Thread: How about the female hero being a lead again?

In Kanto through Johto Ash was traveling with Misty and Brock, two gym leaders. The next two regions had Ash being with Brock and the female protagonist for the gens first game. With Best Wishes Hilda did not pop up, instead Ash traveled with two gym leaders again. I've heard people say that, as the games have several allusions to the first two generations, the anime was trying to be similar to the original generations. But that's besides the point..

Would you prefer Ash travel with two gym leaders again or do you want them to go back to using the protagonists counterpart?

If the next game has a new sidequest that the writers want to heavily promote alongside Ash's Gyms, they'll probably bring in the next female lead character. If not, it'll probably just be another female Gym leader. I notice they only use the female protagonists from the games if they have a major sidequest like Contests in the anime.

But look at how the writers treated the Pokeathlon, Musicals, Pokewood, etc....and just gave them one-off filler episodes. Depends if the next game-side event can be important enough to be used.

I hope we don't get another lead. Sure, with Ash sharing a role, we can have the girl getting more spotlight and playing a larger role. But with two sidekicks, both the boy and the girl could share the spotlight a little more. DP showed that two leads would screw the third person over royally.

And I like Iris. But to give her a leading role? Bleh. I'd like Dawn more, too, if she wasn't shoved down my throat so much.

Originally Posted by The Fighting Misty

If the next game has a new sidequest that the writers want to heavily promote alongside Ash's Gyms, they'll probably bring in the next female lead character. If not, it'll probably just be another female Gym leader. I notice they only use the female protagonists from the games if they have a major sidequest like Contests in the anime.

But look at how the writers treated the Pokeathlon, Musicals, Pokewood, etc....and just gave them one-off filler episodes. Depends if the next game-side event can be important enough to be used.

To be fair, there wasn't much room to make those events from the games into a sidequest, especially when the Pokeathlon was introduced in the middle of DP. At least there was room in Contests to incorporate a battle phase.

Anyway, I definitely hope that there's another female lead in the next series. Both Misty and Iris didn't really do much for me while May and to a lesser extent Dawn were more interesting because the writers actually had to do something with them on a regular basis. Having two sidekick characters didn't really benefit Iris or Cilan development wise. I'd prefer seeing a more active female character in the cast, even if it does cause the third person to get less screentime as a result. We would potentially get more development from the female lead and we have more battles to showcase different Pokemon and both the female leads' and and Ash's progress over the course of a region.

Originally Posted by Karamazov

I hope we don't get another lead. Sure, with Ash sharing a role, we can have the girl getting more spotlight and playing a larger role. But with two sidekicks, both the boy and the girl could share the spotlight a little more. DP showed that two leads would screw the third person over royally.

And I like Iris. But to give her a leading role? Bleh. I'd like Dawn more, too, if she wasn't shoved down my throat so much.

Can I give you a medal? I agree 100% with this.

If it means the next girl not getting the Iris treatment then I'd welcome it - even it meant another coordinator (not that that will happen, I'm just saying).

Otherwise, I'm rather indifferent either way.

Yes, definitely. I would love to see the next games' heroine playing a lead role in the anime. I loved May and Dawn and I think their journeys were well written and fun to follow. I also think the writers work best with a quest to collect tokens than with a passive goal like Water Master/Dragon Master. Unfortunately, I don't see the Contests coming back in the sixth generation, and without them in the games we'll probably see another girl with an anime-exclusive career.

Originally Posted by The Fighting Misty

But look at how the writers treated the Pokeathlon, Musicals, Pokewood, etc....and just gave them one-off filler episodes. Depends if the next game-side event can be important enough to be used.

In the games, the Pokéathlon, the Musicals, and the Pokéstar Studios are as important as the Contests, the writers just didn't feel inclined to turn them into a career to follow in the anime.

