Who do you think is the better coordinator out of Ash's female companions?

Which coordinator do you think is better?

  • Dawn

    Votes: 36 80.0%

  • May

    Votes: 9 20.0%
  • Total voters
    45
Kelleo

Kelleo

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So, this is basically Dawn vs May, only in terms of their skills as coordinators. I've seen people say May is better simply because she's been entering contests longer and stuff, but I disagree. Yes, she has been in more contests and has some powerful Pokemon (namely Blaziken, Venusaur, and Glaceon), but that doesn't automatically mean she's better.

I honestly think Dawn is the stronger coordinator. Just look at the facts.

- Dawn's mom was a top coordinator and Dawn herself has watched her perform before. Thus, this made her want to do the same, so she already had knowledge of contests when she began. This gave her a head start. May didn't know contests even existed when she first started out.

- Dawn reached the Grand Festival finals, if I remember right. May didn't.

- Dawn also defeated May in the Wallace Cup. It was by a small margin, yes, but Dawn still came out on top.

- Dawn ALSO managed to defeat the same coordinator who ended her mom's winning streak. May never accomplished a victory of equal calibur.

This is just down to opinion, but I also think Dawn had much better move combinations. I mean seriously. Ice Chandelier? Flame Ice? Ice Aqua Jet (before she traded Buizel to Ash)? And especially all of those cool things Dawn did with Buneary's Ice Beam. That was truly spectacular. Dawn is also the brains behind that spin technique that evolved into the impressive Counter Shield. She also has some tough battlers, like Mamoswine and Togekiss. Ambipom as well, before she left it with that ping-pong guy.

And that's what I think. Who do you think is better?
 
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Dawn. Clearly. While May is the home-grown hero, much like Ash. And typically veteran. She is rather generic as far as Contests go.

Dawn is inventive, strategic, and skilled. She invented Counter Shield, the corkscrew dodge, Ice Chandelier, Flame Ice, Ice Aqua Jet, Mamoswine and Cyndaquil's Icy Spike Flame charge, and Piplup and Togekiss's Peck Ballista. Unlike May, who like old Ash (not DP Ash, who was much like Dawn) just ramrodded everything at her opposition, Dawn had intellect that got her out of the pinch. Against Ursula, every time this happened. She has beaten May. She has proven her ability to correctly utilize any Pokemon with proper practice, and is inspirational to others (Mamoswine).

Plus, overall, her character development went better.
 
I agree with the character development part too, actually. It's one reason why I like Dawn more overall as well (I also think she's prettier, but that's beside the point lol).

Also, I apologize for not posting this in the right section. I guess even after several months of being here, I still don't know my way around this forum. xP
 
May hands down had better rivals, and Drew and Harley made her contest journey awesome by their damn selves, but for me Dawn wins this category. Here's why:

1.) It actually has nothing to do with her beating May, but how much better developed her journey(not rivals) was in comparison. We saw Dawn struggle, hit rock bottom, question her potential, to eventually growing as a character and learning from her mistakes.

2.) Her decent track record. Dawn won some, but she definitely lost some as well. Over the span of 4 years, the fact that she was able to lose 5 contests and win 5 contests is an amazing balance. Even more amazing that if one excludes losing in the battle rounds to Zoey in her first contest, which was understandable, than she had an even number of loses in the appeals as the battle rounds.

3.) She always used some kind of strategy in her matches, or tried to. That's why she gets an A for effort for me.

4.) I liked the whole idea of not knowing whether she won or not, predictable episodes got old for me after Kanto.

5.) How her Grand Festival ended. Zoey was always one step ahead, and she did help Dawn quite a bit, so in all fairness she deserved the title. But Dawn's ending pose, when she's talking to her pokemon about never giving up on her dream, with her smile at the end...Brilliant! Perfect ending, even if Togekiss had no place being there and Ambipom should have stayed in my opinion.

So, while I really liked May and Dawn pretty much equally, in terms of who I think was better, Dawn, because she has a story and character development. May's contests besides a select view were very much appreciated hilarity and shipping paradise, still like it somewhat though.
 
