I was at work thinking about what goals the rivals had and I realized most of them don't give a fuck about being champion or gyms in general. Blue, trace(on a technicality), N, hau (another technicality), the gen 8 rivals, and Nemona are the only rivals that care about being champion, trace is only champion cause blue was the champion hau just happened to be the only other guy doing the island challenge and it's another thing to try and impress his grandpa with. The others are either generic "I wanna get stronger" guys or don't have battle related goals like the gen 3 rivals don't have goals they exist to fight you and that's it. Barry and cheren care about gyms battles but that's it they don't care about being champion at least not that I remember.

>>57966138 (OP)
If I was allowed to remove 4 rivals from the pokemon franchise, I would kill Trace, Hau, Hop and Avery. I liked Shauna better than their ugly asses.

Pretty sure Barry is at least attempting it but Barry's goal is kinda vague aside from wanting to be cool like his dad. Cheren was arguably working towards it, but then Alder asked him "but y tho" and then he never really finds a good answer to that question. On the topic of Hau, SM Hau isn't even really that interested in winning anything for much of the plot until him not taking shit seriously negatively impacts people around him, then he gets exiled from the plot dimension until post-game because they need to focus on Lillie for some reason. USUM Hau dramatically better because instead of vanishing for the vast majority of the playerbase he instead shows up in a cutscene to do something, is shown finishing the island trials during what is essentially your victory lap, and then shows up to be the Red to your Blue at the end. It's not much, but after four doses of nothing in XY and the about as underwhelming Hugh (who I noticed you didn't even mention which says a lot about him) I'm just glad to actually have a fight with a character with decent buildup. The closest we got to that before was Bianca and while she's a good character, her character is specifically not battle focused so we just have to accept N as a reasonable substitute. And even N is leagues better than Silver's pro-wrestling character arc, but even the child with every disease ambushing you is more impactful than anything Silver does. I can't wait for the Switch 2 Pokemon titles to have maybe one interesting rival, which seems to be a pattern.

>>57966138 (OP)
There's a comedic side to the Gen 3 rival where they literally don't care about battling or competition at all and are just like "Wow anon check out how cool this is!" but then when you fight them they curbstomp you and flex their bike or HMs before you're even able to get them.

>>57966150
>not Trevor and Tierno

>>57966138 (OP)
>Trace is one of the only real rivals in the series who actually is a rival in your ambitions.

Apologize.

>>57966138 (OP)
Cheren literally had entire character development around him wanting to become a champion. His issue was that he was kind of autistic about it and could not answer Alder's question about what he will do after that and it was biting him through entire journey. It slowly dawned on him that becoming a champion is not really a worthwhile ultimate goal when he saw random people just enjoying living and battling with Pokemon and how much can actually be done without that title.

>>57966138 (OP)
Cheren does fight Alder when he finds him outside, Alder is the one telling him there's more to being a trainer than strength
Barry was aiming to surpass his dad at the Battle Frontier and Barry's dad is even stronger than Cynthia