Well it’s almost been two weeks since my last Character Salute post, so I’m going to go ahead and do it now. I’m doing it early partly because I’m stuck on an outline for a story and am procrastinating, and partly because I might be busy on Friday. For this Character Salute I’m going to be talking about another one of Ash’s female traveling companions, Dawn
I’d sure like to know what those Unown in the picture I used are so ticked off about. Anyway, by now I’m sure a few of you are going “Darkarax, how could you like Dawn? She was just another replacement for Misty!” That statement is somewhat true, Dawn can’t compare to Misty. And I do not at all like the idea of Ash and Dawn as a couple. Still, Dawn has some likeable quality that I can’t seem to describe. I mean you have to admit, Dawn was a very refreshing change from that airhead May.
May was one of the major things that killed the anime for me. I ended up not watching the anime more or less after that. But then one afternoon there wasn’t anything else on except a Pokemon marathon, so I turned it on out of curiosity. I saw that they had replaced May with Dawn, and I thought to myself, “You know, this girl’s not bad. I mean she’s no Misty, but she’s not bad.” Of course I can go either way on Dawn’s Piplup, and as a whole the anime kinda sucked, but I was actually a bit sorry to see Dawn go.
In the Games: In Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, Dawn plays a fairly important role as the female character the player can use. And as such, the player can use any name they want for Dawn. Of course I guess it’d be more accurate to say that Dawn is based on this model female character, and the anime writers just filled in the gaps. It’s basically the same thing they did with May. And of course if the player doesn’t chose Dawn for their character, Dawn is used as the Sinnoh Region professor’s assistant.
Potential: So in trying to come up with a closing for this post I’ve thought a little bit more about what I like about Dawn. And one thing that occurs to me is that Dawn to me had the same potential for being a great character that Ash used to have back when the show was good. I mean Dawn does parallel Ash in a few ways. In a tiny way it’s a little like when that Cartoon Network show, Adventure Time, did that episode that had gender swapped versions of their characters. To me Dawn is sort of like Ash’s female counterpart, and perhaps it’s a bit more merciful that Dawn was removed from the show when she was, because her character probably would’ve gone through the same degradation that Ash has gone through.
That wraps it up for this Character Salute. I’ve already decided which character the next Character Salute post will be about. So until then, stay tuned.
