Least Favorite of Ash's Traveling Companions

[Die-Hard Dragon Devotee]

I found Goh annoying and unlikeable.

This I agree with.

Also I think he was the major reason why Ash didn’t get more time to interact with Serena in JN105. I feel the writers want to make Ash & Goh a couple over any one of Ash’s female companions.

Uhhhhh........WTF?

 

[SatoSerefan5229]

Uhhhhh........WTF?

Let’s face it, Tomiyasu doesn’t want Ash & Serena together. I think there was symbolic significance with May & Serena’s contest outfits resembling the lesbian flag.This kind of tells me Serena’s goals have changed and Ash is no longer a major goal for her.

 

[Die-Hard Dragon Devotee]

Let’s face it, Tomiyasu doesn’t want Ash & Serena together. I think there was symbolic significance with May & Serena’s contest outfits resembling the lesbian flag.This kind of tells me Serena’s goals have changed and Ash is no longer a major goal for her.

I'd say that's..........a hell of lot of speculation there, buddy. I'd have to say I disagree with pretty much everything you just wrote. In my opinion, none of that made any sense.

 

[SatoSerefan5229]

I'd say that's..........a hell of lot of speculation there, buddy. I'd have to say I disagree with pretty much everything you just wrote. In my opinion, none of that made any sense.

But when Journeys ended, I felt there were a lot more questions unanswered. Some we will probably get answers but many will remain unanswered for who knows how long.

 

[skynerel]

Anyway, Iris

Iris becoming champion with no anime context was bad writing.


- We don’t know why she decided to become champion. She never showed any interest in collecting gym badges or participating in the pokemon league. Then again, her goal was to be a dragon master so it makes no sense that she suddenly wants to be the strongest trainer in Unova.


- Half her team didn’t listen to her at one point. She didn’t strategize much during her battles. Her Emolga didn’t know any flying attacks. Axew barely used attacks outside of dragon rage (even though it magically learned outrage & giga impact). Her dragonite lost every battle after it started listening to her. She has to many flaws as a trainer, despite being presented to us as a prodigy. Yet, I’m supposed to believe she made the jump to champion level in the time she was absent.


- Why doesn’t she have more dragon types and why is the rest of her team being kept a secret? We only see that Haxorus evolved and that’s it. At least Misty had a bunch of water types, because that’s her specialty.


- She lost every onscreen match as a Champion. It was always going to be hard to swallow her jump to champion because they didn’t do anything in best wishes to make the audience believe that was one of her goals, but having her win onscreen against other strong trainers (such as elite four members) would’ve been a better way to show she is now Champion material.


- I get that the writers during BW didn’t know that fast forward into the future corporate or whoever makes the decision making was going to demand she’d be a champion like in the games, but at least the current staff should’ve tried to dedicate some episodes to her and how she became champion.


- In my opinion it would’ve been more believable if she had returned in Journeys as gym leader of Opelucid City by defeating Drayden. They should’ve left Alder as the champion for the PWC.

 

[-PokemonBattleFanatic-]

Iris went on what....a 99 win streak before facing Drayden when she was younger? Looks like that didn't amount to much considering she made little to no progress in becoming a Dragon Master during her journey in BW.

The Iris/Georgia rivalry was surprisingly one of the positive things about that series and it mostly has to do with Georgia. It's a shame there was never a conclusion, I guess Georgia watching Iris battle Cynthia on TV means they squashed the beef.

Iris became Champion off screen between BW and SM, this makes all of Ash's efforts meaningless whether it be conquering the Battle Frontier, defeating a Darkrai or winning the Don George esque pokemon league.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I found Goh annoying and unlikeable. Also I think he was the major reason why Ash didn’t get more time to interact with Serena in JN105. I feel the writers want to make Ash & Goh a couple over any one of Ash’s female companions.

I think that using Goh to complain about Ash not interacting with Serena is a pretty big stretch. The point of the episode was showing how Serena had progressed off-screen. They didn't need to have Ash and Serena interact with each other to do that, so blaming that on Goh doesn't make sense to me. They weren't interested in making any Ash pairing canon, let alone Ash and Goh.

Iris treated Ash like crap. Ash should have told her to buzz off but he’s too nice to tell anybody to go away and leave him alone. That’s a major flow of Ash’s character, he is just too nice.