I'll agree Dawn was more inventive in Contests, but coming in the finals of the Grand Festival means nothing. All Dawn had to do was beat Ursula a third time and her semi-final match was against Jessie of all people.

If you can't see that her Grand Festival was set-up to give her an easy way to the top, you're not paying close attention. In fact the way her Grand Festival went really killed a lot of the realism of her arc. If Dawn battled Nando, she would have lost. If Dawn battled someone other than Jessie in the semi-finals, she would have lost.
 
I think Dawn is a better coordinator, but that doesn't mean that May isn't a bad coordinator at all. To me they're almost even as seen in the Wallace Cup episode when they battled in the finals. I just voted for Dawn since she's my favorite, while I still like May's character, but May isn't my favorite. I'm very surprised that May didn't get any votes yet.
 
Gliscor'd said:
If you can't see that her Grand Festival was set-up to give her an easy way to the top, you're not paying close attention. In fact the way her Grand Festival went really killed a lot of the realism of her arc. If Dawn battled Nando, she would have lost. If Dawn battled someone other than Jessie in the semi-finals, she would have lost.
Click to expand...

I sometimes wonder how Dawn vs Kenny for a Top 4 match would be. The writers owed him THAT much. It's hard not to feel sympathy for his character when he didn't get a climatic battle against Dawn. I think it could have been a great way to redeem himself if the writers had the decency to at least give him a good battle. It was kinda cold how Kenny's Grand Festival exit went. I loves me some Jessie, but the least they could've done was made her more of a threat in that battle and made it longer.

I still think Dawn's arc as a whole was definitely more well thought out, but the sad thing is, her Grand Festival position wasn't achieved by fighting tooth and nail. It was by getting a victory against Ursula for the 3rd time consecutively and not beating Jessie, but beating Jessie and having the battle shown for only a good amount of seconds. Nando vs Zoey was definitely the epic battle of the Grand Festival, and come to think of it, it was almost as if it was made to showcase how strong Zoey really is and how close, yet far Dawn has for achieving her dream. It wasn't about evening up the score with rivals at all, since Ursula lost for a 3rd time and Kenny lost in the appeal round and Zoey beat Dawn again.
 
I think May is a better coordinator, but she is marred by bad luck. Her rivals are tougher, and the plot kind of dictated that she had to be defeated by the less experienced Dawn. For the Hoenn contests being more simple, I think May was able to do quite a lot in them, and I thought her appeals were more interesting.

But Dawn's really good too, so I can't blame everyone for voting for Dawn.
 
I'd say Dawn because she just seemed more into the contests... And she seemed to do better, since she seems to have won quite a bit. Dawn also had better character development with the contests.
 
I picked Dawn mostly because she had harder lessons to learn, and thus grew stronger because of it. I will not deny May, though, since she almost seems like a prodigy, having lost only a few contests, and mostly from overconfidence. Dawn had the more realistic story, although the only real challenge she had was Ursula. I guess it's more believable for me that Dawn got that skilled.
 
I like May more than Dawn but there's no denying that Dawn is the better co-ordinator. May's style of co-ordinating has been compared to Ash's battling style and the contests in Hoenn were little more than glorified sparkly battles. So as a trainer May wins but as a co-ordinator, Dawn wins.
 
May is the better coordinator in my opinion. She did great in all of her contests and I loved her combinations. All of her rivals seemed much better and stronger than Dawn's as well, thus making appear more skillful than Dawn when she was able to beat them. I also loved the way she'd just come up with new combinations in the middle of her battles to surprise her opponents and win. May's battles would always have me in suspence of whether or not she'd win while Dawn's were quite predictible.

Dawn was okay, but that losing streak where she failed to get past the appeal rounds twice in a row really turned me away from her. She also seemed to rely heavily on help from Zoey to get most of her progress, while May improved on her own. I also didn't think that her battles were as believable as May's and she seemed to win battles she definitely should have lost.
 
That's an easy question, Dawn is clearly the best. As repeatedly pointed out by Zoey, a Coordinator's job is to show off the Pokémon, and Dawn developed several techniques and combinations to do just that. She is creative, inventive and knows how to bring the best out of her Pokémon.

