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Do you think the writers are doing enough with Iris?

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Like everything in BW Iris could have been better. She honestly needs to be less of a hypocrite because that's one problem people have with her.
 
I think they actually did a lot considering how little they got done in general during the Unova saga.

Too bad she never caught a Druddigon instead of that stupid Emolga. Hopefully they let her Axew evolve into Fraxure by the time she leaves at the end of Best Wishes.
 
I think they actually did a lot considering how little they got done in general during the Unova saga.

Too bad she never caught a Druddigon instead of that stupid Emolga. Hopefully they let her Axew evolve into Fraxure by the time she leaves at the end of Best Wishes.

I really can't see them evolving Axew by the time she leaves at the end of the series. Axew hasn't shown any desire to evolve in ages, the whole point of her journey to get Axew to evolve into a Haxorus as a rite of passage in the Village of Dragons was completely stopped and with Dragonite, I don't think that the writers see any need for Iris to have a Fraxure. Having Dragonite allows Iris to have a fully evolved Dragon type without having to do any work to get it, while Axew can stay unevolved in order to remain a cute hair accessory so that they can include it in more merchandise. At this point, I don't see any reason why Axew should evolve. It really wouldn't be too believable or satisfying for me considering it hasn't really grown throughout the series and all of its upgrades, aside from Dragon Rage, have been cheap. I think it's more likely that they wont' address that issue or go with how Axew is actually happy with not evolving at the end of the series.
 
I think Axew could possibly evolve at the end of the series during Iris' reappearence in XY, since there's precedent for both. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't evolve though. I do question why the writers would have Axew want to evolve when it was made a cute walking mascot Pokémon from day 1. Maybe it was just part of the writers' penchant for doing things differently? :rolleyes:
 
I think Axew could possibly evolve at the end of the series during Iris' reappearence in XY, since there's precedent for both. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't evolve though. I do question why the writers would have Axew want to evolve when it was made a cute walking mascot Pokémon from day 1. Maybe it was just part of the writers' penchant for doing things differently? :rolleyes:

There's probably a better chance of the writers going the Togetic route and evolving Axew in Iris' reappearance in XY than doing so near the end of the series, but even that I have serious doubts about given how it really wouldn't matter at that point and be pretty unnecessary marketing wise. I don't think that it will evolve at the end of the series since it hasn't been that important for Iris, or Axew for that matter, in ages. Though, I'd prefer if they broke the tradition for the next series and not have Iris make a cameo, but that's just me. Maybe they thought that Axew would evolve in spite of making it out to be the cute secondary mascot of the series. Plus, the way that they handled Iris in the earlier episodes of BW were significantly different too. At first, she clearly looked inexperienced with a useless Axew and an Excadrill that wouldn't listen to her, but by the time we got her backstory with Excadrill, they started to make Iris look like a super strong and gifted trainer, despite what the audience had already seen of her so-called skills and proceeded to make her look far stronger than she actually is throughout the series. Maybe suddenly shifting from obvious inexperienced rookie Iris to gifted trainer Iris impacted whatever they were originally going with Axew as well.
 
Maybe suddenly shifting from obvious inexperienced rookie Iris to gifted trainer Iris impacted whatever they were originally going with Axew as well.

I don't know, if they're trying to show Dragon's are harder to raise or w/e. But Iris clearly seems like a better trainer when using her other Pokemon that are not Dragons. Axew has gotten destroyed in 2/3's of it's real battles (and was in the one it ended up winning as well), and it's still not trained as much as it could have. Dragonite hasn't won a battle yet under Iris' control, and was losing to Charizard. She lost terribly with the Fraxure she used in school against the other student's Altaria, after her whole Excadrill win streak story. It's odd because we saw Cameron using a Hydreigon like a pro, while destroying nearly half of Ash's team. Him using it without any kind of indication he had problems with it, makes me question the true difficulty of achieving Dragon Master status.
 
