Controversial opinions

[ZDaemon09]

I don’t mind what the anime did with the Ultra Beasts, as most of them aren’t inherently evil. I looked them up and saw how they were created, and they were based on the idea of invasive species. The thing about invasive species is that they aren’t evil on their own, but the situations they create by their existence can be problematic. Therefore, most of the Ultra Beasts are just confused and unfamiliar with the world of Pokémon, and the anime can treat them more lightly, as they aren’t intending to cause harm.

The only two Ultra Beasts that are evil are Nihilego, which is based off of a parasite, and Guzzlord, who will do literally anything in order to get his next meal, even if that means destroying towns and reducing the landscape to a wasteland. Because of this, the anime has taken Nihilego really seriously, and it’s looking like the same’s going to happen with Guzzlord.

All of that! The Beasts themselves are NOT your generic alien species that want to kill everyone for potato reasons, they are powerful pokemon that are in an alien world and react exactly as you would expect one to react in that situation. (Walk a mile in there shoes, you would act exactly as they would.)
They are still a problem for those around, but the beast HAS no ill intentions outside of the lives they are use too.
As for your two exceptions.
Nihilego, unlike the other beasts, are not even sentient and act on instinct, they cannot be reasoned with. Guzzlord would act like a puppy if they go with a comedic route... but that is where the comedy ends, their biology is built around eating everything and their world is a hell hole even for them.

 

[Shadao]

Despite not following the Japanese version, even I've heard of the backlash. I can understand it to a degree since Ash really needs more Pokemon and I assumed that he would get Eevee just so he could have both of the special starters on his team, especially if they are planning on showing a new Eeveelution.

That being said, I do think some of the reactions I've seen are pretty extreme. The show didn't promise Ash would get Eevee. Fans just made that assumption. It was a reasonable assumption, but an assumption nonetheless. Plus, all of the female characters in the cast only have one Pokemon on them and Lana hasn't had much focus lately, so this seems like a way to do something about that. If one of the other cast members would catch Eevee, I would have bet money on Lillie capturing it. She seems to be the most popular character in the cast, primarily due to her video game counterpart, and she seems to be treated as the main female lead of the series. Still, Lana could use more focus and I'm sure that the reasoning behind giving her Eevee makes sense.

Besides that, after watching the Eevee shorts, I just wanted Eevee to have friends, be happy and not be lonely anymore, so this works in that regard. There's also the bonus of Eevee playing with Popplio. I've seen images of the two of them together and it is adorable, so that's great.

Honestly, I had doubts that Eevee would go to Ash. I always felt that should Ash ever get an Eevee, it would be foreshadowed to evolve into Espeon to match with Gary's Umbreon. Based on the shaggy hair and the fact that Partner Eevee doesn't evolve at all, it feels a bit off for this Eevee to go to Ash. It feels more like a classroom pet than anything else. Not to mention Ash always get Pokémon introduced in the current Gen rather than previous Gen (and if he does get a previous Gen Pokémon, expect it to evolve into the current Gen Pokémon).

Of course, I wasn't paying attention to the hype since I had doubts that the Alola League would even have a proper build up to begin with.

 

[sc190191]

I think this post belongs here because I am about to say something positive about showcases (oh my god!). Trust me, I don't really like them either, and even if I did I think they weren't handled well, BUT I just saw Serena's final master class performance in the original for the first time the other day (and like 5 times since then now), and wow was it really cool.

The way they synchronized the movements to the Dori Dori ending was really cool, having seen only the dub before I never realized that the dance was the same as it was in the original ending. But I think it goes way beyond just being a cute little tie-in, because it shows that she finally became the person she dreamed of being. Back then it was just a dream, she finally found a passion to pursue and she was imagining how she could confidently dance alongside her partners and be who she wanted to be. When she got onto the final stage in the master class, she was finally able to confidently be herself and put on the performance she had dreamed of for so long, all while having a lot of fun. Even though she didn't win, I think it was the best way (given the circumstances, they had already made a lot of mistakes with showcases) they could wrap up Serena's performance arc for the XY series. She then progressed from trying to achieve her own dream, to moving forwards towards trying to make other people happy, which shows some cool progression as well. Anyway, it really changes how I am going to look back on that arc. I would suggest if you haven't seen the original (I'm sure most people on here have), to watch the original Dori Dori ending a few times and then watch it, because it is really cool.

