We were robbed of having an epic BW anime.

[Sham]

Isn't that what I pretty much said?

Sorry I misread your comment.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

People have selective memory. You will never stop hearing the Ash vs Trip battle despite Pikachu being weakened and unable to use Electric moves but then run excuses of how he didn’t easily defeat Serena despite almost never finishing a battle and he was Kalos league finalist.

I agree. Pikachu was not at its full power because TRio had drained most of its electricity with that battery trap which was one of their few successful traps as it did what it was supposed to do which was to drain Pikachu of its main attack power. Pikachu still put up a bit of a fight using its non-Electric moves like Quick Attack so it isn’t like Pikachu was helpless.

 

[Applecorp]

Why the hell are people still talking about the Trip fight, you're already putting more thought into it than the people who wrote him.

BW absolutely sucked but it was ages ago, forget about getting robbed of something good, who robbed you people of a chance to move on?

Every single BW topic devolves into Ash vs Trip rants or essays about what a terrible character Iris was. It's like Newton's law or something.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

My major gripes with BW are the mess that Ash had with a rotating team which meant some Pokémon got shafted really hard and didn’t feel justified being owned by Ash after he caught them, how the earthquake and tsunami changed the dynamic and build up that was originally created, Iris needed to train Axew more and be more serious with it and not treat it like a toddler she’s babysitting, Cilan’s connoisseur bit got old and annoying extremely fast, and N didn’t have as much of a presence in the anime as he should have. The first battle with Trip is the least of my concern and honestly I think the reason they gave us as to why Pikachu lost was much better than Ash being given half the Badges in Kanto over some really stupid incident such as Haunter making Sabrina laugh which definitely doesn’t count as a victory in two important and different ways (Haunter was always a wild Pokémon and Ash never actually owned it and he definitely didn’t battle Sabrina in the rematch at all as all of his Pokémon were literally afraid to battle and ran backwards to lean against the back wall and refused to move).

 

[Falconmaroni]

If N was Ash's main rival instead of Trip, and Iris arc was completed in BW instead of now (she had Haxorus, she battled Ash in the 8th Gym etc), and Ash's league loss was more respectable, then it would have been fine. The Plasma story could have been done better.

It's exactly why Iris' character felt unfinished in BW, (it didn't help that after she got Dragonite she didn't get much else besides the Claire episode, then the whole Declora Island arc was pointless), unlike say May who had a better story arc from start to finish with a satisfying conclusion. In a way Iris suffered similarly to post-Aether Lillie where the writers used up a lot of their story ideas already and didn't have much to do with them for the last year of the show. How is they kept May relevant up to literally her last episode but couldn't do the same for Iris?