Would Hugh alone could've been better than Cameron and Virgil together?

[Almonds]

I've had this thought for a while, and this doesn't seem to have any problems. I know the League has been over for months, but I still think there's room for discussion.

What if, instead of both Cameron and Virgil, the writers brought in Hugh as the League-only Rival for the Unova League? Do you think he would've been better? I certainly think that Hugh would've been much better handled than the ultimate n00b Cameron, or screen-time-lacking Virgil. In fact, Virgil could've just appeared as a CotD anyways and leave it at that. The Eevee promotion didn't need more than one episode.

Hugh would've been a passionate trainer who wants to win the League for his sick sister or something. Motivated more than anyone, it's easy to see he would've been a competent opponent.

Of course there's the clash with Bianca and Hugh's game canon, but they introduced Cheren as a gym leader anyways when Bianca was still a rival. No real problem there, I guess?


So do you think Hugh alone would've been a better league rival than Cameron and Virgil put together?

 

[DracoMan]

SpongeBob SquarePants would've been a better rival than Cameron and Virgil. I'd have preferred Cheren, but Hugh could've been interesting.

 

[Hidden Mew]

It does sound interesting and most likely would have been better than what they provided with Cameron, but since Hugh's characterization was heavily connected to Team Plasma, I'm not sure if it would make him a good League only rival. Wanting to win for his sick sister could have been a way to handle his motivation for battling, but it would seem a bit sudden to introduce a conflict like that for a rival, even if he was just going to be around for a League. At the very least, Ash wouldn't have lost to a complete idiot if Hugh defeated him. It would have been better than Cameron. I didn't mind Virgil so much, even though I agree he could have just been a character of the day since we never saw a full battle with his team.

 

[SammyW27]

Ain't no problem making a "what-if" thread every now & then

And yeah, I think a game character with a middle ground personality would've worked better than idiot-savant Kotty or the infallible Virgil (though I can't shake the feeling he'll be back to debut Nymphia...). A LOT better. Cheren would've worked too.

 

[Almonds]

Hugh's Could-have-been Episodes: around seven to eight in total including the League.

1. After the Junior Cup, Ash helps Hugh rescue a stolen Purrloin from TR or random thieves. Hugh reveals himself as the League rival who's going to challenge the Humilau gym for his last badge. His sister is also introduced.

2. Hugh vs Marlon. Ash spectates. Marlon has better screentime here. Also, a short after-party and dream talking.

3. Hugh arrives at the League and says hi to everyone. Possible interaction with Bianca.

4. Hugh vs Bianca.

5. Hugh vs Ash part 1

6. Hugh vs Ash part 2. Ash loses

7. Hugh winning the League, and everyone saying byes.

It'll probably more or less similar to Ritchie.

He'd have a team of Qwilfish Samurott, Buffolant, Flygon, Eelektross, Lucario and Simisear. Better coverage.


Looks better than Cameron to me at least lol

 

[Supreme Leader Palpitoad]

I like the idea very much. Specially that he battles for his sick sister. Waaaaaaay more better than Cameron and Virgil. And when I think of it the writers failed with pretty much in BW. They did not give Virgil a full battle on screen to promote his Evees. That means:
The writers failed with the promotion!!

 

[Winterdaze]

They did not give Virgil a full battle on screen to promote his Evees. That means:
The writers failed with the promotion!!

Yeah, uh...

Spoiler

Look at all that failure.

Anyway, about Hugh. While I liked him in the games, I think he would have made a poor league rival, as his goal was too intertwined with Plasma and winning the league and becoming a powerful trainer was never the point of his journey. If you have to change that much about him just to make him work as a league rival, you may as well just create an original character. If he was included in the anime, Episode N would have been the most appropriate time to do it.

There's not a lot about including him in the league to salvage Ash's "dignity" or whatever that having him lose to Virgil wouldn't have solved.

 

[97SaturnSL1]

They did not give Virgil a full battle on screen to promote his Evees. That means:
The writers failed with the promotion!!

Yeah, uh...

Spoiler

Look at all that failure.

Hugh is instantly way better because he didnt have an eevee and we wouldnt have THIS EPIC FAIL...

Spoiler

Cameron is to me the anime recarnation of the poeple who designed the Ford Pinto... so pretty much most other characters are well above him in terms of reguard

Virgil wanst bad but his eevee set up a snowball effect that led to all above mentioned fails esp the last one so he loses all credibility

 

[Almonds]

Hugh is instantly way better because he didnt have an eevee and we wouldnt have THIS EPIC FAIL...