 

[Camille]

Not sure this is actually an unpopular opinion, but I was greatly annoyed when Bulbasaur (and later Piplup) refused to evolve.

 

[PkmnTrainerV]

Not sure this is actually an unpopular opinion, but I was greatly annoyed when Bulbasaur (and later Piplup) refused to evolve.

Same here, specially since Ivysaur and Primplup are my favourite stages of their respective lines.

 

[FinnishPokéFan92]

Not sure this is actually an unpopular opinion, but I was greatly annoyed when Bulbasaur (and later Piplup) refused to evolve.

Same here, specially since Ivysaur and Primplup are my favourite stages of their respective lines.

I personally don't like how they changed Piplup's reasoning for not wanting to evolve in the dub. In the original version, it was because Piplup had seen what evolution had done to Swinub and wanted to avoid the same happening again. In the dub, it was something smushy and cliche about wanting to preserve their memories together or something like that. I personally think the reasoning in the Japanese version made more sense.

 

[Mikuri]

I personally don't like how they changed Piplup's reasoning for not wanting to evolve in the dub. In the original version, it was because Piplup had seen what evolution had done to Swinub and wanted to avoid the same happening again. In the dub, it was something smushy and cliche about wanting to preserve their memories together or something like that. I personally think the reasoning in the Japanese version made more sense.

Is this true though? I just re-watched the scene in which Meowth translates what Piplup says to Dawn when he is explaining why he doesn't want to evolve and Mamoswine wasn't mentioned. Piplup says that he will protect Dawn from Team Rocket the same way he did when they were attacked by a swarm of Ariados when they first met, and that he will forever protect her as a Piplup.

I've seen this topic being brought up before but I really would like to have some confirmation. Dogasu didn't do a comparison on that episode and Bulbapedia has no info about it in their dub edits section. What I do know is that Meowth doesn't say "Mammoo" when translating Piplup's reasoning. So I guess this is just misinformation that has been circulating far too long on the forums.

In any case, I prefer the "dub reason" a lot more. Piplup refusing to evolve because he is scared of becoming a disobedient Pokémon upon evolving makes him look like a coward who has no control over his own actions.

 

[Rockapheller]

I personally don't like how they changed Piplup's reasoning for not wanting to evolve in the dub. In the original version, it was because Piplup had seen what evolution had done to Swinub and wanted to avoid the same happening again. In the dub, it was something smushy and cliche about wanting to preserve their memories together or something like that. I personally think the reasoning in the Japanese version made more sense.

I thought the reasoning was beyond cliché but I had no idea that was the case originally. Once again we experience the dub, a.k.a. western "localization" ruining the depth of the show which is sad.

 

[Jared DiCarlo]

In the dub, it was something smushy and cliche about wanting to preserve their memories together or something like that.

Wow, that sounds like something you’d see in a cheesy educational DiC cartoon from the 80s.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I thought that Piplup's reason for not evolving was fine. It's cliche, but I thought it was fitting given how much Dawn and Piplup had bonded during that point of DP. Wanting to protect Dawn as a Piplup instead of changing felt fitting and had enough emotional weight behind it to make it feel genuine to me.

The idea that Piplup would be afraid of becoming like Mamoswine kind of makes sense on paper, but at the same time, I think it would be too much of a stretch for that to be the real reason behind Piplup's decision. Dawn barely did anything with Swinub between its capture and evolution episodes, so there wasn't much of a bond between them from the start. Piplup is Dawn's starter Pokemon and they had much more of a connection than she had with Swinub. Pokemon often do change when they evolve, but I'm not sure if seeing Mamoswine disobey Dawn alone would be enough to make Piplup not want to evolve, especially when Ambipom didn't have a problem listening to Dawn after it evolve and Dawn got Ambipom from a trade too.

 

[Alola]

I was going to comment, but looks like several people spoke for me. Anyways, I watched both versions of the episode when they first aired (Piplup lover here) and Mamoswine was never mentioned as the reason for Piplup's refusal to evolve. He merely wanted to stay in the same form and continue the decent job he was doing as Dawn's right hand Pokemon; he wanted her to understand that he could continue doing his best as a Piplup. The whole point of the episode was to show that, while great, evolution isn't always a means to an end when it comes to a Pokemon's potential and strength (in the anime, anyway).

