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Controversial opinions

Wouldn’t a loss just make him work even harder?
I guess that's a good point. It's just that Alain kept winning simply because he refused to lose, which can be a bit boring. It's just like the anime reviewer Suede said about the season 1 Ash once (paraphrasing): "What if you try hard enough, and yet, still don't succeed?"
 
I guess that's a good point. It's just that Alain kept winning simply because he refused to lose, which can be a bit boring. It's just like the anime reviewer Suede said about the season 1 Ash once (paraphrasing): "What if you try hard enough, and yet, still don't succeed?"

Actually, Alain won because he progressed to seek as many opponents as possible to train his charizard. He was actually working quite hard.

Even Ash ‘refused to lose’ but lost anyway at many opportunities.

I just wish Alain’s other Pokemon were seen before and developed, and he shouldn’t have swept the entire league with Charizard and Metang.
 
Actually, Alain won because he progressed to seek as many opponents as possible to train his charizard. He was actually working quite hard.

Even Ash ‘refused to lose’ but lost anyway at many opportunities.

I just wish Alain’s other Pokemon were seen before and developed, and he shouldn’t have swept the entire league with Charizard and Metang.
True. I guess I've been ignoring that point for the sake of my argument to work...

Intentional or not, I think Alain could be seen as a representative of all those players who just spammed their starter and left the rest of their team underleveled in comparison.
 
I know that Paul had a similar thing going for him and that Ash still managed to defeat him at the League, but since Alain's case is more recent, some believe the writers will take the Alain route rather than the Paul one (especially since it's becoming more and more apparent that the writers of Sun & Moon still haven't learned from past mistakes).

...those mistakes being?
 
Why would anyone think that? Gladion is actually a character within the show. Alain's story was just stitched together with the main show last minute to kickstart the Team Flare arc and give Ash someone to lose to. There was not really a character dynamic between Ash and Alain aside from "woah he strong" (going both ways), no matter the outcome, there was nothing emotionally invested in their rivalry aside from victory itself (which is LAME). At least with Gladion there's clearly a competitiveness and built respect between both that has happened over time, even if his presence in the show is scarce.

I don't think Alain's storyline comes off like it was added in at the last minute, mainly because they did establish him through the Mega Evolution specials. Granted, I think that his rivalry with Ash started way too late in XY considering the impact he had, but it didn't feel like they did it at the last minute exactly. Still, I agree that there wasn't a strong dynamic between them and nothing really meaningful behind their rivalry besides the possibility of Ash winning a League for once. I haven't really gotten much of an impression for Ash and Gladion's rivalry, especially when his appearances are so scarce, but that might change when I get to his more recent episodes.

Alain was basically Tobias done right: an OP Trainer for Ash to lose to, who actually had a backstory and an understandable and relatable motivation. He's not a flawless character, but we've had worse rivals (I'm looking at you, Cameron).

I don't really see Alain as Tobias done right. I can understand that comparison. I've often thought of Alain as if Tobias was an established supporting character in DP that the audience was supposed to care about, but I still think Alain is far worse than Tobias. They're both overpowered trainers designed to defeat Ash, but losing to Legendary Pokemon is a lot more justified to me than losing to a broken Mega Charizard X. Legendary Pokemon are practically always shown to have overpowered strength, but Alain winning with Mega Charizard X after they built up Ash becoming stronger with Greninja in order to win just came off as blatant favoritism. While his motivation for battling to help Marin's Chespin was understandable, his motivation for entering the League was more selfish.

He just wanted to battle against Ash again, which always rubbed me the wrong way. It would be one thing if he was already heading for the League and just wanted to face off against Ash there, but he apparently brushed through eight Gyms extremely fast and was able to rely on just two Pokemon until he got to the Kalos League finals. Not only does that show how incredibly overpowered he is, but it always bothered me that someone who wasn't even interested in the Kalos League beyond battling one specific trainer ended up defeating other characters who actually worked hard to get there and wanted to be there. People are still going to complain about Tobias, but I really can't see how Alain as a character or as how he defeated Ash is any better than Tobias.
 
I'm guessing that people prefer Alain to Tobias since he actually had a personality beyond "Hey, a mysterious trainer joined with a Darkrai!"

