There was actually a subreddit for hating on Alain, though I think it burnt out fairly quickly. It was rather NSFW so I won't link it.
Look, I love Charizard and all (just look at my profile,) but (and I may have said this before) even I have to admit Alain's Charizard was stupidly overpowered. I mean, the only things that could stop it after Siebold's Blastoise were Legendaries. Other trainers barely stood a chance. (Trevor.) It just bothered me how no matter damage Alain's Charizard took, it never showed signs of tiring or weakening, and just kept steamrolling through the opposition. Hell, I was rooting for that Remo guy in the Kalos League with the Mega Garchomp, he really wanted to beat Alain. I at least wanted to see some difficulty from Charizard, but nope. Takes down Garchomp even easier than the last time they fought.
I want a rematch where Ash uses Snorlax to cheese OPzard and then sweeps the rest with his own Charizard to turn the tables lol.
Yeah, the match coming down to the wire and Alain having some other role beyond beating Ash probably helped. He was pretty well received with at least the first two Mega Evolution specials. It just never really seemed like a big enough difference from Tobias in a way to me. They still filled the same role of stop Ash from winning a League. Losing to Alain also felt way more frustrating than what happened with Tobias too. At least Ash went down fighting against Legendary Pokemon, which is cooler/more impressive than losing to an overpowered broken Mega Charizard X.
It made Ash Greninja’s arc a waste in the end. I could write a whole essay about it.
I'll never understand this "Alain's reason for joining the League is bad" thing. Wanting to fight strong people is bad now? Isn't that part of why people participate in the League to begin with?
He only wanted to battle against Ash, which he could have done quite easily outside of the Kalos League. They already battled twice, so it wouldn't have been that hard or unlikely for the two of them to meet prior to the Kalos League. Plus, it was done so late in the series and that meant he had to get eight badges extremely fast. If the Kalos League was any indication, he most likely defeated eight Gym Leaders with just his Mega Charizard X. Wanting to face off against Ash wouldn't have been a problem if Alain was already collecting Gym badges. Ash being an extra motivation for him to get to the Kalos League instead of the driving force probably would have been fine.
Well, considering he has several flight-capable Pokemon and isn't wasting time helping every random stranger with their life issues, yes, yes I can.
I agree with the main thrust but also think it would be pretty easy to bring Greninja back if they wanted to; just say he finished up in Kalos.
It was extremely fast, and by extremely fast, it was literally 7 episodes. After Ash's 2nd encounter with Alain...and technically 2 losses against him in the same episode, they take a moment to cut away from the main focus of the episode to show us that Alain defeated Korrina to earn his final badge. This was only 7 episodes after we saw him in XY116. And I remember some saying Sawyer got his too quickly. Between Sawyer's first encounter with Ash and when we learned Sawyer qualified for the Kalos League, there was at least 45 episodes between.
Even with both of those factors, I think that's still expecting a lot for the audience to buy, especially when I don't recall Alain primarily using his Pokemon to travel around in the Mega Evolution specials. We didn't even know if he had any other Pokemon on him until his second battle with Ash. Not only does it still feel unbelievable to me, but arguably the bigger problem was that it continued to over hype Alain as this extremely powerful trainer. Ever since the last Mega Evolution special where Charizard defeated ten trainers in a row, including an Elite 4 member, it felt like they were going out of their way to make Alain more powerful. That's why he primarily just relied on his Mega Charizard X for the Kalos League too. He was always strong, but they were going the extra mile to overhype his strength to the point where I found it eye rolling.
Uhh, no? He lost to an older, more experienced trainer with foreign pokemon in a battle that came down to the wire and crippled the winner’s ace to the point he lost the following round. It was the most believable league loss we’ve had so far.
Also Charizard was tired enough that he couldn't win. It's implied he would've won that one if Charizard hadn't been worn down by Gary's Blastoise
