>>34577919It's kind of ironic. Gen III is known for being when all the casual fans dropped the games/anime even though the fad generally died mid-Johto, yet May's inclusion in the anime is the main reason a lot of people continued to watch the show.
If the original trio or Misty had continued directly into Hoenn after the Johto arc, I think I probably would have stopped watching the anime right then and there. I was already getting pretty bored of the show and the cast back then, and if we didn't have a new character introduced I probably would have drifted off.
It's also obvious that May's success is what paved the way for all the female characters who came after her. Once the writers saw how popular a new female lead could become, it made them realize they didn't have to reunite the original trio or go back to Misty again, and that's why we later on got Dawn fpr DP, and then new casts every generation.
Sometimes I honestly what how different the anime would have been if May had bombed, or the Contests bombed, and the writers viewed May as another Tracey. In that weird alternate universe, the writers might have reunited the original trio for Battle Frontier and into DP. Who knows.
