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The main Ash shippings have a popularity pattern?

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GameCubeController

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I would consider the main Ash shippings to be the pairing of him with his female travel companions. I'm pretty sure that the size of the fanbase for each ship has gone down with each new companion. (pokeshipping is more popular than advanceshipping, which is more popular than pearlshipping, which is more popular than negaishipping.)

Anyone want to comment on why this pattern is happening?

You don't have to stay 100% on topic here. And this is sort of a discussion thread and not completely an "answering this question" thread.
 
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I'd assume Pokeshipping is the most popular because Misty stuck around longer than May and Dawn. Also, many have nostalgia more Misty since she's the first girl- since a lot of anime fans grew up on the show, Pokeshipping was many people's first ship.

A lot of the people who got into the series in Hoenn are now around the same age that the people who got into the series from the start were around Hoenn, so I'd assume that contributes to Advance's popularity. Also, May was the first girl to travel with Ash that wasn't Misty, so in a way it became the first alternative to Pokeshipping for those who wanted to ship Ash with a major female character.

I'd assume Pearlshipping isn't as popular because Dawn is shipped off with more people than the other girls so far. Aside from Ash, Misty is only shipped off often with Tracey and occasionally Gary. May is almost exclusively shipped off with Drew when not with Ash (not counting game ships like Hoennshipping). Dawn is shipped off with Paul and Barry in addition to Ash, as well as occasionally Kenny and Conway. Of course, I'm talking mainly about popular ships- I know Misty and May are shipped off with others than what I listed, but not often.

Iris is still new, hence why Negaishipping is less supported. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't get much support, though- I've seen a lot more Wishfulshipping support, and Cafemochashipping (from what I've seen) seems to be more popular too.
 
I also have noticed that. I don't know why that is? I can understand Pokeshipping being the most popular but, I don't get why it seems advanceshipping is more popular than pearl and pearl more so than negai? Weird, I've thought about that too.
 
Keep in mind that May also has one of the most popular non-Ash ship of the series, which is Contestshipping. Neither Dawn nor Iris have an alternative Ash ship as popular as that. Back in the AG era, Advance and Contestshipping were usually neck and neck in popularity, but towards the end Contestshipping wound up becoming more popular for obvious reasons.

So I don't think its fair to compare them. Contestshipping was also about as popular as Pokeshipping was during the height of its popularity. The problem is now that AG ended over 5 years ago, so a lot of the old Contestshipping fandom is gone.

I'd actually say its more like this:

Misty and May had the most popular ships in the series, then Dawn, and then Iris.
 
I think it goes like this in Popularity for the main Ash Shippings

PokeShipping
PalletShipping (WHICH U COMPLETELY DIDNT MENTION :mad: )
AdvancedShipping
PearlShipping
CafeMochaShipping
NegaiShipping
BoulderShipping
 
I never understand Pokeshipping being the most popular; isn't there an age difference between Ash and Misty (She's shown to be taller than Ash)? Guys prefer to go out with gals who are younger than them. Pearlshipping makes the most sense out of the 4 main shippings since the two are usually paired up to solve a conflict/save something, and didn't Oak mentioned that if a trainer's pokemon is in love with another trainer's Pokemon, both trainers should fall in love too?
 
Ghetsis-Dennis said:
I never understand Pokeshipping being the most popular; isn't there an age difference between Ash and Misty (She's shown to be taller than Ash)?
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No. They're both ten years old. Even if there was an age difference, though, why should that affect Pokeshipping's popularity?

Pearlshipping makes the most sense out of the 4 main shippings since the two are usually paired up to solve a conflict/save something, and didn't Oak mentioned that if a trainer's pokemon is in love with another trainer's Pokemon, both trainers should fall in love too?
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This thread has to do with which is the most popular, though, not what makes the most sense. Pokeshipping is arguably the most popular for being the original pairing and the only one with concrete evidence (being paired up to save something has nothing to do with romance). Sure Pearlshipping is popular, but not on the same level.

As for the Prof. Oak thing, I can't remember the exact quote...but I'm pretty sure it had to do with the Pokemon reflecting the feelings of their trainers. There wasn't anything about the trainers falling in love.
 
Insanish Danish said:
No. They're both ten years old.
Click to expand...

Then how is Misty taller than Ash? From what I understand in that universe, characters who are the same size have the same age. It's my main question on why is Pokeshipping even the most popular to begin with.
 
Ghetsis-Dennis said:
Then how is Misty taller than Ash? From what I understand in that universe, characters who are the same size have the same age. It's my main question on why is Pokeshipping even the most popular to begin with.
Click to expand...

Misty's hardly taller than Ash. It usually varies depending on the episode. Besides, you can be taller than someone and still be the same age or even younger.

As said before, Pokeshipping is the most popular because it's the original and it has solid evidence. Whether Ash and Misty are the same age, or if Misty's taller than Ash, is not a factor.
 
Insanish Danish said:
Misty's hardly taller than Ash. It usually varies depending on the episode. Besides, you can be taller than someone and still be the same age or even younger.

As said before, Pokeshipping is the most popular because it's the original and it has solid evidence. Whether Ash and Misty are the same age, or if Misty's taller than Ash, is not a factor.
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It is a scientific FACT that women find tall men attractive even more than muscular men. And age difference effect relationships to due civil norms. So yeah they are factors. Though I think they are the same age and due to women being shorter and growing up faster Ash Should be taller when they get older.
 
