playing favorites

[kuruk22]

I've been thinking long and hard about it, and after much consideration and careful rumination, I'd have to say that my favorite character from Pokémon's Generation V is Bianca.

I would bombard you with pictures of Bianca being her lovable self, but I don't have very many. I need to remedy this.

Oddly enough, I was sure that I wouldn't like Bianca

Comments

hideously long-winded comment (part 1)

[kuruk22]

Perhaps I misspoke by saying that Cheren was just a rehash of the previous rivals. What I should have said is that the character that seeks strength but doesn't know why he/she does and then discovers him/herself through the journey has become so common that it's an archetype now. It might not have appeared in pokémon before per se, but the whole "finding out my reasons for seeking strength" has definitely been done before.

I don't know if it was just me, but Cheren seemed kind of flat to me. I agree with you on the fact that he is the most studious of the rivals and that, at his core, Cheren sees Hilbert/Hilda and Bianca as best friends more than rivals, but the slight variation of how his "self-esteem as a trainer" issues came up (and the fact that he had them at all) makes him more similar to his predecessors than you'd think.

Green always had a bone to pick with Red/Leaf so that he could "prove" himself to his grandfather. Why else would he challenge you right in front of Oak? Silver has all his daddy issues to deal with, which makes him project this false sense of power and control. In the end he's just a lost kid, and his interactions with Gold/Kris/Lyra bring his insecurities to the forefront. As for Wally, he has his illness to deal with, and despite the fact that he works so hard to meet May/Brendan on equal footing, he falls short. And Barry wants to live up to his father's example and do it quickly, so he also has something to prove.

I think Cheren follows the same path, but he just zig-zags through it. While his predecessors started their journeys with something to prove and gradually learned how to accept themselves and their shortcomings, Cheren started out very confident about his abilities. Like you said, it's fair to say that Cheren has done more studying about pokémon than Hilbert/Hilda and Bianca combined, so he sees his friends more as friends and not rivals. I don't think that Cheren was projecting a false sense of superiority like some of the other rivals; I think it was a real sense of superiority. Battling in your room? Oh, that's so easy for me, I won't even wreck it. It's not a mocking feeling of superiority, but the fact that he's better prepared than his friends makes him think that he's certainly more skilled and prepared than they are.

But when you defeat him, he realizes that he's not as skilled as he thought. He starts out as this guiding figure who wants to teach his friends and guide them through their journeys (i.e his explaining of things, giving you items here and there), but promptly learns that you're better than him. And the thing is he doesn't know why. He studied whereas you didn't as much (or at all), he works just as hard as you, he has the same amount of gym badges and pokémon and that should put you two on equal footing, at least. It just doesn't. If you've noticed, each time you battle Cheren and beat him he gets more and more doubtful of his abilities, openly questioning why he can't win. It's not that he wants to beat you down to feel better about himself - I think he sees the "rivalry" more as a friendly competition than Green or Silver did - but that, at a certain point (probably right before he meets Alder), he's so lost and disillusioned with himself that him beating you is the only easy way out. He's not aggressive or resentful of you like Green was in his flippant/condescending way or Silver was directly, but Wally and Barry weren't angry either when May/Brendan and Dawn/Lucas defeated them.