Dawn's rivals

[Lethal Carnivine]

Well, contests are apparently in the vogue now as we already have 4 new rivals(Jessalina, Zoey, Nando, Kenny). What I want to know is what do you think about them and why? After seeing this on Serebii(don't sue me), I thought it would prove for interesting discussion.

Kenny: Going by his first appearance, he seemed a little bland. It surprised me that he had an Alakazam, which I guess means he was a rather gifted trainer so early on. His crush s also an interesting addition.

Nando: Perhaps one of the most interesting characters that I have seen in a while. He has two goals at the same time, something never thought up before. Not to mention all of his Pokemon seem to have a nice musical theme. The only thing that gets me bored about him is the animator, since it's the same one!

Zoey: She's an all right character. She strikes me the same way as enny does, but with just a tad more hatred. She always seems to butt-in to everything, especially that battle in 'Stand Up Sit Down'. Could have been interesting to see Dawn fall flat on her face with Jessalina, but instead she becomes nosy and wins that battle almost unrealisticaly.

Jessalina(Not Jessie, just to clarify): She's the opposite of bland, she's exciting and new. Her battling style has become more competent as well as the fact that she's doing much better with the appeals. She isn't afraid to taunt other coordinators such as Dawn who quite frankly deserveds it.

I'll say more later.

 

[Cybersai]

We've had similar threads about them in the past, and my opinion on them is more or less the same. They're fairly forgettable in terms of personality. There seems to be something wrong with the Contest dynamic this time around, and for some reason the characters just don't play off of Dawn the way they should.

Its like you're looking for an interesting dynamic, such as the one Ash has with Paul currently, or May had with her rivals, but you just can't find it this time.

I'm not going to go into detail but unless some major plot twist happens with these characters down the road, they're more or less going to be forgettable once the 5th gen starts.

Its a shame, the tag battle arc proves that the writers aren't incapable of making great new rival characters, both Conway and Holly were excellent characters with great dynamics with Dawn and Brock...but the Contest rivals don't have that same impact.

I'll stick with the "they're forgettable" notion. Its almost impossible to get excited over these characters because they generally don't bring much of interest to the show when they appear.

 

[Doters]

One of the most disappointing aspects of Diamond and Pearl was the writers failure to create interesting rivals for Dawn. Especially if you were going to compare them to Drew and Harley, who along with May, created some of the best character interaction in the series.

 

[Durivan]

I actually prefer the DP contest arc over Hoenn/BF ones so far.

-Hoenn/BF-

May was pretty dull by herself. I think she was pretty horrible for a main character. She comes in knowing absolutely nothing then suddenly becomes so great far to fast. She rarely ever ends up paying for her mistakes and ends up the victor far too often. I actually started to hate her more and more as the seasons she was in progressed.

Drew was pretty much just a stuck up jerk. He was pretty boring overall and his only redeeming qualities was his shippy interactions with May.

Harley was the only good one of the three. He was the perfect foil for May. Unfortunately he was mostly relegated to Team Rocket status of almost always losing. If he had been a more serious rival to May and actually won more than once or had a trick to work once in awhile it would have been better.


-Sinnoh-

Dawn actually has something that qualifies as a personality. She had an idea of what to do from the start but still has lots of work to do to get better. She is a beginner and makes some mistakes and seems to actually be paying for them. I think she has some room for real character development.

Zoey is pretty interesting. She is friendly to Dawn and has taken a sort of mentor role over her. She also has her quirks such as thinking people shouldn’t do both gym battles and contest battles (which she pretty much got over after her loss to Nando at Hearthome), and the fact she gives advice even when not asked for it. I thought her butting in the "Stand Up Sit Down" episode really added to her character. She also has a great contest battling style from what we have seen of her so far.

Kenny seems to have a crush on Dawn and who is most people think will be the canon shipping interest for Dawn. Kenny and Dawn would end up as pretty much the opposite dynamic from May and Drew. I think it holds many interesting possibilities.

Nando seems interesting from what little we’ve seen of him. We haven’t seen any of his contest battles yet so I can’t really say much.

Jessie/Jessalina is really not all that interesting. She is the more villainous rival but it is mostly just her being a jerk. I’ll giver her that her appeals are unique (a.k.a. strange) but there isn’t that much more to her. I find her to be very annoying, but I’ve never liked Jesse that much anyway.

 

[Casual_Furi]

I think Jessalina and Zoey hog all the screentime. They're in almoist every contest and non contest episodes. Their pokemon are also pretty boring (save for Wobbuffet, who is never seen in contests) Nando's only had 3 episodes and Kenny's only had 4!

