>>43341780>Yeah, but you always beat their asses easily. Repeatedly.The solution to this is to not have so many battles with them. They realized this by Gen 5 too with villain team leaders, and how someone like Giovanni or Archie/Maxie jobbing to you all the time before the final fight makes them come across as non-threatening.
>Then they lose to someone strong possibly offscreen and learn their lesson after they lecture them.This is better than most "friendly" rivals, who treat their Pokemon and others nicely, and basically do nothing different from the protagonist, yet end up as failures for no reason. Why are Calem/Serena or Hau weaker than you when they take all the same steps that you do? They just play second fiddle for no narrative payoff.
With antagonistic rivals like Blue, Silver, or N, you can see that the story portrays them as strong, but they fall short of the mark of being the best because their philosophies are wrong, and through clashing with the protagonist, they learn a new perspective, and have hope for the future to achieve their dreams now that they solved their problems. Most friendly rivals just have to accept that they'll never be the best because you exist, and that's that.
