>>58803000>I actually don’t think they would have played it up as a ship teasy thing thoughI agree, though they might've at most done a single tease if they busted out the ribbon halves again, spooking Serena for a moment, only for May to be shown to be purely platonic thereafter.
>in the movies however…It's honestly hysterical how different the writing is between the AG series and the AG movies on that front. Most shippy material between Ash and May in the series is relegated to the first few episodes when they're alone together and when May had this weird touchy-feely trope that was dropped early on, a few sporadic episodes where it's played for fun like the battle of the sexes episode and when that adult couple confuses Ash and May for a couple, arguably their end-of-AG contest battle tie, and May's DP return when they bust out the ribbon halves. Meanwhile in the movies, it's almost shameless how ship-baity the writing gets at times, especially in the Lucario and, even more so, in the Manaphy movie. If you just compared movies and ignored the base series, the AG movies arguably lean harder into ship-baiting Ash and May than the XY movies did ship-baiting Ash and Serena. Not really surprising, then, that so much AshxMay art today either includes Manaphy or them in their Lucario movie formal outfits. I wonder sometimes if the meme about the Advanceshipping writers getting movie duty as compensation for the series giving May to Drew has a grain of truth to it.