I wouldn't say that Ash being too nice is a character flaw exactly. He can get upset at his friends. It's less frequent since DP arguably, but saying that he's too nice is a bit of a stretch. Ash telling someone to scram would be pretty out of character, even if it was towards Iris.

 

[SatoSerefan5229]

I think that using Goh to complain about Ash not interacting with Serena is a pretty big stretch. The point of the episode was showing how Serena had progressed off-screen. They didn't need to have Ash and Serena interact with each other to do that, so blaming that on Goh doesn't make sense to me. They weren't interested in making any Ash pairing canon, let alone Ash and Goh

But I noticed the AmourShipping community has gotten significantly smaller ever since Serena made a return in Journeys. AmourShippers really don’t rate JN105 very highly. It seems quite a bit have given up hope on AmourShipping.

 

[skynerel]

The Iris/Georgia rivalry was surprisingly one of the positive things about that series and it mostly has to do with Georgia. It's a shame there was never a conclusion, I guess Georgia watching Iris battle Cynthia on TV means they squashed the beef.

Their rivalry was only important in the first episode Georgia appeared in, which pushed Iris to work with her Excadrill. Other than that, all they did was banter, barely battled and got no conclusion of any kind.

 

[-PokemonBattleFanatic-]

Their rivalry was only important in the first episode Georgia appeared in, which pushed Iris to work with her Excadrill. Other than that, all they did was banter, barely battled and got no conclusion of any kind.

Then there's the other rivalries in BW...........

Ash/Trip
Cilan/Burgundy
Ash/Stephan
Ash/Bianca

Yeah it's a pretty low bar but I still found it to be one of the few parts that I liked about BW.

 

[skynerel]

Then there's the other rivalries in BW...........

Ash/Trip
Cilan/Burgundy
Ash/Stephan
Ash/Bianca

Yeah it's a pretty low bar but I still found it to be one of the few parts that I liked about BW.

It seems the writers were more interested in making the rivalries “funny” (their definition of funny anyway) rather than developing them for character growth.

 

[Vengeful Ghost]

But I felt Ash should have ditched Goh after he lost to Bea. Then he would travel by himself and rank up quicker.

Not it wouldn't because Goh does not dictate when the rankings move. The crew behind the show dictates how the rankings move. Ash not having companions wouldn't make anything go faster because the show has to fill out 3 years of content before the next series.

I found Goh annoying and unlikeable. Also I think he was the major reason why Ash didn’t get more time to interact with Serena in JN105. I feel the writers want to make Ash & Goh a couple over any one of Ash’s female companions.

It sounds like your distaste for him stems less from what actions were intentional by the narrative and more about Jealous Shipper Syndrome who sees every single companion as a threat to the OTP.

Iris treated Ash like crap. Ash should have told her to buzz off but he’s too nice to tell anybody to go away and leave him alone. That’s a major flow of Ash’s character, he is just too nice.

No, it isn't a character flaw because the narrative doesn't treat it like a character flaw. It could be a writing flaw, but this totally misrepresents Ash as some kind of wannabe lone wolf who is too nice to do "the dirty jobs"

 

[Nicolas721]

1. Lana-During the first 60 episodes or so she was just the "nice girl who can fish" so her role in the team wasn't really clear and it was hard to connect with her. Then they turned her into the "introverted who is actually badass" which is better but wasn't executed well as it made her quite smug and unlikeable.
2. Chloe-She's such a disappointment in retrospect, they had good ideas but gradually dropped them and turned her in the most passive companion ever who never had any internal struggles and whose episodes usually ended up with her being overshadowed by someone else. Liko and Dot (who have similar character arcs) are a great lesson on how her story could have been done.
3. Serena/Bonnie-I consider them a little overrated and I vastly prefer Misty and Max for their respective roles, but they aren't exactly bad, just meh.

 

[jbmasta]

Max. Yes, his know it all attitude fits the fact he's a kid, but as shown with Bonnie looking after the Dedenne that was caught by Clemont he could have looked after a Pokémon technically owned by May. He could have become a trainer later on, maybe making an appearance in the Mega Evolution specials since those were the Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire anime tie-ins, to show his development but as it stands we didn't get anything like that.

 

[-PokemonBattleFanatic-]

The best thing to come out of Max's mouth was the fact that he saw Ash on television when he was competing in the Johto League which is was a rarity for any new characters in a new series to know of Ash's past achievements in other regions. Him, Misty and Brock's Croagunk all assumed the role of grabbing Brock's ear or stunning him whenever he pulled his Johnny Bravo shtick on a random female character he found attractive.

