7) Advanced - I just found May and Max really, REALLY annoying.
6) SM - It's too much for kids now. Not awful, though.
5) XY - A lot of the stuff was pretty cool, but Clemont and Bonnie were pretty boring, and Serena got on my nerves. Overall the story was pretty dull and Ash was highly annoying.
4) Johto - Not quite as good as Kanto, but still amazing.
3) Kanto/Orange - Misty, Brock, Tracey and Gary for the win.
2) DP - I loved Paul and Barry. Barry wasn't so friendly it didn't feel like any kind of rivalry at all , and Paul really pushed Ash to the limit. For some reason I really liked Dawn. Brock still ruled. Ash wasn't too stupid. And the Darkrai movie was AMAZING.
1) Best Wishes - I know, I know, everyone hates Gen 5. But I actually like Iris and don't find it annoying when she calls Ash a kid. Since Misty, all the girls have been ridiculously sexist, all apart from Iris. I though she was pretty cool. Team Plasma were probably my favourite evil team out of all the evil teams. The story, the animation, and even the theme tune (WHY DO I LOVE IT SO MUCH?!) were all great. But I'm probably the only one with that opinion.
Can't say I agree regarding DP or Dawn. Tried to like her, but I just couldn't. So far as Johto, it improved on various areas compared to Kanto, and overall it was good, even if it did take a very long time to do things, at least the payoff, Misty getting booted aside, was well worth the wait unlike with other sagas after it where they either have Ash not improving at all/doing worse than before (AG and BW), doing better yet having victory stolen from him (DP and XY), or flat out not pursuing his goal at all (SM).
I do agree regarding Iris, though. From what I gather of her character, she's probably a LOT more tolerable than May and Dawn ever were, and at least she doesn't look like jailbait unlike May, Dawn, and Serena. Sure, maybe her calling Ash a "kid" was annoying, but on the other hand, considering how grossly mishandled Ash was during that saga, I can forgive her repeatedly denouncing him as a child, since you wouldn't even know he did well in prior leagues the way he was handled.
To be truthful Best Wishes didn't make the anime go downhill, Iris was a great character, Cilan wasn't to bad, the rivals were really great, people are just being ignorant and hating on the 5 Gen for no good reason. Advance and Diamond and Pearl is were the anime started to decline. XY anime could have been handled much better.
Advance suck. Because May and Max were uninteresting annoying boring characters.
Diamond and Pearl wasn't anybetter. Dawn didn't have much of a personality and the writer's didn't make things anybetter when they try to make her out of a Ash clone, also the rivals suck in this series and Paul was an awful character.
Kanto/Orange/Johto were really a great part of the anime. Ash/Misty/Brock/Gary/Tracey were all well done interesting characters, the Kanto/Orange/Johto teams were fairly decent.
Well, the one good thing about DP is that at least Ash managed to actually do better than before, even with a stolen victory from him. I wasn't really fond of Paul that much (quite frankly, I was annoyed by how his Ursaring managed to trounce Pikachu, who BTW was the same Pikachu that completely obliterated Brandon's Regice, you know, the same one that knocked Paul on his butt earlier. Ursaring was caught during this region as well, which made it even worse. If Pikachu at least lost to Torterra, while I still wouldn't have liked it, I'd at least tolerate it because among Paul's party, it was the closest in experience level to Pikachu due to being his starter.).
And yeah, I agree with you, I wasn't fond of May or Dawn for a variety of reasons. One of which is that they both really gave me a very painful reminder of Love Hina as well as the girls who trampled over Ash, Brock, and James in Princess vs. Princess (and while Misty's departure certainly didn't help in my dislike of them, I still would have held contempt for them even if Misty never left). And Movie 9 actually made May out to be even WORSE considering that when Phantom outright abducted Manaphy, she just stood there like some coward rather than make ANY attempt at saving what was essentially HER CHILD, and that was supposed to be HER movie (and thanks to that, Ash had to save the day yet again, in a movie that was billed as her movie. Misty did far more in Power of One than May did in the Manaphy movie.). Even Misty regarding Togepi always went out of her way to try and help or save her child when it was in danger, not to mention any Pok?mon who did nearly end up in danger such as Marrill or Oddish. And I hate May slightly more than Dawn, largely because she started off outright hating Pok?mon, and thus literally had no real business being a Pok?mon trainer in the first place, leaves a lot of disrespect to the profession as a result. I'm sorry, perhaps I was a bit too harsh on her, but on the other hand, the entire point of being a Pok?mon Trainer is constantly having to interact with your Pok?mon and try to treat them well and win stuff for you, constantly bond with them, so if you're going to be a Pok?mon Trainer, whether Gym Battler or Coordinator doesn't matter, for a lifetime, you might as well like Pok?mon. Dawn at least didn't outright hate Pok?mon when she started her journey.
Eeveetree9 is probably referring to the fact that May and Dawn were used heavily for fanservice (Masamitsu Hidaka even admitted it in a
2008 interview with Pok?Beach) and were given goals that downplayed battling in favor of beauty and fashion. With Serena, they took the May/Dawn template and cranked it up to 11, giving her a goal that didn't involve battling at all and had much of her storyline revolve around a crush on Ash.
There's nothing wrong with being girly, but there *is* something wrong with female protagonists constantly being portrayed as beauty queen waifus and being treated as fanservice. Girls don't need to be tomboys to be smart or strong battlers, and they *definitely* sure don't need to have
busty hourglass figures or
be wearing skirts that barely cover their assets. (Seriously, aren't these girls supposed to be 10? Ew!)
Yeah, no kidding about that. That's actually another reason why I'm disgusted with how May, Dawn, and even Serena to some extent were depicted. If they want fanservice for the girls, fine, but they'd better make them sixteen years old if not eighteen years old. As bad as Love Hina was, and it was exceptionally bad in how the girls were depicted which was, pardon me for being blunt, but bimbos, and this was despite their pursing college, not to mention huge domestic abusers, at least they were of legal age for the most part, while those three were literally 10 year olds, not even in their teens yet, much less of the legal age. And there's plenty of room for girly girls and fighting. Just look at Honoka, Marie Rose, Kasumi, Hitomi, Leifang, Kokoro, and even to some extent Tina Armstrong from the Dead or Alive series. All those girls were very girly in various respects, and yet they're very skilled at fighting (and despite being reputed to be from a fanservice game, they're actually TAME compared to Pok?mon especially in pre-DOA5 games, which was deliberate regarding Itagaki since he wished to avoid depicting the girls in any lewd lights, viewing them as his own daughters.). At least Misty and Iris were not specifically designed for fanservice purposes. And quite frankly, Hidaka even admitting he only created the girls to be sex toys would have been grounds for him to be required to register as a sex offender. That he even got away with this is just... ugh. And speaking of Dead or Alive, it's because of how Pok?mon and Hidaka depicted May and Dawn that I have zero problem believing that Marie Rose is 18 years old just from the bio claiming this, because I know that if the Japanese truly wanted Marie Rose to be 10, they would do so, international standards be darned based on how they depicted May and Dawn.
Either way, Kanto/Orange Islands/Johto definitely are among the best sagas.