Best Wishes Rivalries

[Trainer Gabriel]

I just hate how quickly Trip assembles powerful Pokemon so quickly, which is obviously just so he can keep up with Ash. Wouldn't it have just been easier to make him an experienced trainer when he met Ash? In fact, if I had watched tomorrow's episode (in the US) without watching the first ep of BW, I wouldn't even think that he was a rookie just as how I was never convinced Paul that was a rookie either when most fans assumed he was.

 

[Kaitou Kid]

I just hate how quickly Trip assembles powerful Pokemon so quickly, which is obviously just so he can keep up with Ash. Wouldn't it have just been easier to make him an experienced trainer when he met Ash? In fact, if I had watched tomorrow's episode (in the US) without watching the first ep of BW, I wouldn't even think that he was a rookie just as how I was never convinced Paul that was a rookie either when most fans assumed he was.

But why does he have to have experience prior to be able to beat Ash? Why can't he just be a normal rookie who prefers to train his Pokemon up to par and is a competent trainer? People grind their Pokemon's levels in game all the time and that's why I don't understand why people are so surprised or annoyed that Shooti has strong Pokemon. Just because we see Ash take his precious damn time through training, does not mean other characters have to do the same. Remember, we only see Pokemon from Ash's point of view, we have no idea how other people might train, capture and raise their Pokemon for battling while they're on their journeys, and we only get glimpses of their personalities and traits whenever they run into everyone's favorite impulsive kid because its all about Ash and most his friends were/are all passive when it comes to training and battling so they aren't much to go by either.

Sometimes I wish for like an episode, the writers would not focus on Ash and focus on his rivals, give them their own episodes, where Ash and Co don't even get a damn cameo. I would have loved to see a day in the life of Paul or Gary, but instead we get filler, stale jokes and overused comedy gags. I know it will probably never happen but its a nice idea.

 

[Steel_Justice]

But why does he have to have experience prior to be able to beat Ash? Why can't he just be a normal rookie who prefers to train his Pokemon up to par and is a competent trainer? People grind their Pokemon's levels in game all the time and that's why I don't understand why people are so surprised or annoyed that Shooti has strong Pokemon. Just because we see Ash take his precious damn time through training, does not mean other characters have to do the same. Remember, we only see Pokemon from Ash's point of view, we have no idea how other people might train, capture and raise their Pokemon for battling while they're on their journeys, and we only get glimpses of their personalities and traits whenever they run into everyone's favorite impulsive kid because its all about Ash and most his friends were/are all passive when it comes to training and battling so they aren't much to go by either.

This is why most people I know who watch pokemon tend to relate better with the rival than Ash. I mean we level grind, actively search for pokemon and often have similar pokemon to the rival.

Sometimes I wish for like an episode, the writers would not focus on Ash and focus on his rivals, give them their own episodes, where Ash and Co don't even get a damn cameo. I would have loved to see a day in the life of Paul or Gary, but instead we get filler, stale jokes and overused comedy gags. I know it will probably never happen but its a nice idea.

This would be a nice idea since it would give the viewers a chance to experience the anime in a different way by showing the methods that the rivals use to keep up with Ash which will no doubt raise interesting comparisons. Plus it would be a good opportunity to give some character development to the rivals and show how they get their pokemon. One thing that annoys me is how we almost never see rivals getting pokemon and they just magically appear the next time we see them. For all we know they went through something like what Ash goes through when he catches pokemon.

BTW who's nanako again?

 

[Trainer Gabriel]

People grind their Pokemon's levels in game all the time and that's why I don't understand why people are so surprised or annoyed that Shooti has strong Pokemon.

I'm not going to reply to a subjective post in full, but I will say that I don't think we should compare this to video game training. In the games, players can simply wander through grass and level up their Pokemon until their Pokemon are at a the max level and be done with training them for good, but they can also become the champion in under 24 hours of playtime. The anime would be way too short if it operated just like an RPG and no one would play the games if opposite were true.

Pokemon training in the anime isn't all about defeating wild Pokemon for experience until the Pokemon's level grows; that's just how the games work. Ash has used other methods such as such as hiking or dodging flying thing for improving speed to train throughout the series.

While I understand that gaining experence in the anime is apparently partly similar to the games and sometimes implied, that still doesn't mean we should think of the two as being exactly alike. And even if we did assume that training was just level grinding like in an RPG, how does your theory explain Pikachu? Using game mechanics, he should wipe the floor with Trip's whole team.

I can't argue with your opinion if you like Trip, but I personally just don't see the point in making a rival a beginner, yet is portrayed to be above the protagonist's level, who has four Leagues and two other championships title to his name, instead of setting him closer to Ash's history like with Paul.

BTW who's nanako again?

Casey.

 

[Kaitou Kid]

I wasn't trying to compare the game mechanics to the anime. I was just trying to point out that for all we know, Shooti could be constantly training his Pokemon at the Battle Clubs and doing various other things during his spare time, that's why his Pokemon are at such strong levels, but we don't know what the hell he does off screen because the writers hardly go in depth about the rivals travel's and we the fans can only resort to Wild Mass Guessing to figure it out.