 

[Piplup]

I like Zoey and Kenny but Kenny should appear more
Nando is a little interesting only because he does both and he should appear more too (and we should see him battle a Gym leader like with Paul to emphasize he's also Ash's rival... Fantina seems a good choise for him and we did see that he wanted to battle at her Gym)
I like how Jessie is a serious rival to Dawn and I hope she'll get to the GF

 

[DashingFox]

One of the most disappointing aspects of Diamond and Pearl was the writers failure to create interesting rivals for Dawn. Especially if you were going to compare them to Drew and Harley, who along with May, created some of the best character interaction in the series.

This sums it up for me. The writers had Harley and Drew so well developed that when one looks at Dawn's rivals a bad taste gets left in your mouth.

 

[Casual_Furi]

Nando isn't a serious threat to Ash. All of his known pokemon are weak to fire and flying moves. I'd be surprised if he made it to the sinnoh league

 

[Nando]

I never understood the hype for May's rivals. Besides Harley, there really was only Drew, who was really quite cookie cutter. Soledad could have been good but she unfortunately was only a oneshot.

The problem with Dawn's rivals is that there's an extreme misbalance between their appearances. Kenny should have appeared many more times than he has by this point, and Zoey didn't need to appear as often as she has.

 

[Cybersai]

The problem with Dawn's rivals aren't their appearances. The problem with them is the lack of interesting moments and they dynamic with Dawn.

Zoey/Dawn interaction has been stagnant since their second episode. Every time Zoey appears, its more or less the same thing as their previous encounter. Zoey gives advice, Dawn follows it, or Zoey gives orders on what she should do.

Kenny's childhood history makes him slightly more interesting than the other two, but again, he doesn't really have much depth to him. It seems like the writers think the "Pikari" nickname he has for Dawn is what makes him interesting, but that's pretty much his only quirk. Still, I think he has the most potential out of the three.

Nando worked better as a filler character than a rival. His interaction with Dawn, or Ash for that matter, is no different than any filler character interacting with them. I like his unique character design, (at least nobody can accuse him of being bland looking like they do with Kenny), but in terms of personality, all we can say about him is that he's nice and he's quiet.


There's nothing fun about the way they interact with Dawn. I actually feel sorry for the girl, she's an interesting character but doesn't have interesting rivals to bounce her personality off of. Giving Dawn a bunch of friendly and supportive characters worked better in theory than it has actually played out. The lack of one-shot rivals in this arc thus far has also been rather odd, especially since a lot of the one-shot rivals in AG had some really interesting personalities.

I guess we'll have to see who this Kaito guy is in the Wallace arc. I hope he's interesting.

 

[momogirl]

I love all of them, well, mostly XD

kenny: YES. yes. He is SUCH a cutie. He may look bland to most people, but I LOVE the adorable chubby-cheeked brown-haired little boy look! It's simple, but I think he's absolutely adorable. Even in personality, he's so cute! He's not the bravest or the coolest, but his crush on Dawn is cute and he's just fun. I like that.

Nando: Naaandooo~ Oh where do I start?? Nando is a BARD. I EFFING LOVE BARDS. He's got that cool, calm air to him, and even an awesome accent in the dub *_* He likes to cheer people up with music, and that is just awesome. He's got his head in the clouds half the time, and I think that's just so amusing. Plus he's so fancy and sparkly~

Zoey: Yay Zoey~ I just adore her! Sure she has a few flaws, but she's gotten over one of them, and I have NEVER seen her "noseyness" as being nosey. She's just a friend being helpful! If brock suggested all of the things she did in her place, NO ONE would have said ANYTHING about brock, because he's a close friend. Zoey is a close friend now too, and has every right to be concerned about her friends, and suggest helpful tips for them, really I think that's all she wants to do! She can SEEM stuck up, but seriously, compare her to drew, her mild stuck-upness is almost NOTHING compared to how he was, and yet people like him more..? Atleast Zoey SUPPORTS dawn instead of mocking her like the AG rivals did to May! She's also super cool, I really love her character design and I just get all giddy when I see her, so awesome and tom-boyish *_*

Jessalina: Uh...annoying Jessie as always XD Fun outfit though.


