u/Moist_Speaker1842

May was one of the oldest female protagonist designs for the games (and anime) given she debuted way back in 2002 which is now almost 25 years ago. Despite multiple gens of the games and anime later, her design managed to remain popular over 20+ years and is still considered the most memorable of many of the female protagonists.

It's a combination of the bandana, the red outfit, and the more sporty/adventure type look to her over more traditional girly looking heroines that kept her prominent. Of course the anime giving her a starring role and her being the first new female companion after Misty helped too, she's the most watched/viewed of all the female companions of the anime after the original cast of Misty/Brock since Hoenn aired over 23 years ago.

And yes, I'm well aware Ash largely got Dracovish due to it being revived by the scientists in the episode rather than capturing it in wild in a battle like Caterpie, but you get the point.

The writers splitting the anime up between Ash and the female companion was such a huge step forward for the show. They probably realized after Johto got dragged down too much with filler that they needed a secondary character with a bigger role in the show to help the pacing. I'm glad they were able to do it with May.

What's funny to me is that companion roles then peaked with Dawn given she was a co-star, but then they went back to supporting roles with Iris (similar to Misty), or Serena (who still got less than May despite more than others), and then the SM cast just had a huge group so Lillie and the others couldn't get too much focus toward themselves since they had to split screentime among 5 companions. And then there's Koharu...yeah.

It's weird, you'd think the companion roles would continually increase, but after Dawn the writers kinda went backwards...lol.

I actually haven't watched AG in Japanese besides a handful of eps here and there, but Kaori's voice as May sounds so cute and fitting. I can see why the anime didn't want to recast her out of respect to Kaori who is still alive but can't perform her anymore.

So May was retired after DP in 2008 besides silent cameos.

I am 38, be honest bros

Misty's Starmie is the original jobber of the anime.

I'm curious, but I think it might very well be Misty?

For example, Serena, Lillie, Mallow, Lana and Koharu don't even have much battles to begin with, so their win/loss ratio isn't even huge. Lana is the most battle-centric of these characters, but even then outside of Guzma's beatdown of her in the league and maybe some early eps, I don't even recall Lana losing much?

Dawn of course has a losing streak in Contests, but two of them were due to the appeal rounds so I don't count that for battles. She did have 3 battle loss contests (first one, one against James' Carnivine and one against Kenny), till her Grand Festival loss. Of course she also lost some battles outside of contest-related eps, like DP's tag battle tournament or some various filler fights.

May is basically the same, she has 3 contest battles losses, two Grand Festival losses, the loss to Drew in his last episode in AG186, and a few losses in fillers/battle eps outside of Contests.

With Misty though outside of Psyduck's headache stuff, she actually loses quite a lot of matches in Kanto and Johto. Even losing to Sakura's sister with the Vaporeon, the kid with the Magcargo who also beats Poliwhirl, she loses to Ash in "The Totodile Duel," and to a kids Remoraid, then the Whirl Cup loss, etc. A lot of Misty's battles tended to be interruped by Psyduck, so when you have stuff like Bulbasaur tickling Psyduck in Togepi's debut episode, I guess you can count that as a loss?

For example Misty was the longest lasting female companion in episode count at 275 episodes due to how long the OS lasted.

But then when you consider how long Ash's series went on as a whole, (over 1,200 episodes), Misty retroactively wound up being in the anime a short time. For example in Japan the anime started in 1997 and by 2002 Misty was already leaving! Misty only had a short 5 year run in the show. She was basically written off the anime when the franchise as a whole was still practically in its infancy, which makes sense as the end of Johto was only Gen 2 and Ash's series went on to Gen 8. Can you believe the anime was only 5 years old as a whole when Misty left?

If you do the math, Misty is only in a little over 22% of the animes total episodes up to the end of Ash's series, and this is even including her cameos from AG, SM and MPM. Even with her cameos added she's still in less than 300 episodes overall (and this is over 20 years of time after Johto)

It's weird, the OS went on both a long time but compared to the length of Ash's run overall,it's a relatively short time. Obviously Brock stuck around two more gens so he did last a very long time comparably.

I know Horizons is far from over, but it feels like Roy's Lucario has "completed" its arc having obtained its second Mega, so I think it's safe to evaluate both now.

Ash got his Lucario as a Riolu from an egg, and used it in several battles in early JN leading to the Bea arc arc. It evolved during the Darkest Day finale, then Ash used it regularly against Volkner where it got its first major usage after evolving, than Bea round 3, Raihan, and then the Masters 8. It also had several fights against legendaries like Mewtwo, Articuno, etc. even if it lost them all. Ash got his Mega stone from Korrina's grandfather, although that ep was very underwhelming. It also got to learn to aura sync via Ash's Greninja and learn the giant aura sphere.

Roy's Lucario originally came with no backstory, was just on Roy's team in the timeskip. Then we got its backstory and well...it was kind of nothing special. Then Roy's Lucario started losing most of its battles as a Mega, including to Nemona twice, and several other characters even though it was initially hyped up. Then Mayonnaise gave it a second Mega from Z-A and it did decently into Horizon's first conclusion.

Personality wise...they both feel exactly the same. Just the standard stock stoic Lucario personality,so there's nothing much to say here. Ash's did have some personality as a Riolu though. Do you feel Ash's is better written?

InfamousTrainer on youtube recently had a poll removing your least favorite of the 4. Serena got the most likely due to shippers voting against her, but I'm disappointed May got the second most.

It's not so much the polling, but the comments. If you look at the replies/comments you see many people saying May was "boring," or "May had no development" or "May and Max were annoying/unbearable characters" (yes they group Max in with May for some reason)

I get the feeling a lot of people have either never watched AG or seen very little of it. Sometimes I honestly forget how many people really don't like May.