>>47599548Erika was absolutely a pity badge. The Gym Leaders are there to see if you're good enough at Pokemon battling to compete in the League, not to verify that you're courageous and a nice guy. I can understand rewarding him with a rematch, but he didn't deserve the badge.
Brock and Misty are both extremely questionable. I'll let Misty slide because, if I remember right, he was pretty clearly winning when Team Rocket interrupted the fight. But Brock was definitely pity. It'd be like if I was in a boxing match with someone, getting my ass reamed, and I stomped on the canvas which just so happened to dislodge a light from the ceiling that fell and knocked him out. Again, it shows character that Ash recognized that his victory was BS, but that doesn't change the fact that it was BS. Sabrina is an even more extreme version of that.
And at the end of the day, Ash only won a single Gym Badge by beating the proper Gym Leader in a Pokemon battle on his first try. In three cases (four if you count Misty), he didn't actually beat them at all, and in the case of the Earth Badge, he beat a couple of putzes who Giovanni put in charge. It's perfectly reasonable to view Ash's Gym Badges as unearned or to generally see his performances against the Gym Leaders as incredibly lame.
It also makes me wonder just how much Koga sucked in the anime universe.