Originally Posted by Karamazov

I hope we don't get another lead. Sure, with Ash sharing a role, we can have the girl getting more spotlight and playing a larger role. But with two sidekicks, both the boy and the girl could share the spotlight a little more. DP showed that two leads would screw the third person over royally.

And I like Iris. But to give her a leading role? Bleh. I'd like Dawn more, too, if she wasn't shoved down my throat so much.

She doesn't have to be a full co-star.

She can have May's type of screentime. May got more focus than the other travel companions without being a full co-star like Dawn. She felt like she was inbetween the two extremes.

Just because the female has a quest doesn't mean she's going to be shoved down our throats.

Originally Posted by The Fighting Misty

Originally Posted by Karamazov

I hope we don't get another lead. Sure, with Ash sharing a role, we can have the girl getting more spotlight and playing a larger role. But with two sidekicks, both the boy and the girl could share the spotlight a little more. DP showed that two leads would screw the third person over royally.

And I like Iris. But to give her a leading role? Bleh. I'd like Dawn more, too, if she wasn't shoved down my throat so much.

She doesn't have to be a full co-star.

She can have May's type of screentime. May got more focus than the other travel companions without being a full co-star like Dawn. She felt like she was inbetween the two extremes.

Just because the female has a quest doesn't mean she's going to be shoved down our throats.

This would work a lot better. So long as she isn't a FULL co-star, it's fine with me.

Don't get me wrong. Initially, I liked the idea. I like Dawn, but I feel it was at the cost of sacrificing much of Brock's spotlight. That wasn't worth it to me.

Well, if they brought back the Ruby/Sapphire style contests in the games (which they should!), then the writers could have "new may" again, or god forbid, even old may or dawn could come back. I don't think people would have THAT big of a problem with Ash having an eternally present contest partner.

What about May/Dawn's already-developed team, you say? Just turn Blaziken into the next Ash's Bulbasaur and dump it off somewhere. That seems to work. Beautifly (or Togekiss, or whatever) as a sort of "contest mascot" doesn't seem too farfetched.

While Dawn did get more screentime at the expense of Brock and I wasn't a huge fan of Dawn to begin with, I'd still prefer another female lead getting that much screentime over another Misty or Iris kind of female character. At least Dawn actually deserved the majority of her accomplishments and her progress in DP was pretty believable. Plus, they could try it again to get a better balance of screentime among the main leads than they did in DP while still doing more with the female lead. I'd still love for Contests to return, although I'm not sure how likely it is that they'll be used in X/Y, but at this point, I'd be happy with just about any kind of sidequest for the female lead to participate in so that they have a chance for decent development.

I'd like another girl with May's kind of screentime, provided they actually give her some kind of coherent thing to work towards (not a co-ordinator quest though, those have been done to death).

Whether a full co-star would be better this time I can't really say. Dawn's blandness and the fact she was retreading May's ground is probably what turned people off the co-star thing, a more original co-star might have been more interesting. On the other hand, the way her story kind of fell flat after the Wallace cup made it seem like they'd billed her with all this screentime and didn't really know what else to do with it.

Of course, the length of the series is going to be important for deciding how much screentime the new girl gets. With an AG or DP length series, there's room for devoting more screentime to the girl. But if we have another BW length series, a sidekick would be best to give more of that limited screentime to Ash.

If its Hilda or Rosa fine. But NO Id rather have CIlan and Iris instead of the gen six female protagonist. I think the key thing is going to be what type of "Bonus features" Such as the contests, ect. would greatly depend on how much and the importance of a new female role would be

They're not going to keep Iris and Cilan next gen, the writers won't repeat what they did with Misty and Brock. They're learned from their mistakes.

I think that a France-based region is the perfect place to restart Contests, and maybe also Sommeliers can become an in-game feature in the same way that Brock was a breeder before the class or Daycares were introduced in the anime. I would love a Burgundy-esque Sommelier female lead who also indulged in contests, although she would not be as exaggerated. In the same way I wouldn't mind Cilan staying on into Gen VI.