The Quest for the Legends

The Ouen League - Chapter 47: The First Preliminary

The first chapter that is actually less than a decade old at the time of the commentary! In this one, we timeskip to when the League proper is about to begin, Mark strategizes with his Pokémon, Letal tries to make up for her lack of evolution by imitating May and trying to squeeze herself into battles where she doesn't belong, I lament the lack of Smeargle, I lament the lack of May's Blaziken being any kind of actual character, we get a glimpse of Robin as a throwaway trainer, there is lots of clunky, weird or awkward phrasing as Mark has his first League battle, huge chunks of ice can be evaporated instantly by Flamethrowers in mid-air, Mark wants to punch someone, and Taylor is delightfully oblivious.

It's interesting that you mention the fact that Blaziken got no character because lately I have been debating just how much character I need to give to my supporting cast's Pokemon teams. (I essentially have four traveling companion characters, each with full teams, and the idea of making all 24 of those Pokemon into characters is stressful.) But I guess there doesn't exactly have to be a character arc for a supporting Pokemon to at least have something worth remembering. (Case in point: I still remember and love Racko's dumb "I love Hoenn" song.)

Yeah, I think "something worth remembering" is the key. So long as there's some sense that there is a character there, you can absolutely get away with not giving supporting characters' Pokémon significant development.

And this was the point where I just could NOT stop reading after the chapter ended, and compulsively stayed up way too late rereading the whole dang story. I really wanna spend more time on fanart sometime.