Do you find Trip/Shooti to be an interesting rival?

[Hidden Mew]

Anyways, to the main point of the thread; No. He was basically a wanna be Paul character who acted rude and arrogant for no reason. He only beat Ash twice (I think?) and tied with him once. He also lost to Cilan & Bianca, and eventually Ash at the Unova League. His team had no development besides his Serperior and Conkeldurr. He barely showed up, and if he did it was usually a relatively boring episode. His back story was really lame, he met Alder once so he thought he knew everything... Ok than...Nothing was interesting about him- at all.

I think that he defeated Ash three times. There was their first battle, their second battle and their match in the Junior Cup. Still, I agree with everything else you said about Trip.

Ash and Paul's rivarly was okay but it wasn't all that great. Trip was an interesting rival and his Pokemon were really cool, i think he was the best rival on the show.

Paul was a Gary wanna be and his personality was a bit bland most of the time, and i don't know why some trying to make Paul be so overratted because he wasn't the greatest rival or anything like that.

I can understand considering Paul and his rivalry with Ash overrated, but I really don't understand how Paul was a Gary wannabe. He was a vast improvement over Gary in my opinion. Gary was all talk and no action for the most part. At least Paul had the skills the back up what he was saying to Ash and he didn't act like an immature jerk bragging about his skills. He could actually battle really well. Ash and Paul argued much more about how to train Pokemon, which never really happened that much with Gary. I still think that he was the only good rival Ash has had at this point since they were able to devote a lot of time to fleshing out the rivalry and providing good buildup to their League battle.

If you don't mind me asking, why do you think that Trip is the best rival on the show. I really do think that he at least had potential to be an interesting rival, but all of that potential disappeared with his second battle with Ash when they just went to make him ridiculously overpowered. Aside from Serperior and Conkeldurr, I don't think we saw his Pokemon more than twice and none of them really stood out, at least not to where I thought that they were cool. Trip's backstory was uninteresting and the character himself was just boring. He barely appeared, had no impact on Ash unlike with Paul or even Gary and the whole rivalry felt unnecessary. I don't think that anything would drastically change if he was taken out of BW. He was handled terribly and the worst rival in the show.

 

[Pokémon Master Ash]

Paul was a step down from Gary who was ten times better then him as a rival. Trip being a rookie rival was a lot more better and fresher then that terrible boring uneeded fake poorly handled rivarly Ash had with Paul in the DP series, Gary and Trip were on the same level as being Ash's rivals unlike Paul was, Paul didn't really help Ash's character out that much the during the DP series and the Sinnoh saga made Ash's character a lot more worser not better.

I could understand not liking Ash's rivalry with Paul, but considering it unneeded, fake, and poorly handled just seems really odd to me. The rivalry with Paul was the only rivalry that was actually handled well and it was a significant aspect of the series not only because of the Chimchar subplot, but also because of how wanting to defeat Paul impacted Ash throughout the series. Paul is so much of a better rival than Gary and Trip in my opinion. Trip being a rookie trainer was an interesting concept, but the fact that they just made him ridiculously overpowered to keep Ash in the underdog role made the choice of Trip being a rookie really backfire on them. At least with Paul, they kept his amount of experience vague at first and then basically said that he traveled through the other regions Ash had gone through.

Honestly, Ash's rivalry with Trip was unneeded, fake and poorly handled in my opinion. It was completely one-sided and even then, Ash wanted to battle him just because, which was a pretty weak reason compared to why he wanted to battle Paul and even Gary. Neither Ash or Trip were affected by their rivalry and the rivalry itself was practically nonexistent. Alder was more of a rival for Trip than Ash was since Alder was more of a goal for Trip and Alder was the one who actually affected his character. Trip could have been a decent rival if he was handled better, but as he is, I think he's the worst rival character ever introduced in the anime.

Nah, even on his worst day, Trip is still a better rival than *gasps* Cameron! :boom:

 

[Neo Blaze]

I thought Ash's rivalry with Paul was very good. One of the better things of DP, IMO. I just hate Paul's personality, I never found him likeable during DP (he reminds me of people IRL that I hate with a passion), but I suppose that that was the writers' intention. He did become a bit likeable at the end of DP, after his league battle with Ash.