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I don't know, if they're trying to show Dragon's are harder to raise or w/e. But Iris clearly seems like a better trainer when using her other Pokemon that are not Dragons. Axew has gotten destroyed in 2/3's of it's real battles (and was in the one it ended up winning as well), and it's still not trained as much as it could have. Dragonite hasn't won a battle yet under Iris' control, and was losing to Charizard. She lost terribly with the Fraxure she used in school against the other student's Altaria, after her whole Excadrill win streak story. It's odd because we saw Cameron using a Hydreigon like a pro, while destroying nearly half of Ash's team. Him using it without any kind of indication he had problems with it, makes me question the true difficulty of achieving Dragon Master status.

I'm not sure if they were trying to show that Dragon types are harder to raise. Iris has done extremely little with Axew over the course of the series and I'd chalk that up to her just being an inactive trainer on training her own Pokemon rather than anything about the difficulties in raising a Dragon type. Dragonite not getting a win under Iris' control is probably a combination of making up for being so ridiculously overpowered in the Junior Cup and Iris' skills not really being that good even when she's practically given a fully evolved Dragon type. Though, losing with the Fraxure after she had won nearly a hundred battles with Excadrill does give that impression. Given Cameron's intelligence, I can definitely see why you'd question the difficulty of achieving Dragon Master status. Iris having a harder time in battles with her Dragon Pokemon might be there just for tension and to give the idea that she has grown, even though I really don't think that she has, more than the idea that Dragons are harder to raise than other Pokemon.
 
Maybe suddenly shifting from obvious inexperienced rookie Iris to gifted trainer Iris impacted whatever they were originally going with Axew as well.

I don't know, if they're trying to show Dragon's are harder to raise or w/e. But Iris clearly seems like a better trainer when using her other Pokemon that are not Dragons. Axew has gotten destroyed in 2/3's of it's real battles (and was in the one it ended up winning as well), and it's still not trained as much as it could have. Dragonite hasn't won a battle yet under Iris' control, and was losing to Charizard. She lost terribly with the Fraxure she used in school against the other student's Altaria, after her whole Excadrill win streak story. It's odd because we saw Cameron using a Hydreigon like a pro, while destroying nearly half of Ash's team. Him using it without any kind of indication he had problems with it, makes me question the true difficulty of achieving Dragon Master status.

That's true, but Iris is generally portrayed to be fairly strong and good with dragons. When it comes to dragons, her psuedo-aura powers just serve to show how well she connects with them for example. Axew is pretty weak but it learned a couple of powerful moves because it's 'strong'. Dragonite did lose to Ash and Drayden, but the former was to re-ignite Ash and Trip's rivalry and the latter was because I suppose beating Drayden is supposed to be a monumental task. (since there are two other 8th gym leaders around, it's not like anybody is particularly hard-pressed to beat Drayden anyway.) Dragonite did beat Georgia and Dawn while being disobedient, and while Iris was disappointed with how it beat Georgia, I don't believe anybody other than Georgia actually thinks any less of Iris because of it. Plus, there's Iris being set up to be a gym leader, which being part of her occupation post-BW, is also supposed to show her skill as a trainer. And while Cameron is a huge idiot, I think the implication is that he's good-natured and very strong (just look at how he beat Ash 6-4!) which could possibly explain his skill with Hydreigon.

While Iris isn't that a great of a trainer in my opinion, as far as the show is concerned she's nothing less than really skilled. Same with Cameron: He's ditzy but he's very strong! Same with Ash: He's practically objectively become a worse trainer than in DP, but the show doesn't dwell on it one bit.
 
