What made them so memorable and the later ones so not? It can't just be "muh nostalgia" because I played Gen 2 very close to the time I played Gen 1, but for some reason I always forget who most of the Gen 2 gym leaders even were until a replay with Whitney being a standout because she's such a meme
Japan wasn't 200% gay and hypercapitalist yet
they look less european and more chinese
Legend of the FAS
i fucking miss the left days. take me back man. the art for most anime nowadays is so garbage in my honest opinion
Japan has been hypercapitalist for longer than you have been alive, just not gay.
O.O really?
Anime had gay and lesbian stuff in like the 70s and possibly earlier I think. I mean if you're a 90s dude, don't you remember learning how they censored Sailor Moon for the US?
this reminds me, when japan reworked the western beast wars cartoon for their market, they changed a female character (who was in a romance with a male character) into just being a gay male character cause they thought it'd sell more toys than being a girl.
Japan pretty much turned Beast Wars into a total parody dub. Had nothing to do with toy sales, just spite.
>just spite.
i would generally not put it past them but considering the madcap and silly tone of their own original transformers series, i don't know if it was malicious as much as it was just them not taking it as seriously as the western side. not that american transformers is always a deadly serious affair, but the japanese stuff is just something different entirely lol
Gundam is the 10 and up mecha series and in general super robot stuff is considered more juvenile there. So TF series always were aimed at a younger audience, especially after the mid 80's.
The BW dub was, funny enough, really successful in the first season. So much they needed to make original anime shows to fill in the gaps between Season 1 and when they could dub S2/3. But those series didn't do as well.
They all look the same to me. A sea of stupid headgear and cargo pants from Old Navy.
Holy based!
Are the ones on the left supposed to look less gay? rofl
Those redesigns of the older ones at the top are soulless, their faces are so dull and empty
The Kanto Gym Leaders were also in Gen II, and tougher than all of the Johto Gym Leaders, so that might have helped make them more memorable.
They appeared in tons of games: Gen 1, Gen 2, Stadium, Stadium 2, Gen 1 remakes, Gen 2 remakes, and each time they all had different designs. They're also part of the only anime arc anyone cares about and two of them are unforgettable to any 90s kid.
Basically just exposure.
It helped that Gen 2 got delayed so Gen 1 got even longer to wallow in the limelight.
because red/blue is the only good pokemon game
Because you think what you remember is the same as everyone else. I don’t have any trouble remembering the Gym Leaders for the first 4 gens, nor would I use that as some measure of quality. This is a /vp/ or twitterfag kind of argument.
But the Pokémon fan base tends to be retarded and lack critical thinking skills anyway, so w/e
Obviously OP is asking his question to other people who agree with him, or asking people generally what about the Kanto gym leaders would potentially make them stand out more than the others. FFS he literally talks about his own personal experience. He should not have to add stupid qualifiers like "in my opinion" or "to me" just to avoid snarky psychoanalyses from people like you.
You sound like someone who would say "But I did have breakfast this morning"
No, that anon is right. OP is being kind of retarded using only his own experience as some general truth. This kind of low-effort OP infests /vp/ and it even gets into Pokemon threads here. Notice how he couldn't praise Gen 1 without shitting on another gen. Plus memorable is just a buzzword.
>Plus memorable is just a buzzword.
No it's not. "buzzword" is a buzzword though, stop using it whenever your feelings get hurt. Something being memorable means you remember it, it's common English. Nobody outside of this website and gay blogs has ever said "buzzword"
You played them during your formative years
>but for some reason I always forget who most of the Gen 2 gym leaders even were
kantofags are finally going senile, thank god
You notice a lot of really young people claim gen 2 was their entry, why is this? Is it just a lie they feel comfortable with because "nobody will suspect me lying if i say i played gen 2 and not gen 1" or something? Cause realistically, gen 2 came out one single year after gen 1, and it sold a lot less.