Now, back on topic: Trip is a horrible rival, not correctly handled in any way. I find him interesting in the sense of wondering what other Pokémon he has and what he will do with all his photos, but that's about it. Trip is also not likeable at all to me.

 

[Pokémon Master Ash]

I thought Ash's rivalry with Paul was very good. One of the better things of DP, IMO. I just hate Paul's personality, I never found him likeable during DP (he reminds me of people IRL that I hate with a passion), but I suppose that that was the writers' intention. He did become a bit likeable at the end of DP, after his league battle with Ash.

Now, back on topic: Trip is a horrible rival, not correctly handled in any way. I find him interesting in the sense of wondering what other Pokémon he has and what he will do with all his photos, but that's about it. Trip is also not likeable at all to me.

My opinion is that:

Paul > Trip > Cameron

You know, Trip isn't bad at all when you compare him to the horror that is Cameron, though. XD.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Nah, even on his worst day, Trip is still a better rival than *gasps* Cameron! :boom:

I can understand that, especially when Cameron's stick got so old and annoying really quick, but I don't think that Trip is a better rival than Cameron. Trip was ridiculously overpowered, while Cameron was just plain stupid. Both are pretty bad rivals though.

 

[Pokémon Master Ash]

Nah, even on his worst day, Trip is still a better rival than *gasps* Cameron! :boom:

I can understand that, especially when Cameron's stick got so old and annoying really quick, but I don't think that Trip is a better rival than Cameron. Trip was ridiculously overpowered, while Cameron was just plain stupid. Both are pretty bad rivals though.

Yeah, I understand where you're coming from. The only good rival Ash has really ever had is Paul in my eyes. I like Gary for nostalgia, but yeah. Most of Ash's Unova rivals were horrible.

 

[Pikacuh]

I think that he defeated Ash three times. There was their first battle, their second battle and their match in the Junior Cup. Still, I agree with everything else you said about Trip.

Ash and Paul's rivarly was okay but it wasn't all that great. Trip was an interesting rival and his Pokemon were really cool, i think he was the best rival on the show.

Paul was a Gary wanna be and his personality was a bit bland most of the time, and i don't know why some trying to make Paul be so overratted because he wasn't the greatest rival or anything like that.

I can understand considering Paul and his rivalry with Ash overrated, but I really don't understand how Paul was a Gary wannabe. He was a vast improvement over Gary in my opinion. Gary was all talk and no action for the most part. At least Paul had the skills the back up what he was saying to Ash and he didn't act like an immature jerk bragging about his skills. He could actually battle really well. Ash and Paul argued much more about how to train Pokemon, which never really happened that much with Gary. I still think that he was the only good rival Ash has had at this point since they were able to devote a lot of time to fleshing out the rivalry and providing good buildup to their League battle.

If you don't mind me asking, why do you think that Trip is the best rival on the show. I really do think that he at least had potential to be an interesting rival, but all of that potential disappeared with his second battle with Ash when they just went to make him ridiculously overpowered. Aside from Serperior and Conkeldurr, I don't think we saw his Pokemon more than twice and none of them really stood out, at least not to where I thought that they were cool. Trip's backstory was uninteresting and the character himself was just boring. He barely appeared, had no impact on Ash unlike with Paul or even Gary and the whole rivalry felt unnecessary. I don't think that anything would drastically change if he was taken out of BW. He was handled terribly and the worst rival in the show.

To me Trip was a lot more interesting rival with a great backstory, Ash's and Paul's rivarly wasn't all that great to begin with and some people are trying overrate it as being the greatest of the entire series when in matter of fact it wasn't.

