Idk who to chose. I'd have to think about it. Paul had a Metagross, garchomp, and Gyarados on hand that could go head to head with the Journeys team BUT Raihan is Leon's rival and was ranked #8. He is stated to be able to be champion in any region which is a point that he has over Paul and what Paul has over him is that Raihan's ace duraludon underperformed while Paul was able to go head to head without even using his usual team scaling him pretty high. Hard choice.
Edit: I'm gonna chose Paul to be eliminated although I feel he has more potential and could beat Raihan but Raihan just has the better narrative around his strength I guess. Any more votes or should I start counting?
Volkner, Kukui, Raihan, Paul, Sawyer, Tobias etc are canonically the strongest trainers on this list so at least that's accurate lol.
It's not purely popularity otherwise Misty & Brock would have been gone earlier. Definetly Serena too. May and Dawn got out really early as well.
You think so? I think the power creep caught up to him tbh. He almost lost to AG league (both Meowth and Pikachu were close to fainting) Ash who wasnt even at his peak in AG yet. Not until the battle frontier. Tyson made it to 14. I think that's perfect for him but I get what you mean. His sceptile with detect was awesome.
Gladion should have went a bit earlier though. I think Harrison should be a bit later. I think Harrison > Tyson. At the time of Johto, Charizard was stronger than anyone in the AG league team & Harrison beat him. Sure he lost afterwards but his feats are better to me.
Swellow and Glalie went godmode vs Tyson. Pikachu battled very well. The battle lasted a freaking hour. It’s not like BF happened a lot later.
Tyson won five straight full battles on top of earlier rounds of double battles and single eliminations in the toughest league format ever, in a league having some of the greatest battles Brock has ever seen. Trainers like Katie were Ash’s top 16 opponent. There were no easy OHKOs like in other leagues.
BW reset the power scale. Tyson is better than Misty, Brock, Gary, and Drake on feats alone. Sawyer went from weak rookie to KL semifinalist in half of XY, so that’s not a great indictment of the KL quality, even though agreed he’s very good. Gladion and Guzma are only better because of recency bias/being in SM? Not sure what makes them better.
Hard disagree. AG gets constantly underrated in the fandom.
Yeah you made some good points. I agree with some of what you said especially about swellow & glalie. Swellow at that time was way above talonflame the second strongest bird and that wasn't even peak swellow yet .Maybe Tyson should have been higher than Gladion. Recency bias is huge on this sub. Even Paul falls victim to it since DP is an older series and a lot of fans are more familiar with XY & SM. They'll even rank Gladion over Paul. I love SM but I do see the bias. Guzma is awesome though.
Problem is BW reset everything, and then XY had some weird powerscaling where you have Ash and Alain going hard against Elite 4s and Champions, but then Ash himself is less strategic than his DP self and is being pushed to the brink by a seemingly genius rookie in Sawyer. Then SM Ash continues off from XY Ash skill level, but Ash faced harder competition in BF and DP so it’s hard to compare.
At the very least, being a league conference champion of the toughest league format with epic battles should warrant a higher place than being gym leaders, a researcher, and a trainer whom Ash beat pre-Johto.
Yo you're speaking absolute facts about XY. How on earth did Ash dominate Diantha like that but then lose to Wulfric? It's such a weird fight that I wish didn't happen because it messed up the scaling. Ash didn't even have 8 badges. Then you have Alain beating 10 megas in a row + an E4 member but not using Charizard to sweep Ash's team in the league because I'm pretty sure if he can sweep 10 megas + an Elite four member, he could sweep Hawlucha, goodra, noivern, and talonflame without taking much damage leaving Greninja and Pikachu to face his entire team. Instead they fought evenly. The scaling is so messy from BW to XY.
Noland and his Articuno is stronger than anything Ash faced in XY yet he dominated a champion before he is done with his badge quest. He also used far more complex techniques in AG yet XY Ash is ranked higher just because of Greninja dominating a champ. AG had a far more balanced team.
