>>35727413>Of course it does. Dawn losing in something she doesn't specialize in makes sense because she's not an expert in traditional Pokemon battling. Likewise, May losing in something she is specialized in to a rookie indicates a passing of the torch to a more popular girl.She barely lost to Dawn in a current Contest because she was the current girl, it had nothing to do with a girl being popular than the other. If that were the case Dawn would have beaten Iris because Dawn is much more popular than Iris.
>Please tell me you're joking. Neither male nor female viewers gave a shit about Harley, while Zoey and Shauna were some of Dawn and Serena's definitive rivals. Drew is popular because of shipping faggotry, which is why the vast majority of his fans also happen to be contestshippers.How are you going to tell me Harley isn't popular? His character is loved by Contestshippers as well because of how funny his interactions with Drew/May is, and Harley is loved in general not only because of his funny personality, unique design, how gay he is, but also because he doubled as a villain...sabotaged May's Contests, worked with Team Rocket, he brought the best sense of drama to the Contests most of the other rivals didn't have. You obviously weren't in the fandom when AG was airing or even years into DP if you think Harley wasn't tremendously popular. He was a secondary rival yet became a major one due to how liked he was in Hoenn.
Also because Zoey/Shauna were the main rivals of the other girls, that doesn't automatically make them popular. Zoey's personality/design was never all that popular, and Shauna is just a "cute girl" who barely did much in the anime. Nobody really cared about Shauna more than her design/
>No it didn't, it matched late Johto which was already a long way down from when Pokemon was at it's most popular in Kanto/OI/early Johto. Then DP came along and improved on AG in almost every way, and became more popular for it. 
