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Controversial opinions

I suspect he lost in Kalos at least partly because they didn't want him skipping a rank (going from top 4 to winner without a runner-up section), but I don't think they anticipated quite how large the backlash ended up being (twitter and social media had taken off even more between BW and XY's ends, plus we already knew he was losing previous ones ahead of time thanks to episode titles) and never considered ways to mitigate it like a tie or interrupting the match.
I don't think it help that by the end of the match Alain's MC-X didn't looked hurt at all.
 
In hindsight maybe it may seem people would have been less upset about the match getting interrupted, but really people would have gone nuts if the Kalos League Finals never had a result. It would have been different backlash, but still negative backlash. It would be impossible to measure which would have been "worse", but rest assured it would have been really negative either way. I think its hard to imagine now, because its easy to think that no result is better when you know the reality was a loss, but many people thought a win was quite possible at that point, and would have been super upset if there was no result at all. It would have felt like a pretty huge cop out to not decide which competitor would come out on top. The league finals was the pinnacle of what Ash was working towards during his entire Kalos journey, so it is not comparable to other battles/events that wound up without a clear result. Even if they did Charizard vs Greninja later, it wouldn't have really been a legitimate substitute, remember Charizard had already taken damage from Pikachu before battling Greninja, and like I have said before, a 1v1 is not a good substitute for a full battle when determining how strong a trainer overall is (and it would have benefitted Alain who really wasn't the most balanced trainer - at least when we saw him). Also, while on this topic, so many people say Greninja had a type advantage, but it doesn't when Charizard is mega evolved, and Charizard was the only one with a super-effective attack.

Back on topic, another aspect of the overall backlash is that some people that weren't upset originally may have been upset by an interrupted final. Count me as one person who would have been quite annoyed with no result at all, while I wasn't upset about Ash losing, since I think its perfectly reasonable that he isn't better than a extremely dedicated trainer who is twice his age.
 
Are you talking about Alain? He’s definitely not 20...
Yes, I would have guessed he's pretty close to 20, do you see him more as Brock's age? Either way, he's clearly quite a bit older than Ash, and he was visually a lot younger when he got his Charmander, so he had been training a long time. The point stands either way, I don't intend to argue about his exact age, and its just one of many reasons that I'm okay with him beating Ash. I didn't spell it out enough above, but the fact that Alain spends most of his time dedicated to getting stronger, whereas Ash takes a lot of time to help others (which, admittedly, can sometimes be indirect training) and build relationships with friends, or just do fun things, etc [for example, can you imagine pre-League Alain spending a day at the Gadget Festival?]. Ash was very good at that time, but it really isn't unreasonable that someone else would be better, and that someone being Alain, based on what we had seen about him, wasn't unreasonable at all to me.
 
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Yes, I would have guessed he's pretty close to 20, do you see him more as Brock's age?
Yes, I saw him more as being around 15, or 17 at most. I do agree with the rest of your post though, Alain spent a lot of time training when compared to Ash. That’s why I wasn’t outraged when he won against Ash at the league.
 
Yes, I saw him more as being around 15, or 17 at most. I do agree with the rest of your post though, Alain spent a lot of time training when compared to Ash. That’s why I wasn’t outraged when he won against Ash at the league.
He looks pretty adult-looking to me, especially compared to 15 year old Brock.
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Ash vs. Hapu, upon rewatching, is not a bad battle at all. Certainly not good either but not deserving of scorn, it portrays Ash's ability to use the battlefield to his advantage like he's done several times in the past.
I think the issue with Ash vs. Hapu was that although it was a good strategy, the use of water from well outside the battlefield to soak the Mudsdale came across as cheating to a lot of people. If it had been water from the central pool of one of the old League battlefields I think people would have had less of an issue with it.
 
I think a lot of people will hate me saying this (hence the location of the post), but all the whining about trio absences is starting to get pretty annoying. I would certainly also like to see more of the trio, but seriously, most of us lost our favorite characters years ago. I could whine and say, its been 545 episodes since May's last appearance, no fair! (Wow, bizarre coincidence, I was actually looking up the numbers to write that and May's last episode was #545 and today's episode was #1090 [by Bulbapedia's numbering system] - for those who don't like math that's exactly double, I feel so old).

Anyway, my point would be to be grateful that your favorite characters have lasted so long and remained at least somewhat relevant, considering almost nothing about the past is relevant anymore. The annoying part for me is when I see the whining and I think how literally all my favorite characters have next to no chance to ever appear again, and even if they somehow do it will be minor, short, and fleeting at best. If I got any of my favorite characters in even 5% of episodes I would be appreciative beyond compare. I get the argument that they are the main characters and the show is better with them (I agree, it is, at least when they are handled well), but the show has had a lot of main characters come and go (who also made the show better), just appreciate the fact that they have been able to hold on so long. I'm not telling people to change their posting habits or anything, just trying to offer a bit of perspective. It really has only gotten annoying recently when it seems to fill up every thread, and a lot of people just whine without offering any critique. I don't find it annoying when people critique an episode and explain their thoughts on how trio could have improved it. Also, complaining is very different than taking action, I do think its great people are trying to do what they can do get the trio in more episodes - so this post isn't meant to degrade that effort.

Just remember, even if the glass is only 1/7th full, at least it hasn't been dried up for years with no hope of ever being filled.
 
