Gym Leaders

How do you think Gym Leaders work in the Anime? Basically, Gym Leaders are an important part of Ash's journey because he has to defeat eight of them in order to get into the region's league. The thing is, over time people have gotten more and more frustrated and Ash's losses to gym leaders because at this point he should be 'really powerful'. But I feel that these people always think about how the games work when they're talking about this and forget that the anime works differently. There is less leveling involved and more skill involved. We've seen more disadvantages winning, combos that can never happen in the games, and so forth. It's far more versatile than what is provided in the video games.

Personally, I think is that Gym Leaders come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, like pokemon trainers. Well, they -are- essentially pokemon trainers, but, I believe that they were more recognized from the League associations that they were from, because their skills are 'special' enough to have their opponents be a little more creative in order to defeat them. Sure, normally, you can command your Squirtle to use Water Gun on a Geodude anytime, putting you in an advantage, but, let's say you're facing a gym leader's Geodude - these Gym Leaders think about their own weaknesses, and try to make their strategies revolve around covering their own weaknesses. So, how are you going to counter that strategy with your own? I believe Gym Leaders want to test that.

A trainer can also learn from these Gym Leaders just as well. Now, of course Ash isn't the best pokemon trainer around, which stands to reason that he losses to some gym leaders from time to time, like Sabrina, Brawl, or Whitney, but you know, I like to think that it's all part of Ash's growing up. If you remember the episode on where Ash loses to Brawly, he really underestimated him, and it causes him to rethink how he battles with his pokemon. Remember how he lost to Whitney? That Milktank seemed unstoppable, but again, Ash ha to be creative in order to win, and thus he realized, a battle is a battle, no matter what situation you're in, or where you're at. There's a lot more lessons that Ash learned from fighting gym leaders, but all in all, that growing up is what makes Ash a better trainer in the process, imo, and, you know, I think that stronger gym leaders can help him grow up more.

But those are my thoughts. How about yours? How do you think Gym Leaders work in the anime? How do they work? What's their role in the anime, do you think?

Regarding the Gym Leaders, I could buy Ash losing to Gym Leaders when he uses Rookie Pokémon. Heck, when he was a rookie himself. At least there, I can buy it. In fact, I actually get really annoyed when he actually beats Gym Leaders first time around with rookies (with veterans on his team, I wouldn't mind one bit, since at least THEY have actually gone through at least one league. Not with rookies, though, and if anything that just reminds me of Team Rocket's loss in Episode 3, and NOT in a good way, since after that loss, they were infamously depicted both in and out of universe as being bottom feeding trainers, and this was DESPITE being dangerous enough in their debut that they had WANTED signs around Viridian City.).

It's when he actually loses to Gym Leaders especially at times where he definitely shouldn't have been able to lose even if you go by the anime, such as Pikachu losing to the Sinnoh Gym Leaders despite the fact that immediately prior to leaving for Sinnoh, he actually managed to beat a Regice with minimum effort and unaided, that I get extremely annoyed. This isn't even taking into account the games, anyways (the Battle Frontier Brains were compared by Scott to Agatha of the Elite 4 in terms of overall skill level when first telling Ash about the Battle Frontier event, and besides which, Legendaries are a class unto themselves. Even an untrained Legendary is a very big threat to all but the most skilled trainers, and imagine how much more powerful they would be upon being trained by a trainer. Such is ESPECIALLY the case in the anime where they're demi-gods in all but name to such an extent that most times they aren't allowed to be captured by Ash or anyone else barring maybe the villainous teams.).

As far as the Gym Leaders themselves, one of the reasons I utterly HATED AG and BW is because the Gym Leaders there, far from being depicted as crème of the crop trainers, were depicted as being complete weaklings comparable to Jessie, James, and Meowth on their WORST days. Of the Hoenn Gym Leaders, only Roxanne (who at least managed to lose to Pikachu, an established veteran) and Brawley (the only Gym Leader to actually BEAT Ash) came across as even REMOTELY impressive. The rest often lost to a near-completely rookie team due to Ash making a "fresh start" effortlessly, and in the case of Wattson, both parties effectively cheated during the match (Wattson basically cheated with the whole Robo-Raikou thing). And from what I heard of the Unova Gym Leaders via Lizardon, they were just about as bad as the Hoenn Gym Leaders if not even worse (especially when you remember that not only is Ash using a rookie team like before, but Ash himself was made even dumber than usual during that saga). The fact that in AG, this was right after they infamously forced Misty to be removed from the main cast to run the gym in her sisters' place didn't help matters either, especially after the manner in which the Hoenn gym leaders lost pathetically essentially gave the implication that Misty was effectively going to be a massive punching bag to rookie trainers and overall DECREASE in overall potential, not increase, especially considering her goal was to become a Water Pokémon Master. It wasn't until the Kanto Reunion Arc of Sun & Moon that we even GOT any sense of relief that such isn't the case. Heck, after the Original Series, which at least depicted the Gym Leaders as being difficult, XY came the closest to truly restoring the Gym Leaders' honor until the Reunion Arc (I'm not counting DP since, while the Sinnoh Gym Leaders were depicted as skilled enough, it came at the expense of making Ash and Pikachu look grossly incompetent in the process, which doesn't make the Gym Leaders look impressive by any stretch even if they were technically better. At least with XY and their Gym Leaders, they came across as genuinely skilled WITHOUT making Ash look bad.). Maybe if, during instances that Ash uses his rookies to fight the Gym Leaders, he does it like with Lt. Surge back in Kanto (losing, then learning a strategy to actually beat the Gym Leader), I'd be a LOT more forgiving of the concept post-Original Series.