 

[Shinneth]

In this context, there are no facts; everyone has their own perception of what they feel is best. The facts lie within the reasons cited for any preference, which most people who've praised Paul's character and/or rivalry with Ash have supplied. What you're suggesting implies that we're entirely making up everything we saw. Obviously that can't be the case. You're saying based on pure, hardcore facts that Trip was the best, but you're not really offering much in the way of evidence to supply your claim. It's easy to say he had the best backstory and character (as it would be for anyone), but you're not really going into detail on what makes him so great. Trip was a very interesting rival, you say. How was he? Provide the evidence. This is just MY opinion, of course, but Trip as a character was as basic as his catchphrase, and his rivalry with Ash (what little there truly was) was as generic as they came. Ash's desire to battle Trip doesn't differ from how he desires to battle any character-of-the-day he comes across and Trip has failed to influence Ash in any way beyond telling him Oshawott needs to learn how to swim. There's not much to go by on his backstory: he's nonsensically butthurt that Alder doesn't remember him - a kid among hundreds Alder has come across in his career and making the same "I'll battle you someday" promises to - and that's it. None of this explains why Trip was ridiculously overpowered for a rookie and why he thinks he's ready to take on Champions. It doesn't explain why Trip is xenophobic towards people from Kanto. It doesn't explain why Trip carries that holier-than-thou attitude which in my opinion doesn't fit well with his rookie status. His camera quirk was very dull (he wants to record his journey, well whoop-de-doo) and relevant only one time in the series. His catchphrase was pointless and meaningless.

What would've helped Trip as a trainer is if we actually got to see HOW Trip trained his Pokemon, but we barely saw most of his Pokemon as it was, let alone how he trained them. How did he so quickly assemble a full team that he has zero compatibility problems with despite being a rookie? How many other new trainers have we seen in this show that had this much luck right out of the gate? Even Paul, who is very much not a rookie, was shown having compatibility problems with Chimchar. So even though Paul had the upper hand on Ash most of the time, we could see right away that he was flawed. We don't get that with Trip at all; either his Serperior is destroying everything in its sight, or Trip's having his ass handed to him when using Conkeldurr (the only other Pokemon of his that appeared consistently).

To me, the real problem is that Trip as a whole was not explained very well. He was a brand new starting trainer, but right away everything he did and said contradicted the role he was assigned. It wasn't until the Don Battle that Trip even remotely behaved like a rookie, but that was solely through losing in the first round of both tournaments because he underestimated his competition. But then Trip doesn't act like a rookie when he loses, and instead walks out of the episode before anything can be expanded on him. Oh yeah, there's his bullshit excuse that he won't learn anything by watching others battle, which we all know is wrong, but nobody really picks up on that. Trip's progression makes no sense at all: he starts out destroying Ash with ease despite the wide experience gap, then gets his ass kicked out of the first round of 2 tournaments, then the next time we see him he's portrayed as being near-invincible as he wins the third tournament. Alder was the obvious drive, sure, but I struggle to imagine a hard-on for Alder strong enough to overpower everyone in a tournament without breaking a sweat, honestly. Then Trip magically loses his jerk side after battling Alder, then loses in the first round of the League to Ash despite kicking his ass for about 99% of the battle. Neither side gained anything from the battle, no one learned anything, and then Trip was gone.

Now mind you, this is all just how I interpreted his character, but I really do not think it's coincidental that they placed the Trip battle in the preliminaries of the League. No, it's not because the Japanese staff acknowledge American forum people; I think the staff members themselves realized how much they fucked up with Trip and just wanted to be done with him. With characters like Paul, I could see the effort from the writers in developing his character; they clearly invested a lot of time into him. With Trip... I'm honestly not seeing the effort at all. It feels like after Donamite, they pretty much gave up on him and just went through the motions to finish him up, given that he failed to appear in any non-tournament episode after that point.

So, yeah... I mean, if you really feel Trip was the best rival and had a fantastic backstory, go for it. But your arguments aren't the least bit convincing given the sheer lack of evidence provided. I won't tl;dr about Paul this time, mainly because this post is long enough already and that given this is a Trip thread, I wanna focus on where his alleged great story and character is before even trying to compare him to Paul.

 

[Hidden Mew]

To me Trip was a lot more interesting rival with a great backstory, Ash's and Paul's rivarly wasn't all that great to begin with and some people are trying overrate it as being the greatest of the entire series when in matter of fact it wasn't.

