>>45435910>>overly friendly brown kid with successful family member wants to take his place,Wrong right off the bat. Hau doesn't HAVE the drive to become Kahuna because he's failed so much before, to he masks his lack of effort with a carefree attitude and gung-ho appraoch to training that he ends up needing to change because it gets Lillie kidnapped by Team Skull halfway through the game and he comes to the realization that it's also unfair to his Pokemon to hold them back like that.
IN contrast, Hop almost tries TOO hard, to the point where he somewhat believe his relationship with Leon belies some natural talent and that he cann 100% live up to his name. That's why losing to you and Bede crushes him, and rather than Hau, who just goes full on denial about being a fucking loser, Hop goes panic mode and tries literally anything team-wise to beat you, to the point of ditching his first Pokemon ever in Wooloo/Dubwool.
>>constantly heals your pokemonI don't remember either of them healing you that much, it mostly came from other characters or the game auto-healing. Them doing it at all is shit though, I agree
>big loser that tries really hard not to pretend not to be sad when he losesNot the case at fucking all. This is especially obvious when looking at the conclusion of their arcs. Hau ends up striving for strength because he realizes that bottling up his losses into a negligent attitude was the easy way out of having to acknowledge that you're just not that strong of a trainer. Hop's realization is that being a trainer isn't his true calling, and while he'll be driving for the Champion's seat and he's still a very talented trainer, he focuses much more on his lab assistant duties and becoming a professor.
>Hau crushing on Lillie, Hop seems to have some kind of feelings for (You).Even if either of weren't utter headcanon, there's a stark difference between the rival having a crush on another character and the rival having a crush on the MC.
