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She has a similar problem to Kris, Lyra, and Elaine where they were introduced later. Gen I is dominated by Red, and him being the ultimate boss of Gen II and its remakes cements that. Not to mention that Ash is based on Red, so it creates this media synergy of Gen I's protagonist being a the boy. People like his rivalry with Green too, and the two of them appear in the Alola games. Leaf isn't like that. She only exists in art in Gen I, mostly to fill space. She gets repurposed into the female character of FRLG, but goes completely unused again until LGPE 14 years later. Even then it created a disconnect as fans were used to calling her Leaf and the game calls her Blue. They're clearly based on the same Gen I art, but none of this feels consolidated. And not long after, we get the figure that calls her Leaf and she's called Leaf in Masters. But at least she isn't Elaine.
As for Kris and Lyra, Kris is only present in Crystal, not GS or HGSS which sold far more. Her design is pretty dated, she never appears as an NPC, her name was also kind of unclear as the only thing anyone had to work with until Masters was some screenshots where she was named as such, but even the male protagonist was given that name for Crystal, just as Chris. Lyra appears in HGSS and has an NPC role, but for 10 years people have thought of the boy as the main character. He's the one who battled Red.
May, Dawn, and Serena overshadow Brendan, Lucas, and Calem because of heavy anime promotion, but both genders at least appear as NPCs.
