist goal. Assuming this is what you’re going by. I will admit that Dawn’s contest goal was amazing because of the graphics, animation and awesomeness of it all but Dawn really didn’t have a lot more character growth than Iris. I feel like a lot of people mix up “goals” with “character development”. I don’t even consider Iris becoming the queen of Unova contributing to her character development since she acted no different than her time in BW really.Iris was relatively better, but a step down from Dawn, hence why I said it was a gradual decline. She had good interactions and some bits of development, but her character arc wasn't as well defined, especially until her return appearance in Journeys.
Serena still got an arc, but was the start of them snuffing out female battlers while not doing a terrific job giving them something else to do in place of it, especially since she had the disadvantage of being in a very action focused series.
The SM girls varied, but definitely got the short straw compared to the boys. Lillie got her own cast herd and an arc at the start of the series but was mostly a supporting character for Gladion afterwards.
Chloe is unintrusive and has some development, especially with the twist of long term not even liking Pokemon or even the main character at first, but struggles to hold episodes herself. I feel like the fact she started off a bit player suggests the writers didn't have much faith giving her star appeal.
Iris’ character arc was excellent. She herself was ostracized for being “child like” and in return started doing the same thing to Ash who can be immature at times. It wasn’t until meeting him that she learned to embrace her inner child instead of being a hypocrite “mature one” out of the group. Her “you’re such a kid” turned in a tease from an actual insult.
Not to mention having to individually learn how to tend to all of her Pokemon’s needs and instead morph herself a trainer rather then try to change her Pokémon. She constantly kept trying to command Excadrill despite not valuing his feelings because she was so caught up in the battle with Drayden (this is later shown with her using Fraxure as a student and still not considering his feelings and kept commanding while she was training at school), she learned how to use Emolga’s Volt Switch to good use and not getting upset when she used it, finally gaining the trust of Dragonite and not giving up on him despite his attitude and finally she stopped babying Axew which resulted in him being the Champion’s ace and fully evolving.
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