 

[FinnishPokéFan92]

I was going to comment, but looks like several people spoke for me. Anyways, I watched both versions of the episode when they first aired (Piplup lover here) and Mamoswine was never mentioned as the reason for Piplup's refusal to evolve. He merely wanted to stay in the same form and continue the decent job he was doing as Dawn's right hand Pokemon; he wanted her to understand that he could continue doing his best as a Piplup. The whole point of the episode was to show that, while great, evolution isn't always a means to an end when it comes to a Pokemon's potential and strength (in the anime, anyway).

I might've misremembered what I had heard and/or read. Sorry.

 

[Yᵒᵘ Oᶰˡʸ Lᶤᵛᵉ Oᴺcᴱ]

Not sure this is actually an unpopular opinion, but I was greatly annoyed when Bulbasaur (and later Piplup) refused to evolve.

I get why Piplup's dub reasoning might've made his decision seem annoying, but I totally understood his original justification, as well as Bulbasaur's.

 

[sc190191]

I wanted to make a post about what a fourth year of the XY series would have looked like. Prior to SM games being announced there was some people who thought XY would last 4 years, while some people argue that a 4th year wouldn't have been possible without a filler arc. I personally wouldn't have minded a filler arc, since I loved this group, but I also personally have believed such an arc wouldn't have been necessary based on the pace of XY and the content in XYZ seeming rushed. I think it is a bit controversial, so I wanted to put it in here. I just finished re-watching XY (and I loved it even more the second time - like I usually do, still drying the tears from the finale) and so I wanted to take a stab at taking a look at what the fourth year could have looked like. This isn't a "wish list" of additional episodes/storylines, if I did that I could come up with hundreds of additional episodes, I am actually trying very hard to take a realistic look at what the series looked like before it sped up and what additional types of episodes would have seemed likely if there was a 4th year. I am entering into this without an outline or plan, so I really consider it an experiment, I want to see if I think a filler arc would have been necessary or not.

I thought about making this a thread, but I think it would have been a dud because I don't think a lot of XY fans remain active in A&M section anymore, and there is a lot of XY hate flying around these days, but regardless of if you like XY or not, the point of this isn't to say would you rather have had a 4th year or not, its to take a look at what that 4th year would have looked like if it did occur, and see if a filler arc would have been necessary.

So in my opinion the pacing and balance of the series changed from the leisurely pace of the XY series, to the quick pace and lack of balance of the XYZ series. As far as I can tell, many people agree this happened at some point, for me I think it was just a bit before XYZ started, but for argument's sake we can just say XYZ. I don't want to get into conspiracy theories of Game Freak springing on the anime that they only had a year left or anything like that, I'm just saying the series definitely felt quite a bit different in pacing and balance, so I always wonder what a fourth year would have done to improve that.

As far as what the 4th year would have looked like, I get there would have been a gym battle gap, and I know people complained about the DP gym gap, but people complain about EVERYTHING, so I think some of us were perfectly fine with it as well. It was pretty well established during XYZ that a lot of time was passing during short spurts of episodes, if we look at the pace Ash and Serena's rivals moved forward at. Typically rivals can move faster because of all the random stuff the main cast deals with, but that is typically explained by us actually seeing the random stuff happening. In XYZ we didn't really see that stuff, we had some huge advancements in keys and badges during some very short spans, so I think a slower pace would have made that stuff make more sense, even though it was offscreen, while also adding additional balance in the onscreen treatment of storylines, main characters, and Pokemon.

Before I start listing additional episodes I think would have existed, I want to establish how many total episodes we could have expected, because its a bit less than the other 4 year series. At 2 years DP had 95 episodes and wound up with 191, and at 2 years AG had 103, didn't even go quite 4 years, and got 192. At 2 years XY had 92, so I think 184 or 185 would be a better estimate for total episodes (It wound up having between 140 and 142 depending on if you count specials, so another year should be about 45 or less).