Spoiler

Cameron is to me the anime recarnation of the poeple who designed the Ford Pinto... so pretty much most other characters are well above him in terms of reguard

Virgil wanst bad but his eevee set up a snowball effect that led to all above mentioned fails esp the last one so he loses all credibility

Gah, I really hate that pic ;_;

Virgil would've sufficed as a one-time CotD, and while Hugh himself is definitely heavily related to Team Plasma, Cheren and Bianca both had Plasma interactons as well, Cheren as far as fighting on the Frigate with Nate/Rosa. Yet they both appeared with no such ties to Team Plasma, Bianca settling as a comic rival and Cheren appearing as a one-time gym leader. They managed to make Cheren unrelated to Team Plasma despite all he's done in the games. Hugh could've settled for a short-term rival as well.

If course, they could've gone all the way and make Hugh join the cast of Episode N but I doubt the writers were smart enough to even think about it.

 

[Supreme Leader Palpitoad]

They did not give Virgil a full battle on screen to promote his Evees. That means:
The writers failed with the promotion!!

Yeah, uh...

Spoiler

Look at all that failure.

Hugh is instantly way better because he didnt have an eevee and we wouldnt have THIS EPIC FAIL...

Spoiler

Cameron is to me the anime recarnation of the poeple who designed the Ford Pinto... so pretty much most other characters are well above him in terms of reguard

Virgil wanst bad but his eevee set up a snowball effect that led to all above mentioned fails esp the last one so he loses all credibility

I mean that the writers brought in Virgil to the anime to promote Evees. And he did not get a full battle on screen. That was epic fail.

 

[SlimeStack]

I feel like I'm the only one who loved Cameron. It's not Cameron's fault Ash was too stupid to beat a stupid person in the top 8. :x

I thought Hugh was a lame rival and he pretty much has no reason to exist outside of his one dimensional hatred for Team Plasma. If there was room for him in Episode N then he would have fit in there, but I really can't picture him being anything special in the league.

And I really don't think Ash's league rivals were the problem. The issue is Ash spent 5 episodes doing a 1-on-1, 3-on-3 and a 5-on-6 then called it quits. You kinda expect a couple of satisfying 3-on-3s then at least one epic 6-on-6 no matter who he is facing.

 

[Ashfangirl22]

Oh gosh yes, Virgil didn't even do any thing in the league besides battle another one of my least favorite rivals.

 

[BugMite]

If Hugh had been in Cameron's place to knock Ash out from the tournament and then win the whole league, then yes. Virgil himsel was fine, but having Ash lose to the league winner would've been better, and Cameron... Yeah...

 

[Sweet Veil]

Hugh is boring, so no. I know you guys can automatically see a game character and make assumptions that that pretty much means he would be auto-better than this or that. But Hugh is boring, all he does in the game is make generic comments about him and his Pokemon getting stronger and whine about Purrloin and Team Plasma. IHATETEAMPLASMAANDWANTMYKITTY = bland. He's extremely uninteresting as a rival, literally the only reason behind his popularity, from my POV, is because of his fangirls. He's a one-dimensional, poorly characterized "rival" in-game and I would expect the same in the anime. There's nothing interesting about him because there's truly nothing to him. Hugh is boring, generic writing of a rival through and through. We know his drive is Purrloin but it stops there, we don't really get any expansion on it in a way where the character becomes attached to the gamer and doesn't develop in the slightest. He's a one-note character, he gets Liepard and just sorta disappears and then later gives one final battle before the PC changes the E4.I loved the final battle though He relies too much on his archetype(IIRC, this was one of my main criticisms of Paul, Barry and Bianca) to be his characterization and would suck as a rival. Hugh only grew more generic as the game went along as his composure decreased and anger increased with each Plasma encounter, if there's any reason I like Hugh it's because of his dialogue. The guy's got some fun dialogue, words and snappy comments that make him amusing, comedic wise.

Hell, give me Benga kicking Ash out of the league over Hugh. At least he has an interesting character, quirks, tie to another character with more than one-dimension and an interesting personality. That would be the perfect way to go and he isn't intertwined in any TP shenanigans.

