u/Empty_Departure2046

Something I think Serena or just xy in general doesn’t get enough credit for is the way it treats Serena’s femininity as a positive and never like some burden or weakness. I feel as though a lot of time stories tend to characterize or associate strong female characters with typically masculine traits that leaves no room for feminine qualities and or treats them like they’re mutually exclusive things. To be clear I don’t think there’s anything wrong inherently with female characters that are more masculine,but the one thing I will say is that I do think it perpetuates the idea that masculinity is the only way to be “strong” or “tough”.

I think Serena is a very good representation of how being “strong” and feminine don’t have to be mutually exclusive. It’s pretty obvious that Serena is very girly but shes also competitive,(kinda)sassy,and not afraid to speak her mind which is something that becomes more apparent as the show goes on. The story almost never makes Serena choose to be one or the other she’s allowed to do both.

Something else that represents this well is Serena’s choice to do showcases. The showcases obviously are very feminine from the presentation to the competitions themselves. With the showcases being more traditionally feminine Serena gets to keep all the feminine aspects of her while still being able to growing as a character. The showcases are also never treated as this completely frivolous thing that doesn’t matter,but are presented as real competitions that are treated with the similar levels of respect as the gym battles.

An important distinction to make is that my point isn’t that xy as a whole deviates from gender norms/stereotypes,but rather to explain how Serena’s femininity or just femininity in general doesn’t have to be at odds with being assertive,strong,or whatever and personally I think Serena in particular represents this idea very well.

Something you might not have noticed while watching or rewatching Pokemon xy is this cool lil piece of visual storytelling in Serena’s arcs throughout the show. It’s how each of fennekin’s evolutions are kind of a visual way of showing Serena’s major chunks of development in the show.

Fennekin- this one kinda self explanatory and straightforward,fennekin is the first evolution and is a starter and when Serena gets fennekin she is just starting her journey and is obviously at the earliest stages in her journey.

Braixen- by the time fennekin evolves into braixen it’s at a point in Serena’s journey where she’s experienced a bunch of character growth with this being off the back of haircut that had happened recently and her strengthening her bond with her team and fennekin evolving kinda salitafyes all that growth fully.

Delphox- we even see this trend continue in journeys where it’s very clear that Serena has changed a lot since the end of xyz and we get to see her braixen has evolved into a Delphox within that time signifying a huge leap in growth as a character(if it already wasn’t obvious)

IF they ever decided to bring Serena back into the anime since Delphox has a mega evolution they could potentially continue this trend and use this as a way to display even more mastery in performance/contests or an even stronger bond with her Pokemon.

I tend to put more emphasis on the evolutions themselves as I think those are what actually reflect the character growth but I do think this subtle visual storytelling really adds a lot to Serena’s character.

Now to be clear this isn’t completely comprehensive nor do I think that this was actually technically intentional by the writers,but it is something that I’ve picked up on from watching this show a bunch and is just part of my interpretation of things.

So if you’ve seen any criticism of Serena on the internet you’ve probably heard/seen the criticism that “Serena doesn’t do anything for 40+ episodes” or “takes too long to find a goal” and personally I find issues with these criticisms because of either its dishonesty or misunderstanding of Serena’s themes as a character in the beginning.

For one Serena doesn’t literally do nothing for 40 episodes she does contribute to the main story by helping out Ash on several occasions with his gym battles. During the beginning of the series she is the one to remind Ash to not give up during his training with Alexia and is the one during the battle to make Ash snap out of it which indirectly helps Ash win his first gym badge.

Secondly Serena attempts to help Ash learn tireno’s dance battle style which ends up not working out mostly cause Ash can’t dance for shit,but the advice that she gives to Ash which essentially is just do your own thing is something Ash explicitly remembers during his gym battle with korrina.

Not to mention Serena’s smaller development like gaining a new perspective on ryhorn racing after teaching Ash how to ride one or her getting over caring about being dirty in order to save fenniken which I would say also helps deepen their friendship. These are ultimately much smaller developments,but still relevant nonetheless.

So the claim that Serena doesn’t do anything or contribute for 40 episodes is just not really true and as for her “taking too long to find a goal” I think that this criticism requires nuance. 