The following sections are the amount of episodes I feel would have likely been added to the 4th year for certain storylines that seemed to get sparse attention come XYZ. If I add 1 that doesn't necessarily mean I think it would be one whole episode, in some cases it would be spread over the series, but amount to an episodes-worth of time, and sometimes I add less than one as well, its just about how much total time it would take up. I think the order and spacing would have needed to change in a lot of cases, but I'm really not getting too much into that here, I guess the assumption being everything that happened in XY stays the same, the below is additional episodes to XYZ (My personal claim is the pace sped up more in the range of XY 80s, but its a lot harder to prove so I will go with what I think is a more commonly agreeable theory that XYZ is where it sped up). And like I said before, this is what I actually think would have happened based on how the series behaved prior to XYZ and how other series behaved in the past, it is not a wishlist:

Additions to main storyline:
+2 Serena showcase losses (I think this is pretty key because it got to the point where it seemed like she had improved too quickly and made her rivals seem less of a threat, and in general the showcases need to be way more spread out, because towards the end it was showcase overload. The master class should be at least as close to the end of the series as it was, if not closer, I think they tried to get it out of the way early so they didn't have to worry about it anymore...)
+1 Jessie showcase win (Only adding one episode because one of them would have been her beating Serena, and the other would have been an ep mostly dedicated to her win with some flashes to a random subplot with the main crew)
+1 Sawyer battle (We really needed one more battle so he didn't go straight from pushover to force to be reckoned with, so just a level in between where he was emerging as a threat, overall all his battles would be more spread out over the 2 years)
+2 Kalos League training (like some past series, the league isn't immediately after the 8th badge, so quite a few episodes happen in between, two of them based on training. I personally think a re-visit to battle chateau as league training was a missed opportunity, but either way we needed some more training/preparing for the league)
+1.5 Visit Vaniville town (Serena is the only main character (other than Tracey, but we don't even know where he's from) who's hometown wasn't visited by the group, sadly just like she seems likely to be the only main character to never exist after their own series.... Anyway, I see this happening pre-league, post badge quest. Twinleaf festival was 4 episodes so I see this as conservative)
+2.5 Kalos League (I know how long a typical league is, but Ash didn't typically get to the top 2 either. With more time we would have had the chance to see Ash's flying types get some more wins, see interesting new competitors, have a little more non-battle drama, calls home (I get why they didn't have Oak/Delia show up because of how Flare arc came right next, but at least a call...), etc. I personally think Astrid should have been the first full battle, then Goodra could have gotten a win and at a minimum we needed to see all of Hawlucha and mega Absol, since beating a mega was quite a big deal at that time, plus actually giving a girl some desperately needed league screen-time, that would have led to Sawyer and Tierno being full as well, and we would just see a little less than all of it, but give Tierno's full team a chance (since we know he has nearly a full team, but didn't see almost half of them do anything), without revealing everything about Sawyer's).

Total: 10 additional episodes

Additional character development:
+1 to Ash's "Losing streak" (Remember when Ash said he had to end his "losing streak" after losing to Sawyer, but before losing to Wulfric. Uhh, yeah that was 1 loss, would have meant a lot more if another episode would have increased the struggling).
+1 to Jessie practicing for showcase (not a whole episode by itself, but over the course of the additional year, an episode's worth of having this be a thing - this isn't unheard of - see Sinnoh)
+1 to Serena half for practicing for showcase and coming up with something new, half for more confidence building in non-showcase development
+1 Serena catching a fourth Pokemon (I personally like my main girls getting 6, but I know that isn't a reasonable expectation anymore, but I think we could expect one more for Serena in a 4th year).
+1 Bonnie befrieding a wild Pokemon (this was more frequent pre-Squishy, so I think without the speed up there would have been another one of these, that would have worked well for Bonnie to gain even more respect from Squishy and see how Squishy interacted with the new friend).
+1.5 Clemont focus episode (again I think we could ask for even more, Clemont's focus went way down in XYZ until the Flare plot)
+1 Random amour episode (I don't even want this, but we all know if they had another year we would have gotten at least one more of these)
+1 Alexa episode (remember the woman who brought Ash to Kalos? She appeared semi-regularly during XY, then had no role at all beyond cameo in XYZ)
+1 James/Inkay development (I think a lot of us wanted to believe James could get another catch, but doesn't seem reasonable anymore to believe this, but at the very least he didn't get a lot of development once XYZ rolled along)
+1 Trevor development (He really wasn't ever even established as a league-type competitor and had no meaningful appearance in XYZ until league and post-league)
+.5 Tierno development (He got more time than Trevor, but he was a more important rival, would have been good to see him during XYZ run as well, since he also was absent until league and post league)
+1 Trio focus episode (In another year I think at least one would need to occur, again I think I could go even higher)
+.25 Something additional with Miette for Serena (for Serena's first rival, she was very minimal in XYZ, she was very fun in non-performance episodes)