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I think a lot of people will hate me saying this (hence the location of the post), but all the whining about trio absences is starting to get pretty annoying. I would certainly also like to see more of the trio, but seriously, most of us lost our favorite characters years ago. I could whine and say, its been 545 episodes since May's last appearance, no fair! (Wow, bizarre coincidence, I was actually looking up the numbers to write that and May's last episode was #545 and today's episode was #1090 [by Bulbapedia's numbering system] - for those who don't like math that's exactly double, I feel so old).

Anyway, my point would be to be grateful that your favorite characters have lasted so long and remained at least somewhat relevant, considering almost nothing about the past is relevant anymore. The annoying part for me is when I see the whining and I think how literally all my favorite characters have next to no chance to ever appear again, and even if they somehow do it will be minor, short, and fleeting at best. If I got any of my favorite characters in even 5% of episodes I would be appreciative beyond compare. I get the argument that they are the main characters and the show is better with them (I agree, it is, at least when they are handled well), but the show has had a lot of main characters come and go (who also made the show better), just appreciate the fact that they have been able to hold on so long. I'm not telling people to change their posting habits or anything, just trying to offer a bit of perspective. It really has only gotten annoying recently when it seems to fill up every thread, and a lot of people just whine without offering any critique. I don't find it annoying when people critique an episode and explain their thoughts on how trio could have improved it. Also, complaining is very different than taking action, I do think its great people are trying to do what they can do get the trio in more episodes - so this post isn't meant to degrade that effort.

Just remember, even if the glass is only 1/7th full, at least it hasn't been dried up for years with no hope of ever being filled.
I might be one of the only people who feels this way but, I don’t really miss TRio in their absences and actually don’t miss them when they aren’t around. I just find them to basically be a pointless part of the series. They aren’t a credible threat to really anyone, they’re pretty weak as trainers so even in legit competition, they don’t stand a chance of going anywhere, they can never succeed at anything because their main focus is causing trouble with Ash and friends which only compounds the previous 2 points and when they’re not acting as a point of conflict and don’t have something like Contests and Showcases to do in a region, they’re just kinda there feeling directionless. What I’m saying is, they’ve honestly become stale over the years because their entire shtick is the same thing played on repeat over and over to the point of ad nauseam.
 
I don't think replacing Ash in the anime is as impossible as most people mention it to be. And no, just because it didn't happen in the past 20+ years doesn't mean it won't ever happen. Many patterns have been broken, many radical changes have been applied. Ash's time of farewell might come when the time is right.
 
I don't think replacing Ash in the anime is as impossible as most people mention it to be. And no, just because it didn't happen in the past 20+ years doesn't mean it won't ever happen. Many patterns have been broken, many radical changes have been applied. Ash's time of farewell might come when the time is right.

I think breaking patterns and traditions are different than replacing the main lead after over twenty years. They can afford to shake up the status quo to a certain point. I can't really see any good reason as to why they'd replace Ash at this point. I understand why fans want that to happen, but that ship sailed over two decades ago.
 
There is one tiny thing about the Alola League I haven't seen anyone talk about, it's that...

As much as I enjoyed Guzma's character and story, the thing that bothered me was that Team Skull was just so unimportant to his personallity. Like... The only thing Plumeria did was injuring Illma's Eevee, which... What was even the point? Why couldn't she win? And then, she and the other TS grunts were just background characters who only amounted to cheering Guzma?

In fact, I would argue that Guzma's character would have been even more tragic without anyone supporting him. If he had no one to cheer him up, no one to look up to him as 'unbeatable', it would've most likelly pushed his depression to a whole new level.

The anime version of him simply didn't have to be a part of Team Skull. TS did nothing to setup Guzma when they first appeared, Plumeria was just a background cheerleader for him and his dynamic with Kukui and desire to demolish the Pokemon League had nothing to do with Team Skull. At all. Team Skull were just random troublemakers that could've been cut from the script entirelly, and it wouldn't change s**t about neither Guzma, nor the League, nor the show as a whole.
 
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Anime Guzma doesn't really make any sense. He's evil because he's jealous of Kukui.
His evilness is kept to a pretty apporpariate scale though, which is why I am okay with it. He wasn't trying to take over the world, he wasn't murdering people or creating a massive anti-Z-Move propaganda like certain intriguing, but sadly devastated towards the end of his series antagonist was. He just wanted to tear down the League, which in his eyes was Kukui's greatest achievement. It made sense.
Compare that with the guy I'm alluding to here, Amon from the Legend of Korra. He tried to rid the world of all benders by removing their powers, led to the creation of a giant terrorist movement by tricking the Republic City's population into victimhood status, and all of that because of... Daddy issues.
 
Much like Hau, Guzma really should have had far more appearances before the start of the League. I can kind of see why they'd want to save his debut to tie in with the official announcement of the Alola League, but it also just gives them less time setting up his character. At least he actually gets screentime, which is more than I can say for Hau. I don't know how feel about SM Guzma just yet since I haven't seen his full defeat in the Alola League yet, but I think a major problem is that they didn't seem to have a clear idea on what to do with Team Skull. Those three grunts were often used for comedy relief, sometimes in place of Team Rocket, there was no real buildup to Guzma and they were completely cut out of the Nebby arc, which was pretty important for Guzma's development in the games. Team Skull was just kind of there as extra comedy relief or a quick source of conflict for Ash and his friends to defeat. It might have helped if they built up to Guzma's debut or hinted at him before since not being able to reach out to him was pretty hard on Hala and Professor Kukui.
 
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