>>22815639Its hard to say. Dawn's popularity in Japan has to do with her looking Japanese, Piplup, her co-star status, interacting with Ash, and probably a new gen of kids who started watching when DP began 10 years into the anime,.
May's entire fanbase came from classic Kanto fans. Hoenn was extremely earler in the anime's history that it didn't have an entire new young fanbase of kids growing up with it, it was mostly old-school Kanto/Orange fans.
Ask any May fan when they started watching the anime and they'll say Kanto. That's proof the majority of May's fanbase came from the original OS fans who liked May more than Misty.
There's a reason May was so popular it convinced the writers to axe Misty for good and why Contestshipping and to a lesser extent Advanceshipping were tremendously popular.
Its been over 12 years since AG began and people are still singing their praises about May.