Total: 12.25 additional episodes

Additional Pokemon development:
+1.5 Noibat training and battles (sorely needed)
+2.5 Serena new Pokemon development
+.5 Pancham learns a new move (tons of options)
+1 Luxray post evolution development (This really isn't unreasonable, pre XYZ Clemont's Pokemon all had focus episodes semi-regularly, but Luxray lacked a solid focus episode post evolution)
+1 Sylveon post evolution development and new fairy type move (either dazzling gleam, moonblast, or misty terrain)
+.5 Braixen learns psychic type move (preferably psychic) - this could possibly be even a whole episode, could become really interesting, but i'll keep the estimate conservative
+.5 Hawlucha new move and general development (Hawlucha had a lot of focus pre XYZ and then very little, so I think this is fairly conservative as one of the most entertaining Pokemon we've ever had (Fact, not opinion, lol))
+.25 Chespin new move
+.25 Talonflame learns flare blitz (Talonflame did learn moves at a good clip originally and was always learning really good ones, so it really seemed to make sense that this jump would have been made, similar to how Staraptor eventually got close combat)
+0 Greninja learns night slash (I think this should have happened, I guess it doesn't because of the Japanese name, so I came back and decided to not count it, plus Greninja got more than enough time anyway)

Total: 8 additional episodes

Additional Locations: (I want to add a lot here, because there was some great missed locations, but I will remain conservative and only include places that make sense)
+1 Travel through Santalune Forest (I want to go with like +10 here like Ilex got since I love the forests, but I think an episode in the forest on the way to Vaniville is perfectly reasonable).
+.25 Aquacorde Town (They would at least stop here somewhat heading to Vaniville, could easily have a plot here, but I'm trying to be as conservative as possible)
+.75 Various traveling/camping out (This is spread out over the entire year, again pretty conservative because we used to see a lot of traveling back in the good ol' days)

Total: 2 additional episodes

Additional Balance to the "fun" aspect XY had before XYZ
+1 Articuno episode (Come on, we all expected this, it totally killed me to not get an episode from my favorite of the Kanto leg bird trio)
+3 various light-hearted fillers/other (Ok I am trying to be as scientific as possible here. I went through and counted the number of episodes during XY and during XYZ that weren't any of the above type of episodes (so I don't double count) and were basically a light hearted not main part of the regular storyline. I also tried to be very conservative in my count for the XY portion, so I didn't overestimate, of course anyone may have a different opinion of this, but its what I came up with. I got 29/93 for XY and 10/47 for XYZ. 29/93 is about 31%, 31% of 47 is about 14.65, so I will round down and add 4, then considering some of the above, like portions of episodes for new moves, can mesh into these, I will reduce it another and only add 3. I can think of a lot of fun ideas for stories for these, but that would be for a different day.

Total: 4 additional episodes

Post league and Flare Climax additions
+.5 Let Clemont's episode actually give him the main focus and have the Alain party take up part of another episode
+1 Xerosic conflict more in-depth, because it was a lot more complex and difficult to defeat in games and it was really rushed into half an episode, barely feeling like a legitimate threat (maybe even include the great Looker)
+.75 most of an episode actually spent in Pallet town (This comes essentially after the finale to retain the emotion, almost like a special - similar to what we had seen most other series)

Total: 2.25 additional episodes

Optional:
+1 Malamar returns (I think a lot of people expected this, but I don't really think it was ever all that likely, so I didn't want to include it above)
+2 A better reward from Sycamore than silly medals, he takes group (with Alain and Mairin included) by train to Kiloude city where they relax and have fun and experience a little bit of what the Maison has to offer, including a chatelaine battle, some safari exploration seeing Pokemon that hadn't been seen in the series, etc.
+.5 Azure Bay visit
+.5 see Xerneas again that was hinted in Summer Camp
+1 Serena actually gets a special! (In this case occurs before SM, is why it adds to episode count)

