For the most part, I actually did rather like the BW anime rivals, and thought they were pretty solid as characters (Georgia and Burgundy were my faves tho from this series, they had such fun personalities and interactions. Burgundy especially was really funny)!
These two tho? I just couldn't stand. Trip, at least early on before his personality became a bit more fleshed out, felt a bit like a bootleg Paul, except trading the Pokemon abuse for being mildly/weirdly racist (low-key nationalistic maybe?) at Ash after finding out he was from Kanto. And I feel like I was more okay with Ash and Pikachu losing to Snivy than a lot of other fans at the time, it's clear they were off-rhythm not being able to use Electric attacks, fine, but it was embarrassing to see him keep losing after that to a rookie Trainer. (He's better than Cameron tho, but that bar is so low it's in hell.)
Cameron was a straight-up boob, between almost boarding the plane to go to Johto (where he thinks the Unova League is held, bruh, what???), not knowing how many badges he needed to enter to the point Ash and co. had to set him straight, almost slept in on the day of registration for the League and was only allowed to participate because Nurse Joy took pity on him, and then topped himself by bringing 5 Pokemon to a full battle, and this is the dude Ash lost to? Like, I wasn't expecting Ash to win in Unova, I don't think anyone really did by that point in the anime's run, but srsly??? He has some good Pokemon, but as a character he honestly just felt like a more annoying Barry. (There's also the wasted potential to tease Sylveon they could've had if it was Virgil that defeated Ash instead.)
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