As said it may not have been the primary point but those things still sure as hell happened.
I bring up Team Rocket because they were often her only opponent besides other grunt level characters. I could point out battle rivals but there were none. Before the haircut Serena could rarely handle even them (she couldn't handle MEOWTH fighting back for crying out loud) and TR still had that tint of BW not-so-harmless feel to them, which was abandoned the moment the haircut happened, making it rather suspicious. Again getting stronger might not have been the point, but it still felt like writers wanted to force in some superficial strong moments anyway, and fans sure as hell know they shoehorned TR curb stomps throughout XYZ, even worse than previous series.
It wasn't just Team Rocket anyway, the showcases, everything up until Team Flare. It might not have stuck out so much if there weren't so many enforced actionised/quest/competition seeking moments in XY(Z) compared to other series and the fact Serena literally NEVER lost or struggled in any of them without some flukey excuse. She worked great in those token times they could do a laid back episode, but of course those had to be the minority because XY was supposed to be a more intense 'epic' series, even if superficially so at times, thus Serena's character was often stuck working against the medium and not really merging or being interesting in the main plot, hence likely why it took so long for her to get rolling.
Serena probably would have worked better in SM's more slice of life setup where they could have just focused on her main appeal of personality and wouldn't be stuck trying to make her look superficially badass to keep to the plot necessities because it genuinely wouldn't need to be the point there.
I bring up Team Rocket because they were often her only opponent besides other grunt level characters. I could point out battle rivals but there were none. Before the haircut Serena could rarely handle even them (she couldn't handle MEOWTH fighting back for crying out loud) and TR still had that tint of BW not-so-harmless feel to them, which was abandoned the moment the haircut happened, making it rather suspicious. Again getting stronger might not have been the point, but it still felt like writers wanted to force in some superficial strong moments anyway, and fans sure as hell know they shoehorned TR curb stomps throughout XYZ, even worse than previous series.
It wasn't just Team Rocket anyway, the showcases, everything up until Team Flare. It might not have stuck out so much if there weren't so many enforced actionised/quest/competition seeking moments in XY(Z) compared to other series and the fact Serena literally NEVER lost or struggled in any of them without some flukey excuse. She worked great in those token times they could do a laid back episode, but of course those had to be the minority because XY was supposed to be a more intense 'epic' series, even if superficially so at times, thus Serena's character was often stuck working against the medium and not really merging or being interesting in the main plot, hence likely why it took so long for her to get rolling.
Serena probably would have worked better in SM's more slice of life setup where they could have just focused on her main appeal of personality and wouldn't be stuck trying to make her look superficially badass to keep to the plot necessities because it genuinely wouldn't need to be the point there.
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