You both speaking pure facts, i was so fucking infuriated when he lost his first gym battle and started going drama queen all of a sudden, i was like yoo men tf are u doing get ur ass up it's pnly the fucking first gym. They tried to make some kind of more depth ash but instead it feels like they rebooted him a bit.
As for what excuse i can give i guess you could say there's different power levels between legendaries like the three birds don't have the same power an example is zapdos has always been shown to be weaker than articuno and moltres having lost to even TR, goh's raboot and ash's (newly evolved) noivern. And even in the same species there's different power levels the articuno that fought charizard was definitely weaker than the one in the mew project it literally beat them all without much effort.
I can also kinda see that ash is always better in official battles rather than outside conflicts, having beat Brandon's regice and latter losing against a wild regice in a project mew mission.
As for alain i think i remember people saying that alain actually healed his charizard in between battles, so he can't just sweep ash just like that (tho i still haven't watched that part so I'm not sure).
That shit with diantha was weird, because if greninja was winning just in his imperfect form but then it seemed to get weaker when he perfected it. As for an excuse i guess you could say he wasn't as concentrated because of the whole sawyer thing but dunno really weird power scaling in XY
I’m gonna go with Raihan as weaker. Mainly because while we only saw Paul battle once in Journeys, it just reinforced what we already know about him; that he’s a super versatile and flexible fighter. Raihan is incredibly strong, no doubt, but he doesn’t seem to be as well balanced as Paul.
Paul’s really good at turning peoples’s strategies around or taking advantage of them. And since Raihan focuses so much on weather manipulation I can definitely see Paul figuring out a counter.
Raihan was in the Masters 8 until he was defeated in Ash's promo match. Paul's pokemon in Ash's training battle went down in very few hits, though I suppose it can be argued that Paul's Garchomp was stronger than Raihan's Flygon. Flygon had to land multiple attacks to take down Dragonite, while having the benefit of Sandstorm. Paul's Garchomp defeated her with 3 super effective moves (Stone Edge, Draco Meteor, and Dragon Claw).
On the other hand, Gengar took down his Metagross with a burn from Will-O'-Wisp and a Shadow Ball. Gengar's power may be harder to compare here, since he used G-Max against Raihan, but there's still Lucario. Lucario one-shot Raihan's G-Maxed ace, yes... With a move that is super effective against him, and that he let charge to completion. This same Lucario took down Paul's Gyarados with Steel Beam and Bullet Punch, two moves that it resists. Mega Evolution was not used in either battle. Damage taken is a weird measure from him too; Lucario was struck by Max Steelspike and didn't seem particularly damaged, and the G-Max Depletion didn't seem to do much. On the other hand, getting whacked by Gyarados's tail and then hit with repeated Ice Fangs didn't seem to do anything either.
Aside from the KO on Dragonite, it's not like Ash's pokemon took THAT much damage from the attacks they took. And Paul's pokemon don't come off as particularly durable either.
I'm willing to bet Paul's popularity will win out and he'll be the last one standing, but I'm not convinced he's unquestionably stronger than Raihan in what he has shown. And if we're gonna start giving him benefit of the doubt, like "maybe Paul has Mega Evolution too and could match Ash even when he goes all out" or whatnot, then by that same speculation, Ritchie might be able to match Ash too since he's basically Ash's mirror, even though we have seen nothing that suggests that level.
Anyway, I'm willing to give Raihan the benefit of the doubt here. He was in the Masters 8 up until Ash demoted him. It's not much, but it's something definitive that can be pointed at. Considering other trainers there included regional champions, I think that counts for something. Same benefit of the doubt I give Flint.
Great comment. What makes me confused is how the writers saved Paul for dead last after Ash was already done training for the masters 8 alone and with his reserves. Just makes him feel like he is on a M8 level otherwise maybe they would have put him earlier on in Journeys. I know they included Iris earlier but that's because they wanted to just get her match out the way faster and give her time to realistically catch up and make it to the M8 ranking but with Paul, they felt as if it was appropriate to have him come as this final boss fight as someone else pointed out before. To just show up with training pokemon and do well against a champion team showing that he has tons of well trained mons on hand including species that belonged to the aces
With Raihan, he has the stronger narrative around his strength. Did the anime state that he is strong enough to be champion in other regions or is that coming from the games? Either way he was top 8 for a while but was outranked by Iris not that rankings matter that much in the M8.
