I get that this wasn't your intention, but these are statements that do come off as inherently sexist. Not to mention assuming Liko is a Mary Sue just because she has a special object...ah, yes, it's not like no protagonist in history has ever been special before. This is a narrative devise used to create a storyline. It is not to make Liko seem like she's all perfect.
Children are "catered to" because the anime was quite literally intended for them from the very beginning. It is not fair to put children and teens down just because the anime is going in a direction you don't like.
Could you please provide a source for this? I'm a little confused as to how that will happen just by the anime being called "girlish". Or even why just having a female lead automatically MAKES it "girlish".
Admittedly, I think it was be reasonable to expect Ash and Team Rocket to stay as long as the anime was running prior to this announcement. Change does happen and every series has had various degrees of changes. It's one of the reasons why I never quite understood why people thought that the anime didn't change. But I can understand not being in favor of this decision to a point. Most franchises don't wait decades to start changing their iconic protagonists. This is a big reason why I keep thinking that this happened twenty years too late. Replacing Ash at the end of the original series would have still been a risk, but considerably less so than doing it twenty years later instead and I think more people would have been more open to the idea then as opposed to now. While I don't necessarily expect the new series to fail, I'm also not sure how much payoff they reasonably expect for going in this new direction at this point either.
Pokemon hasn't aimed at only boys ever. There are many Pokemon that are clearly aimed at appealing to younger girls and older woman. Hell, Pikachu was chosen as a mascot in the first place because they felt it appealed to both boys and girls. The anime might give that impression since female characters were usually secondary leads but the games themselves have had female MC options since Gen 2. Spinoff web animations like Evolutions have also featured the female trainers as the protagonists. If anything, a female lead is just anipoke matching the rest of the franchise as opposed to doing anything radically different.
Yeah I understand why your upset but honestly I feel your being way too harsh. They have a musical special coming out next week. Rica has been tweeting about her role as Ash and saying goodbye, they made a 11 episode mini series etc and much more. All the hard work they put in 25 long years. To finallyake Ash the strongest in the entire world.To see all of that and dismiss it and claim they don't care about Ash and his fand because they changed the Twitter banner and then turn around and say you're disgusted by the staff is honestly a bit toxic
I am not turning around to anything. I dont turn around. By biases are laid bare in my comments. I am no hypocrite. Ash was never special. Pikachu was just a normal Pikachu. It became special through hard work. How many pendants like Riko s exist? Appearently not many, because the explorers want it specifically. So yes, for now, she is a Mary Sue. It can change.
It's hard to make an argument against something that has no sources backing that claim up. Take calling Liko a Mary Sue for example. A Mary Sue is a character who is "depicted as unrealistically lacking in flaws or weaknesses"(as per google dictionary) and "usually female and almost always the main character, a Mary Sue is often an author's idealized self-insertion, and may serve as a form of wish-fulfillment"(as per wikipedia). The show has not aired yet, so we haven't been introduced to Liko as a character yet. All we know about her are the basics. The same applies to Friede, Roy, and every other character thus far: we know next to nothing about them. To say that nobody gave a sound argument against your point is disingenuous, since you didn't make any sound argument either. Having special circumstances does not automatically make a character a Mary Sue: the only thing that falls in line with the definition of being one is the fact that Liko is the main character...and that she is female. That is the main reason it comes off as sexist, not even considering the fact that the term "Mary Sue" has become outdated as more people have realized how the term is used as a form of sexism over time. This argument you're making is just proving that point.
Nobody said that Pokemon is directed to girls, but that Pokemon includes them in the target audience. You bring up Japanese culture in your argument too, but Pokemon isn't only aired in Japan. The producers have the international market to think about to and they have made changes in the past to cater to that international market(take the early writers replacing Takeshi with Tracey(forgot his Japanese name...) because there was the assumption that Takeshi embodied a racial stereotype).
Ash
"Gender-swapped Ash". Ash is the most bare-bones anime protagonist in history in terms of a personality. They don't have to do remotely anything to Riko and she would still probably be similar to Ash.
Also IDK if you know, but the reason Ash's female companion is swapped out year after year was stated decades ago to be so that boys will have new "eye candy" to continue watching the series. Riko would not turn boys off of the show, it would be the opposite. I mean, you are aware that a good handful of guys will pick the female protagonist in the game, right? Because they want to spend their time looking at a girl over a boy. No one is going to stop watching a child's television program because the new protagonist is a girl, they're probably going to be more interested in it. Not less. Especially since you've already admitted that she's basically the exact same character that they were already watching before.
I guarantee you that young children are not this personally attached to Ash and a lot of people here are ignoring the fact that many old time fans, including myself, have been waiting for Ash to leave for ages now. He has long overstayed his welcome and a new protagonist, whoever it would have been, is just a breath of fresh air that is giving us some new vigor and excitement for this new series. I, for one, am looking forward to starting to watch the anime again for the first time since midway (maybe even before midway) through Sun and Moon, which for me personally, was unbearable.
I noticed that too.
This is a part of what I tried to convey. Honetly, I don´t understand why so many people refuse to understand this. It´s part of life and, for better or worse, will always be like this. Also, boys deserve representation as much as girls, but nowadays some shows are overcompensating for the abysmal treatment of female characters in previous years.
Boys have gotten plenty of representation in media. The "overcompensation" you're talking about is hardly enough to overshadow centuries of male dominant media. Male leads aren't gonna disappear into thin air just because a few shows decide to incorporate more women into their series. This stance has thinly veiled sexism laced into it. It might not have been your intention, I get that. But even in your arguments there is a double standard.
