About Cheren - if he had been in the anime...?

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Almonds

Almonds

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I want a discussion with people who are interested in this topic, but I don't know where to post this, so if this belongs somwhere else I politely ask a mod to move it for me :)

Gary, Silver, Barry, and Bel are the game-based rivals that had the chance to appear. Gary was handled poorly despite being the main rival. Silver didn't even last five seconds on the show in The Legend of Thunder. Barry appeared in late DP, and he wasn't even the main rival (that was handed to Paul). Bel appeared relatively early, but she isn't the main rival, either. (Though, Bel has potential so she might be better much later...) Anyways, Ash didn't even have a rival in AG - not even poor little Wally :(, and now Unova is showing Trip.

We know that Cheren had been dropped and Trip was brought into the anime instead. But what would the show might've been like if Cheren had been in the anime instead? What if Cheren had been Ash's main rival? Or what if Cheren and Trip both appeared?

To me, Cheren is the exact rival I had ever wanted in the games. He's got pride and self-confidence. He's a bit arrogant, but he's never rude. He's willing to climb up to be the strongest yet he'd help you and share his knowledge with you. I find him to be likable and the exact ideal rival who would be a very competent trainer to pressure Ash and keep him going. Who knows, maybe Ash might've developed a lot if Cheren had been his rival.

What do you think? Would the story have improved if Cheren had been in the anime?
 
Basically, we'd just have an older Trip with black hair, glasses and slightly less terrible fashion sense. Not a huge improvement IMO.
 
This topic isn't suitable in the Pokemon World board, so I will move it to the Pokemon Anime board, in which this thread belongs to.

Thanks for reading.
 
Winterdaze said:
Basically, we'd just have an older Trip with black hair, glasses and slightly less terrible fashion sense. Not a huge improvement IMO.
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I'd say he would be a a lot like Max, except 9 years older and with a pigeon.
 
The show wouldn't have been much better. Trip seems like a carbon copy of Paul. Except Paul had experience and trip is brand new.

The only rivalry that has actually come across well on screen is Ash and Gary. That felt like a proper rivalry, Paul did a good job too saying that, but I find Trip to be considerably lack luster and they seem to have forgotten him recently.
 
Cheren was great because;
a)He was your childhood friend. Always a plus.
b)He was slightly below you. As such, he had reason to develop, as you kicked his ass, as barely as it might be.
c)You, Bel and Cheren formed a Freudian trio. You played each other off.
d)Cheren had other characters who suffered similiar issues, Adeku and Renbu.

If those elements were in animé, then yes. He would work perfectly. Though Satoshi wouldn't necessarily need to be higher than Cheren's level, if he were to appear in animé, he should be at least around his level, instead of getting two losses and one draw like in Shooty's case, though that seems to be changing, if his loss against Dent is any indication and if Rouboushin episode has him losing.

Karamazov said:
Winterdaze said:
Basically, we'd just have an older Trip with black hair, glasses and slightly less terrible fashion sense. Not a huge improvement IMO.
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I'd say he would be a a lot like Max, except 9 years older and with a pigeon.
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A calmer, much more serious Kouhei is something I would actually love to see, in all honesty. Though I wouldn't mind seeing Shooty go all nerdy either, beyond his "That's basic" shtick.
 
Whilst Cheren wasn't as entertaining as most of the other game rivals, I still enjoyed his arrogant yet friendly and reliable personality, and I remain hopeful he will appear in the anime at some point as another rival for Ash. I don't think Trip should count as his replacement, because Cheren is far more pleasant to the player character than Trip is towards Ash, unless Cheren was secretly harboring xenophobic views all along.

I would have been perfectly happy if the main group of B/W consisted of him, Ash and Bianca, as that would reflect the set-up from games themselves. I imagine he would have taken Brock/Cilan's role as the straight man of the group, only not as knowledgeable as those two and would have much to learn from the more experienced Ash.
 
It would be no different. In my opinion, Trip is basically Cheren, and so I see no reason why Cheren would be treated any differently. Due to that, I think there would just be more complaints about how a game character was getting poor treatment.
 
If he had been in the anime, people would still complain that Cheren was too little like Paul. Then the complainers would complain about the next rival not being Cheren enough, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next.

I wish people would stop with the sour grapes about Trip...
 
If we had Cheren instead of Trip, we'd pretty much have a similar scenario that we have now... only a little less basic, and most likely no xenophobia or stupid Todd Snap 2.0 gimmick. If Cheren was a childhood friend to Bianca like he was in the games, then I could see potential for deeper, more complex and fresh rivalry concepts (though imo this would work better if Bianca was a traveling partner of Ash's - it gets the most mileage out of the "childhood friend" aspect since Ash obviously can't be the Hilbert of the equation). But all in all, I really couldn't take Cheren seriously in the games because his issues seemed pretty shallow compared to Bianca's. Plus his issues do call back to Paul's in a way so we'd still feel that "carbon copy of Paul" in all likelihood unless they went a completely different route, but at least with Cheren we wouldn't be mocking his design like we do for Trip, aka Mister Saturated Color-Reversed Paul. Since the anime isn't all that keen on the game characters staying faithful to their roots, it's entirely possible that we'd actually have something much more engaging with Cheren, but given their quality of writing for the general series one can only at best give extremely optimistic conjecture of the possibilities.