Gen 2 was my first pokemon. Ill tell you exactly why this happened so often. Many parents dont just preemptively serve their children tons of all the best toys. Pokemon came out and made me want a gameboy. That got me on the process of working down my parents on buying me an expensive toy. That only happens on my birthday. Most of a year passes. Now pokemon silver exists so that's the pokemon game I want. Bing bang wahoo the answer is: you are so privileged that other relatively rich children who got the same fancy electronic toys only slightly later than you did dont "make sense"
That doesn't really answer it though, because that would place you around the same age as most people who played gen 1. My question was asking about the younger people. There seem to be a lot of younger millennials/older zoomers in the gen 2 camp who bitch about the "old boomers", but it doesn't add up timeline wise when you actually remember gen 2 came out basically back to back with gen 1
I think as the first title kanto's got to have a few more cameos and games--for example, stadium or the leaf green remake. It's a tad more iconic, at least I think so. It also had a good anime start while following seasons had varying quality and naturally Pikachu is a given. At times there are exceptions where a title other than the first is more popular, e.g. ff7, but for Pokemon it was popular from the get-go.
I was a year late too and got gen2 because it was the latest at the time. I try to avoid as much as possible the can of worms that is pitting the two gens against the local shitposting lingo, honestly.
>You notice a lot of really young people claim gen 2 was their entry, why is this?
I don't know what you mean by really young. I'm in my early thirties and gold was my first pokemon game. I watched the show from its premiere and collected the cards but didn't have a gameboy. When I finally got one (Christmas 2000) gen 2 was new and therefore that's what I got with it. I ended up buying blue the following summer with my birthday money.
What I mean is people who are probably like 25 or so (I guess), those who complain about "boomers" when it comes to gen 1 while simultaneously claiming gen 2. It doesn't make sense because gen 2 was more or less part of the gen 1 era if you think about it. The games were out at the same time as Pokemon The First Movie and that introduced some new Pokemon but was largely still gen 1, gen 2 really came out at the climax of gen 1 and the two blurred rather than being it's own individual era that reset things.
Like you say you started with gen 2, but you're not who I'm talking about since you're the same age as the other people who started with gen 1, you just didn't get the first games first.
I guess I have never come across anyone like that. I have younger siblings that are in their early/mid twenties right now and they started with the GBA games. IIRC I did eventually give them my GBC games but I don't recall ever asking their opinion on them.
i prayed for days like these
its gen 1 charm but without the jank of a buggy system + it has a lot more things familiar to modern pokemon players such as gender,breeding, day/night cycle etc.
If they didnt start with gen 2 then hgss helped bring more attention to gen 2 because of how well done it was as a remake
because of repeated exposure in our prime influential years
you saw them in the game
you saw them in the pikachu game
you saw them in the sequel game
you saw them in the suicune game
you saw them in puzzle league 64
you saw them in the cartoon
you saw them in all the merchandise and fanart at peak pokemania
you saw them in the TCG
you saw them in fire leaf game
you saw them in heart soul game
you saw them any time you went back to any of the above
I think it's a combination of this
and the fact that there was so little to do in RBY that the gym leaders were a bigger deal back then. They're almost an afterthought later. I'm a boomer who bought Red on release day, and the only gens where I remember the gym leaders are 1, 3 and 7 (if you count that). The only other ones I remember are the girls that I save feets pics of. Gen 4 is my favorite gen and I remember like 2 gym leaders from that game.
>The only other ones I remember are the girls that I save feets pics of
dangerously based
They're not really any more memorable than the later designs imo.
Probably helped that two of those gym leaders were main characters in the anime for years.
Yeah, Brock and Misty are obvious.
Giovanni is very memorable too because he's basically the main villain of the game, and also of the early anime. Blaine is kind of forgettable, but Lt Surge, Sabrina, and Koga are all pretty novel and perfect for the type they represent. But even they got some extra coverage cause of multi media, hell I had a whole deck of cards that was specifically themed around Sabrina.
>What made them so memorable and the later ones so not?
They're the first ones you played.
>It can't just be "muh nostalgia"
It is.
For starters, it had competent women.