The night before the Jubilife Contest, her first, Dawn called Piplup and Buneary out and said how she was eager to show the audience how special they are. In the Lilypad Contest she was unhappy when Mamoswine quickly defeated Mario's Granbull, Lyra said a win is a win but Dawn wanted the battle had lasted longer because she was hoping to do more with Mamoswine. This is a Coordinator.

I think my biggest problem with May was that she would try to knock her opponent's Pokémon out when she saw herself in big trouble. She would totally forget to perform and go wild much like a Gym battler would, and this is not how a Coordinator thinks. They battle to display the talents of their Pokémon, not to make their opponent's Pokémon pass out. When a Coordinator has more wins by knockouts than by points, they should reconsider their career.
 
May. She had a better journey and growth. And she's kinda hot....you know... for a bunch of pixels.
 
Personally, I like May more since she had a more fun personality and her rivals were generally more interesting, but Dawn would be a better Coordinator. She had solid development throughout her journey that showed how she was progressed as her Coordinator skills and she was more innovative with her combinations. I wouldn't take Dawn getting to the finals as an example of being a better Coordinator since we only saw one full match she had before getting to the finals. Dawn getting to the finals isn't unrealistic since she had the skills to get there, but we didn't really see a lot of it prior to the finals, especially when her victory against Ursula was unsatisfying and her battle against Jessie was a bunch of clips. Still, I think the journey she went through showed that she does have better skills as a Coordinator. Though, I think that Dawn really benefits from the writers' experiences with Contests through May since by the time DP started, they had a better idea of how they worked. May is still a really good Coordinator and it showed during her return for the Wallace Cup, but I think that I'll have to go with Dawn on this one.
 
May is far better dawn is a boring copy built on mays previous success imo.
 
Based purely on what they've done as Coordinators (cutting out rivals out of the equation and whatnot), Dawn is better. She had much more innovative Contest moves where we clearly saw how she was inspired - not to mention Ash's Ice Aqua Jet was courtesy of Dawn as well. May's appeals weren't terrible, but getting by with Skitty's Assist was much less impressive.

However, I feel if Dawn was in AG and May was in DP, we'd mostly be saying May was the better Coordinator with all her creative combos and whatnot, since AG's take on Contests (first take, no less) is much more simplistic and sketchy than DP's Contests. Even though May won a lot of Contests via KO rather than points, I like how at the end of AG she acknowledged that - that she was feeling she was emulating Ash too much and her whole reason for separating from him was to develop herself as an individual better. And when May cameoed in DP, her appeals and battles, I felt, were definitely up on Dawn and Zoey's level. May just came from an era of the anime where the Contests were struggling to find their identity separate from the typical battles. Hence, May's Coordinator skills look much less polished than Dawn's and the battles were pretty damn questionable.

But I will give Dawn credit, that her innovative ideas aren't just the product of DP having a more improved handle on the Contests - she knew she wanted to be a Coordinator before she became a trainer, her mom's a Top Coordinator, and as evidenced in May's return in DP, Dawn obviously watched a lot of Contests before she set off on her journey. With a background like that, it makes sense that Dawn's appeals and battling style would be more distinctive than May's, as May had no idea what she wanted for herself other than traveling when she started out, only learned that Contests were a thing when she passed by a Contest Hall one day. So May lacked Dawn's inherent passion for Contests and had to learn how to think and battle like a Coordinator; Dawn's main drawback at her beginning was her overconfidence and overabundance of enthusiasm that impeded her progress (hence why she took it particularly hard when she lost two Contests in a row without ever making it to the battle rounds). Dawn was always coming up with new and interesting techniques, though.

If AG's Contests were more like DP's, I think it would be harder for me to determine who's the superior Coordinator. But Dawn not only had the benefit of being in a refined Contest era - she also had the Coordinator's spirit coming right out of the gate. So with all that said, I think Dawn is the better Coordinator in the end. I just kinda wish May had the benefits of DP to better display her own skills.
 
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