May and Dawns contests had battle phases
Dawn also had a lot of regular battles, often with Ash (and once or twice vs Ash)

as a kid I always hated these episodes of ADV/DPP
Not because they were girly contest episodes, but because the scoring judges seemed completely arbitrary in how points were given out, and in round 2 they had the option to just beat the shit out of your opponent's pokemon as if its a normal battle anyway - which I think May did several times.
And usually whenever they lost it was because of total bullshit

>>59053894
Kind of annoying that they did the same thing 3 times in a row (not counting Iris from Black and White because the Black and White anime doesn't exist). Like yes, we get it, they're girls, they're so girly!
Japan in general does stick a lot stronger to gender norms compared to America though. In Japan you'll very rarely find (in real life at least) femboys or butch lesbians who like to grow beards. And their idea of a "tomboy" is basically a girl who is extremely girly but prefers short shorts to mini skirts, is sporty or physically active, has slightly shorter than average hair, and who has a pretty bold personality. So basically Misty. In America Misty would be considered a girly girl but in Japan that's as masculine as a woman possibly gets.

>>59053894
>bitching about muh equity when both dawn and serena's generation feature female champions

>>59053894
Post fingernails or hips.

>>59053932
Maybe you should watch your shitty American cartoons and let cute girl enjoyers have their anime in peace, faggot?

>>59053894
then we have liko... who flopped hard...

>>59053964
I wasn't complaining about anime not having butch lesbians who like to grow beards, just saying how I don't like how almost all of Ash's female companions have been pigeonholed into being into contests and how the explanation for it is because Japan doesn't really break from gender norms. If we just simply had more companions like Misty who do stuff other than contests I'd be happy.

>>59053970
They shouldn't have made her ugly

>>59053923
>Dawn also had a lot of regular battles, often with Ash (and once or twice vs Ash)
Pearlshipping had the best Ash chemistry, aside from early Kantos banter with Misty

>>59053932
>butch lesbians who like to grow beards
jesus fucking christ. femboys are at least cute. beards don't even look good on a lot of men much less so on women