All I know is, the AG rivals never really caught my interest. Drew was a complete jerk and snob at first, though I guess he got better, he still never struck me as that great, in my opinion. His design wasn't much more interesting than Kenny's. Harley was very interesting, but I would have liked him more if he wasn't such a jerk with serious grudge issues. XD I love the DP contest rivals about 100 times more. I dont care how "boring" being NICE to dawn makes them, I'M ENJOYING THE CHANGE. <3


wow I rambled woops. This is what i get for not sleeping last night, so excuse me if I sound really opinionated, just what I think of them ^^

 

[Lesley_GSC]

I love all of them, well, mostly XD

kenny: YES. yes. He is SUCH a cutie. He may look bland to most people, but I LOVE the adorable chubby-cheeked brown-haired little boy look! It's simple, but I think he's absolutely adorable. Even in personality, he's so cute! He's not the bravest or the coolest, but his crush on Dawn is cute and he's just fun. I like that.

Nando: Naaandooo~ Oh where do I start?? Nando is a BARD. I EFFING LOVE BARDS. He's got that cool, calm air to him, and even an awesome accent in the dub *_* He likes to cheer people up with music, and that is just awesome. He's got his head in the clouds half the time, and I think that's just so amusing. Plus he's so fancy and sparkly~

Zoey: Yay Zoey~ I just adore her! Sure she has a few flaws, but she's gotten over one of them, and I have NEVER seen her "noseyness" as being nosey. She's just a friend being helpful! If brock suggested all of the things she did in her place, NO ONE would have said ANYTHING about brock, because he's a close friend. Zoey is a close friend now too, and has every right to be concerned about her friends, and suggest helpful tips for them, really I think that's all she wants to do! She can SEEM stuck up, but seriously, compare her to drew, her mild stuck-upness is almost NOTHING compared to how he was, and yet people like him more..? Atleast Zoey SUPPORTS dawn instead of mocking her like the AG rivals did to May! She's also super cool, I really love her character design and I just get all giddy when I see her, so awesome and tom-boyish *_*

Jessalina: Uh...annoying Jessie as always XD Fun outfit though.

You. Win. The. Interenet.

Because I agree with just about everything you said there. ^_^

 

[momogirl]

You. Win. The. Interenet.

Because I agree with just about everything you said there. ^_^

Haha yaaay XD I just tend to really like all the characters I guess, as long as theyre not complete jerks~<3

 

[Snake Bandage]

*sigh* I'll try to make this short because I'm known to go on and on when it comes to this subject.

Jessalina definitely isn't my favorite Coordinator!Jessie disguise (though holy god, her flirting with Wallace was the best thing I've seen in Pokemon in AGES), Kengo's a very cute kid though doesn't make for a terribly good rival (kind of like Jun in the games), Fried Chicken Man is incredibly boring, and Nozomi should stop butting into everyone else's business, that nosy nubnugget.

Call me when she gets a good rival please.

 

[momogirl]

*sigh* I'll try to make this short because I'm known to go on and on when it comes to this subject.

Jessalina definitely isn't my favorite Coordinator!Jessie disguise (though holy god, her flirting with Wallace was the best thing I've seen in Pokemon in AGES), Kengo's a very cute kid though doesn't make for a terribly good rival (kind of like Jun in the games), Fried Chicken Man is incredibly boring, and Nozomi should stop butting into everyone else's business, that nosy nubnugget.

Call me when she gets a good rival please.

f..fried chicken man? o_o do you mean nando? wtf XD

Also since when is trying to help out your firends "butting in"? o_o seriously. I thought making friendly suggested to those who you consider good friends was something common in everyday society. Or maybe that's too "realistic" of her character to be concerned about her pals.

what WOULD be your idea of a "GOOD" rival? A snotty jerkface pretty boy coming in to belittle everyone rather than try to be nice and help dawn to improve? Oh wait that's been done. A LOT.

 

[Ashfangirl17]

Kenny has to be my fav out of all of them. His past relationship with Dawn is cute and I like that he has a crush on her. Too bad he hardly ever appears so he doesn't evolve as a character =[

Zoey-I dread that name now. I'm sorry I just can't stand this character, no offense Zoey fans its just her nosey attitude and pusheyness blah. Plus she appears far too much. Give other rivals a chance for crying out loud LOL.

Jessie-Um nothing else to say, at least she's winning contests now and is begining to win the fair way.

Nando-??? Who is Nando?? No, no I kid. He's not all that intresting in contests at the moment but once he gets into the leauges it should boost up his character a bit.

But yah the writers really didn't do a good job with Dawns rivals. I'll give them all a chance to develop later on, if nothing happens they'll remain lost to me forever.

 

[Shinneth]

Yeah... especially when you compare them to May's rivals, Dawn's are... really in need of some major development/re-tooling, or... I'd even take some retconning in certain cases. Even though I think the anime's too invested with what they've got now considering they're in the new ending and all...

Jessie: Best one so far, mostly because she's won a ribbon now.

