The third wheel...

G

goalpostcasualty

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Ever notice how in animation (and other places as well) it always seems like a love interest can disrupt the balance of a friendship?Take Shrek for example, the ogre and donkey start out as friends only to have the addition of a princess love interest knock it off kilter.Or in Brother Bear 2,where the little bear Koda spends the majority of the movie complaining over his big bro's paramour...

And then,eventually,everything is pretty much reconciled.
 
I have noticed that 3-member groups are pretty popular, whether with 2B:1G or vice versa, and that way too often than not they start as buddies, until the odd one out eventually goes for the main character. Sometimes it is with the sidekick, but either way, the group hardly ever just stays friends, and it can be pretty awkward...
 
The most used plotline in history is the inclusion of a love interest that either both characters are into, or one is into and the other feels that they're muscling in on their territory.
 
IIRC, neither one seemed interested in her. She just seemed to be there to be the token female and fill the role of inventor, hence the name.
 
What show were you watching?

They BOTH had the hots for her, but she never (from what I recall) seemed to think of either of them as anything but friends...
 
That wasn't a 3rd wheel scenario. Both Chip and Dale were hot for gadget and fought each other for her attention, but Gadget showed no interest in either of them other than friendship, so there was no 3rd wheel in that case.
 
I guess this explains why everyone who watched "Pok?mon" in its first five seasons wanted Ash and Misty to hook up - it followed the exact same "two boys, one girl" format. Only difference is, the writers didn't make any effort to set up a romantic relationship between them, which drove the fans absolutely nuts. When it comes to "Pok?mon" fans, putting a male and female character onscreen together and not having them kiss is like dangling a carrot in front of a mule.
 
Yeah, I've seen some other Pokemon fans really heavy into shipping different character. There was some feelings implied and practically mentioned in the first two seasons between Ash and Misty, some of it dub-added I'll admit, but I think most of the rest after that was fan implied. I've seen a lot of Ash and Misty fanart. They pair up Ash with every new girl, even Dawn. The weirdest pairing that I've ever seen has to be Dawn and Paul. It just feels so weird.



I remember that episode. She didn't say that she would marry him one day. I believe it was more like this: "One day, you and I will be married too." Followed by Ash screaming a reasonable: "What?!" But nothing else after that. It could either be taken as she would marry him one day or that each of them would marry someone else someday. I bet I know which way most fans took it as though.
 
Why they replaced a perfectly good character like Misty with May and that other girl (shows how boring she is, I don't remember her name!) I'll never know. That's when Pokemon went down hill. However, there were hints of this in Pokemon: The First Movie. Subtle, but there nontheless.
 
It seems blatantly obvious to me - they needed a new character to promote the new video games. Ash couldn't leave 'cause he's the show's protagonist. Brock couldn't leave 'cause they needed to keep the boy-girl-boy structure. Misty was the most logical choice to leave, as the anime wanted an opportunity to showcase a female character from the games (gender choice was something that wasn't added to the video game universe until after the Johto episodes had already begun). Also, they needed a character to specifically promote Pok?mon Contests, and Misty doesn't really have the type of personality that fits Pok?mon coordination. The best bet was to create May, an entirely new character based on the Ruby and Sapphire female sprite who loved the idea of Pok?mon Contests. Then when Diamond and Pearl came out, they did the same thing - Ruby and Sapphire weren't hot anymore, thus they dumped May and ushered in Dawn.

People often forget that the whole reason the "Pok?mon" anime exists is to make kids buy video games. The writers don't care about which characters people like or don't like, just as long as those characters keep plugging Nintendo's products.
 
J. B. Warner already said this quite nicely, but I wanted to just point out how correct he is anyway. They replaced Misty because they needed a new female character to promote the then new games of Ruby and Sapphire, as well as Pokemon Contests. May would be a much better choice not only for promoting the R/S/E games, but since Misty wouldn't work for a Contest battle like style. The same thing happened when Dawn came into the picture. I personally like May over Dawn, but I could like her better once she gets more development. Besides that, I fully know that they made that change to promote the games. Pokemon is a commercial for the video games. I don't see anything wrong with that, of course, but it's a pretty well-known fact.

By the way, the girl you couldn't remember the name of is Dawn. She only has been in the series for almost two seasons so I don't think much of anyone outside of the Pokemon fan base knows much of anything about her. I also respectively disagree with you about Misty being more interesting than both May and Dawn. Even in her season one and two days, I don't think Misty did anything as interesting as May or even Dawn, despite how she's still relatively new to the series, have done so far. At the very least, most every Pokemon fan agrees that she was completely boring and useless in Johto. I don't want to start anything, but I just wanted to express my opinion respectively as well.
 
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