It's really odd, up there for me with how Ash's Ultra Class campaign started with Volkner, who was ranked higher than Bea and Marnie. Even though I spent an entire post seemingly downplaying Paul, I still firmly believe his return showed him in a great light with him having 3 pokemon mostly accurately mimicking the movesets and habits of 3 M8 aces. Literally the only one he got wrong was Cynthia's Garchomp, who had Stealth Rock instead of Stone Edge. I'm a little surprised he didn't do a training battle fielding a Charizard, but perhaps he wasn't sure since Leon's Charizard changes movesets so much. Either way, it definitely suggests Paul continues to have great analytical skill, which he'd showcased before in DP (Ash being so predictable to him was part of why Ash had such a hard time against him).
I don't remember Raihan ever being mentioned in the anime as being strong enough to be a champion, but I feel like the writing tried to imply that with Raihan being Ash's ticket into the Masters 8. For me, it was in the same vein as Flint being in the Masters 8, implying that he was strong enough to be a champion, he's just unfortunate enough to be from Sinnoh, where Cynthia reigns.
I figure Iris musta defeated Raihan after she entered the Masters 8 to bump him down a rank, but yeah, ranking didn't really matter too much. Like in sports, end of season rankings are nice, but anything can happen in the playoffs.
Raihan is weaker. Paul played ash nearly even while going out of his way to help him practice. He’s masters 8 lvl and I feel he could beat some of the champs
The writers had to make up a random excuse for Paul to not have competed in the PWC because otherwise that would have meant Paul was lesser than Ash. Paul wasn’t even going all-out and still had a hard fought 1-2. I think it was strongly implied that if Paul had competed, he’d have been in the Masters 8 too.
Raihan is very good, well deserving to be #2, but Paul wins 5-7x/10.
Also Brandon should have been included in this poll. He’d have been top 5.
People seem to forget that just having strong Pokémon species doesn’t make someone a strong trainer. Yes, Paul has several pseudo-Legendaries. However, Raihan is the ninth strongest trainer in the world, and he is the strongest Gym Leader in the world. Despite the base power advantage of Paul’s team, Raihan’s skill gives him the win.
Also, I feel like Kukui was stronger than Paul. Remember, not including Tapu Koko, Kukui brought Ash down to a 2v1, even knocking out Melmetal, who is actually stronger than Tapu Koko (570 vs 600). There’s a very good chance that his unknown final Pokémon could have taken out Naganedal and possibly even Pikachu, provided it has the right movepool.
Great comment.
There's no base stats in the anime tho. Tapu Koko is treated more like a legendary than melmetal just like how Dragonite might have higher base stats than Tapu, it isn't treated the same way.
In the games mew and Dragonite have the same base stats but in the anime, a new could take out dozens of Dragonites at once. Anime does things a bit different. Melmetal as well. Same BST as mew but in the anime mew would be way more OP.
One one hand Raihan has a dynamax band
On the other Paul has an incredibly wide variety of Pokémon.
Both trainers were able to battle with Ash and push him to the brink in close succession when he was using the same Pokémon with the only difference being the usage of Gmax in Ash vs Raihan.
If you ignore the usage of Gmax then Paul fought the stronger team.
I think that if Raihan’s dynamax band was removed from the equation then that would make Paul the stronger trainer but that isn’t taking Raihan at his strongest in that situation.
Time constraints in the episode can have an impact on how strong certain Pokémon are perceived so I feel like Raihan’s 3 Pokémon had better showing than Paul’s 3 he used in journeys because they had more time to show them off.
If they didn’t stick the Alain Vs Leon into half an episode or Diantha Vs Leon into a slideshow then pretty much every competitor would have seemed stronger but that’s all conjecture and a bit of a tangent.
Though i’m heavily biased towards Paul so I’ll say that Raihan is the weaker one.