Alphaphlare said:
It is a scientific FACT that women find tall men attractive even more than muscular men. And age difference effect relationships to due civil norms. So yeah they are factors. Though I think they are the same age and due to women being shorter and growing up faster Ash Should be taller when they get older.
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Fact or not, this is Pokemon, not the real world. Ash and Misty are fictional characters and it doesn't (or shouldn't) matter if Misty is taller or older or whatever.

But guys, this is off-topic. The topic is the popularity of the Ash ships. Please stick to that.
 
I thought of another, simpler reason why ash's main ships get less popular with time. In combination with the nostalgia thing (like Lyra Zeni said) and other stuff, it could be that the anime doesn't have as many fans as before, so there simply aren't as many shippers. I'm having a hard time finding statistics about the # of anime fans over time though.
 
Keep in mind that also at the beginning of the show, there was no other viable girls to pair Ash up with. Misty was there for 5 years and the concept of another important female heroine being there hadn't existed yet.

This is why people sometimes paired Ash up with Melody, Latias/Bianca or sometimes Casey or Duplica, people would often have the desire to pair Ash up with another female character.

At the time May was introduced, again we had no idea there would be more main girls after her. Nobody knew May would leave just for yet another female heroine, or yet another after that. Advanceshipping likely became popular for this reason, until the Contest stuff really started to get going and Drew was introduced.

The problem is when Dawn was introduced, everyone knew right from the beginning she would just leave when DP ended. We didn't know when Misty or May would leave until it happened. Dawn was the first girl whose departure was expected so Pearlshipping had some shaky supporters for that reason.
 
More like, PokeShipping was the "original" shipping. Most people only watched OS, and just shipped what was in front of them. When Misty left, I'm pretty sure the ones who were either getting bored of Pokeshipping or didn't like it in the first place, OR only watched AG (when Pokemon wasn't as popular) started to Ship Advanceshipping, or Contest for that matter. When Pearlshipping was introduced, I guess people just stuck to what ever they shipped in the first place.
 
Alphaphlare said:
It is a scientific FACT that women find tall men attractive even more than muscular men. And age difference effect relationships to due civil norms. So yeah they are factors. Though I think they are the same age and due to women being shorter and growing up faster Ash Should be taller when they get older.
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Ahahhahaha you mean if they get older :p

And I agree with most reasons here on why ships are declining in popularity. Also, I agree with djulienr on that popularity of "Ash shippings" list, that's what I've seen too. It has to do with the amount of evidence, nostalgia, originality, etc. That's why that list makes sense.



  • Pokeshipping-The original pairing with the most cold-hard evidence supporting it.

    Palletshipping-the original yaoi pairing.

    Advanceshipping-The first main alternative to Pokeshipping for people who disliked that.

    Pearlshipping-Started going down in popularity because people already had their ships and new Dawn would leave and there wasn't many hints IMO.

    Cafemochashipping-Lol this one I guess is just because of all the funny, subtle, little hints they have and because Dento is so fabulous.

    Negaishipping- Another girl to ship Ash with, no one seems to care for this pairing, I don't know why, even Pearl has more than this. My guess is that everyone already ships Ash with someone else and there's literally nothing suggesting them at all, there's more suggesting Cilan in all honesty. And Iris gets annoying with her "you're such a kid" every five minutes.

    Bouldershipping- I don't know it never really caught on...I guess since Brock is always flirting with a million girls every three seconds so it kinda proves he's straight...(not that stops shippers...) or....
    -Brock only hits on women to hide his burning desire to be with Ash and that he's gay- /shot/

Then there are others but, they aren't even popular enough to bother listing.
 
@PokemonLotty - "with the most cold-hard evidence supporting it" Is purely subjective, but I won't get into that.

The decline in popularity, I think, is due to the decline in popularity of the overall Pokemon franchise, since little kids these days who watch Pokemon are more likely to go "YEAH BEAT THOSE BADDIES" rather than "AWWWW KISS HER"
 
PokemonLotty said:
Bouldershipping- I don't know it never really caught on...I guess since Brock is always flirting with a million girls every three seconds so it kinda proves he's straight...(not that stops shippers...) or....
-Brock only hits on women to hide his burning desire to be with Ash and that he's gay- /shot/
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I'm actually surprised Boulder doesn't have that much support. Brock stuck with Ash longer than any other companion, even Misty, and they definitely had moments that could be interpreted by someone with their shipping goggles on as chemistry.
 
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Lyra Zeni said:
I'm actually surprised Boulder doesn't have that much support. Brock stuck with Ash longer than any other companion, even Misty, and they definitely had moments that could be interpreted by someone with their shipping goggles on as chemistry.
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I guess that's because Brock didn't have a single, "gay" bone in his body. The guy fantasized about women in every episode. Ash and Brock are definitely what I'd consider, "close brothers" but that's about it.

If Cilan was introduced earlier in the anime, I could have definitely seen Cilan's admiration of Ash to grow in popularity a lot.
 
^Good point- he was always flirting with woman, so I guess that drew people's attention away from Bouldershipping. Brock never really hit me as that popular either, at least compared to the lead girls.

Yet, Cilan seems much more popular than Iris. Huh.
 
DarkDreams said:
@PokemonLotty - "with the most cold-hard evidence supporting it" Is purely subjective, but I won't get into that.

The decline in popularity, I think, is due to the decline in popularity of the overall Pokemon franchise, since little kids these days who watch Pokemon are more likely to go "YEAH BEAT THOSE BADDIES" rather than "AWWWW KISS HER"
Click to expand...

That's true, it is subjective, you're right. But, I think most people can conclude that Pokeshipping had a good amount of hints to back it up.
 
Please note: The thread is from 14 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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