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I wanna talk about Dawn (and a bit of May) for a bit.
I've been keeping autistic numbers while watching AG/DP about when the three Contest girls hit certain milestones (catching Pokemon, doing a Contest/performance, when they first battled). I'll post the full numbers when I figure out how to format them so that they don't look like ass. Originally it was just to compare May and Serena's pacing, but it quickly became more fun to compare May and Dawn's since both kept doing things after a certain point.
Dawn doesn't "do as many things" as May does, but she still seems to be more of a center-focus in DP than May does in AG. With the exception of the Grand Festival coming a bit soon, Dawn felt on par with Ash, while May was a 1b to Ash's 1a. Even though the third season (going by US numbers) had by far the least amount of "things happening," most of it didn't feel too sluggish. I credit that with a lot of the season focusing on Dawn -- not her "doing things" per se, but just her as a character, her relationship with her mother, Ash, Brock, Jessie, all of her Pokemon, even Barry. She did not have her existential crisis arc that ended with the Wallace Cup and then fade into the background, only showing up to do Contests for one episode, until the Grand Festival put her center stage again. It's clear the writers liked her, and wanted to keep her around.
I think, if I had to pick, I like May more just because I like her vibe more, but I don't know if there's much controversial about saying that Dawn's the best written of Ash's female companions.