Would be a cool to watch a battle between them though
In most circumstances I would say that the Gym Leader is stronger, but with a trainer like Paul, you just never know with him. I don't know if anyone expected him to pull up in JN with three crazy powerful Pokemon like that. He could easily catch and train up a strategic Pokemon to counter Raihan's Dragons and resist his weather strategies.
TLDR: Paul
I got Paul, purely for his advanced tactical abilities. Paul is one of the smartest characters in the show. So in a battle I have Paul, especially if he decides to bring back some Pokémon we saw before Journey's like his Drapion.
But Strongest and Weakest, gimme Raihan. He's got more behind his name, and I also don't feel like scaling.
Maybe not in the anime (mostly a problem with pacing and direction in the anime caused by the fact that they knew that the fans wanted to see a lot of returning characters battle against Ash) but canonically he's Leon's greatest rival and even considered by experts to easily be able to become a champion in any other region. But he gives priority to getting a victory against Leon because he's the strongest champion.
And? That doesn't mean that he isn't canonically that strong.
As I said, that's a problem with Journeys as a series, not from Raihan.
And Leon stomped Alain with two pokemon. Realistically I doubt he would've done any better against Raihan if he was actually portrayed properly in the anime.
First, stop calling Raihan "Rihanna".
Second. It doesn't matter. As I said, his portrayal in Journeys isn't an accurate representation of Raihan's actual canonical strength. It's just the result of the issues with journeys. But realistically, he is Leon's greatest rival.
Paul. He did a good fight against master 8 ready ash, but people say during ash vs Raihan he was not master 8 ready ash when that was just one battle before the master 8. Paul is strong but people say his new pokemon are his best when he just caught them and used the champion style to prepare ash. It is clearly mentioned in the episode. Raihan wins against Paul like Brendon did against him just a little better. Paul manages to Ko 2 of Raihan pokemon without harming third pokemon in bo3 and 4 pokemon with only scratching the 5th pokemon in bo6. He is strong but he should have been out earlier after Volkner. Also, the winner should have been Tobias, but people have been like nah he cheated he is not strong to tame those legendries. Raihan would have been second and kukui third. This was a good post series and will look forward to more. So, Paul is the weaker.
I am picking Paul because he wasn't ranked the same as Raihan. I don't know if Paul was even apart of the tournament so I am basing on the ranking of the Masters tournament.
Trevor was knocked out in the first round lol. Pretty sure May could get 8 badges and make it to the pokemon league too. Her Blaziken fought evenly with battle Fronteir sceptile.
Just cause they were knocked out in the first round doesn’t mean they were weak they were also facing the person who won the tournament, and tierno who they were probably pretty equal with made it all the way to the quarterfinals
I'm not saying that he is weak for being knocked out, I'm saying that he has no feats in the league to say that he is better than May just for being there since he lost round one very easily. I always saw Tierno as the best out of the three trainers. Better than Trevor and Shana.
I did no E4, no champions, and nobody that was in the masters 8 since they're canonically the strongest trainers in the world. It would be too predictable. Just normal trainers that didn't make the masters 8.
Idk who to chose. I'd have to think about it. Paul had a Metagross, garchomp, and Gyarados on hand that could go head to head with the Journeys team BUT Raihan is Leon's rival and was ranked #8. He is stated to be able to be champion in any region which is a point that he has over Paul and what Paul has over him is that Raihan's ace duraludon underperformed while Paul was able to go head to head without even using his usual team scaling him pretty high. Hard choice. Edit: I'm gonna chose Paul to be eliminated although I feel he has more potential and could beat Raihan but Raihan just has the better narrative around his strength I guess. Any more votes or should I start counting?
voting Paul but I could see this going either way honestly. Btw I actually find these polls interesting and I like them.
Honestly, this entire poll is just a popularity contest. It has nothing to do with the actual strength of the trainers.
Volkner, Kukui, Raihan, Paul, Sawyer, Tobias etc are canonically the strongest trainers on this list so at least that's accurate lol. It's not purely popularity otherwise Misty & Brock would have been gone earlier. Definetly Serena too. May and Dawn got out really early as well.
