Which is better: DP or BW?

[Caseydia]

I think aside from Paul, Conway and Barry, BW also has better rivals.

Bianca/Georgia/Burungly/Stephen >>>>> Zoey/Kenny/Nando

Granted nobody in BW could top Paul, or Barry even, but otherwise the rest of the DP rivals were pretty dull and mundane. As much as I liked Conway, we barely saw him outside those small arcs too.

The BW rivals are nothing compared to the DP rivals.

I understand the development but there is the strength and other things that seems to be missing now. Not only that but there has been little interaction with Burgundy/Cilan and Iris/Georgia lately like rivals should. Not to mention Bianca just recently coming off of her losing streak and Trip....Well I don't want to say anything else.

Now I get that BW has good chemisty as a group but as trainers, I'm not too convinced. There is Ash who pretty mich does his own thing. Iris who we barely see training compared to Dawn and Cilan barely training.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I think aside from Paul, Conway and Barry, BW also has better rivals.

Bianca/Georgia/Burungly/Stephen >>>>> Zoey/Kenny/Nando

Granted nobody in BW could top Paul, or Barry even, but otherwise the rest of the DP rivals were pretty dull and mundane. As much as I liked Conway, we barely saw him outside those small arcs too.

I don't think that BW has better rivals. I still don't care much for anime Bianca or Stephen, although like I said earlier I haven't seen the recent tournament arc so maybe I'd feel different about them after that. I like Georgia and Burgundy as characters, but I'm not sure if they work as rivals. Georgia isn't pushing Iris to reach her goal and their interactions mostly consists of Georgia calling out Iris' flaws, Iris arguing back and then nothing comes out of it. Their rivalry is going nowhere fast. I like Burgundy as an underdog character, but she doesn't feel like much of a rival for Cilan, but I don't think that they both consider themselves rivals and there's not much tension in their rivalry to begin with. Trip is extremely dull and uninteresting, more so than at least Zoey and Kenny. Nando never felt like a rival due to not appearing for the majority of DP.

DP had a lot more effort put into their rivalries, including Zoey/Dawn, and most of them were far more interesting than any of the rival characters in BW. At least the interactions between Zoey and Dawn actually went somewhere and was significant to their characters. The rivals in BW are either dull or just not good rivals, but rather good characters, which doesn't make me think that they're much better than the rivals in DP.

 

[Cybersai]

- Paul was the only real standout rival of the series. Trip is a terrible character.

- Barry and Bianca are pretty much the same, comic relief rivals and nothing more.

- Burungly and Georgia as well as Stephen, are fun characters. I like them more than Zoey/Kenny. Nando was just wasted potential.

 

[Hidden Mew]

- Paul was the only real standout rival of the series. Trip is a terrible character.

- Barry and Bianca are pretty much the same, comic relief rivals and nothing more.

- Burungly and Georgia as well as Stephen, are fun characters. I like them more than Zoey/Kenny. Nando was just wasted potential.

I agree that Paul was the only rival in DP that really stood out and that Trip is a terrible character. As for Barry and Bianca, they have the same role as the comic relief rival, but I don't think I would take anime Bianca over Barry. Barry was actually kind of funny at times and Bianca in the anime is more annoying than funny to me. Even though I don't think that he had an on-screen victory, I might have forgotten if he did though, he was actually shown to have some skills as a trainer. While I believe Bianca did defeat Trip in the previous tournament, most of her appearances throughout the series thus far have made me wonder how she could have gotten two badges with just one Pokemon.

I also like at least Burgundy and Georiga more than Zoey and Kenny and they are fun characters, but I don't know if that necessarily means that they're better rivals. It definitely doesn't help that I feel nothing about their rivalries with Cilan and Iris, more so with the latter, and they aren't causing either Cilan and Iris to move closer towards their goal. Cilan is already shown to be really great as it is and Iris doesn't care about actually doing something about her goal, despite always saying that she wants to be a Dragon Master, so aside from making a good underdog character out of Burgundy and the writers possibly using Georgia as a means to poke fun at how nonexistent Iris' determination to reach her goal, I'm not sure what was the point of giving either one of them a rival. At least there was a point with making Zoey and Kenny Dawn's rivals, despite how poorly Kenny was handled as a rival and how dull he was anyway.

