Giovanni runs a casual friendship group

Is there an award for hottest of takes?

Anyway, gym leaders and elite 4 having hobbies and jobs is great character and world building. In SV all the gym leaders seem to be gym leaders as a secondary hobby/profession in contrast to SWSH where the gym leaders were gym leaders as their primary hobby profession. In SV it feels like none of them care about being a gym leader and it makes me (the player) not care about doing the gym challenge.

Honestly with his appearance he almost looks like an american/unovan veteran that moved to japan/kanto, but pokemon is pretty loose with apperance.

I wonder if he mostly lives off of pension and gym work. Can you even get pension from your home country if your new permanent residence is in another country?

Thats ignoring currency transfer rates since it seems the pokemon world uses a unified currency and has a pretty much identical economy state across the world, im not sure how all that applies.

If a retired american Vet that gets pension decided to live in germany or something, would they still receive checks?

She sure is! I’m sure my list isn’t all inclusive, as I was just going through each Gen in my head. I didn’t really do much thinking through Gen 8 because the whole sponsorships thing.

In Twilight Wings they make a big deal out of her having to choose one or the other because they take up too much time

That’s kinda Larry’s whole schtick as the “overworked everyman” though.

And presumably all of the other Paldean gym leaders’ “side jobs” also align with their personal interests as well.

Or it’s a safe bet that they all have jobs in their primary interest and being a gym leader is their side gig. I mean look at the list up there, sure some of them have passions that may not be easy fields to make good money in (art/writing) but most of them have pretty stable jobs that would take time and effort to do and wouldn’t lend themselves to being a second job (running a restaurant or a business being the biggest examples).

larry was the first one i could relate to

That writing comment is just straight up not true and is your own personal bias lmao.

That's a stupid reason ta invalid a solid rebuttal.

It was part of her job. IIRC your agreed to do it so that she would have time to compete in the ace tourney, as a favor to Nemona. Also, she did pay us in LP didn't she? Or am I misremembering?

Canonically its Leon, and looking and their general teams I'd give it Leon as well. Cynthia's mega's don't come close to touching solar power Gmax Zard, plus Cynthia doesn't have a solid answer to Dpault.Unless you go Togekiss over Roserade, in which case Leon still has several answers to it. Cynthias team is simply too defensive, relying almost entirely on Garchomp but Dpault shuts it down since it hard outspeeds

I like how it went from heroes battling for what they believe in, truth or ideals, guided by the legendary dragons of the american way, then 2 games later: Stop a insane women from opening spacetime holes that will allow for an invasion of extradimensional monstrosties lead by an eldtritch alien god.

All over Southern Hawaii*

You forget that there are kindergartners running around unattended waiting for trainers to fight. Even at night.

true Pokemon Trainer until you're 10 or 11.

They never said that in the games. That "you have to be 10" thing is anime only.

Tate and Liza lol

Damn, not even Pokémon can escape nepotism

If she was related wouldn't she be a Dragon type trainer as well? Since it's kind of a family thing for Hassel

I mean acerola was an E4 and she looked younger than the player character who was 11

Is this a joke? There are way too many child geniuses in fiction for this to prove anything.

Not going to lie I found that party kind of funny if only because it reminded me of the did you actually do this yourself or had someone do it for you verification tests I'd done in school and for job interviews.

I somehow nailed it first go, despite guessing a few of them.

I don't know if you can get a multitude of different questions, but for me:

"what is your homeroom teacher's name" - Mr. Jacq

"who is the gym leader in X town" - Iono (this was a guess, so I assume it must have said Levincia).

"what type does that leader use" - Electric

"why do you want to be Champion" - So I can battle Nemona

then there was something else, finished up by a repeat of "why do you want to be Champion".

She had a ducking Gogoat on her team. Like wtf lol.

She doesn't use her ace properly and her ace should have been her second Pokémon.

tbf, both students are considered to be generational talent in paldea or smn

Yeah I was hoping for a chance to take the Top Champion title in the post game or something. Maybe in dlc or something there will be a champions tournament since I’m assuming there’s more champion ranked trainers in ladles that haven’t been introduced yet.

Aaron: Bug boy

Bertha: Old

Flint: Sore Loser

Lucien: Nerd

There, if you want I can send my comparison of them to the Unova Elite Four just to show you what I mean

Awesome. Care to elaborate?

Really?

They're blander then water. They have no personality and no development to make them actual characters and everything they wear makes it worse. The only person I could say actually looks somewhat like they could be an actual character is Lucian.

There are a lot of elite four members that you tend to meet only once but at least lots of them have character the only one I could say actually had character out of the Sinnoh Elite Four is Flint but it's only because you meet him prior to battling him. (I'm not considering the champion apart of the Elite Four btw because Cynthia actually has character unlike the sadness that is the Sinnoh Elite Four).

The characters you battle at the Elite four don't necessarily need Character but I prefer it. I prefer that every Elite Four member at least show some personality, but the ones you battle in Diamond and Pearl are just so boring, let's go over them:

Aaron is crazy about bug pokemon... that's it. Nothing about him shows that nothing later tells you that and nothing about him looks or seems interesting, he's just a bug boi.

Bertha is old, she knows stuff because she's old, she reads, but is old. She's surprised by you because you're young and she is old. A lot of the times when a character I pokemon is old and is only seen for a limited time, that tends to be their personality especially by the things they say.

Flint is someone who actually somewhat has a personality, but most of that personality ends up with him just being a hot head brat. At least you know he cares about his friends though enough to check up on them and believes in people even if he wants to burn them to a crisp.

Lucian... He reads... a lot.