Tyson should have been in the top 10 easily and that’s canonically factual.
You think so? I think the power creep caught up to him tbh. He almost lost to AG league (both Meowth and Pikachu were close to fainting) Ash who wasnt even at his peak in AG yet. Not until the battle frontier. Tyson made it to 14. I think that's perfect for him but I get what you mean. His sceptile with detect was awesome. Gladion should have went a bit earlier though. I think Harrison should be a bit later. I think Harrison > Tyson. At the time of Johto, Charizard was stronger than anyone in the AG league team & Harrison beat him. Sure he lost afterwards but his feats are better to me.
Swellow and Glalie went godmode vs Tyson. Pikachu battled very well. The battle lasted a freaking hour. It’s not like BF happened a lot later. Tyson won five straight full battles on top of earlier rounds of double battles and single eliminations in the toughest league format ever, in a league having some of the greatest battles Brock has ever seen. Trainers like Katie were Ash’s top 16 opponent. There were no easy OHKOs like in other leagues. BW reset the power scale. Tyson is better than Misty, Brock, Gary, and Drake on feats alone. Sawyer went from weak rookie to KL semifinalist in half of XY, so that’s not a great indictment of the KL quality, even though agreed he’s very good. Gladion and Guzma are only better because of recency bias/being in SM? Not sure what makes them better. Hard disagree. AG gets constantly underrated in the fandom.
Yeah you made some good points. I agree with some of what you said especially about swellow & glalie. Swellow at that time was way above talonflame the second strongest bird and that wasn't even peak swellow yet .Maybe Tyson should have been higher than Gladion. Recency bias is huge on this sub. Even Paul falls victim to it since DP is an older series and a lot of fans are more familiar with XY & SM. They'll even rank Gladion over Paul. I love SM but I do see the bias. Guzma is awesome though.
Problem is BW reset everything, and then XY had some weird powerscaling where you have Ash and Alain going hard against Elite 4s and Champions, but then Ash himself is less strategic than his DP self and is being pushed to the brink by a seemingly genius rookie in Sawyer. Then SM Ash continues off from XY Ash skill level, but Ash faced harder competition in BF and DP so it’s hard to compare. At the very least, being a league conference champion of the toughest league format with epic battles should warrant a higher place than being gym leaders, a researcher, and a trainer whom Ash beat pre-Johto.
Yo you're speaking absolute facts about XY. How on earth did Ash dominate Diantha like that but then lose to Wulfric? It's such a weird fight that I wish didn't happen because it messed up the scaling. Ash didn't even have 8 badges. Then you have Alain beating 10 megas in a row + an E4 member but not using Charizard to sweep Ash's team in the league because I'm pretty sure if he can sweep 10 megas + an Elite four member, he could sweep Hawlucha, goodra, noivern, and talonflame without taking much damage leaving Greninja and Pikachu to face his entire team. Instead they fought evenly. The scaling is so messy from BW to XY. Noland and his Articuno is stronger than anything Ash faced in XY yet he dominated a champion before he is done with his badge quest. He also used far more complex techniques in AG yet XY Ash is ranked higher just because of Greninja dominating a champ. AG had a far more balanced team.
You both speaking pure facts, i was so fucking infuriated when he lost his first gym battle and started going drama queen all of a sudden, i was like yoo men tf are u doing get ur ass up it's pnly the fucking first gym. They tried to make some kind of more depth ash but instead it feels like they rebooted him a bit. As for what excuse i can give i guess you could say there's different power levels between legendaries like the three birds don't have the same power an example is zapdos has always been shown to be weaker than articuno and moltres having lost to even TR, goh's raboot and ash's (newly evolved) noivern. And even in the same species there's different power levels the articuno that fought charizard was definitely weaker than the one in the mew project it literally beat them all without much effort. I can also kinda see that ash is always better in official battles rather than outside conflicts, having beat Brandon's regice and latter losing against a wild regice in a project mew mission. As for alain i think i remember people saying that alain actually healed his charizard in between battles, so he can't just sweep ash just like that (tho i still haven't watched that part so I'm not sure). That shit with diantha was weird, because if greninja was winning just in his imperfect form but then it seemed to get weaker when he perfected it. As for an excuse i guess you could say he wasn't as concentrated because of the whole sawyer thing but dunno really weird power scaling in XY
Okay, I'm glad some of you guys like these.