(Optional) Total: 5 episodes

So here is the result:

Additional Episodes: 38.5
Optional Additional: 5
Total: 43.5

So I was thinking an extra year would need about 45 episodes, and I got to 38.5 with what I conservatively thought would likely happen based on what was missing from XYZ, how the XY series had gone, and evidence from past series. I think this is quite close, so I think they could have easily stretched it out into a fourth year without a filler arc and without feeling slow (considering I actually pared down a lot of my estimates in order to be as conservative as possible). Also, if including specials (which did lead up directly to SM) and add in a Serena special, then the regular episodes really only needed to add about 42, so we're even closer. I also think it possible Ash could have had another catch (a la Gible), but I thought I would leave that out. Anyway, I believe this shows that the series could have easily lasted 4 years, and I think it would have been more complete and more satisfying. I really didn't even factor in that completely new material could be introduced, something we pretty much always have, so again I think there would be no trouble whatsoever in this being a 4 year series based on what we had seen through the XY portion.

Thank you for reading if you made it through this. I tried really hard to be conservative and fair in this and put forth a lot of effort, but let me know if something is totally off base or doesn't make sense. Clearly I wish this would have happened, but I tried very hard to not let that influence how I determined the above. So yeah its all irrelevant, but I enjoyed putting this list together and I feel it is a good effort at showing what a 4th year could have been like for the XY series.

 

[Nicolas721]

Nice post! I had a good time reading it. It should've been a thread or a blog so we could discuss it deeply, I love "what if" subjects. My main hopes would be the following:

+1 Serena meeting her fans and being recognized as popular
+3 Team Flare appearances (remember their 5 month absence?)
+5 Hoenn Tournament with May, Max and most rivals
+3 Lumiose City gimmicks (Looker anyone?)
+2 Iris & Cilan visit (yes I said it, come at me)
+3 Ash's sixth Pokemon (of course it would appear in more episodes, but these would be focused on it)
+1 Blaziken Mask backstory
+1 Malamar closure
+1 A Mythical from the past comes back in a central role
+1 Reuniclus (yeah, BW is to blame for this one)
+1 Articuno
+1 Ash vs Astrid in the league, preferably using reserves.

 

[prog rocker]

-Pikachu should have evolved either in the first season or Johto. I mean, Raichu is not what you could call unmarketable. However, it's too late now.
-I hate Paul. I still feel he is a bootleg Silver. I read all the posts in this thread about him. They didn't make me change my opinion. The fact he's possibly based on competitive players actually makes things worse in my mind.

I'm going to put this apart since it's more what I think happened in development: I feel that the SM anime was based on an earlier version of Gen VII. Then again, I'm basing this on the fact that the only game characters that showed up for a lot of episodes where the first ones revealed. Also, it wouldn't be the first time something from a beta showed up in the anime (Blaine's original appearance and Blue being a researcher).

 

[ii kanji]

@sc190191 you made me realise how much I miss 4 year sagas

 

[KenzeyEevee]

Both Gladion and Hau are nice rivals in the games, but their animé-counterparts aren't eager to fight. Ash didn't battle Gladion much and Hau either (since he just appeared once), and for me, Ash and Gladion and Hau don't have a rivalery like Paul, Alain, Sawyer or Gary. And I don't see Kukui as a rival either, because I think Kukui would more enjoy watching the league than appearing in it.

The LGPE-Eevee episodes feel like a waste thb, don't you think?

 

[CaptainBuggles]

I was always kind of annoyed by how Zekrom came in randomly at the start of BW and ended up screwing Pikachu over just because, so I feel like BW could've potentially been more interesting if they flat out made it Zekrom's fault that Pikachu's power seemed "reset" even after his electricity was restored.

Then Ash could want to hold Zekrom accountable for what it did to Pikachu, and part of his goal would be to track it down again and gain its respect. In this case, it wouldn't be that Ash hates Zekrom, and he wouldn't want it to straight up suffer or anything. He would just want it to actually acknowledge that what it did was wrong.