I'm on board with what @Trainer Yusuf said in the off-chance that they didn't retain Cheren's game personality; after Paul, I always felt the next logical step for his successor would be a rival similar to Conway, with some tweaks of course. Appearance-wise Cheren would've been a shoe-in for the methodical, by-the-books intellectual rival that would be the perfect kind of rival for Ash to have; someone who could really make him think out of the box all the time. Honestly, when I first saw a picture of Cheren, I assumed by appearance alone that he'd be that kind of rival, so I was thoroughly disappointed once I played the game. The anime could've done a lot here; this would be a case where I wouldn't mind the anime deviating from the games.

But... sigh. Keeping myself grounded on planet Earth and knowing what sort of anime series we have as our "adaptation" of the Gen V games, I really doubt the writers would have taken advantage of the potential Cheren had. I mean, sure, theoretically they could've made Trip the same way, but his design does not scream "egghead", and neither does his personality. And in all likelihood Cheren wouldn't have been that big of a change from Trip, but I'm pretty sure we'd at least be spared from basic this, basic that, the unjustified xenophobia, and the dumbass Facebook photowhoring.

In the long run, though, I doubt there would be much of a difference for the better. In that case, though, it makes one wonder why they didn't simply use Cheren to begin with rather than going out of their way to make an all-new character to fill his shoes (rather poorly, no less).
 
Well, what would happen is that Hetalia fans the world over would think that Austria had accidentally wandered into Unova. More seriously, just photoshop use Adobe™ Photoshop™ Digital Editing Software to replace Trip with Cheren, and you'd get the same guy, animé style, especially since if Trip didn't have xenophobia then chances are Iris wouldn't have it either.
 
So there are 2 possibilities :
1. he being a starter trainer like Trip! and making it pretty boring just C being a smart a**!
2. he being an trainer who already has participated in Leagues, with a strong and well developed team! So Ash's team had to progress a lot faster and we wouldn't be stuck on the starters first level so much! But with C having strong Pokes he would push Ash to be stronger just like Paul did!
SO WHICH OPTIONS IS BETTER!!??
 
Who's to say he won't appear?

Jun didn't appear in Diamond and Pearl until over 100 episodes in.
 
I'm not gonna get ahead of myself and say Cheren won't ever appear, but unless they really change him - make him distinct from his game persona, that is, then his presence in the anime will be awfully redundant seeing as Trip is already filling in a lot of the base roles Cheren represented in-game. Plus, there's the fact that we have a slew of rivals already and the fact that BW is way way way more fast-paced than DP, to the point where 100 episodes in likely is going to put us in 8th Gym territory/pre-League nonsense. And I suspect the writers realized it was a mistake to hold off on introducing Barry to DP until the series was nearly half-over, which would explain why Bianca was introduced very early on.

The only way I could see Cheren being introduced to the anime at a very late point in time is if he's revealed to be the designated League rival who'll inevitably beat Ash, or if they plan something for him in whatever filler arc is sure to happen after the League. More realistically I predict he'll get treated like Hilbert/Hilda and relegated to short, silent movie cameos. Either way, any of these options would be a waste of Cheren's potential, imo.

So while it's possible for Cheren to still appear at some point, any sort of substantial role will require a lot of tweaking for his character unless the writers just really want to be redundant as hell and have two Trips running around mucking the series up.
 
I like how it's going so far. There is no need for too many rivals if Ash can't battle with all of them. But who knows? Cheren might be the Harrison in the league or something.
 
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There's still the possiblity that Cheren might appear most likely as a powerful League rival... but that's only a possibility. I doubt he'd be another rival if he appeared - Ash has too many rivals in BW currently, and Bianca is holding potential yet to show. The writers might be saving something special for her, but if they introduce Cheren, either he's going to be poorly mishandled and overshadowed by Bianca, or vice-versa. If he was going to be a rival, he should've been in the show instead of Trip.

If he had been the main rival, I don't see why he'd be similar to Trip. His game personality, in my opinion, was very well designed. According to Bulbapedia:
While he holds a greater knowledge in Pokémon than his friends and tends to offer the player advice during the course of their journey, his comments are often witty and intellectual. He also misunderstands Bianca's humor often, to her dismay. Whilst Professor Juniper describes him as being very honest, she also remarks that he can be 'a little difficult'; his impatience in particular is often seen throughout the earlier stages of his journey. He is also described as being quite judgmental by Alder.
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This is NOTHING like Trip at all.
 
I could see him being more like Kouhei if he shows up.

Smart, confident, and coming up with various strategies like Kouhei's Trick Room one in the Diamond and Pearl league finals.
 
If Cheren was here, we wouldn't have the boring rival Trip who degrades Ash for no reason.
 
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