 

[Caseydia]

- Paul was the only real standout rival of the series. Trip is a terrible character.

- Barry and Bianca are pretty much the same, comic relief rivals and nothing more.

- Burungly and Georgia as well as Stephen, are fun characters. I like them more than Zoey/Kenny. Nando was just wasted potential.

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm ganging up on you but even though Barry was comic relief he was often seen as being very strong. Bianca was shown as being a shopping bag stepped on. Trip is not terrible like some say, he's just not on Paul's level but neither is he to Gary. All of the rivals in BW are lower in strength. Most of the rivals in DP were experienced.

 

[Mikuri]

- Paul was the only real standout rival of the series. Trip is a terrible character.

- Barry and Bianca are pretty much the same, comic relief rivals and nothing more.

- Burungly and Georgia as well as Stephen, are fun characters. I like them more than Zoey/Kenny. Nando was just wasted potential.

I don't think the rivalry between Cilan and Burgundy is an example of rivalry. Cilan clearly does not consider Burgundy as a rival, she criticizes him and he ignores her, is how it works. The fact that Cilan is in a class more advanced than Burgundy also does not help. Burgundy does not inspire Cilan as Zoey and Paul inspired Dawn and Ash, respectively, because Cilan is already better than Burgundy. I like Burgundy as an individual character, but her rivalry with Cilan has no meaning.
The rivalry between Iris and Georgia can be even more meaningless. They look like two children of preschool fighting over a candy bar.
Trip just fails, Stephan is a decent rival, but Bianca is the only one who can hold my attention, I really want to see her making progress, becoming a stronger Trainer. So I don't think BW is so much better than DP in the rivalry department. I really liked Paul, Zoey, Ursula, Barry, Conway and Jessilina.

 

[Grave-E]

I guess it depends on what you're looking for in a rival, or at the very least, aspects that'll keep you satisfied. If you want fun characters that are good for entertainment value, there's BW. If you want ones that are there to push the protagonists to improve, there's DP.

I'm more for the former, myself, though I can dig that others might want something different.

 

[Cybersai]

I just want to see entertaining characters. That is obvious.

 

[Piplup]

I think aside from Paul, Conway and Barry, BW also has better rivals.

Bianca/Georgia/Burungly/Stephen >>>>> Zoey/Kenny/Nando

Granted nobody in BW could top Paul, or Barry even, but otherwise the rest of the DP rivals were pretty dull and mundane. As much as I liked Conway, we barely saw him outside those small arcs too.

It makes more sense to compare Trip to Paul and Bianca to Barry, and not to Dawn's rivals
I don't think I even need to say anything about who's better in the Paul/Trip comparasion...
Bianca is totally the "female version" of Barry and she's the ONLY rival in BW I can care about, even though I still prefer Barry over her (Barry was just too awesome, I doubt they'll ever top him with a funny rival, just like I doubt they'll ever top Paul with a serious rival)
Stephan is...... I don't know... he's ok, he's nice... but I can't care for him too much
Burgundy and Georgia barely feels like a "rival" anyway and they're not really that interesting, especially Burgundy... at least I can somewhat like Georgia, but that's it...

So if to compare Georgia/Burgundy/Stephan to Conway/Nando/Jesslina/Zoey/Kenny/Ursula - I honestly prefer any of these DP ones
I really loved Zoey... she was cool and different in many ways that I already explained in details before
Kenny had entertaining interactions with both Dawn and Ash, had his funny moments of telling Dawn's embarassing past, had the cute crush on Dawn, actually managed to motivate and excite Dawn to battle him, etc...
Conway was funny and gave us some good battles, Jesslina was an awesome improvement for Jessie as a Coordinator, Ursula was ok and I kind of liked her though not as much cause she's just another generic antagonistic-for-no-reason rival, and Nando... he could be handled way better, that's right, but I do like him for his uniqueness of doing both things and I also think it's much better to have someone like Nando rather than a made up random characters like Morrison and the other one shots at Leagues/Grand Festivals... at least it's someone we actually know and that got some relation to the main characters... Nando also gave us what I find to be the BEST Contest Battle ever (Nando VS Zoey in the GF) and his battle with Ash in the League was pretty cool too (mostly the Heracross VS Kricketune part)
So - as you can see - each and every person have his own personal opinions, there's no right or wrong, and for me DP wins in every possible ways including the rivals

