>>309159377 gyms straight. The entire Lysandre plot goes off and is resolved between gyms 7 and 8 (Wulfric and his city in general were pretty cool at least; only XY gym leader I like)
You also forgot the "rivals", the characterless E4, the most boring champion in the history of the series...
Look how little anyone cares about the Gen 6 gym leaders.
Look how popular basically every Gen 7 trial captain is
except poor Sophicles, RIP. Even Mina has a decent following and she's the one who out-useless'd the XY gym leaders to the point she didn't even set up a trial.
Basically what I'm saying is that XY only had a few actual characters and everyone else was flat cardboard planks designed to advance the plot to the next cardboard plank. It was the formula becoming so routine that you could literally say what would happen before playing and be right on the money.
Sun and Moon threw the formula away and did something else, and is infinitely more memorable for it.
