Why was Dawn treated better as a co-star than May was?

[Cilan]

It seems like they gave Dawn more of a starring role than they gave May. The Japanese text calls DP "The adventures of Satoshi, Hikari, and pokemon" but in AG it just called it "The adventures of Satoshi and pokemon" as if they were saying that Haruka wasn't supposed to have as big of a starring role as Satoshi. (at least that's how it felt to me)

Plus Dawn is usually in the center of the eyecatches or shares the spotlight with Ash with Brock in the background. She got her own these song as well and it got remixed about 3 times and played several times throughout the anime as well as in some of the movies while May didn't get a theme song until the end of AG right when it was almost time for her to leave. May's theme wasn't even introduced as her these because it first played as an insert song. Not to mention that Dawn's debut episode was almost entirely about her while May's was mostly about Ash and Pikachu. They also treated Piplup better as a mascot then they did with Torchic.

I know that May is a co-star but it feels like Dawn got the co-star treatment better than May did.

 

[Owain]

she definetly was...

maybe due to an Advance in writing?

Pun not intended at first...

 

[Legacy]

Probably just because the writers were able to learn from May's story and correct the problems/criticisms when creating Dawn.

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

Default Why was Dawn treated better as a co-star than May was?

I think they just want something new and original.

I know that May is a co-star but it feels like Dawn got the co-star treatment better than May did.

She isn't. Hikari is the only co-star in the show. For now, at least...

 

[Owain]

^^ Nope, Haruka was a Co-star aswell

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

^^ Nope, Haruka was a Co-star aswell

How you know that? AG was "Satoshi's story" after all, not "Satoshi and Haruka's story"...

 

[Musashi]

[*]Mima Masafumi tells us that when they were working on the music for Advanced Generation, they wrote it as if they were writing for a shounen series. When DP came along, they started to write songs for both boys and girls since that series had a female co-star.

Hikari was the only co-star. Hence why she was treated better.

 

[Yankees4life]

WTF are ya talking bout. She was treated like a Queen, she stole the other guys' spotlight JUST for character development. Nuff said. DP is ova, and she'll come again to either promote a filler-arc or a new region

 

[Cybersai]

Regardless she got better screentime than any of Ash's other companions got, or ever will get.

 

[Yankees4life]

Regardless she got better screentime than any of Ash's other companions got, or ever will get.

yea, but it was a turruble Charles Barkley turruble move by the writers, tho

 

[Hellion]

Hikari was the only co-star. Hence why she was treated better.

That's pretty much it. Dawn was the only character that was ever viewed by the creation's team as a co-star, that's why she got better treatment, which really brought something unique and good to Pokémon. She really felt like a character in her own right, since she didn't just stand on the sidelines. She was battling, she was pursuing her dreams, she was overcoming personal stuff.

It's just the way the writers conceived and viewed the character.

 

[Pikachufanboy]

Regardless she got better screentime than any of Ash's other companions got, or ever will get.

I don't know if we can say none will ever get that. What about Iris if there is a new side quest in future generations that they can work as well as contests?

 

[Cybersai]

I don't know if we can say none will ever get that. What about Iris if there is a new side quest in future generations that they can work as well as contests?

Well in the future who knows, but compared to Misty, Brock, Iris or Dento, she was clearly treated as a more important character in her respective arc.

Other characters would have loved to have May's screentime.

 

[Charbok]

I always considered May a costar because she is based on the playable character May in the games and that's why her role was bigger than Misty's. If you ask me I would say that May was probably an experiment to see how a female co-star would work and once they saw how popular May was they decided to give the next gen girl an even bigger role. Dawn was treated better in the beginning but later on she began to get less screentime while in AG it seemed like May was getting a lot more screentime. I don't know if we'll evecharactr that shared the spotlight with Ash since BW went back to being "Satoshi's adventure."

 

[FGWAlex]

Becausee the Hoenn Region was GAWD AWFUL. Plus Dawn is my fave and she deserves it.

 

[Hellion]

There's also the difference in how they treated Ash, most of the time, he was shown training or stopping Team Rocket and getting oodles of screen time, where as during Dawn's contest he was realy taking a backseat. Also, even in the episodes that didn't focus on her, the writers usually took the time to include Dawn into the plot and gave her something to do. The difference is in their approach: They really viewed her as an almost equal to Ash. Only for the last 15 episodes did her role seem to diminish but it was the League, and even then she got more focus than Misty and May during Ash's League, mostly because she interacted with Ash and Ash's rivals more.

 

[Cybersai]

Most of her extra screentime was spamming Piplup or Piplup fillers though.

 

[Hellion]

During which she wasn't standing around doing zilch... unlike... other characters that shall remain nameless.

 

[Cilan]

In the episode where Ash, Dawn, and Brock were filling in for Johanna by teaching those kids about Pokemon, Dawn turned the whole thing into her trying to get her Ice Chandelier combination right. But also it seemed like they made Dawn struggle with her combinations more than May with hers.

 

[Cybersai]

Most of those appeal training episodes were incredibly boring. I understand why people want to see the training, but filling an entire episode with it was so dull to watch.