Erika is pretty forgetable.
as a character she is, though i'll always remember the pervert old man outside of her gym
Because these guys are very core to their idea/gym. Look at surge, with his hair and cameo, he strikes me as a guy who would use electric types. Or Erika, she's got this calm looking sprite, and she uses plant. Compare him to giovanni, who looks like a shady mobster, who uses Earth types that look tough.
Etc etc. Here you don't have to come up with super original versions of these character ideas, you can just come up with the first ones that come to mind.
Yeah I don't really know what Faulkner has to do with birds, or the steel trainer girl has to do with metal. Bugsy has to do with bugs, but it's pretty lazy as he's essentially just the bug catcher trainer class.
Who is this cutie?
Erika, the leader of Celadon City Gym - a grass-type user who rewards you the Rainbow Badge upon defeat.
Thanks, time to jerk off
Yes
>t. picrel
>Only talks about "strong Trainers" in HG/SS and onward
Lame!
Don't forget about the disappearance of the whips
>people who whip animals?
>sabrina, criminals, rock musicians, skinheads, animal tamers, and cool people
Gen1 is based like that
Gen 2 still has a bit of flare
Why are they called COOLTRAINERs? Besides that they're obviously cool hotshot trainers, I'm wondering if this is a good translation or not. I don't know a lick of Japanese.
As sterile as the new translations can be, I really enjoyed "Hey, sorry to bug you while your world's expanding."
>I'm wondering if this is a good translation or not
I could be wrong, but after a quick search it seems they're called エリートトレーナー, meaning literally "elite trainer".
so yeah the localization is not literal
Yeah, Nob took a bit of a liberty in translating their title. They've gone by the more-accurate "Ace Trainer" since Gen4.
That's because Pokemon were still weird monsters that existed alongside regular animals back in Gen 1. What all these trainers have in common is that they used big brute kaiju Pokemon instead of the ones that were just cute animals or bugs. Even Tamers got to keep their whips into the new remakes because their whole motif is that they're classic circus beast tamers.
This is one of those odd things that I'm glad is gone, but I would have liked to experience the circus circa 1900. What a trip, they even had pokemon(Fiji mermaid, bearded lady)
>Mr.mime
Doesn't the remakes have to point out that the Tamers only use their whips in self-defense and not to force obedience on their Pokemon?
I don't think so? Everyone's dialogue is the same as the original games. Unless one of the Tamers says it in FRLG.
>Everyone's dialogue is the same as the original games.
Maybe for FR/LG since they hadn't sacked Nob yet, but Let's Go rewrote a lot of the original dialogue to fit with the current canon (i.e. no more real-world locations or animals) and I'm pretty sure the Tamers said something about it there, especially since real world circuses did away with animal acts by that point and so the Tamer was an outdated concept.
I'll have to fire up my roms again. Aside from changing "Lighting American" and Raichu's entry referencing an elephant, I can't think of any other major changes, but i has been awhile since played either remake. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the additional "Master Trainers" in Let's Go says it, though.
>(i.e. no more real-world locations or animals
That shit really bugs me cause it just doesn't make sense. Even avoiding the really nerdy implications of a world without millions of proper niche filling organisms in nature because "its just a cartoony game d00d", you mean to tell me they really want to imply that whenever people are eating meat, it comes from a slaughterhouse full of Miltanks and Tauros and shit? That doesn't really fit with the whole Pokemon are intelligent, fully sentient, and your best friends of all time shit they really base the series around. That and it clashes with the idea that Pokemon are sort of a special and abnormal race unto themselves which they really went overboard with with the litany of uber powerful and mythical Pokegods, like that very idea clashes with how we're supposed to now accept that they're just mundane naturally occurring lifeforms of the planet, but also they're not?
I think D/P/Pl had a snippet of a myth where if you eat a Pokemon, you're expected to wash its remains and bless it for providing the meal and it will return to life.
Japanese culture is different. Slowpoke tail is a delicacy, so is basculine but Magikarp is too boney. Miltank are milking cows, in a lot of ways that's worse than being a butcher cow, like Tauros who is free range meat.
