>>43457855Blue and Barry were the two rivals you actually wanted to be better than. In Blue's case because he was an ass who thought he was better than you, and in Barry's case because he was hyperactive and prone to rushing off to the next gym before you had the chance to.
Silver comes in close second but largely just because he was antagonistic, but not much of a rival. Similar deal with Gladion but he also just had a sadboi backstory to soften him up and make him even less of an antagonist without making him any more of a real rival.
The whole Sword/Shield crew are actual rivals, if with varying levels of really pushing you to want to outpace them.
In theory Tierno and Trevor could actually have made decent rivals if Trevor had actually made comparing dex count and rare finds a part of his encounters. And in Tierno's case if his dance move gimmick had actually manifested as him looking to use specific move sets, or if they'd just thrown contests back in for him to compete in their actual personalities could've been unchanged and they'd have worked.
All the other rivals had no sense that they were actually rivaling you in anything. They just showed up, said "hey lets fight" and when wandered back off.
Hugh came close to being a decent rival if they'd just have positioned his random crusade to be something you actually wanted to keep up with him in.
Wally and Bianca both suffer from being anti-rivals. Both fun characters and frankly better written than most of the rivals, but if anything their characterizations actually make you want to beat them less. Hop dipped into this for a bit in Sword/Shield, but he got (a little) better.
