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Controversial opinions

Interesting enough Ash has never beaten Iris' Excadrill in a battle to this day. I wonder if he would ever get to battle it again. It's one of the few times Pikachu not overpowering a ground pokemon with electric moves made sense.

Ash has beaten Iris in battle twice and she beat him once
 
Also to give Iris a little slack
Her champion team in the games weren’t all Dragons so she’s a dragon type specialist similar to how Lance uses Pokémon like Charizard and Gyarados

Granted that was after the anime and she already had Emolga which I think was just for cute appeal and promotion similar to Dawn and Pachirisu and Bonnie and Dedenne and etc
 
Also to give Iris a little slack
Her champion team in the games weren’t all Dragons so she’s a dragon type specialist similar to how Lance uses Pokémon like Charizard and Gyarados

Granted that was after the anime and she already had Emolga which I think was just for cute appeal and promotion similar to Dawn and Pachirisu and Bonnie and Dedenne and etc
In fact, now that I think about it, Lance is more a Flying-Type specialist than a Dragon one.
 
Early days Pokémon was wild like that. Another example would be Agatha who despite claiming to be a Ghost Type trainer, has instead a full roster of Poison Types. :confused:
To be fair Agatha never claims she's a type specialist in the original R/B/Y (nor does Bruno, it was just Lorelei and Lance back then).
Also adding on, this was an era when there was only one line of Ghost type Pokemon. We didn't really start getting more Ghost types until Gen 3, though I still question why Morty was never given a Misdreavus. I believe Gen 3 introduced at least 6 Ghost types.
 
Yup. In fact, the only non-Flying type he has was added in LGPE, and just as a reference to Clair.

Not true. The first was a Kingdra in FRLG (Rematch), the second was a Garchomp in HGSS (Rematch), then a Hydreigon, a Haxorus, a Salamance and a Flygon in BW2 at the Champions Tournament (Occasion in which his entire team is made of dragons). And finally, besides Seadra, he has a Mega-Charizard X (and not the Y Lol) and an Alola Exeggutor in LGPE (Rematch).

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Lance
 
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Johto's teams in general were a mess. There was an abundance of species repeats in a lot of teams even when they were of types that actually had at least a few varied options (looking at you, Falkner, Pryce, and Jasmine) and almost none of them took advantage of the new species additions, as several teams didn't include even a single Johto Pokemon in their lineups (again, here's looking at you, Falkner. As well as Bugsy, Chuck, and Morty). If I were to make adjustments to the Johto teams, here's how I would've built them:

Falkner
  • Hoothoot
  • Pidgeotto
(I'm letting him keep the Pidgeotto since it has a lower BST than Noctowl and so it's better suited for the early game. The Pidgey really should've been a Hoothoot, though.)

Bugsy
  • Spinarak
  • Ledyba
  • Scyther
(Again, Bugsy keeps the Kanto ace because I don't really have an issue with Scyther. Scizor has the same BST, but a Bug/Steel would be too difficult to get past at this stage of the game, and I'm saving Heracross for another character. Still gonna replace the Kanto Coccoons with Johto's Early Game Bugs, though. Because that's how it should've been.)

Whitney
  • Jigglypuff
  • Aipom
  • Miltank
(I'll replace the Clefairy with a Jigglypuff on account of the former being retconned to pure Fairy in Gen 6 while the latter simply has it added to its existing Normal-type. I also keep Miltank because no way that thing is going anywhere: it's a tough fight for beginners and the first ace mon to actually be from Gen 2. Finally, I'm adding Aipom because I don't like that the third Gym Leader goes back to having two Pokemon when the previous one had three and third Gym Leaders traditionally use three Pokemon in their battles; anyway, Aipom fits Whitney's aesthetic and personality, imo. It's also a Johto mon, and we need all the Johto rep we can get.)

Morty
  • Ninetales
  • Misdreavus
  • Gengar
(I know Ninetales isn't a Ghost-type, but when it comes to building teams for characters whose type specialty is scarce, I admittedly prefer going the Flint route of giving them a variety of Pokemon that at least fit their theme over just using species repeats because I feel the latter makes the battles against them boring. Feel free to flay me for my heresy. Anyway, Ninetales is portrayed as mystical and otherworldly, so I think it'd fit decently in a Ghost team anyway; I know it's not a Johto mon, but I couldn't really think of any that fit. I'm also giving Morty a Misdreavus because like everyone else I feel like he should've had one. Gengar stays as the ace because it's far more powerful. Finally, I'm cutting down his team to three in part to balance out the power increase of his lineup, and in part because he's still only the fourth Gym leader, which traditionally only have three Pokemon.)