If we were using game mechanics, then yes, Pikachu should wipe the floor with Shooti. But we don't and the writers like to retcon Pikachu's abilities at the start of the region. Hell, Pikachu's durability during battle fluctuates as well, all the Pokemon do. Just because Ash has a title and an ass load of experience, doesn't mean he can't be defeated. Having titles means nothing if you can't utilize your skill and since Ash is the main character of this long standing anime, he's obviously not going to win every battle at the moment be it against a rookie or not. They aren't trying to overpower him and make him own everything without even trying, they are trying to make it fair for the kids that watch the show. Maybe if the writers never reset him at the beginning and Pikachu didn't need a plot device to lose his energy then yeah he would've won. But for now, all we can do is deal with it.

 

[Trainer Gabriel]

Yeah, I'm aware of everything you said. Of course Ash has to be the underdog to make the rivalry more interesting (even if the pattern is getting tiring at this point).
All I was originally saying is that watching Ash competing with a rookie feels like the biggest downgrade to his abilities right now, and that nothing would change if Trip were more experienced, making his status as a newbie pointless anyway. And the main point I was trying to make in response was that I don't know if we can be too sure that training is as easy as simply level grinding like in the games.

There's really nothing more I say so to each his own I guess.

 

[MarshiyanMisutaa]

I hope, to everybody's surprise, Shooty will be "easy" rival at the league and Bel will be surprisingly competent against Satoshi (maybe even beat him?).

 

[War]

I hope, to everybody's surprise, Shooty will be "easy" rival at the league and Bel will be surprisingly competent against Satoshi (maybe even beat him?).

Yeah, keep dreaming.

 

[Shinneth]

The sad thing is, while the curbstomp loss (from someone other than Ash most likely) to knock down Trip a peg or two is just what he needs to be more bearable as a rival... that's sorta exactly what Paul needed to when Cynthia stomped on him. Last thing we really need is another reason to look at Trip as a watered-down version of Paul.

Unless, somehow, the loss isn't so much a landslide and the competitor is another trainer from Kanto; it just isn't Ash. That right there would go a long way in getting Trip to open his goddamn mind and realize people who aren't from Unova aren't necessarily hicks.

(My fantasy plot twist would be for Paul to show up in Unova out of nowhere, flash his Brave Symbol at Ash for a brief, silent moment, then squash Trip in battle with new Pokemon he acquired in Unova. It would be totally awesome, but then Trip really would be labeled "The One Who Wants To Be Paul, But Never Can"...)

As I played the game, I found Cheren to be pretty dull as he really only ever talked about strength. I imagined if he ever came into the anime and retained his game persona 100%, he'd be akin to those cardboard cut-out rivals that we had in spades durng Diamond & Pearl. From looks alone I pictured him to maybe be a Conway Expy, but the last thing BW needs is to be stealing concepts from previous series again...

Though eerily enough, the Conway model of rival is really the best route to go with an antagonist for Ash. It's really the only type of rival that stands a chance of making a mark and leaving an impression after the enormous mark Paul left on Ash. Even though I personally thought Conway himself would've made a better Dawn rival than for Ash, his character archetype is ideal for going agaisnt Ash if you rectify his inability to improvise during a battle. I figured Cheren would be the best candidate for that, at least, should he appear.

With Trip, I guess one can argue that he may have booksmarts on his side (one of my friends pointed out that he said he was "finally" ready to start on his journey, insinuating that he didn't immediately set off away from home the very day he turned ten for reasons unknown), but the few times we've seen him talk... Iunno, he didn't sound like any kind of genius to me; did he to you guys? It's very hard to figure out what kind of angle they're going for with Trip that isn't "Paul's gay xenophobic cousin from California". Hell, I even color-reversed a picture of Paul a while back and - swear to god - a lot of reverse-Paul's colors were very close to Trip's color scheme. If you upped the saturation, they were almost exact. That's what leads me to believe that they reeeeeally did not put much time or effort into Trip... it really feels like they're building him as they go along week by week; swear to god. It just... isn't a good thing when I personally think the best thing about Trip is the fact that he is, voice-wise, Barry trying his hardest to impersonate his idol. There's so much fun to be had in that, but not so much for the show itself.

It would help if they stopped giving him these damned OU-level species; that just aids Trip in giving him these BS wins he doesn't deserve. Then again, it also doesn't help that Ash is getting less-than-stellar species left and right with no rhyme or reason to it. And getting all three starters again... augh.

As for Bianca, I'm pretty sure I said earlier she's Barry With Boobs, and that extends to her rivalry with Ash. I actually pictured the ideal female Ash rival as being a tomboyish sort of girl rather than a scatterbrained ditz. Somewhere down the road they'll either have Bianca be an even bigger doormat than Barry was, or an accidental genius sort of trainer who's mowing everyone down and all the while Bianca doesn't even know her own strength. That would be admittedly humorous, and I'd like to see them do that...

That's about all I can say off the top of my head right now, as I haven't been paying any attention to the Cilan/Cabernet rivalry at all...