Trip's backstory wasn't that interesting. He just idolized Alder when he was little and that fueled his desire to become a trainer. That's nothing really interesting or unique for that matter since most trainers would want to defeat a Champion like Alder. He wasn't interesting beforehand to me, but the backstory did absolutely nothing to help his character in my opinion. I can understand considering Ash and Paul's rivalry overrated, but I don't see how that rivalry was so much weaker than the rivalry with Trip. Ash's rivalry with Paul had a significant impact on him and was an important aspect of the series. By comparison, the rivalry with Trip doesn't do anything like that. They don't have any impact on each other and their rivalry is practically nonexistent. I still think that Trip had potential to be at least a decent rival, but he became the worst rival ever shown in the anime for me.

 

[Pikacuh]

In this context, there are no facts; everyone has their own perception of what they feel is best. The facts lie within the reasons cited for any preference, which most people who've praised Paul's character and/or rivalry with Ash have supplied. What you're suggesting implies that we're entirely making up everything we saw. Obviously that can't be the case. You're saying based on pure, hardcore facts that Trip was the best, but you're not really offering much in the way of evidence to supply your claim. It's easy to say he had the best backstory and character (as it would be for anyone), but you're not really going into detail on what makes him so great. Trip was a very interesting rival, you say. How was he? Provide the evidence. This is just MY opinion, of course, but Trip as a character was as basic as his catchphrase, and his rivalry with Ash (what little there truly was) was as generic as they came. Ash's desire to battle Trip doesn't differ from how he desires to battle any character-of-the-day he comes across and Trip has failed to influence Ash in any way beyond telling him Oshawott needs to learn how to swim. There's not much to go by on his backstory: he's nonsensically butthurt that Alder doesn't remember him - a kid among hundreds Alder has come across in his career and making the same "I'll battle you someday" promises to - and that's it. None of this explains why Trip was ridiculously overpowered for a rookie and why he thinks he's ready to take on Champions. It doesn't explain why Trip is xenophobic towards people from Kanto. It doesn't explain why Trip carries that holier-than-thou attitude which in my opinion doesn't fit well with his rookie status. His camera quirk was very dull (he wants to record his journey, well whoop-de-doo) and relevant only one time in the series. His catchphrase was pointless and meaningless.

What would've helped Trip as a trainer is if we actually got to see HOW Trip trained his Pokemon, but we barely saw most of his Pokemon as it was, let alone how he trained them. How did he so quickly assemble a full team that he has zero compatibility problems with despite being a rookie? How many other new trainers have we seen in this show that had this much luck right out of the gate? Even Paul, who is very much not a rookie, was shown having compatibility problems with Chimchar. So even though Paul had the upper hand on Ash most of the time, we could see right away that he was flawed. We don't get that with Trip at all; either his Serperior is destroying everything in its sight, or Trip's having his ass handed to him when using Conkeldurr (the only other Pokemon of his that appeared consistently).

To me, the real problem is that Trip as a whole was not explained very well. He was a brand new starting trainer, but right away everything he did and said contradicted the role he was assigned. It wasn't until the Don Battle that Trip even remotely behaved like a rookie, but that was solely through losing in the first round of both tournaments because he underestimated his competition. But then Trip doesn't act like a rookie when he loses, and instead walks out of the episode before anything can be expanded on him. Oh yeah, there's his bullshit excuse that he won't learn anything by watching others battle, which we all know is wrong, but nobody really picks up on that. Trip's progression makes no sense at all: he starts out destroying Ash with ease despite the wide experience gap, then gets his ass kicked out of the first round of 2 tournaments, then the next time we see him he's portrayed as being near-invincible as he wins the third tournament. Alder was the obvious drive, sure, but I struggle to imagine a hard-on for Alder strong enough to overpower everyone in a tournament without breaking a sweat, honestly. Then Trip magically loses his jerk side after battling Alder, then loses in the first round of the League to Ash despite kicking his ass for about 99% of the battle. Neither side gained anything from the battle, no one learned anything, and then Trip was gone.

Now mind you, this is all just how I interpreted his character, but I really do not think it's coincidental that they placed the Trip battle in the preliminaries of the League. No, it's not because the Japanese staff acknowledge American forum people; I think the staff members themselves realized how much they fucked up with Trip and just wanted to be done with him. With characters like Paul, I could see the effort from the writers in developing his character; they clearly invested a lot of time into him. With Trip... I'm honestly not seeing the effort at all. It feels like after Donamite, they pretty much gave up on him and just went through the motions to finish him up, given that he failed to appear in any non-tournament episode after that point.

