Like I said, they are blank slates. No playable character in Pokémon has any personality whatsoever outside of how you want to picture them, so one character fitting in one role or another is more out of preference or whatever they wanted to do with them than anything. There's also the fact that outside of the Kanto games, there has not been a canon protagonist.
Didn't Lyra say she battled Red, according to a screenshot I found? That would make her the canon-to-Pasio Johto protagonist.
Weird, the post I was going to quote removed the info about Lyra, only leaving my reaction to it. I guess they retconned that and now made Ethan the "canon" character? I'm confused now.
She just said that she faced Red, not anything else that I could remember, but because the post that contained the Tweet with the pics got edited as Masters got updated, I can't see it anymore. Like I said, only my reaction remained.
This is the only thing I can find, and it merely implies that she thinks the player knows Red. If I remember correctly, she adds that the player reminds her of Red, but that hardly means that she met the latter as he's obviously famous.
Well, like I said, the OP was edited when Masters got updated, which is kinda frustrating to me since I swear I saw her mentioning battling Red. Doesn't help that Web Archive does not have the thread archived, so I can't check the Tweet that was in that place. I feel like I'm going through a case of Mandela effect.
The anime doesn't really affect things.
Well my point is just that if May has Mudkip, then this game automatically cannot be Canon with the main games, since May should have the one stronger, assuming she is Birch's daughter.
Why it should be Nate?