Zoey: Hardly counts as a rival anymore since the vast majority of her appearances consist of her showing up, giving random advice/suggestions, and then leaving. The Wallace Cup has a chance to make her interesting again, I think. That's me being optimistic. She doesn't necessarily offend me... she is boring me, yes, but that just puts her at lukewarm for me rather than all-out HAET.

Nando: A total nonpresence, really. Not all that interesting in his own right, either.

Kenny: I immensely dislike the twit. The only thing remotely amusing about him is how he gets treated like a total punching bag in his second appearance. The childhood friend of Dawn aspect seems really thrown in, because what else have we really gotten out of that other than Pikari/Dee-Dee, which by now is a quirk that isn't even exclusive to him anymore? He's the one I would like shoved out of the picture completely. Of all Dawn's rivals, he's easily the hardest one to take seriously. I... really don't want him to win over Dawn at any point, either. He's boring, he fails, get him out of there.

Conway was a perfect foil to Dawn in the tag battle arc; why not bring him back? May would have been an excellent rival for her as well, though it's doubtful she'll stay in Sinnoh beyond DP80. And say, it couldn't hurt to have some one-shot rivals now and then. At least they might succeed in taking the staleness away from Dawn's long-term rivals.

There are so many ways to improve on Dawn's rival situation... but the writers really fell apart on this. How or why is completely beyond me... but this section here is easily my least-favorite part of D/P right now.

 

[Jo-Jo]

One of the biggest problems with Dawn's rivals IMO is that there are too many of them, and the writers are trying to make all of them important. What they've ended up with is a complicated web of relationships between a group of people who are mostly not at all interesting. This is one instance when they probably should have modelled Dawn's quest more closely on May's. May started out with just Jessie, who we already knew so she didn't need much development, and Drew. They got to play with May/Drew for a few episodes, while giving May a string of one-shot rivals who were all good characters in their own right. By the time Harley showed up we already had a good feel for who Drew was and why May's rivalry with him was important. Then Harley was such a unique character that he didn't need much of an introduction, so we could segue straight into the new three-way rivalry, which the writers didn't add to until a whole year later when they introduced Solidad. We had plenty of time to adapt to each new rival and see how they fitted into the established dynamic. Whereas with Dawn they just threw four rivals at her at once. It's as if they were trying to model it on the Battle Frontier contests, only BIGGER!! with EVEN MORE OF THEM!! Except the reason the Battle Frontier didn't waste time easing each rival in gradually was because we already knew who Drew and Harley were. When you try and do it with a bunch of new characters, it's just a bit of a mess.

The main problem, though, is just the fact that the writers seem to have lost their ability to create quirky, likable characters. Even May's one-shot rivals had more personality than this new crop. The only vaguely promising one of the lot is Kenny, and he was clearly designed to be a secondary rival, which means the main rival needs to be better than him, not... Zoey.

IMO if they'd stuck with Kenny and Zoey that would have been an improvement. Or they could even have forgotten Zoey and made Jessalina the main rival. Either way, though, we did NOT need Nando. My god.

 

[momogirl]

I think I like Zoey and Kenny a lot because they feel more like real-life people than crazy people with weird quirks XD Real people arn't always as exciting and quirky as you'd want them to be, and they all have flaws. Zoey has lots of flaws ut that's why I like her! She's realistic, and honest. She says what she thinks. And kenny would remind you of an old friend.

Nando is weird and not very realistic, but that's part of his own charm XD


Were May's one-shot rivals REAL:LY that good? o_o Somehow I doubt it...

 

[Snake Bandage]

f..fried chicken man? o_o do you mean nando? wtf XD

Nando's. Grilled chicken, actually, but Fried Chicken Man sounds funnier.

Also since when is trying to help out your firends "butting in"? o_o

Helpful advice is one thing. Brock gives helpful advice occasionally. OCCASIONALLY. Occasionally is FINE. But every time Nozomi appears, she has something to say, some "helpful advice" that everyone HAS to listen to because OMG SHE'S NOZOMI. I'm sorry, it's completely aggravating. I HATE people like that. And she really didn't make a very good impression to me with her "OMG DOING BOTH CONTESTS AND GYMS IS A SIN" attitude in her first episode. So Ash tries contests once! Big deal.

A good rival would be someone who's at least a bit antagonistic, and Hikari's rivals just aren't. They don't have to be assholes, they could be like Jun - a good friend and kind person who's convinced they're all that and a bag of chips. Kenny is ALMOST Jun-esque (which is why I like him), but he's too down-to-earth and nice to actually be very rival-y.