I personally don’t have strong opinions on the matter, since Alain was a decent enough character for me and Tobias was more blatantly created to win against Ash.
 
I don't normally like saying this, but Ash probably would have fared better if he used some of his reserves against Alain. Aside from Ashgreninja and Pikachu, his Pokemon thas season just weren't up to deal with the likes of Mega Charizard-who might as well be classified as a Legendary at this point-, Goodra and Noivern especially barely had any training. Cause unlike Charizard, Gliscor or even Primeape, Goodra wasn't left behind to train so I doubt it did any of that and I don't even think that much time had passed since Ash left it behind. And Noivern was still just an infant and had little trianing put into it as well.
 
I actually prefer Tobias over Alain as a plot device to make Ash lose the Pokemon League. The fact that Tobias wasn't really much of a character makes it easier for me to accept him as the blatant plot device that he is. Alain, on the other hand, was a character with a story, a goal and a personality. He even received some character development as early as the Mega Evolution specials thanks to his interactions with Mairin. Turning a genuine character into a plot device is really unfortunate, especially because I think Alain's story could have been great. It had a decent foundation.
 
Like KrisiChiki and Hidden Mew said, there just wasn't any way they could have made Ash losing to Alain satisfying with the material they were given. If anything, Ash should have never battled Alain before the league, so even when it was obvious he'd lose at least we had expected the battle to be fun (like what was expected to happen with Virgil). One thing that could have made it at least more bearable would be that Charizard should have been more tired and filled with scars.
 
Like KrisiChiki and Hidden Mew said, there just wasn't any way they could have made Ash losing to Alain satisfying with the material they were given. If anything, Ash should have never battled Alain before the league, so even when it was obvious he'd lose at least we had expected the battle to be fun (like what was expected to happen with Virgil). One thing that could have made it at least more bearable would be that Charizard should have been more tired and filled with scars.

Or have Ash beat Charizard at some point before the Kalos League. I think a lot of the complaints come from how overpowered Charizard was presented as.
 
I think they were just overanalyzing it.

More like underanalyzed it. Seriously, when you have a title that says "Kalos League Victory! Ash's Ultimate Match!!", of course everybody is gonna be like "OMG! Ash's finally going to win a league!". And that was exactly what they wanted.
 
More like underanalyzed it. Seriously, when you have a title that says "Kalos League Victory! Ash's Ultimate Match!!", of course everybody is gonna be like "OMG! Ash's finally going to win a league!". And that was exactly what they wanted.
The "victory" part refers to the fact that someone will be victorious here, which is obvious. And it was Ash's ultimate battle at the league. I can understand why some people may have misunderstood it, but like I said, I think they're overanalyzing it.
 
More like underanalyzed it. Seriously, when you have a title that says "Kalos League Victory! Ash's Ultimate Match!!", of course everybody is gonna be like "OMG! Ash's finally going to win a league!". And that was exactly what they wanted.
Exaxtly! If it had been given a more neutral title like "Kalos League Victory! The Ultimate Match!!" or "Kalos League Finals! Satoshi versus Alan!!" then I guarantee the result would have been taken a bit better than it was. Even if that wasn't the intention and we were just overanalyzing it, specifically calling it Ash's Ultimate Match was a bad move as it did nothing but get everyone excited and worked up. At its core, this was basically a clickbait title.
 
I don't think that people were overanalyzing the title. It was an assumption, but it was a pretty reasonable assumption all things considered. Ash had already battled to Alain twice, seemingly came close to defeating him in their second match before Ash Greninja was perfected and even making him ridiculously overpowered could have seen as building up to Ash's eventual victory. The title was just another reason why people thought that Ash was going to win. If that was the main reason people thought he was going to win, maybe it would have been more like reading too much into it, but it was another reason why the Kalos League had so much hype behind it.

Personally, I was still firmly of the option that Team Flare was going to interrupt the Kalos League and we'd get a conclusion later even when the title first came out. I'm not sure if that would have been better than having Ash lose right off the bat or not. Still, I can't really blame people for thinking he was going to win. I do think that the immediate backlash was too intense in some cases, especially during the first couple of weeks after the match happened, but I can understand why people were upset that he ended up losing. I doubt that any other League is going to get the same kind of attention and hype the Kalos League had among fans and that is kind of sad.
 
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