Pokemonfan5
Member
- Joined
- May 27, 2021
- Messages
- 70
- Reaction score
- 75
Tbf Iris seems bigger battler than all other pokegirls and last one who was so active in battles, tournament arcs and other things shown that, but BW bad writing didn't let her goal more fleshed out most likely because of them scrapping original script, she could've got more dragon type like Deino and evolve it, had battle with other dragon users and improve her ability as a dragon trainer.Having competitions does tend to help give characters' goals more structure though. That's a big reason why May and Dawn worked so well because they had a goal that required the writers to focus on them more often and ideally would show them becoming stronger over the course of their respective series. It isn't the only way to have well written female leads, but I think the female leads with a competition based goal generally were better than the ones without them. Putting aside my issues with Iris and BW on the side for a moment, I can't really see how Iris' Dragon Master goal was that good. This is mainly because they were quite limited on Dragon types in Unova for a large portion of BW, so there were fewer Pokemon she could have caught to actually help her with her goal.
Lillie overcoming her PTSD was good. I actually preferred episodes dealing with that issue than their attempts to adapt her storyline from the video games. Video game Lillie and SM Lillie were two different characters, so I think forcing elements of the former's storyline into the anime was a poor choice. Slowly becoming a better trainer was okay, but I think the long gaps between her focus episodes didn't really help in making things like Snowy defeating a Salamence in the Alola League or even getting pass the preliminary round particularly believable for me. That being said, I think that both Chloe and to a lesser degree Lillie are good examples of how the female leads can have good writing without being involved in a competition related to their goal. But I also still miss having the anime having more focus on the female lead and the female lead being more proactive in general. That's a big reason why it feels like the anime lost something important when Contest were removed and they still haven't found something else to make up for that loss. It definitely doesn't help that both SM and Journeys are seriously lacking in more proactive female battlers in general as well.
SM isn't much focus on battle and had large cast with only 3 seasons so Lillie didn't have as much focus as May and Dawn and I had no hope from Chloe as well as she is side character, if Lillie was a sole female character of the group she maybe get more focus and get close to May and Dawn level, I want to see Pokegirls being more unique rather than having same goal and do same thing of past pokegirls all the time, they could've different kind of competition not just contests.
I don't see any problem with Salamence when it already take super effective damage from Kiawe's Turtonator and get KO'd by 4x super effective move, Lillie most likely battle some weak trainers like her to get pass battle royal.