I still wish Bianca wasn't made into a stereotype in the anime, in-game she's one of my favorite characters with great development and an enjoyment character arc. in-game that I haven't felt invested in for quite a long time. She's touched on weaknesses and pretty much embodied "quit" in a sense. She learned that not everyone can be strong or good at something, there's no encouraging her to get better this and you can do that no matter what. She just flat up faces the truth and no one gives her false ideals and ways of thinking. That's relatable and that felt like a truly life-like change in a character. She's a bit lively but not hyper and there are some scenes in-game where we feel her character. When Elesa gave her the small speech about how she was going to have to learn about the differences within herself, that meant she was going to learn she couldn't be like Cheren or the PC. She simply couldn't, later on in the game and BW2 she moves on to something else and develops toward being a Pokemon professor. A more than fitting end for her story.

Trip was handled fine up until the tournaments. Yeah, I'm one of the people who doesn't give a crap about Trip being a new trainer. Seriously, Ash isn't gonna sweep everyone and they have to give him a rival and someone that makes him struggle, new trainer or not he will.

1st appearance-Character introduction.
2nd-Battle.
3rd-Different way of thinking, more than one dimension is layered to character.
4th-Different interactions with non-Ash character, Iris, some backstory is given, more interesting interactions with Ash.
5th onward-Shitty. There was no reason for him to lose to Cilan or Bianca aside from giving both characters a win, those losses came with zero purposes. By that point Trip's character had been skewered and dumped on enough that the Junior Cup and Alder couldn't help him one bit. His characterization was strong but him as a rival was a yawn by this point.

I know Trip was a Cheren stand-in just like Paul was most likely a Silver stand-in but they could have done better. Explaining his motives behind his behavior for example, like Paul's were because of seeing his bro quit and fail iirc.(But then again I always found that lei motif behind Paul's character to be weak in the grand scheme of things, so whatever.) Trip really should have just been the one to battle and be overcome by Ash in the league and he should have gone on to lose to Virgil, Benga or Cameron, it doesn't matter.

 

[megaevolvedmushroom]

Probably. I hated Cameron, and didn't care about Virgil (his only purpose is to promote the Eeveelutions).

 

[Dr. Buni]

I think so. Hugh may be one of the most boring rivals in the game series (still better than Blue and RSE!rivals, though), but a character must be REALLY lame to be worse than Cameron, the writers would have to shit a lot on top of Hugh's head to screw him enough, to compare him to Cameron. Also, I must say that as far as rival in Best Wishes are concerned, Stephan alone was better than Cameron, Virgil AND Trip together. It is a real shame his rivalry with Ash wasn't well developed and in the end he was just a "side rival".

 

[Magenta Fantasies]

I don't particularly like Hugh as an in-game rival (I find his character rather dull), but I think he might be interesting in the anime, or would've been interesting to see in the Unova League; truth be told I don't like any of the Unova anime rivals other than Bianca. I'm not sure what he would do that the current characters couldn't do without him there, so leaving him out of the anime wouldn't be as unforgiveable as say, leaving out Silver and Wally.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Hugh in the games was okay for me at best. I liked how he did have at least a different kind of motivation for setting off on his journey, but compared to the rivals in the first B/W games, he did feel kind of lackluster. While he would still be better than Cameron, if only because of how Ash wouldn't lose to a complete idiot, there would just be so many changes to make him fit as a League only rival that it would kind of defeat the purpose of including him in the first place. Besides that, he might not have even a good personality in the anime. Bianca is one of my favorite rival characters for having such refreshing and unique development, as well as a likable personality, but I can't stand her anime counter-part. Hugh still would have been better than Cameron, which isn't hard to achieve, but he still might have not been a good rival character in the end.

 

[Caseydia]

No way! I'm glad they didn't bring Hugh into this series. Just look at how they treated the other BW game characters.

Bianca= comedy relief fail.
Cheren= appeared once as a gymleader and that's it. All that game hype for nothing.
Cilan= treated like a toy throughout half of BW.
Iris= shakened and stirred throughout BW.

I wouldn't want one of my favorite game characters to be soiled like the others. Unless he would have been introduced in the Junior Cup and with an actual plot connected in Team Plasma then maybe.

 

[Almonds]

No way! I'm glad they didn't bring Hugh into this series. Just look at how they treated the other BW game characters.

Bianca= comedy relief fail.
Cheren= appeared once as a gymleader and that's it. All that game hype for nothing.
Cilan= treated like a toy throughout half of BW.
Iris= shakened and stirred throughout BW.

I wouldn't want one of my favorite game characters to be soiled like the others. Unless he would have been introduced in the Junior Cup and with an actual plot connected in Team Plasma then maybe.

Well, now that you mention it, considering how the writers messed up Best Wishes, it's probably more a relief than anything else that Hugh was saved from being sacrificed by bad writing.