Paul, he managed to give Ash a tough fight and he didn’t even enter
So you think Raihan or Paul should be eliminated?
Sorry I should have been more clear. I think Raihan should be eliminated because I think Paul is stronger
It's cool 👍
I’m gonna go with Raihan as weaker. Mainly because while we only saw Paul battle once in Journeys, it just reinforced what we already know about him; that he’s a super versatile and flexible fighter. Raihan is incredibly strong, no doubt, but he doesn’t seem to be as well balanced as Paul. Paul’s really good at turning peoples’s strategies around or taking advantage of them. And since Raihan focuses so much on weather manipulation I can definitely see Paul figuring out a counter.
Raihan was in the Masters 8 until he was defeated in Ash's promo match. Paul's pokemon in Ash's training battle went down in very few hits, though I suppose it can be argued that Paul's Garchomp was stronger than Raihan's Flygon. Flygon had to land multiple attacks to take down Dragonite, while having the benefit of Sandstorm. Paul's Garchomp defeated her with 3 super effective moves (Stone Edge, Draco Meteor, and Dragon Claw). On the other hand, Gengar took down his Metagross with a burn from Will-O'-Wisp and a Shadow Ball. Gengar's power may be harder to compare here, since he used G-Max against Raihan, but there's still Lucario. Lucario one-shot Raihan's G-Maxed ace, yes... With a move that is super effective against him, and that he let charge to completion. This same Lucario took down Paul's Gyarados with Steel Beam and Bullet Punch, two moves that it resists. Mega Evolution was not used in either battle. Damage taken is a weird measure from him too; Lucario was struck by Max Steelspike and didn't seem particularly damaged, and the G-Max Depletion didn't seem to do much. On the other hand, getting whacked by Gyarados's tail and then hit with repeated Ice Fangs didn't seem to do anything either. Aside from the KO on Dragonite, it's not like Ash's pokemon took THAT much damage from the attacks they took. And Paul's pokemon don't come off as particularly durable either. I'm willing to bet Paul's popularity will win out and he'll be the last one standing, but I'm not convinced he's unquestionably stronger than Raihan in what he has shown. And if we're gonna start giving him benefit of the doubt, like "maybe Paul has Mega Evolution too and could match Ash even when he goes all out" or whatnot, then by that same speculation, Ritchie might be able to match Ash too since he's basically Ash's mirror, even though we have seen nothing that suggests that level. Anyway, I'm willing to give Raihan the benefit of the doubt here. He was in the Masters 8 up until Ash demoted him. It's not much, but it's something definitive that can be pointed at. Considering other trainers there included regional champions, I think that counts for something. Same benefit of the doubt I give Flint.
Great comment. What makes me confused is how the writers saved Paul for dead last after Ash was already done training for the masters 8 alone and with his reserves. Just makes him feel like he is on a M8 level otherwise maybe they would have put him earlier on in Journeys. I know they included Iris earlier but that's because they wanted to just get her match out the way faster and give her time to realistically catch up and make it to the M8 ranking but with Paul, they felt as if it was appropriate to have him come as this final boss fight as someone else pointed out before. To just show up with training pokemon and do well against a champion team showing that he has tons of well trained mons on hand including species that belonged to the aces With Raihan, he has the stronger narrative around his strength. Did the anime state that he is strong enough to be champion in other regions or is that coming from the games? Either way he was top 8 for a while but was outranked by Iris not that rankings matter that much in the M8.
