Lana is pretty carefree to me, think she really doesn't care at this point to do anything seriously. Adventure one day in the future maybe and that's it. I dobn't really blame her anyways but I'd at least want her get another water Pokemon just for the heck of it at this point.
As for moves, I'd be okay with just them having four moves on their Pokemon tbh. They've got to have some form of training before doing anything like protecting Alola from whatever is coming imo. I really don't wanna just see them being this Ultra guardian thing and they can't stand up for themselves. 10000000 volt thunderbolt wouldn't always save them :/
I think there's only so many good battles the writers can be bothered to make per series, and it's becoming more obvious as we go along, what with some of the main characters becoming more blatantly non-battle centric and the villain plots (the ones they know they're allowed to break the rules with the most) becoming lazier and more ineffective (how many times do the heroes either curb stomp the bad guy, or get curb stomped themselves and then summon a legendary or stronger trainer to curb stomp the bad guy instead?). A huge bulk of battles, if not the majority, are curb stomps or spam fests. Generally only a handful of plot centred battles plus the goal based ones like Ash's gym/Kahuna ones are strategy heavy and keep to the character playing them all the way through on their own while still making it look like a challenge (and even then it took until XY for them to fully abolish all forms of flukes/DEMs from Ash's gym run).
I would truthfully kinda prefer they just take the 'slice of life with odd battles' setup of early SM and stick to it instead of making it more actionized again, because I think the writers can make more consistent use of the former over 'tons of boring curb stomps with the odd really good battle in there' ratio that previous series had. You predicted it yourselves; the side cast get flukey wins due to being poor battlers, Ash gets a DEM to be the big hero, the villains are resultantly a pushover and an anti climax makes the plot. Not exactly satisfying.
I think it has negative effect on the protagonists as well because they NEVER feel like the underdogs in the action heavy route, not even the poor battlers, because they usually get through ridiculous circumstances without a scratch and not based on their own effort, while with the SOL setup with moderated battles, Ash, even with his winning streak, feels adorably humble and rootable.
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