I also remember him stirring up trouble with that Deoxys. He threw a temper tantrum and stole the gym badge Ash won against his Father Norman even though he already saw his Charizard in action at the Silver Conference.

 

[Die-Hard Dragon Devotee]

The best thing to come out of Max's mouth was the fact that he saw Ash on television when he was competing in the Johto League which is was a rarity for any new characters in a new series to know of Ash's past achievements in other regions.

Too bad the little twerp then ruined it literally 5 seconds later by belittling Ash's skills as a trainer and saying he would have won the battle if he was in Ash's shoes-like the know-it-all little brat that he was/is.

Then he gets attacked by May's Torchic a little later after insulting it and Ash smiles kind of evilly at Max's suffering. Always found that moment satisfying. Serves you right, little twerp! Y'know, this moment right here:

Spoiler

 

[-PokemonBattleFanatic-]

Too bad the little twerp then ruined it literally 5 seconds later by belittling Ash's skills as a trainer and saying he would have won the battle if he was Ash's shoes-like the know-it-all little brat that he was/is.

Then he gets attacked by May's Torchic a little later after insulting it and Ash smiles kind of evilly at Max's suffering. Always found that moment satisfying. Serves you right, little twerp! Y'know, this one:

Spoiler

View attachment 188294

That's why AG Ash is my favorite iteration of the character, even though he matured and improved as a trainer he still showed glimpses of his old self from the OS series.

 

[thepokedr]

Because I started watching Pokemon in '98, my favorite trio is Ash, Misty and Brock.

 

[Steel_Justice]

Probably beating a dead horse at this point but Iris in general is a pretty clear symptom of how bad the writing for Best Wishes is.

For one; she's basically made into a retread of Misty without any thought as to why she kind of worked for people back then. At least when Misty roasted Ash in those old days it was when he was an actual new trainer prone to making mistakes and Ash had no qualms about firing back. Iris just looks like a bully with how much she picks on Ash since he doesn't retort back and pretty much just takes it all. Her fear of Ice types also doesn't make sense and is an obvious attempt to shoe-horn in a trait that Misty has. She's supposed to be afraid of Ice types because Dragon is weak to Ice? As I recall; Water isn't weak to Bug, Iris being afraid of something like Ghosts would have made more sense. Iris could still hate cold weather but being afraid of a floating ice cream cone is just dumb.

And while I'm sort of on the subject of pointless nostalgia pandering, Iris' promotion to champion is just plain stupid and clearly an attempt to pander to people who enjoyed the BW2 games. Iris is still overall a worse trainer than even Best Wishes Ash during the Unova saga and that's saying something. There's no damn way she beat all 8 gym leaders, won the league tournament and beat the Elite 4. I'll die on this hill; that Eevee trainer who won the Unova league would have laid her out, especially if he has a Sylveon now. I don't see a Poison Jab from that Haxorus, Iris is probably the kind of person to rely on Guillotine hitting to beat a hard counter and claims it's skill when RNG is on her side. The really embarrassing thing is that Iris loses all of her on-screen battles as "champion" and only has off-screen wins and credibility as feats. Oh sure, she may have had a 99 winning streak in her backstory but so what? You could accomplish the same by beating Youngster Joey 99 times, they and those offscreen opponents during the world tournament are cannon fodder if we don't see them. It's ironic really; during the season where Ash gets to be world champion is also a season where someone like Iris devalues the title with her existence. It's almost a step away from being just a word from stuff like that.

And Max, yeah, Max sucks. Absolutely pointless and annoying. What does he do? Hold the Pokenav that almost never works when Ash and co get lost? Be someone May can snap at? They don't always fight and May has much better interactions with Drew (and later Harley) that serve a better purpose. There's not much to say about Max other than he's just the annoying know-it all kid that can't back his bluster when it's time for him to prove his worth. Though for what it's worth; Bonnie seems to have been made to correct those mistakes. She at least had plot importance somewhere other than a movie that people dispute the canonicity of.

 

[fluffy-wooloo]

Max because frankly he was the most unnecessary companion of them all from my point of view. He was basically the navigator of the group but Brock could've easily done that instead since he was was basically the de facto reader of maps in Kanto and Johto (the few times that we saw the group consult a map, anyway). Max not even having a Pokemon added to his redundancy within the group and I can't remember there ever being an instance where I actually liked his presence. Sorry not sorry.