Like Serena taking a while to find a goal I understand might be frustrating to some especially compared to Dawn or May who either found a goal quicker or just straight up knew what they wanted to do from the start,so Serena taking 40 episodes to find a goal might seem like a major flaw in her writing and while I definitely think it’s a pacing issue I would actually argue that it’s not actually a major writing flaw but something that adds to the themes of her character.

I mean if you really think about Serena themes as a character at least at the start,that being a naive girl who doesn’t know what to do in life but eventually finds something she's passionate about, her taking a while to find something to do fits the central themes of her character at the start. Further,in the narrative it makes perfect sense for her not to be rushing to find a goal as Ash says multiple times that there’s no rush and if we take into account that she was forced into doing a career she didn’t want to do which we can assume was for most of her life it makes even more sense for her not to be rushing to find something to do,though this part is more conjecture so take that how you will I guess.

I think something that is crucial in being critical of something is being able to separate ideas of not personally liking something with it being objectively bad. You may not like the fact Serena takes longer to find a goal which is fine,but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a flaw of her writing. Remember that two things can be true at the same time.

Thanks for reading my nonsense

There are probably other scenes too,but you get the point. I hate this criticism its just very disingenuous.

(Please be civil if you’re gonna comment)

The horizon characters don’t count cause I don’t know much about any of them so ignore them.

If you wanna try ranking them yourself then here it is link

So I was scrolling through google trying to find the full interview with Tetsuo Yajima interview (the Pokemon xyz director) and I found this website that had the full thing and while reading through it this line I highlighted in particular intrigued me.

This line kinda intrigued me because I’m having a hard time trying to understand what exactly this is supposed to mean. Like I understand how they’re trying to convey two people being forcefully separated,but I’m just confused I guess on how the loneliness is supposed to play into that.

This website I found has the full interview if you’re interested in reading the whole thing. Rn Im almost done reading it and it’s been pretty cool to learn about the bts stuff.

Apparently the website has a bunch of different translated interviews that are also apparently translated by a professional. Here's the website if you’re interested Link

Serena says this in the sub

Funny screen cap I found. I think this from one the xy movies.

So Im assuming most if not all of us are fans of xy because it’s an amazing show,but it’s obviously not perfect as no show really is,so what are some things you would change or things that you feel were done poorly in the show.

For me personally there are a few criticisms I tend to have for xy like it’s pacing issues,at least the start. Like for Ash there’s a big gap in between Ash’s first and second gym battle and Serena,while it making perfect sense for her to take a while to find a goal it’s still a pacing problem that has deluded some people into thinking that Serena "doesn’t do anything in the beginning" so personally I would make the pacing at the beginning a bit snapper.

Another would probably be something like fixing how greninja was released or just have Ash keep him. I think the reason greninja was released was very lazy and kinda pointless as the stupid vines are still there post xyz. I think if they were going to have ash release greninja they should’ve had a better reason for doing so.

Something I’ll also note is that some of the rivals,while being entertaining at times weren’t all that necessary. Like Im mostly talking about the "extra" rivals,someone like Trevor,Nini,and even tireno(to a lesser extent). These characters aren’t bad,but I feel they either lack narrative importance or just don’t push their respective rival to be better,so they tend to kinda just feel like padding.

Obviously I still love xy/xyz it’s still my favorite Pokemon series to this day and the one that I still think is the best,but I wanted to have more ideas about xy be represented as I think that a big part of liking something is being able to acknowledge its flaws and this sub is the closest we have to a xyz subreddit so I thought it would be interesting to see some of the FAIR criticisms some of you have.

Artist:Damany7

So I keep seeing this picture on twitter go around and people on twitter are framing as amourshippers being so "excited" they didn’t even read the prompt and just voted for Serena. It’s very exhausting to be an amourshipper/serena fan in 2026 because of narratives like this where people have created this caricature of amourshippers in there head that gets projected online to the point that these people don’t even think amourshippers can even read. Mind you a lot of these guys can’t even think in more than a single dimension when it comes to Serena and her character arc,they get suck on the romance part and thats as far as their analysis goes.

Serena is probably still for the most part one of the most beloved characters in the fandom but her becoming more polarizing throughout the years has been such an uphill fight with some people that just don’t care.

Took a little while but I think came out pretty good