Never forget that the original script of "The Secret of Unown" was suppose to reveal that Pokemon came from another dimension and had slowly driven regular animals extinct.
And supposedly, X/Y was going to have Team Flare as Men In Black-styled aliens and the Fairy-type being cosmic in origin. Seems like the franchise keeps toeing the idea of Pokemon being from space, but never goes through with it.
You can't answer the question of "where'd they come from" because it implies they weren't always there. Forget the fact that Pokemon were an explicitly recent phenomenon, hence the scientists who couldn't catalog less than 200 local species and don't even know they lay eggs.
Pokemon have to have always been the animal creatures in the setting or you can't scale the setting infinitely backward or forward.
This is why the nuclear apocalypse theory is so good. Everybody only ever mentions a war, or say "before the war" nobody talks about why the population in the towns is 10 people maximum. Tho I guess legends Arceus completely retcons this idea. I still like it
The "nuclear apocalypse" theory is and will always be stupid because it has its roots in kids taking Bulbapedia's "population" stats too seriously and not understanding that the Japanese kids the games were originally made for would automatically assume that the American soldier living in not!Yokohama's "war" was probably Desert Storm of Vietnam.
Ho-oh explicitly turned three dying Pokemon into the Legendary Dogs hundreds of years ago, though. So it's not like it's that recent. If you're going to nickpick the obvious "don't think about it" stuff, Voltorb, Electrode, Grimer, Weezing, Koffing, Muk, Magnemite, Magneton, ought to be way in the back of the Pokedex due to being far more recently appearing Pokemon and Mewtwo shouldn't be in there at all, because no-one but the Pokemon Mansion researchers and the player ought to know it exists. Besides; Pokemon don't lay eggs. They literally DO appear out of nowhere and one of the Daycare men says that they aren't really eggs and are more like cradles.
>Ho-oh explicitly turned three dying Pokemon into the Legendary Dogs hundreds of years ago, though.
Not anymore, now there is a prehistoric dinosaur form of Suicune....
The leading theory is that "Walking Wake" and all the other Paradox Pokemon aren't actually from the past or future, but being willed to life by the imaginations of those who saw such creatures in a book combined with a corruptive crystal element capable of warping reality.
That whole story was always half-baked. They even put a guy out front telling you it happened when he was younger.
Someone in an interview actually asked a dev what people in pokemon world eat, and he dodged with “who knows what mysterious food sources they could have”.
Good post. I once saw an analysis on gundam that made a big point about jap series for kids using some kind of ‘equalizer’ to put kids on the level of adults. Even with powers it can feel weird or off to see a kid fight an adult, but if they’re both using giant mechs or commanding magical animals then it doesn’t matter that one is a kid. The child becomes an individual on par with any other, judged by their merit and competence instead of dismissed due to age.
Being able to leave home to journey outside with friends instead of going to school is a big point too. Goal of the game is to become champion of a popular sport. Series was definitely a big power fantasy for kids.
Man I’ve seen people who literally want more npcs and dialog becuase they think pokemon is only worth playing for the story and that story can only be told through cutscenes. Pokemon fandom is just big enough that even the dumbest possible beliefs will be pretty common from the sheer number of people.
Honestly I feel it's just pushback against le dreaded "genwunner" bogeyman because I see it come from seemingly reasonable people. It's like how some people go overboard defending Vanillish and Klefki like "IF YOU DONT LIKE THESE DESIGNS, UR DUMBBBB.....BUT ALSO VOLTORB FUCKING SUX FUCK U" and it's like dude, they all suck almost nobody loved objectmon in gen 1 either, but clearly you're the more biased one now
It's like if you really think generic "wanna rule the world/destroy the world" stuff is more interesting than Team Rocket, I don't get it.
Even Team Rocket wanted to rule the world. They were just more pragmatic about it by controlling the economy first and the Pokemon second. Sadly, escalation got to them too and now they want to rule the multiverse. Even in Let's Go, their goal is retconned to using SilphCo and Mr. Fuji to raise armies of super-Pokemon like Mewtwo to crush all their enemies.
