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Was Johanna a RELATIVELY bad mother?

C

Cindyblock

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I say relatively because obviously they're all pretty awful as they allow their children to venture aimlessly through the world. I was rewatching DP from DP001 and noticed how much Johanna got on my nerves. Dawn called her and she tells her to quit crying, to stop calling her and go cry to her friends instead. I was stunned at that statement...her ten year old child is alone and calls you and you tell her to stop!? Meanwhile Delia is desprately hanging by the phone awaiting a call to see if Ash is even alive and Johanna tells Dawn to stop. Caroline's neglegant daughter never called home either!? May and Ash are horrible children...so is Brock. Dawn is intially good but, her mother rejects her, just another example of how family oriented this television program is...as their children hop on aeroplanes and fly around the globe alone.
 
I imagine Johanna is what Zoey would be when she grows up.

Both her mother and Zoey were almost exactly the same and they both had Glameow.
 
Gliscor'd said:
I imagine Johanna is what Zoey would be when she grows up.

Both her mother and Zoey were almost exactly the same and they both had Glameow.
Click to expand...

I completely forgot about Zoey's Glameow D: But yea that's probably the only similarity i can think of.
 
Its honestly as if the writers created two characters to serve the same purpose, scold Dawn and act as Mary Sue's. They also both had the same monotone personality.

It was like Johanna was this big Contest winner but she scolded Dawn and yelled at her for crying. She would sit on that ugly pink couch in her house every single time we saw her as if she was permanently stuck in that position.

Then Zoey becomes, "Mom on the road," to Dawn, doing the exact same thing. Zoey was pretty dull herself once she got over her Gym/Contest grudge and didn't become interesting until the Snowpoint eps for obvious reasons.

Johanna was the worst mother ever seen in the pokemon anime.
 
Gliscor'd said:
Its honestly as if the writers created two characters to serve the same purpose, scold Dawn and act as Mary Sue's. They also both had the same monotone personality.

It was like Johanna was this big Contest winner but she scolded Dawn and yelled at her for crying. She would sit on that ugly pink couch in her house every single time we saw her as if she was permanently stuck in that position.

Then Zoey becomes, "Mom on the road," to Dawn, doing the exact same thing. Zoey was pretty dull herself once she got over her Gym/Contest grudge and didn't become interesting until the Snowpoint eps for obvious reasons.

Johanna was the worst mother ever seen in the pokemon anime.
Click to expand...

Yea I will admit I didn't like that whole Grudge with the gym matches thing but I really like how her charecter wast left in the end.
 
Shame on Johanna...Expecting Dawn to achive a goal she wouldn't achive...lol

At least Dawn ended up deafeating Johanna's contest rival...lol she couldn't do it.
 
I'm sorry, but I missed the part when in a world where ten years old is apparently of legal age to travel on your own, that a mother could be considered bad for trying to get her daughter to stop being a "mommy's girl" and trying to get her to make new connections with the people she had came in contact with.

I guess teaching your child you can't always be there for them and to stand on their own now that they are an "adult" (by virtue of the show's in-universe rules of being a trainer) is bad parenting.

And Brock is a horrible child? He took care of his, what seems at times to be hundreds, of siblings on his own and put his dream aside for their sake. His father returns and he was finally allowed to pursue what he wanted to do.

Oh and this is like the topic of whether characters never sleep. It's 20+ minute show, they show what's relevant to the plot. They aren't going to show every phone call made.

I love how caricatured you people make characters you like/dislike out to be.

For a rejecting mother, Johanna sure does spend a lot of time watching Dawn on the TV, though by all you people's logic, she's clearly doing it so she can criticize her as many of you would say, rather than helping her get better with constructive comments (something members of this forum can't seem to distinguish between)
 
Johanna was a strict mother but she did nothing for her daughter. Dawn improved because of herself, rivals and/or Ash, nothing to do with her mother.
 