Chuck
  • Machoke
  • Primeape
  • Poliwrath
  • Heracross
(Yep, this is the character I decided to give Heracross to. I know I could've given him a Hitmontop instead, and that was actually the original plan, but I decided to go for Heracross instead so that Chuck can distinguish himself a bit more from Bruno, who is in the same game. I also added the Machoke that the anime gave him because it's usually around the fifth Gym Leader that teams of four Pokemon start being used. Primeape and Poliwrath stay because I didn't see any reason to remove them, the only change is that Poliwrath is no longer Chuck's ace and the position is now Heracross's instead, since it's been a while since a Johto mon was the ace of a team.)

Jasmine
  • Forretress
  • Magneton
  • Skarmory
  • Steelix
(It really is sad that Gen 2 actually introduced enough Steel-types to almost fill out a team and they still went with two Magnemites and a Steelix for the Steel specialist's team. Here I right that wrong: one of the repeat Magnemites is ditched while the remaining one is evolved since her team is around level 30, which is high enough for Magnemite to evolve, and give her every other fully evolved Steel-type in Gen 2 bar Scizor.)

Pryce
  • Delibird
  • Sneasel
  • Dewgong
  • Piloswine
(I know that giving Pryce a Delibird seems insane, but believe it or not, the Seel that he uses in canon is actually about as strong as a Delibird anyway, so I'm not actually weakening him. Also gave him a Sneasel for additional Johto rep and because the number of Pokemon needs to be higher as per the previous ones. The Dewgong and Piloswine obviously stay and the latter is still his ace because Johto.)

Clair
  • Dragonair
  • Gyarados
  • Lapras
  • Ampharos
  • Kingdra
(Finally we arrive at the team that I think is gonna be the most controversial. I'm obviously keeping the Gyarados and Kingdra, since the latter is her ace and the only Dragon-type introduced in Gen 2 while the former is a staple "psuedo dragon" in these kinds of teams anyway. I will be removing one of her repeat Dragonairs, though, and replace it with a Lapras and an Ampharos because Clair's the final Gym Leader, which often have nearly full teams. Lapras is because it has been associated with Dragon-type teams before and also can learn various Dragon-type attacks, while Ampharos is because of its Dragon-type Mega and being a Johto Pokemon for the rep. The Lapras and Ampharos also help make Clair's team remain dragon-themed while simultaneously making it more distinct from Lance's, which I will be covering.)
Will
  • Wobbuffet
  • Mr. Mime
  • Girafarig
  • Slowking
  • Xatu
(Will's canon team is honestly kind of a mess: he has two repeat Xatus and the rest of his Psychic-types are Kanto mons despite Johto introducing several Psychic-types. So I decided to fix it. I'm keeping the Xatu because it's his ace, but I remove the repeat. I also gave him a Mr. Mime despite it being a Kanto mon because Will sort of looks like a jester, so I think this thing would've fit him quite nicely. The rest of his team is Johto Psychics: Wobbuffet because I thought it might make for an interesting and unorthodox fight due to its Counter/Mirror Coat strats, Girafarig because I like it and also its color scheme fits Will, and finally Slowking, who replaces the Slowbro he had originally like it always should have.)

Koga
  • Ariados
  • Muk
  • Weezing
  • Tentacruel
  • Crobat
(I know Koga's team is mostly Kanto Pokemon, but in this case I feel like it's a bit more justified, since he is originally a Kanto Gym Leader, so I just gave him an assortment of what I felt were the strongest Kanto Poison-types while keeping the Ariados and Crobat for Johto rep.)

Bruno
  • Hitmonlee
  • Hitmonchan
  • Hitmontop
  • Steelix
  • Machamp
(Bruno's team is by far the least changed, since I feel it's the least flawed. The only thing I did was evolve his Onix because firstly, its Steel-type actually allows it to resist every single one of Fighting's weaknesses, making it a decent counter for his specialty's nemeses; and secondly, because let's face it, Onix is just way too weak for an Elite Four team.)

Karen
  • Sneasel
  • Murkrow
  • Gengar
  • Umbreon
  • Houndoom
(Again, not a lot of changes here. I just replaced the Vileplume with a Sneasel so that Karen can use more mons of her specialty type. The Gengar stays because, like Steelix with Bruno, it counters Dark's weaknesses rather nicely, and because it fits her aesthetic better than Vileplume. I'm also saving Tyranitar for you know who.)

Lance
  • Kingdra
  • Gyardos
  • Aerodactyl
  • Charizard
  • Tyranitar
  • Dragonite
(Finally, we arrive to the main event. With Lance's team I pretty much just removed the repeat Dragonites and replaced them with a Kingdra and Tyranitar because they're either Dragon-types or at least dragonlike, for the Johto rep, and to try and make his team at least a little bit less Bird Keeper-y.)
 