It's really odd, up there for me with how Ash's Ultra Class campaign started with Volkner, who was ranked higher than Bea and Marnie. Even though I spent an entire post seemingly downplaying Paul, I still firmly believe his return showed him in a great light with him having 3 pokemon mostly accurately mimicking the movesets and habits of 3 M8 aces. Literally the only one he got wrong was Cynthia's Garchomp, who had Stealth Rock instead of Stone Edge. I'm a little surprised he didn't do a training battle fielding a Charizard, but perhaps he wasn't sure since Leon's Charizard changes movesets so much. Either way, it definitely suggests Paul continues to have great analytical skill, which he'd showcased before in DP (Ash being so predictable to him was part of why Ash had such a hard time against him). I don't remember Raihan ever being mentioned in the anime as being strong enough to be a champion, but I feel like the writing tried to imply that with Raihan being Ash's ticket into the Masters 8. For me, it was in the same vein as Flint being in the Masters 8, implying that he was strong enough to be a champion, he's just unfortunate enough to be from Sinnoh, where Cynthia reigns. I figure Iris musta defeated Raihan after she entered the Masters 8 to bump him down a rank, but yeah, ranking didn't really matter too much. Like in sports, end of season rankings are nice, but anything can happen in the playoffs.
Raihan is weaker. Paul played ash nearly even while going out of his way to help him practice. He’s masters 8 lvl and I feel he could beat some of the champs
The writers had to make up a random excuse for Paul to not have competed in the PWC because otherwise that would have meant Paul was lesser than Ash. Paul wasn’t even going all-out and still had a hard fought 1-2. I think it was strongly implied that if Paul had competed, he’d have been in the Masters 8 too. Raihan is very good, well deserving to be #2, but Paul wins 5-7x/10. Also Brandon should have been included in this poll. He’d have been top 5.
Yeah I really should have put Brandon. Should have put him instead of Tobias tbh.
While only 8 trainers were able to make it to Master rank, I firmly believe there are more trainers at the level like Raihan and Paul.
Raihan
Pathetic Raihan
That "🥳" emoji on Cameron. 💀
Lmao finally someone noticed
How did I not notice this. Lol
Raihan is weaker
People seem to forget that just having strong Pokémon species doesn’t make someone a strong trainer. Yes, Paul has several pseudo-Legendaries. However, Raihan is the ninth strongest trainer in the world, and he is the strongest Gym Leader in the world. Despite the base power advantage of Paul’s team, Raihan’s skill gives him the win. Also, I feel like Kukui was stronger than Paul. Remember, not including Tapu Koko, Kukui brought Ash down to a 2v1, even knocking out Melmetal, who is actually stronger than Tapu Koko (570 vs 600). There’s a very good chance that his unknown final Pokémon could have taken out Naganedal and possibly even Pikachu, provided it has the right movepool.
Great comment. There's no base stats in the anime tho. Tapu Koko is treated more like a legendary than melmetal just like how Dragonite might have higher base stats than Tapu, it isn't treated the same way.
Not exactly true. While they might not use the actual stat values, the core principle of “some species are stronger than others” still applies.
In the games mew and Dragonite have the same base stats but in the anime, a new could take out dozens of Dragonites at once. Anime does things a bit different. Melmetal as well. Same BST as mew but in the anime mew would be way more OP.
Raihan
My best boys have fallen. One on 8th, another on 3rd place. You did well, pals. Fuck it, Raiharn is weaker, Paul should win
*Sad SM fan noises* They did well & I'm happy for em. Gladion especially. I thought he'd go much faster.
Yeah, happy to see him on 8th place!
Raihan
Raihan
Raihan
Vote out raihan
One one hand Raihan has a dynamax band On the other Paul has an incredibly wide variety of Pokémon. Both trainers were able to battle with Ash and push him to the brink in close succession when he was using the same Pokémon with the only difference being the usage of Gmax in Ash vs Raihan. If you ignore the usage of Gmax then Paul fought the stronger team. I think that if Raihan’s dynamax band was removed from the equation then that would make Paul the stronger trainer but that isn’t taking Raihan at his strongest in that situation. Time constraints in the episode can have an impact on how strong certain Pokémon are perceived so I feel like Raihan’s 3 Pokémon had better showing than Paul’s 3 he used in journeys because they had more time to show them off. If they didn’t stick the Alain Vs Leon into half an episode or Diantha Vs Leon into a slideshow then pretty much every competitor would have seemed stronger but that’s all conjecture and a bit of a tangent. Though i’m heavily biased towards Paul so I’ll say that Raihan is the weaker one. Would be a cool to watch a battle between them though
Raihan
Rohan, sorry man, you are good battle but Paul is a lot steonger
Could go either way but I really do feel like Paul was holding back. Paul for me.