That's true, but Iris is generally portrayed to be fairly strong and good with dragons. When it comes to dragons, her psuedo-aura powers just serve to show how well she connects with them for example. Axew is pretty weak but it learned a couple of powerful moves because it's 'strong'. Dragonite did lose to Ash and Drayden, but the former was to re-ignite Ash and Trip's rivalry and the latter was because I suppose beating Drayden is supposed to be a monumental task. (since there are two other 8th gym leaders around, it's not like anybody is particularly hard-pressed to beat Drayden anyway.) Dragonite did beat Georgia and Dawn while being disobedient, and while Iris was disappointed with how it beat Georgia, I don't believe anybody other than Georgia actually thinks any less of Iris because of it. Plus, there's Iris being set up to be a gym leader, which being part of her occupation post-BW, is also supposed to show her skill as a trainer. And while Cameron is a huge idiot, I think the implication is that he's good-natured and very strong (just look at how he beat Ash 6-4!) which could possibly explain his skill with Hydreigon.

I thought that her psuedo-aura powers was just used once with Dragonite to prove its innocence, but that was to show that she is even more gifted. Axew's learning overpowered moves is probably there to make Iris look better as opposed to making Axew strong. She lost to Drayden since defeating him would have been too unrealistic. Even Excadrill and Haxorus tying was extremely unbelievable. Georgia was the only one who had a reasonable reaction to Dragonite winning those matches, which isn't too surprising since the show tends to downplays or flat-out ignore Iris' flaws and problems. They want to make her look like a strong trainer to set up Iris being a Gym Leader, which wouldn't be too bad if her strength didn't feel forced and was more natural progression of her character throughout the series.

Ambipom666 said:
While Iris isn't that a great of a trainer in my opinion, as far as the show is concerned she's nothing less than really skilled. Same with Cameron: He's ditzy but he's very strong! Same with Ash: He's practically objectively become a worse trainer than in DP, but the show doesn't dwell on it one bit.

Of course the show isn't going to make any of these characters look weak or dwell on how weaker Ash has become, even though both the match against Roxie and the Unova League in general is the closest we got to the writers admitting that he was a worse trainer. The show considers Iris to be a really skilled trainer, but it just comes off as forced and she is much weaker than the show would want the audience to believe.
 
I agree with all of what you said. I'm just saying that since Iris beat Georgia in the Junior Cup which seems to be the end of the line for Georgia, Iris is right and Georgia is wrong as far as the show is concerned :/
 
I don't think the show is above making characters seem weak. The recent battle Axew had made it look pathetic, and it didn't really make Iris seem like a Gym Leader worthy given it's lack of much training. If she's going to be a dragon-type gym leader she needs more than just Dragonite to rely on. It's just things like being a good "Dragon Master" get a bit muddled when you Iris and Cameron using their respective Dragons in nearly the exact same way. Namely, just trying to over-power their opponent with an onslaught of high-powered moves.
 
I agree with all of what you said. I'm just saying that since Iris beat Georgia in the Junior Cup which seems to be the end of the line for Georgia, Iris is right and Georgia is wrong as far as the show is concerned :/

That is sadly true. At the very least, it seems like the audience is suppose to be against Georgia and in favor of Iris, despite how many good points Georgia brings up about Iris's flaws and how weak they have made Iris.

Masurao said:
I don't think the show is above making characters seem weak. The recent battle Axew had made it look pathetic, and it didn't really make Iris seem like a Gym Leader worthy given it's lack of much training. If she's going to be a dragon-type gym leader she needs more than just Dragonite to rely on. It's just things like being a good "Dragon Master" get a bit muddled when you Iris and Cameron using their respective Dragons in nearly the exact same way. Namely, just trying to over-power their opponent with an onslaught of high-powered moves.

That's one reason why Iris being Gym Leader worthy feels so forced. Axew looks pretty weak when it battles much more often than not and it has a serious lack of training to help it out. At this point, she's just going to rely on Dragonite, even though I agree she would need more if she is going to become a Dragon type Gym Leader. They haven't done a good job with explaining more about how to become a Dragon Master either.
 
I couldn't agree more with HM. I guess they expect us to side against Georgia since she's the rival/antagonist to Iris, but all she did was bring up a valid point. If she doesn't do anything wrong why should I side against her?
 
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