Pikachu is, honestly, my all time favorite pokemon. I actually like him as the mascot for the franchise a lot, and find him quite interesting. He's super cute (i ADORE cuteness <3), he's a cheery yellow, has a upbeat personality, and is a great battler in the anime (as well as a really great friend to the main character! cuz friendship is magic :P).
In a way, he even reminds me of Korrina, in the form of a pokemon, kind of!
It annoys me he can be hard to use in the games (not the overall best speed and also worst defences pretty much for a non baby). At the same time, though, i think i would like him less if they made him too cheep. The light ball does make him semi usable, especially with good team stratagy, which i enjoy (i mean, thinking of a stratagy that would make him hard to beat could be fun sometime! i just enjoy pokemon battle stratagies in general haha).
But him not being cheep in the games also gives him a specialness in the anime to me. Ash's Pikachu is like the unexpected powerful pokemon of the show, making the anime pretty easy going in terms of battle overall. xD Maybe too easy going, in a way, but at the same time, thats helpful to me. Less of a need to fully stereo type/catagorize in terms of anime battling as an option along side game stuff. It works differently, so its quite interesting! I like doing a cross between anime and game style battling with korrina in my daydreams with her lol xD
I like that people can easily reconize Pika, too! And i love that he has those adorable red cheek pounches. And he's a major reason why I like yellow a lot as well as the color pink too.
Overall, I think Pikachu is awesome. I suppose i understand those who say he's 'over rated'; he's EVERYWHERE pretty much and theres like over 800+ other pokemon now so yeah. At the same time, though, it does kill me inside a little when people put him down or generally dislike him (especially if they like really dislike him....lol). I think Pikachu is really adorable, anyways, and cute things mean a lot to me. Though I could become friends with pikachu haters i guess if they aren't too annoying about it (and liking other cute pokemon a lot probably helps them annoy me less too).
I hope my post was an interesting read! :3