I guess it depends on what you're looking for in a rival, or at the very least, aspects that'll keep you satisfied. If you want fun characters that are good for entertainment value, there's BW. If you want ones that are there to push the protagonists to improve, there's DP.

I'm more for the former, myself, though I can dig that others might want something different.

I think the DP rivals had their nice side of entertainment and humor too
Like... we're talking about the series that had BARRY... we also got Conway... and even Paul could give us a laugh once in a while (like when he didn't remember Dawn, or that maze ep where the twerps constantly annoyed him, etc...) and Kenny also had some funny stuff as I said before
Seriously, it's not like the BW rivals are THAT funny or something... it's mainly just Bianca who's funny there... while Burgundy/Georgia can sometimes be a little funny too
Well, at least that's how I see it...
Anyway, I think rivals should be more about their relationship with the main characters, not just a funny thing (we have crazy eps like evil Togepi and other eps for that, I'd prefer rivals to focus on the actual rivalry and development)

I just want to see entertaining characters. That is obvious.

"entertaining" can be different for different people
I found the DP rivals very entertaining and thought they filled their roles perfectly (or at least as close to perfect as this show ever did)

 

[Shinneth]

For the record, Barry did have on-screen victories. At least two, and one was against Ash. Granted, it was his Empoleon against Ash's Gible that he only had for a couple of minutes before they battled, but it was still a win that the anime showed Barry having. I remember when a lot of people complained about Barry being the buttmonkey of the series because his on-screen wins were so few and far inbetween (I think this was after Paul curbstomped him in the League), but that's nowhere near as bad as how Bianca was treated. It wasn't until 63 episodes in that Bianca partially won a battle (as in, she beat one Pokemon in a tag battle but ultimately lost the whole match). She didn't win a proper on-screen battle until Donamite, 72 episodes in.

For Barry, it was at least understandble why he didn't win that much because he was extremely superficial about what it means to be a strong trainer with strong Pokemon, so there was justification for him to be losing a lot. Even though Bianca shares similarities with Barry, that trait was not one of them. Bianca was absent-minded, but I thought she had a more realistic approach about what it meant to be a trainer. She also had a deeper motivation to be on her journey (i.e. her father). So to see her lose so many times without a single on-screen win until recently, it really damaged her credibility as a rival far more than it ever affected Barry. She is still comic relief, but so is Stephan to a degree, and he was the one who won the Donamite, which boosted his credibility as a rival far beyond Trip, the one we're supposed to buy as the main rival.

There simply wasn't any justification to make Bianca lose as often as she did, nor was there anything to justify why we had to wait this long just to see Bianca win anything.

Lack of justification is another thing that BW suffers from, but for the most part, DP does not. There's a method to the madness in DP, even if it isn't always obvious. There were still bullshit writing flubs and retarded things that happened with no real justification in DP, true, but the justified actions far outnumber the ones that weren't. For BW, that's pretty much a vice-versa, and a big reason why the series bothers me as much as it does. Things happen, but I greatly struggle to see any reasoning in it other than the lazy "the writers said so" excuse. And I just don't like being forced to accept lazy bad writing that cripple even things that I like about BW.

And as I've said before, there is nothing justifiable to how the writing in BW is generally rather bad. The series was a consistent progressive move forward ever since Johto ended, all up until BW started. Now all of a sudden there is a feeling of general regression with no good reason as to why. I don't like having to ask myself WHY whenever something stupid happens in BW. It greatly hampers my ability to enjoy the series, and ignoring those urges is just what the writers want me to do. Well, I'm not going to play along with that. I know they can do better, there's proof that they have, so damn it all, I'm going to be indignant until they get their shit together.