Gliscor'd said:
Johanna was a strict mother but she did nothing for her daughter. Dawn improved because of herself, rivals and/or Ash, nothing to do with her mother.
Click to expand...
Now imagine if she had cuddled Dawn instead of pushing her toward Ash when she had a problem. She was encouraged to be independent of her mother, while looking toward others for help. Johanna is a Top Coordinator, imagine how bad it looks for Dawn being the daughter of a Top Coordinator, getting to the top spot not of her own skill, but because Johanna was being a back seat driver every single step of the way? It wouldn't be her win. She could have beaten Zoey in the Grand Festival, but she would have still lost as a character compared to the Dawn we do have.

Yeah, you guys are right, most of these characters are one-dimensional, but what's amazing is how much more one-dimensional you can make them with your interpretations
 
Yah, I wasn't a fan of Dawn's mom myself, I mean Ash's mom at least worrys about him and gives him advice or helps him when needed. Its not like people stalk her at her house or any thing from what I saw, she could have helped her out.
 
I laugh at how people here apparently hate character development, cause that's exactly what Johanna gave to Dawn's character...
The writers do good stuff and the fans laugh at it instead of appreciating it...
 
^but the thing is, development of a main character is ALL she was good for. She served as a mere plot device, not that great of a character in her own right, and as others have noted, it doesn't help that the regularly-appearing Nozomi (who was also dull as hell) was pretty much just a carbon clone of her.

To be fair, she was probably given Top Coordinator status in the anime due to the fact that she competes in the Master Rank Contests in the games (though, they really didn't make a big deal of it in the games' storyline.... then again, they didn't make a big deal out of Contests to begin with), so if one wanted to describe her as a Mary Sue, she's at least more justified than the likes of Nozomi (moreso considering her high status was achieved through unspecified backstory, as I recently got through talking about with another character). On another note, where the hell's her Garura from the games?
 
It bugs me when every now and then someone pops out the card called "they're only ten years old!"
But isn't it like they are more mature and capable to travel alone at the age of ten in the Pokémon World, because it's simply a whole another world? It's like.. normal.

I didn't like Johanna at all. I never did. She looked so young and somehow childish, and something in her characteristics didn't catch up with me.
 
I also hated Johann's hair style and how skinny she was. What was up with that?

Delia and Caroline had womanly figures. They looked like adults. Same with Brock's mother. Although I suppose Caroline had to be well-endowed for a reason.

Johanna looked like a stick figure.
 
I think tough love is the perfect phrase to use here. Just because what Johanna did may not have made her a likable person, her actions were beneficial in helping Dawn mature. It's like a parent playing the bad cop - they don't like it because it makes their children dislike them, but they have good intentions while under that facade, hoping that what they do will teach their children a valuable lesson.

Gliscor'd said:
Its honestly as if the writers created two characters to serve the same purpose, scold Dawn and act as Mary Sue's. They also both had the same monotone personality.

It was like Johanna was this big Contest winner but she scolded Dawn and yelled at her for crying. She would sit on that ugly pink couch in her house every single time we saw her as if she was permanently stuck in that position.

Then Zoey becomes, "Mom on the road," to Dawn, doing the exact same thing. Zoey was pretty dull herself once she got over her Gym/Contest grudge and didn't become interesting until the Snowpoint eps for obvious reasons.

Johanna was the worst mother ever seen in the pokemon anime.
Click to expand...

I think the writers purposely made Zoey like Dawn's mother. Since Johanna pushed Dawn to rely on her friends rather than someone whom she wouldn't always have by her side, Zoey filling Johanna's role was a way of the writers easing Dawn into growing alongside her friends rather than turning to her mother whenever something went wrong. I think the parallelisms were also a way of showing that (both owning Glameow, achieving Top Coordinator status, similar personalities).

Yamato-san said:
^but the thing is, development of a main character is ALL she was good for. She served as a mere plot device, not that great of a character in her own right, and as others have noted, it doesn't help that the regularly-appearing Nozomi (who was also dull as hell) was pretty much just a carbon clone of her.
Click to expand...

I don't think it matters too much that her only purpose was to spur Dawn's development and growth since she was a minor character. She filled the typical "strict mom" role, which I felt worked in this case. A bit more personality or a few more quirks would have been gladly welcomed, though.
 
She is kind of domineering towards her daughter. But I still think she's a better parent than Takeshi's parents...
 
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