Couldn't agree more with Pokemon: Journeys and Yu-Gi-Oh. Despite being a huge fan of both series, they did their female "leads" dirty by not having them either do much, get possessed (in Yu-Gi-Oh's case), be damsels in distress (which isn't necessarily a bad thing if done right but neither Pokemon nor Yu-Gi-Oh did it right in my opinion), and the list goes on.

Koharu (or Chloe in the dub, sorry I will refer to her as Koharu since I watched the Japanese dub of Journeys) had so much protentional to do great things. She could have started her journey as a trainer, her Eevee could have evolved or been a G-max Eevee, she could have done a mixture of gym battles and contests (kind of like Ash did in the Diamond Pearl/Advanced Generation seasons) but no...she just kind of waffles all over the place and the two episodes that were SUPPOSED TO BE HER conclusion arc ended on a very flat uninspiring note. Koharu unfortunately was pointless and didn't have anything of note to do while Ash was doing his masters 8 tournament thing and Goh was capturing Pokemon which is...something I guess. But yeah, really disappointed in how Koharu was written. I like her as a character and hate how she was handled...course that could be said for much of Journeys as a whole to be fair.

As for Yu-Gi-Oh, there are many of the series that fell flat with their female leads...in my opinion, Arc-V did this the worst with the bracelet girls...we didn't get introduced to Ruri/Rin until we were over halfway through the show and that was rediculous. What's more is they get possessed by these stupid insect bugs and that's how we see them duel, possessed and all evil and crap and it's a damn shame because I was looking forward to seeing how Rin and Ruri dueled unbrainwashed but unfortunately we never got that and don't even get me started on the ending of Arc-V. TO this day, I still consider it (in my opinion) one of the worst anime endings because of how all 8 main characters got freaking screwed. Arc-V started out really great with Yuzu and Serena being great duelists and then the show just crapped on their characters. It really is a shame...they had me in the first half...not gonna lie.

I know all the Studio Gallop produced Yu-Gi-Oh animes have some sort of female inequality with them...I just ranted about ARC-V because it was the worst in my opinion...of course VRAINS dropped the ball with Aoi/Blue Angel too...anyways...hope you don't mind a disappointed fan ranting. I still like the shows mentioned...but am disappointed with certain aspects of them regardless.

@Dranzerstorm:

True, particularly for Kari, who was upgraded to a main character in Digimon Adventure 2. The others in series like Beyblade and Medabots, though I understand the frustration, were fringe characters (Sam, Mariah, etc). The original Beyblade didn’t give any of the fringe characters much attention after their respective tournament arcs. If I recall correctly, Medabots was much the same in that respect.

Speaking only for the ones I’ve seen, you’re absolutely right; but as a girl watching the series, I didn’t really mind. I watched for the fun and the character arcs, regardless of whether the main cast was boys or girls (and regardless of whether I was their target demographic or not). XD