 

[Caseydia]

I just want to see entertaining characters. That is obvious.

I understand. That's cool. I like the interesting characters too. But I also would like to them to be a real challenge and not so much comic relief all the time.

 

[Cybersai]

I think Zoey would have been more interesting if they had her crush on Dawn.

 

[Trainer Gabriel]

^ Your belief that Zoey's what you think she is is the only thing you care about regarding her character, isn't it? :sweat:

 

[Cybersai]

Honestly looking back, the reason why DP's rivals stood out was simply because there was so many of them. But again, only a few of them were actually interesting, and on top of that some of them barely appeared.

As much as I liked Conway and Ursula, they're only in a small handful of episodes. As much as I liked Barry, we don't see him until 100 episodes into DP. Kenny/Nando were non-existent for 85% of DP.

 

[Peppermint Phoenix]

Honestly looking back, the reason why DP's rivals stood out was simply because there was so many of them. But again, only a few of them were actually interesting, and on top of that some of them barely appeared.

As much as I liked Conway and Ursula, they're only in a small handful of episodes. As much as I liked Barry, we don't see him until 100 episodes into DP. Kenny/Nando were non-existent for 85% of DP.

Yeah but I don't give a rat's ass about any of the rivals in BW. They don't add drama and they are not compelling. Barry was a humor character but he was compelling because in the games there is a lot of temptation to only use attacks. I rarely use non attacks and in Pokemon online I win most of my matches so Barry was not serious but he was compelling. I guess I see Georgia as compelling because I hate Iris too but she is destined to loss so I can't enjoy that. I guess I can't find any of the character as funny because I have to much empathy for them. Similar to how Kristen Wiig annoying the fuck out of people doesn't entertain me it annoys the fuck out of me as well. But they aren't badass enough for me to find the cool either. So really what's left. Me being as bored as I was with Kenny.

 

[piplup15]

BW is awesome and so are their pokemons... i dunno why but my friends thinks that Gen V is the most childish generation cuz they all look cute and childish like but i think they are all badass xD

 

[Peppermint Phoenix]

BW is awesome and so are their pokemons... i dunno why but my friends thinks that Gen V is the most childish generation cuz they all look cute and childish like but i think they are all badass xD

I like gen V and Unova but this is an anime thread and the quality of the games does not directly effect the quality of the anime AND the problem with BW is no one is badass Ash is clumsy and every one is new. I just don't feel like what I'm watching is intense which is very distracting.

The inability to see tension in a story ruins the story speaking of the story they aren't using the games story which is one of the best videogame stories of all time. The movesets leave much to be desired.

Watching BW makes me angry. I still going to watch it but I can't defend it

 

[Cybersai]

Yeah this thread is about the anime, not how you feel about Unova or the 5th gen pokemon in general. For example I make it known that I disliked the Johto saga of the anime, yet I do like the GS games and most of the Johto pokemon themselves. There is a difference between games and anime.

Come to think of it, with Unova ending probably in the Fall, does anyone think the potential filler arc will be better than BW so far? Even though its part of the same gen, there has been a difference between each arc to the next. Especially if Plasma return.

 

[Trainer Gabriel]

We can all hope the quality of BW improves in the next saga. And hopefully Trip will be resolved in the Unova League. I think there's a good chance of that, tbh, but we'll just have to see what the writers have in store.

 

[El_]

Come to think of it, with Unova ending probably in the Fall, does anyone think the potential filler arc will be better than BW so far? Even though its part of the same gen, there has been a difference between each arc to the next. Especially if Plasma return.

I honestly don't know. One can only hope, but it really depends on the content and what they do with it. An entire filler arc that had Team Plasma in it could be amazing if they handled it right. Hopefully by then alot of the rivals will also be wrapped up which would allow a bigger focus on the filler's plot as well.