Should James become Ash's rival in Gen V?

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Neko Godot

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Lots of people have been complaining about how Jessie gets most of the spotlight from TR and how James doesn't do much. Am I the only one who thinks this can be rectified by making James a rival to Ash the same way as Jessie has been a rival to Dawn and May?
 
If they increase the amount of PokéRinger contests in the anime, then yes. Then Kojiro would have the chance to win for once. But I don't see him doing any gym battles.
 
It would have made more sense the other way around. I would honestly see it working out better as James doing Contests and Jesse battling.
 
Might be a good way to give James more spotlight. Maybe he could do gym battles as well. Decides to collect badges, to go along with his bottlecaps.
 
I don't know. James' interests don't tend to match with Ash's interests, so they wouldn't really make for very good rivals. Even PokéRinger, it's just a recurring plot device and Ash always does better in it than James because James has shit luck.
 
Ooh, now that would be interesting. It'd certainly be a nice twist to integrate James into the story some more as well as spicing up the badge quest a bit. And I always found Ash's and James's interactions oddly adorable, so I'd dig it. XD

If he would do Gym battles, it would have to be off-screen, though, aside from maybe a couple times when he's first trying it out and probably the rare match here and there. They could play around and have stuff like Ash losing to a Gym leader and then James coming around and winning against them in his first go (after which Ash would come around and win on the second try, of course). Hey, maybe they could even use this to introduce us to some anime-exclusive Gym leaders.

Haha, I wonder what kind of disguise he would use.

And also! This would mean they would have to actually develop James's Pokémon and give him a varied team! Something which I'm sure all the Chimecho and Mime Jr. of the world would appreciate.
 
Ugggghhh, no. As much as I love gyms, I couldn't stand watching the same matches twice, or anything similar. Also, the gym quest does need almost a full team, or at the very least 3, for 3vs3 gym battles, let alone the 6vs6at the league. I just can't feasibly see it happening.
 
I'm still hoping the show is wrapped up at the end of this generation.

So no, I do not want James to be Ash's rival in Gen 5.
 
Scott, for crying out loud, this is completely off topic.

On topic: James isn't even that interested in gyms. He and Jessie DID try to get into the Pokemon League back in Kanto, but they were trying to do it in the easiest ways possible. It hasn't come up again after the Indigo League arc ended.
 
Didn't Jessie tend to get more screentime than James back in Kanto/Johto too?

It always seemed like she was more focused on, at any rate.
 
I've never really noticed any true bias toward any member of TR, one way or another, until DP popped up.
 
Scott85 said:
Didn't Jessie tend to get more screentime than James back in Kanto/Johto too?
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I don't think so :/ It's only really DP where it's been glaringly obvious as far as I'm concerned.

As for gyms, he isn't really a gym person. Of his 2 pokes, he's reluctant to let 1 battle lest it gets hurt. I'm really at a loss as to what they could do to even out the focus.
 
Well I seem to remember Jessie and Misty getting into some squabbles like in the Princess day episode, and a few other eps while James/Meowth just hang back.

Granted Johto was such a filler-fest that all the eps blur together for me, so I don't really know for sure.
 
Scott85 said:
Well I seem to remember Jessie and Misty getting into some squabbles like in the Princess day episode, and a few other eps while James/Meowth just hang back.
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Such as? Girls day is the only one I'm aware of. But Jouto had the Happinaas/Blissey ep and the Delibird ep and that's pretty much it for TR in the region.
 
What about Jessie in the Seaking catching contest in Johto?

Also in "One Trick Phony" TR used a rental Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur to battle Ash.
 
Scott85 said:
What about Jessie in the Seaking catching contest in Johto?

Also in "One Trick Phony" TR used a rental Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur to battle Ash.
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Well, for that episode, both Jessie and James used rental Pokemon. Granted, Jessie used two and James only one, but that had more to do with Jessie's anger dominating over James and Meowth. I also didn't really notice Jessie getting a lot more treatment than James until around D/P. I thought that it was fairly close to equal in the other seasons.

As for the topic, while I definitely wouldn't mind James getting more spotlight, I can't see him challenging gyms like Ash does in every region. I don't think that it would be that interesting to see two trainers challenging the same gym leader. It worked at the beginning of D/P with Paul, but that's because it was new and if done throughout the entire saga, it would get dull really fast. Besides that, I'm not sure James would even have the right amount of Pokemon on him for a gym battle since most of them require at least three Pokemon.

The idea sounds interesting, but I don't think that it would work out in the end.
 
Zeta said:
It would have made more sense the other way around. I would honestly see it working out better as James doing Contests and Jesse battling.
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Entirely agree with this.

That Happiny contest - it's totally James' style. I mean he does get the cute or quirky Pokemon.
 
ii kanji said:
I don't think so :/ It's only really DP where it's been glaringly obvious as far as I'm concerned.

As for gyms, he isn't really a gym person. Of his 2 pokes, he's reluctant to let 1 battle lest it gets hurt. I'm really at a loss as to what they could do to even out the focus.
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This is easily solved, have James borrow Jessie's Pokemon like she does sometimes to James in contests. And as for Mime Jr., he'll either have to go or be evolved, but this is the fifth gen I'm talking about here, so there's still time.

And as for "HE'S NOT A GYM PERSON!!!", I'm sure that the writers could think up some silly reason for him to do gyms. We wouldn't even have to see all the battles, I mean Ash has 3 other rivals, and the only time we saw a rival battle a gym leader was with Roark. Really, it amazes me sometimes how some people are so against characters actually doing stuff and being interesting.
 
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