>>56185549Had the anime ended on Gen 9 Pageeta would have been the one sweeping everyone like that.
Leon honestly just got lucky in terms of timing, but even so, they went way over the top with him, but at the same time, they were self-aware enough in regards of who was sacrificed to him.
They also showed some degree of self-awareness in regards to Cynthia considering things like Garchomp's fuck-awful moveset and not having Ash defeat Mega Garchomp too.
That said, Journeys was a total mess of a series and nothing in the world will convince me that Ash was meant to go when Journeys started. I'll bet anything in that that was decided midway, which is also when they likely decided to bring back all the Champions for the sake of "hype", and Leon was already long since decided on being the "goal" for the season.
Like, look at Leon vs Lance. It's like night and day in comparison to how Leon started to get portrayed afterwards. It was a rather even match and even if Lance lost it didn't felt like he was being disrespected or made into a sacrificial lamb for the sake of "hype" even if on the strict sense of the word he was a jobber.
>On some level, I think they probably don't really get why she's popular.>I doubt it's genuine resentment, but I can see a character like Leon being formed from their realization that if Cynthia can amass her popularity by "accident", then if they were to deliberately design something to be the strongest champion, it would easily eclipse all other characters.Absolutely.
They definitively up to a certain degree think people like Cynthia first and foremost because she's "strong" and not realizing or understanding why people think Cynthia is "strong". They think that by being told X character is strong people will start liking X character because they were told to do so indirectly.
People started to think Cynthia was strong on their own, not because they were told she was strong. Her reputation is organic.