Still, it would become apparent that part of the issue was that Zekrom simply saw them as so beneath it that it has no reason to care about them, necessitating Ash to get much stronger simply so he can make Zekrom actually see that he's worthy of respect.

Other things that could happen here, optionally:

1: Trip learns about what happens too. Maybe even with proof through his own Zekrom issue, like he gets a good Electric-type but it gets nerfed by Zekrom too... Then he has to be humble enough to accept advice from Ash, and admit that he was wrong for dunking on Ash when Pikachu was affected by something outside of Ash's control

2: Ash is driven to take his training seriously enough that he still wins his second battle with Trip. (although Pikachu himself still loses)

3: In general, Ash is still humorous, but makes less stupid mistakes and less of his humor is about being a butt monkey/slapstick victim. (Especially redo the wonky Elesa Gym battle where it felt like he didn't even deserve to win in canon)

4: Do something else with Pikachu's moves rather than having him learn Electro Ball, as part of him training to try and make up for what happened to him. Preferably, I'd like to see him learn a way to make Volt Tackle safer. It's always bugged me that the anime can take a million and one other liberties, but once it comes to Volt Tackle, the drawback suddenly has to be so utterly non-negotiable that Pikachu ends up dropping it. And then they don't even acknowledge Electro Ball's special effect, on top of that? It's just frustrating.

 

[FinnishPokéFan92]

I personally have nothing against friendly rivals. Sure, Blue was an iconic rival, but that doesn't mean that rivals unlike him are automatically bad. Let's have a rundown on all the rivals introduced after Generation II:

• Brendan/May: I admit, these are probably the blandest rivals to date, but thanks to OR/AS, they're perfectly respectable in my books. They're not competitive against you, but still want to battle against you just for the fun of it, helping you advance in your journey.
• Wally: Like Brendan/May, Wally got a much-needed facelift in OR/AS, pulling him out of obscurity and giving him a ton of more character. Also, need I mention that he's one of the strongest Trainers in terms of level outside of battle facilities? That alone is a big plus for me.
• Barry: This guy is loved despite him not being an a-hole, and I think it's because he's still competitive towards you, not to mention of his hilarious personality and behavior.
• Cheren and Bianca: These rivals represent the game's theme of truth and ideals, and they truly develop as characters throughout the game. Plus, when we revisit Unova two years later, it's nice to see how they've advanced in their respective lives and attained professions they're perfectly happy with. Also, given Unova's heavy emphasis on story, these two naturally contribute a lot to it.
• Hugh: Probably the best blend of competitive and friendly rival, combined with a great story and motivation. This guy deserves more recognition.
• The Kalos rivals: Sigh... These guys. They seem to get all the hate in the world when it comes to friendly rivals in Pokémon. But the thing is: they have a reason for being like they are. Each of them enjoys a different aspect of Pokémon: Shauna enjoys the journey she gets to make when she has a Pokémon on her side; Tierno enjoys just being with Pokémon, regardless of where he's going; Trevor enjoys filling up the Pokédex; and Calem/Serena enjoys the classic training and competitive parr of Pokémon. I think these four deserve way more respect.
• Hau: This malasada boy is a nice guy. Especially in US/UM, in my opinion. He starts his journey by with the intention of nothing but enjoy it, but as the story advances, he understands that he needs to train much harder to become a stronger Trainer and be able to protect those he cares about, like Lillie. And in US/UM, this results in him facing you in a battle for the literal Champion throne, effectively making him the second-strongest Trainer in Alola. I also like the relationship between him and his grandfather. He's probably my favorite "friendly" rival.
  
• Gladion: This guy honestly already gets a lot of respect. I really don't know what to say about him that hasn't already been said. He's already beloved enough by the fandom to not need any defense.
  
• Trace: Despite Trace effectively being a replacement for Blue, I still don't hate him for being that. He's a respectable rival and overall a nice character. One of his defining traits must be him adopting the orphaned Cube, using it to fight Team Rocket at Silph Co., and eventually evolving it into a Marowak. I also don't mind him becoming the Champion like Blue did, even if they did miss the most opportune chance to make Professor Oak the Champion.

Also, I'll share with you all the thing that I randomly found and inspired me to make this post in the first place.

Spoiler

The title alone ticked me off, to be honest...