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Perhaps I was unfair in saying it in those terms, as you’re right, having a love interest does not automatically render your character development pointless.
I remember watching that last episode live and having as many squees as anyone else. What soured it, and Serena’s entire arc, for me was her telling Satoshi that he was her goal.
It sends such a bad message to kids that a girl who has had good focus on the development of her ‘career’ and is in fact leaving to pursue it (whatever anyone might think about her choosing to do contests next...) can somehow make that all about a boy.
Yeah, I remember a few complaints about Serena telling Ash that he was her goal for similar reasons. It does give off a pretty problematic message that kind of conflicts with Serena choosing to leave in order to work towards her goal. That's one reason why I liked how the dub handled that line. I think that Serena said that Ash would like the person that she'd become, which is at least less blatant and emphasizes more on how she'll change rather than how she sees Ash as her ultimate goal.
While the kiss was a surprising way to end Serena's story and made all of the shippers happy, that's mostly what people are going to remember about Serena, which is kind of a shame when she had some really good moments and development unrelated to her crush on Ash. It wasn't perfect, but her character development was one of the few good things that came out of Showcases in my opinion, so all of that being ignored because she ended up kissing Ash as her goodbye to him is kind of sad.
ii kanji said:The non-battler complaint RE Serena I agree was a thing, and as @Kyriaki said due to wrong conflation between battling and ‘manliness’ I get how for some ignoramuses this translated as problematic because ‘girly’.
I suspect Mao and Lillie garner less complaints about battling:
- Because the cast is bigger, and Suiren is pulling her weight as a female battler.
- Not much is required for Suiren to pull her weight as even Satoshi has barely battled.
I've seen people complaining about the female leads, including Serena, being girly since at least May, so that was an issue. I don't think it came up as much compared to Serena not being a battler, taking too long to find a goal and not catching a lot of Pokemon, but using the term girly to complain about Serena came up every once in awhile.
I never really thought of Lana being the female battler of the group. I don't think that Eevee has taken part in a battle, unless we count teaming up with Popplio to defeat those Team Skull grunts in its capture episode, and most of Primarina's focus has been on it learning to create bigger bubbles rather than actually battling. Maybe there are other battles that I either forgot or haven't seen yet, but I wouldn't call any of the SM girls battlers. Although, that is a valid point in that even Ash doesn't battle as often.
The larger cast probably also helps since we have more than one or two female characters for once. I still think that SM Lillie is only popular because of how well received her video game counterpart is. After overcoming her fear of Pokemon, she didn't really have much of a goal and didn't battle, which is pretty similar to what happen with Serena, but since SM Lillie is based on a popular character and is the only SM cast member with character development thus far, it feels like she gets a free pass.