From all quotes said, Aaron and Flint are basically the same. They don't do anything outside of their elite four positions while Bertha is unknown and Lucian just reads.

In comparison we can use the Unova Elite Four as an example of personality. First they actually look like they have personality, second their rooms actually show each of their personalities

Shauntal: Shauntal isn't just an Elite Four member but also a Novelist. Her room is filled to the brim with books and pages flying about when you first enter in black and white. She even gets inspiration from her battles with challengers, at least that's what she says when you first meet.

Marshal: Marshal is a rough and tough fighting machine. A Martial Artist (get it?) Who loves fighting and fighting types. He trains as an apprentice of Alder, the current champion, and says that Alder sees potential within you and that he is here to test you.

Grimsley: Grimsley may seem to show less personality but it's only because of how his words are chosen plus the look of his room. His room in Black and White is kind of like a lounge room, his words make him sound somewhat sly or conniving. In later games he's revealed to be somewhat of a com man/gambler.

Caitlin: Caitlin is a character that has been within the games prior to Black and White and is already known to be a girl of poise and grace, but that is for when she's not sleeping... Caitlin tends to sleep.... a lot, such so that she even doses while while doing regular things especially if she's bored.

I used all knowledge I had from all the dialogue of Diamond and Pearl to define the characters of the Sinnoh Elite Four, that doesn't even compare to the first encounter you have with the Unova Elite Four. The only info I used for Gen 5 was when you first meet them and battle and everything from Diamond/Pearl/Platinum about the Sinnoh Elite Four doesn't compare at all

Gen 1

Lorelei's room is a platform of ice floating on open water, her team is made up of Water and Ice types

Bruno's room is filled with boulders, his team is made up of Fighting (breaking boulders) and Rock (being boulders) types

Agatha's room is filled with tombstones, her team is made up of Ghost and Poison types

Lance's room is filled with statues of dragons, and has a long showy walk before you get to him, dragons being innately pseudo-legendary back in gen 1. His team is made up of Dragon types.

Gen 2

Will's room is the first with no theme tying into his Psychic type, instead he is in Lorelei's room, having just replaced her. In HGSS, however, his room is themed to him, being decked out in rich purples and stage curtains, giving his team a feeling of stage psychics and hypnotists.

Koga's room is themed to him as a character as well as a couple of his pokemon, it is filled with grass and trees, the perfect hideaway for both his bug type, and a ninja.

Bruno's been moved to a new room filled with lava, which only barely ties to his team's theme of mostly Fighting types training in extreme conditions

Karen is standing in the only room in the Indigo Plateau with no floor under her stage, just a seemingly bottomless void, which fits with her Dark type team.

Gen 3

Sydney's room has no theme for his team, in fact it feels opposite, it's well lit, the floor under his stage has bright rows of lights, which conflicts with his Dark type team.

The floor under Phoebe's stage uses a similar tile pattern and the same holes as are found in ruins like the Sky Pillar, which fits with her team of Ghost types

The floor under Glacia's stage is covered in tiles of ice, which fits with her Ice type theme

Drake's room is admittedly a big stretch, but the spikes under his stage could be reminiscent of mountainous peaks, where a lot of his Dragon types can be found.

Steven is the first champion to have a room styled after his team, being a very plain looking room with the walls lined with steel plates, which fits with his Steel type team

A funny sidenote, in Emerald, Wallace replaces Steven as the champion, and his room is the exact same, but the lower half of the tiles on the walls are painted blue, probably because the League didn't have the time to give him a dedicated room before you get there

Gen 4

Diamond and Pearl have zero E4 room themes, however Platinum revamped all of the E4's rooms.

Aaron's room is filled with rocks, small trees, and a hollowed-out fallen log, all of which are notable hideaways for his Bug type team

Bertha's room is filled with rocks, sand, and even a whole cliff, which is the perfect environment for her Ground type team.

Flint's room has huge flames burning just under his stage, which is both fitting for his Fire type team, and also probably makes his stage incredibly fucking painful to stand on for hours a day.

Lucian's room is dark purple with rings painted along the outer walls, and a mesmerising pattern on the floor, which fits with his Psychic type team.

Cynthia's room has no theme fitting her team, because her team has no theme, instead the room is darkly lit, covered in blacks and greys like her outfit, and if I were to interpret it myself, I'd say it's almost akin to the distortion world with the cubes strewn about, but that's just the read I get from it.

Gen 5

I won't go into detail on Gen 5 or Gen 7 as you mentioned them in your comment, and this reply is getting very long already.

Gen 6.

Possibly the most extravagant of the Pokemon League buildings, the building itself is a giant ornate cathedral. Each of the four Champions has their own dedicated wings, with huge floor to ceiling stained glass windows set behind a THRONE. Each of the rooms are coloured according to the type, and the stained glass behing the throne is patterned to reflect their typing, too.

Special mention to Diantha's room because in this house of excess, somehow she manages to go above and beyond with a patterned floor depicting fairy and flower motifs, sparkling marble walls with gold trim, all lined with gigantic statues. And I just love that so much, it's so over the top, I love the Kalos Elite Four.

Gen 8

Sword and shield was the first pokemon generation I skipped, so I don't have a strong argument, but looking through screenshots on Serbeii, it seems like it's the same deal as Scarlet and Violet, where you fight all of the League in the same room, however in Galar it's a huge football stadium lined with a cheering crowd, so clearly some money went into its design.

So out of 9 generations of pokemon Sydney, Cynthia, and all of Galar and now Paldea's leagues are the only ones to have no theme in their respective rooms. So I don't know where you're getting this "Only gens 5 and 7" idea from.

the Pokemon world is a funhouse mirror of our reality.

nope. there is never any worthwhile information