They all fill a classic RPG niche, handled in a way that obeys the pseudo-science-fiction setting
>'torb is the mimic
>'mite is the obligatory robot
>'mer is the slime
>'gon is the synth
Later games forgot about objectmons' place in the game structure, so you get "it's the ice cream" and "it's the ring of keys (no function)" and "it's the teapot". Instead of unique interpretations of classic tropes, it's clearly the result of someone looking around the office for things to slap a face on.
Actual soul vs soulless in action.
Voltorb lore is that they actually evolved to look like pokeballs/apricorns, there's even an ancient Voltorb Pokemon in legends that looks like an apricorns. Magnenites lore is similar but evolving around scrapyards iirc. Same with Grimer and garbage dumps. Polygon is cool, it's a completely synthetic pokemon. You forgot ditto which are failed mew clones.
I generally prefer the original concept of objectmons being the result of pollution and other human interference.
>um you see the item capsule/metal scrap/toxic waste is alive because erm well it just evolved that way of course 🙂
-is such a copout.
Ditto isn't really an objectmon in that it's not something inanimate given life. It being a failed clone is a significantly worse idea than just accepting it as a naturally occurring skinwalker-esque cryptid.
>-is such a copout.
But, those are actually the original reasons. It's not some revision, it's based on how animals adapt and evolve to their environment.
>It being a failed clone is a significantly worse idea than just accepting it as a naturally occurring skinwalker-esque cryptid.
It's not bad at all, it's a cool sci fi idea that adds to the weirdness of pokemon. But I also enjoy the idea that ditto could be a natural skinwaker, it's just not the accepted lore
Them being failed Mew clones isn't actually canon or lore either. They're literally goofy blobs that turn into other Pokemon as their defense mechanism. They don't even show up in the Pokemon Mansion until Yellow because Duplica and her Ditto lived in a Mansion in the anime.
i agree with your premise on the gen1 object mons. I like them all in setting.
I will interject on behalf of some of the later ones you mention (somewhat devil's advocate because I agree with the thread's sentiment that pkmn was way better in gen 1 when trainers used whips on monsters)
Klefki is a very small fairy that collects keys. I could see that being a quaint yokai, its purpose was to show what a "fairy type" is. No 10 year old trainer looking to compete would want one, but a thief or old lady might. Why would one occur in nature? idk Paris is an old city and keys are an ancient concept.
Ice cream guy. He is actually an ice sprite that floats around and just looks like Icecream but tastes like freezerburn. I think that is neat enough for monsters inhabiting a cold storage mini dungeon. They're just ice dragonquest slimes. The first and 2nd stage really aren't bad. I feel like Vanilluxe is almost excessive, but that it isn't exactly a common monster to encounter and only would reach its fullest potential with a dedicated trainer anyway.
the tea cup is bad and dumb. Why would a species inhabit exclusively tea cups? because "lol england" I guess. I kind of have beef with all the ghosts inhabiting objects as being lazy and dumb while also not making sense with the egg hatching mechanics. (although lots of gen 1s dont make sense with breeding either) they should come with multiple patterns. Phantump too.
Cofagrigus gets away with it because he possesses Coffins found in a specific dungeon. He is like a mini boss with a unique ability that could perplex a player. Gen 5 was actually quite good at having monsters that fill a specific role in-game. I think that is why people who played B/W tend to be fond of it whereas people that are just aware of its dex from scrolling thru it online think its bad. They make sense in-game.
still not as brilliantly as voltorb and electrode tho. RednGreen were a masterstroke
Haunted objects is a lazy way for ghosts, the possibilities are endless but it doesn't exactly result in "cool" monsters
Giovanni is the only one which really strikes me as memorable but for all the wrong reasons. His change of heart struck me as so forced and hammed in as to be absurd but then again what can I expect from a game made for kids under 10
Imagine a yakuza top-dog, who has barely lost anything in his life, losing two fights to a 10-year-old. That same 10-year-old thwarted 3 (iirc) of his plans in a row, a job usually done by police. At that point I'd be questioning whether I'm fit to lead anything.