Also, to Lorelei's credit, her team is still predominantly Ice. It's just that when almost every Ice-type was part Water back in those days it's pretty difficult for your specialty not to overlap.
this is reminding me, i was talking about how absolutely atrocious faba's team is (lusamine's team in the first battle with her also has only three moves on all of her pokemon which is. yikes!) and apparently alola has like three different water/psychic lines which is.. a bizarre coincidence and also a sign that i think gamefreak might need to cut down on the water types. but anyway my point is they straight up gave this dude 2 different repeat dual typings (pure psychic and the aforementioned water/psychic) and even in usum they couldn't be bothered to completely fix the issue and then the anime DOUBLES DOWN ON THIS by giving him ONLY two pure psychic types AND THEY LOST THE DARK TYPE COUNTERING MOVES THEY HAVE IN THE GAMES.

but hey, surely even if we've got some repeat types we're long past the days of trainers just Not Using the type they specialize in, rig- are you kidding me i'm well aware his whole gimmick is using sandstorm but maybe you could have just. not made him use dragon types give him gmax sandaconda or something
1647030973057.png
 
this is reminding me, i was talking about how absolutely atrocious faba's team is (lusamine's team in the first battle with her also has only three moves on all of her pokemon which is. yikes!) and apparently alola has like three different water/psychic lines which is.. a bizarre coincidence and also a sign that i think gamefreak might need to cut down on the water types. but anyway my point is they straight up gave this dude 2 different repeat dual typings (pure psychic and the aforementioned water/psychic) and even in usum they couldn't be bothered to completely fix the issue and then the anime DOUBLES DOWN ON THIS by giving him ONLY two pure psychic types AND THEY LOST THE DARK TYPE COUNTERING MOVES THEY HAVE IN THE GAMES.

but hey, surely even if we've got some repeat types we're long past the days of trainers just Not Using the type they specialize in, rig- are you kidding me i'm well aware his whole gimmick is using sandstorm but maybe you could have just. not made him use dragon types give him gmax sandaconda or something
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Also not like Galar was short on Dragon types... this isn't Hisui.


Raihan could have had these:
Noivern
Haxorus
Drampa
Dracozolt
Dracovish
Hydreigon
Kommo-o
 
I kinda like it when they're not all monotype, but go to a broader 'theme'. Like Karen using other night mons like Gengar/Vileplume, but ofc teams like Flint's DP one are dumb
I think the reason Flint's team sticks out as ridiculous compared to ones like Karen or Agatha is because
  1. Karen and Agatha do have the excuse that back in their debuts Pokemon of their preferred specialty were quite scarce, meaning they had little choice but to use repeats and/or things outside their type that fit some sort of theme. Flint on the other hand came out in Gen 4, and by then there were more than enough Fire-types in existence to fill out multiple teams, but due to the rather odd decision to limit DP's Pokedex to just two Fire-types, they had to pad out Flint's team despite the fact that it shouldn't have even been necessary in the first place.
  2. The choices for Flint's team don't fit a fire theme as well as Agatha's and Karen's do theirs: Agatha uses a Golbat and an Arbok, which while not Ghost, do at least fit a spooky/horror theme by virtue of being a bat and a giant snake (and bats in particular have always been heavily associated with the supernatural); Karen similarly uses a Vileplume and a Gengar, which at least fit her "dark" aesthetic, not to mention that they're part-Poison, which is a type commonly used by villains, and since Dark happens to be called "Evil" in Japanese, Gengar and Vileplume can be thought of as the "villainous sidekicks" to the rest of Karen's team's "main villains". Flint's team, however, unfortunately relies on some pretty big reaches; I'd argue that the only one that really justifies its place is Drifblim because it's a hot air balloon, so the fire theme is easier to see with that one, but the other two do not: with Steelix the main justification is that apparently Onix can evolve into Steelix without trading in-universe via burrowing so deep underground that the heat and pressure triggers the evolution into a sturdier form, but it's easy to miss that detail unless you're someone who likes to read Pokedex entries really carefully, and without that piece of lore Steelix looks very out of place; Lopunny, meanwhile, is blatantly a pun on being "hot", which... I guess it can be pretty funny, but fanart will absolutely ruin that joke really, really fast.
 
I do like the idea of characters having themed teams and would not be opposed to them doing more of that - especially outside of Gym Leaders.

Like say, a team of Reptile Pokémon for example would be pretty diverse since you could have Blastoise, Feraligator, Sceptile, Torterra, Keckleon, Arbok, Krookidile, Heliolisk, a bunch of the Fossils and Fuecoco plus probably some more I’m forgetting. :unsure:
 
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