Eh, personally, I didn't mind Togepi that much, could care less about it one way or another. In fact, I'm actually baffled as to why people give it that much hate, even going as far as to treat its relationship to Misty like a Metroid feeding on its victims. If anything, I thought it was a far better done relationship than May and Manaphy's relationship. Say what you will about how Misty and Togepi's relationship was handled overall, at least if Togepi was in danger, whether being abducted, going missing, or anything like that, you definitely can count on Misty to go out of her way to save it or at least track it down. May didn't make any attempt to save Manaphy when Phantom abducted it in Movie 9, or heck, even aid Ash in stopping him and saving it. Besides, Misty's violent temper even prior to Togepi existing if you ask me was far closer to a mere three-mile island compared to Jessie from the same series, or ESPECIALLY Naru Narusegawa from Love Hina (at least Misty only gets violent when Ash and Brock do something genuinely foolish and/or bad. As that link you provided pointed out, Naru violently beats up Keitaru if he does so much as even look at her the wrong way, or heck, even walk in at the absolute wrong time). And even before Togepi hatched, or even before its egg was discovered, Misty definitely had hints at a motherly nature, like for example, she comforted that Cubone during her brief stint as a nurse, and in the case of the first two episodes, she was genuinely concerned with Pikachu and, in the novelization, even directly comforted it by cradling it. Besides, I know of a few characters where their becoming a mother didn't harm their development at all and in some cases actually helped tremendously and made them even more of a badass, like Ariel from The Little Mermaid II, or Samus Aran from Super Metroid, or Terra Branford from Final Fantasy VI.
Not to mention, quite frankly, maybe Togepi should have been developed a whole lot better than it did, but I don't think having it be a battler would have worked. Orange Islands already established that it doesn't really understand several basic moves even if you do a physical demonstration, its moveset in the games wasn't particularly impressive until Gen IV, and even the way it evolves doesn't even involve battling. Ironically, Misty "babying" Togepi actually came far closer to unlocking its potential than having it fight. And personally, not blaming you specifically so much as several other fans in general such as Cybercubed who claimed that, but I kinda blame everyone insisting that Togepi "did nothing" by not battling at all for the various OP Pokémon we got in the anime starting with AG, including Ash's Hoenn team for the most part, not to mention May's Eevee and Squirtle, and probably also Dawn's Piplup. At least Pikachu's OP status was excused by it not being an ordinary Pikachu to begin with.
But agreed, would like to see Azurril evolve, especially when its evolved forms actually ARE Water Types.
Eh, personally, I'm not a big fan of doing AUs or retcons, especially when the anime's already bad enough with continuity as it is from AG onward (and quite frankly, after the complete mess Hideo Kojima made with Metal Gear's continuity with each entry, up to and especially including the mess that was MGSV, I would rather they do as few retcons as humanly possible). Besides, the fact that Misty and Brock are considered Ash's friends would suggest that its not an AU (Misty and Brock didn't appear in M20). Now, if she and him both mention the bike, it's sold being the same continuity, which if anything would make it even better.
Maybe, but then again, even Giovanni spent from the episode TCPi started doing new voice actors up to DP080 with a new voice actor, and then with DP080 afterward, he got back his old 4Kids VA, so its not necessarily impossible for Misty to have Rachel Lillis act as her VA when the episode gets dubbed.
Yeah, no kidding. We didn't get a reappearance from them until the Battle Frontier. Speaking of which, let's hope that with the upcoming Kanto revisit, they also have Ash's Squirtle return for good as well, like what happened with Ash's Charizard in BW. Oh, and also bring back Pidgeot.
Yeah, valid points, and let's not forget how they wasted a perfectly good opportunity to not only bring Misty back, but also potentially bring closure to her character back in Best Wishes where they managed to completely skip over the Pokémon World Conference arc despite it actually being something from Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, and thus have a whole lot of advertising potential. Probably the only one that actually DID get decent coverage was HeartGold and SoulSilver, and that's only because they at least had the playable characters from those games actually cameo in a few episodes.
Yeah, I agree there. And even in the few instances they do show things from the games, they really overrate it regarding the full game like with Contests. And its not like kids can't, I don't know, get DVD boxed sets to catch up or, heck, even watch the series on YouTube at least to catch up.
Ugh, don't remind me of Cameron. That guy should have outright LOST to Ash due to having been a massive idiot throughout the league, making even BW Ash look smart by comparison. And yeah, that's what makes it even MORE sad as well, especially when in the case of Noland and Brandon, they actually used Legendaries (heck, even OWNED Legendaries in the latter case), meaning they definitely shouldn't have qualified as weak.
Fully agreed there, though I prefer it to be the standard canon and not an AU. Continuity's been pretty bad as it is with this series, and I prefer it stay true to canon for once, rather than treat everything like an AU (besides, I'm not fond of retcons especially after the mess Hideo Kojima caused with Metal Gear as it is).
Still, at least Misty did far more in Johto than Brock did, too bad she got the axe and not him, especially considering Pewter Gym's situation was FAR worse than Misty's situation with Cerulean Gym.
Yeah, agreed. Hopefully they've got an actual Water Pokémon Master event akin to the Whirl Cup that both she and Misty could participate in. Would at least be better than what is essentially an Emperor's New School clone (nothing against Emperor's New School, but that kind of series doesn't fit in with Pokémon at all, and I really don't appreciate Ash being forced out of what was supposed to be his goal, literally having his victory stolen from him in a cheap manner, and then not even attempt to oversee development of a new league in Alola as compensation, or better yet, actually WIN Kalos). And this is especially if Misty is indeed returning for far longer than two episodes.