I feel conflicted about the rockets whole story in gen2 being wanting Giovanni back. At the same time it's a nice unexpected take that he's never coming back, but at the same time it feels unrealistic not to have someone else take his place and the whole thing contributes to gen2 feeling like gen1++ rather than its own thing.
Yeah, Gen 2 is a weird one, I think I don't like the Rockets at all in that game because it's already suffering from the "Pokémon limited scope" problem where subjects like predator vs. prey, crime, and corruption are too taboo to talk about or even have as plot elements. I think the beta elements of Gen 2 point to it having a more cohesive story vision at the start of development, but then it devolved into them being afraid to up the ante from Gen 1.
Gen 1 still stands as the only game in the series where the Rockets are treated exactly like the mafia force that they are with complete seriousness. Other games have villains they treat seriously as well, but none of them feel real because their goals are fantastically lofty.
Giovanni tells you that you're meddling in affairs that only adults would understand, you don't get to see his grand plot if he even has one. The real conflict is between you and adults. It's not about doing the right thing, it's about proving that you're not just some joke.
It's a game about overcoming the frustrations of being a child by giving you a power fantasy where, if an adult tells you "Stay out of adult business!", you say "No, I don't think I will." It's about showing up that bully/mean kid that always humiliates you. It's about being outside all the time and not being stuck in school.
That's way more relatable than the core themes of Gen3 and onward, even if later games do touch on these elements. Granted, later games do have tragic anecdotes and plots beyond JUST saving the world, but they don't feel real at all.
What I'm trying to say is that Gen2 doesn't maintain Gen1's relatability. I think it's trying to, but failing. Gen2 treats you like you've played the first game and have grown up a bit since then. The adults treat you with marginally more respect, and there's a nostalgic melancholy in its setting. But it stays too distant from its own themes.
Man I really need to stop Vyvanse-posting in the mornings.
One thing that ticks me off is when people say Team Rocket was the worst villain subplot and was "too basic".
It does take a real dumbass to not realize that sometimes, less is more. Sure, when you get down to basically supervillain plots these are BIGGER ideas, more GRAND ideas, but it doesn't inherently mean they are better or more interesting.
This. Team Rocket actually felt like a real criminal organization instead of Supervillain and his Lackeys.
>stealing fossils in Mt. Moon
>set up a recruitment gauntlet and committed a big robbery in Cerulean City
>The Game Corner and it's prizes are literally a front by Team Rocket to launder their money and sell their stolen goods to the public
>Completely take over Saffron City and a major company in an attempt to steal the perfect Pokeball
>Literally killed a Pokemon trying to protect it's young from being poached and held a man hostage afterwards
Their approach in GSC wasn't bad either, I always liked how their use of radio to force Magikarp to evolve at Lake of Rage tied into their later takeover of the Radio Tower. And there was a bit of pathos in how they were so desperate to get Giovanni back that their first instinct once they had control of the transmitter was to reach out to him, rather than broadcast another rage signal Johto-wide.
And in HG/SS, Giovanni is so touched by their loyalty that he actually decides to come back to them, but then he gets defeated out of the blue because of Celebi's time-space fuckery and runs off again.
Eh, that's one of the many things in HGSS that doesn't work for me. It works better if Team Rocket is yelling into the void and even the player doesn't know where Gio is.
>Right image
That's rich coming from the guy who had just ordered his Dragonite to nuke a Rocket Grunt with a Hyper Beam.
This imagine perfectly sums up one of the reason why I like 8-bit RPGs so much. Don't get me wrong I spent a good 400hours in HG/SS and the only thing I haven't done is the battle tower with rental pokémon because apparently I suck; but 8-bit RPGs, when they had to worry about space and having text readable in low res, NPCs got to the fucking point when they talked and it worked and often manage to capture different personalities with as little text as possible.