So, yeah... I mean, if you really feel Trip was the best rival and had a fantastic backstory, go for it. But your arguments aren't the least bit convincing given the sheer lack of evidence provided. I won't tl;dr about Paul this time, mainly because this post is long enough already and that given this is a Trip thread, I wanna focus on where his alleged great story and character is before even trying to compare him to Paul.

My argument is convincing your's isn't and the writers never hated Trip in the first place, Trip had an interesting personality and his backstory about wanting to beat Alder was really well handled, but the writers should of shown his pokemon a lot more.

Paul had more flaws about his character then Gary and Trip put together. Not everybody thought Paul was the greatest rival or character, besides Paul never really had a reason to be a jerk and the only reason why there was even a rivarly in the first place between Ash and Paul was due to how he treated Chimchar.

 

[Hidden Mew]

My argument is convincing your's isn't and the writers never hated Trip in the first place, Trip had an interesting personality and his backstory about wanting to beat Alder was really well handled, but the writers should of shown his pokemon a lot more.

I don't think that your point is very convincing. It's fine if you do think that Trip was a great rival since it's a matter of opinion, but nothing you've said really explains why you feel that he is great and interesting rival. His personality was much more annoying and smug to me. He acted like he was superior to Ash, as if he was the experienced trainer and Ash was the rookie, from day one, and insulted Ash for being Kanto for no good reason. His backstory about wanting to beat Alder wasn't anything special. Most trainers would want to defeat him, so it wasn't unique, and I don't think it was handled particularly well anyway. He got upset that his idol wasn't exactly what he remembered him as, left in disappointment rather than trying to learn anything and then he was magically transformed into less of a jerk after losing to Alder. Nothing about that seems like it was handled well at all to me.

As for the writers, I definitely don't think that they liked Trip at least. By the time he lost in the second tournament arc, if not the first one, I thought it was pretty clear that they just gave up on him. They didn't even bother to make him appear more often during the series to make him look more interesting or make an attempt to give him clear development by having him watch the rest of the tournaments after he was defeated to learn from his mistakes. He just wrote them off like he wouldn't learn anything from watching, despite losing in the first round twice. They went back to making him ridiculously overpowered in the Junior Cup, but that was mainly so that he could lose to Alder to affect his character in a sudden and unsatisfying manner. Though, they probably could have done that without making Trip so overpowered. At the very least, the fact that they got rid of Trip in the first round of the Unova League showed that they clearly didn't want to have him hanging around for too long and wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible. I still think that was one of the few good decisions in the Unova League since he didn't deserve anything more than a one-on-one match with Ash.

Paul had more flaws about his character then Gary and Trip put together. Not everybody thought Paul was the greatest rival or character, besides Paul never really had a reason to be a jerk and the only reason why there was even a rivarly n the frst place between Ash and Paul was due to how he treated Chimchar.

Paul wasn't perfect, but I'd take him over Gary and Trip as a rival any day of the week. I understand that not everyone likes the rivalry with Paul and that's fine. I can understand why people would find it overrated, but that seems to be the main point you keep bringing up and nothing else concrete about the actual rivalry or why Trip's rivalry with Ash was so much better. Paul did have a reason to be a jerk. Perhaps not the best reason when it was basically not wanting to be like his brother after he lost to Brandon, but he did have a reason to act the way he did, far more than Trip did in my opinion. There was a rivalry between Ash and Paul because of their polar opposite attitudes about Pokemon training. They were rivals well before Chimchar's abuse became more of a key point to their rivalry given how Ash kept trying to beat Paul and how he disapproved of how Paul would release his Pokemon if they weren't strong enough for him. Chimchar did become an important aspect of the rivalry, but definitely not the only reason they had a rivalry in the first place. Even it was the only reason, that still doesn't make it worse than Trip's rivalry when it did have a significant impact on the series and characters. By comparison, Trip's rivalry with Ash was practically nonexistent and had no significant effect on either one of them.