>>31149201Red I'll accept, he's obviously overleveled on purpose for a laff.
The rest I dunno, I handled it well enough as a kid, except for Red.
I think it's not as extreme as you'd expect from a cursory glance at the levels because on average the Johto league has the lowest levels in series to date. That 10 level jump before Lance is peanuts compared to the 15 level jump to Steven, or that ridiculous 16 level jump to Cynthia, especially when those fights are working with higher levels which are more difficult to grind out.
Even when you get over to the Kanto side, most of the Gym leaders are about E4 range in levels, except for Blue who's around 6-8 level above Lance, but you can't battle him until you've just about finished your tour of Kanto.
Though honestly, all of the games pretty much require some plain old grinding if you want fair levels, except for gen 6 and beyond thanks to exp.share and amie/refresh.