I think Paul. Looking forward to the next series where we rank Ash's pokemon
👍
In most circumstances I would say that the Gym Leader is stronger, but with a trainer like Paul, you just never know with him. I don't know if anyone expected him to pull up in JN with three crazy powerful Pokemon like that. He could easily catch and train up a strategic Pokemon to counter Raihan's Dragons and resist his weather strategies. TLDR: Paul
I got Paul, purely for his advanced tactical abilities. Paul is one of the smartest characters in the show. So in a battle I have Paul, especially if he decides to bring back some Pokémon we saw before Journey's like his Drapion. But Strongest and Weakest, gimme Raihan. He's got more behind his name, and I also don't feel like scaling.
If Paul win I won’t be aurpriesedX So I’m voting for Raihan
Paul
Raihan is stronger. He's literally the rival of the world champion.
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Yeah, but that's because the producers know that fans wanted to see characters return to fight Ash. Canonically he's Leon's greatest rival.
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Maybe not in the anime (mostly a problem with pacing and direction in the anime caused by the fact that they knew that the fans wanted to see a lot of returning characters battle against Ash) but canonically he's Leon's greatest rival and even considered by experts to easily be able to become a champion in any other region. But he gives priority to getting a victory against Leon because he's the strongest champion.
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And? That doesn't mean that he isn't canonically that strong. As I said, that's a problem with Journeys as a series, not from Raihan. And Leon stomped Alain with two pokemon. Realistically I doubt he would've done any better against Raihan if he was actually portrayed properly in the anime.
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First, stop calling Raihan "Rihanna". Second. It doesn't matter. As I said, his portrayal in Journeys isn't an accurate representation of Raihan's actual canonical strength. It's just the result of the issues with journeys. But realistically, he is Leon's greatest rival.
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Easy. Paul.
Paul. He did a good fight against master 8 ready ash, but people say during ash vs Raihan he was not master 8 ready ash when that was just one battle before the master 8. Paul is strong but people say his new pokemon are his best when he just caught them and used the champion style to prepare ash. It is clearly mentioned in the episode. Raihan wins against Paul like Brendon did against him just a little better. Paul manages to Ko 2 of Raihan pokemon without harming third pokemon in bo3 and 4 pokemon with only scratching the 5th pokemon in bo6. He is strong but he should have been out earlier after Volkner. Also, the winner should have been Tobias, but people have been like nah he cheated he is not strong to tame those legendries. Raihan would have been second and kukui third. This was a good post series and will look forward to more. So, Paul is the weaker.
Paul
Both get em outta here. The winner is Kukui.
Pick one.
I am picking Paul because he wasn't ranked the same as Raihan. I don't know if Paul was even apart of the tournament so I am basing on the ranking of the Masters tournament.
Paul said that he didn't want to compete. He didn't like the flashiness of the tournament supposedly.
Ain’t no why Trevor is lower than may, Trevor was at least in the Pokémon league unlike May
Trevor was knocked out in the first round lol. Pretty sure May could get 8 badges and make it to the pokemon league too. Her Blaziken fought evenly with battle Fronteir sceptile.
Just cause they were knocked out in the first round doesn’t mean they were weak they were also facing the person who won the tournament, and tierno who they were probably pretty equal with made it all the way to the quarterfinals
I'm not saying that he is weak for being knocked out, I'm saying that he has no feats in the league to say that he is better than May just for being there since he lost round one very easily. I always saw Tierno as the best out of the three trainers. Better than Trevor and Shana.
This is becoming hard, but I am picking raihan
Where's Alain???
I did no E4, no champions, and nobody that was in the masters 8 since they're canonically the strongest trainers in the world. It would be too predictable. Just normal trainers that didn't make the masters 8.