>>54307925Rivals should, generally, be someone you want to beat.
And unfortunately for pokemon, the MC is a mute who can only respond with shit like "yeah" and "okay", so they can't form any kind of dynamics with other characters. This limits the type of rivals that could actually work.
Friendly rivals are not one of them. The way you can't respond to them just makes some of these people just feel like stalkers, especially the spanish bitch. I mean, I guess fighting off your stalker is a fairly compelling reason to want to beat them, but I don't think that was the intended impression.
So ones more like Green/Blue and N are the ones that are going to work more. The former is the dickhead you're racing who always manages to be one step ahead, and the latter is some crazy dude that directly opposes you and the objective of the game and he may or may not steal your pokemon. Archetypes that can function even if the MC doesn't react verbally.
tl;dr I dunno nigga but they actually have to OPPOSE the MC in some way