I was just reminded of Just Breed which as a joke has a character that won't shut up and then it asks the player if that made him mad. But his wall of text is nothing compared to the average gen5+ RPG.
Try playing this, it is very concise and to the point
They are really nothing special, they are memorable because they are part of an extremely popular game and the start of the biggest multimedia franchise in history
Gen 1 had a different approach for its NPCs. They struck more as regular people who happened to also train monsters as a side gig. You look at the gym leaders and you can easily tell that they all got other things unrelated to battling. They were also not designed to resemble their ace Pokemon.
Pokémon was all the kids talked about at the time, the cartoon was memorable, how can I not remember then?
but I grew out of Pokémon after gen 2, so I don't really care or have the emotional investment on the later gens
Me too. I've tried a couple remakes fire red and soul silver.
a lot of later gen gym leaders are memorable too. but the gen 1 leaders are the most memorable because they were the first ones. obviously. i dont think thats a mystery or anything
Because unlike most newer Gym Leaders each Kanto leader had a blurb about their backstory/job and the two that didn't Brock and Misty were anime protagonists.
Take gen1 and gen3 psychic leaders with info from just in-game sources
>Sabrina
>As a young girl she exhibited PSI powers and by harnessing them she forged a bond with psychic type pokemon and became the Kanto expert on them
>Tate and Liza
>They're twins lol
It's not like they couldn't have come up with more backstory for the twins, they're psychic twins from a small island town that just happens to have a space station, their pokemon also happen to be Solrock and Lunatone a pairing of psychic pokemon. They could've done a whole Princess Kaguya thing with them but they did literally nothing in-game.
Replace Sabrina with Tate & Liza and it's the exact same story.
Most of the characterization for the Gen1-3 Leaders came from remakes and the majority of their original portrayal was "I'm a Leader, this is my type, fight me for your badge" with maybe a token bit of personality added on. Gen4 and especially Gen5 was where they started developing the Leaders and Elites as having more to do in their lives beyond fighting for badges.
for me its Clair
every kid watched the indigo league anime whether they owned the games or not
Gen 2's gym leaders aren't tough, which isn't the same as difficult. Design-wise, Gen 1's designs are such that any of the gym leaders from Surge onwards could pass for an Elite 4 member; Gen 2 is a league of Brocks and Mistys.
It helps that Gen 1 positions the leaders as actual boss characters. Half the time you have to complete a "dungeon" just to get through the door, and even when you're not, Kanto is harder to get through than Johto in general. Having your progress marked by badges actually means something.
Then you get to Gen 3 onward and every game is about stopping the evil team from harnessing the power of the box legendary to fuck up the world and the relative mundanity of doing the league challenge becomes the point (hence why they usually wrap the story up before the final gym leader, which serves as a breather).
Erika: yamato nadeshiko.
Sabrina: hime cut.
they created the formula every other game has followed since then. also brock and misty were main characters in the anime. giovanni was the "villain" of the game. and sabrina is the sexiest girl gamefreak ever made.
>sabrina is the sexiest girl gamefreak ever made.
Barring that weird phase she went through in the DS era.
Anime made them to be villains more than friendly.
Every season since then the gym leaders are relatable, allies, or friendly rivals.
>Anime made them to be villains more than friendly.
Surge and Sabrina were the only ones that outright antagonized Ash, and he never even got to meet Giovanni during Kanto.
Your rose tinted glasses are on right now. All of them were made to be very antagonistic. Erica wouldnt even see Ash, he had to infiltrate the gym for example.
Only because Ash stupidly insulted her by saying her Pokemon stank. Koga and Blaine toyed with Ash a bit, but no more than they do with the player in the games.
I only know 4 of them and 3 because of the anime. None of the leaders are memorable
Whitney will always be hottest
it is nostalgia, children who grew up on later games remember the gym leaders of their personal fav gen best
Memorable how? Who are these people? There's three male characters who look the same and two who just have round heads with different details. The women all have the same face.
They all have distinct themes, with the exception of Brock and Misty none of them are just normal, but Brock and Misty were main characters in the anime so even they end up being famous