May (anime)

May (anime)
May (Japanese: ハルカ Haruka) is a ten-year-old Pokémon Coordinator from the anime and a former traveling companion of Ash. Her goal is to become a Top Coordinator. She traveled through Hoenn and Kanto with Ash, Brock, and her little brother Max. She is the daughter of Norman andCaroline, and her starter Pokémon was a Torchic given to her by Professor Birch.

Advanced Generation series
When May debuted in the anime, she did not like Pokémon at all and was only interested in becoming a Pokémon Trainerso she could travel. Everyone expected her to follow in her father Norman's footsteps. However, after seeing a Pokémon Contestin All Things Bright and Beautifly!, she decided to become a Pokémon Coordinator. Since she initially knew almost nothing about Pokémon or attacks, Ash assumed the role of her mentor. She gradually gained experience through her journey and practice with Ash.

As a Coordinator, May was able to learn more about Pokémon and form stronger bonds with them. In Come What May!, after winning the Fallarbor Contest, May told herBeautifly that she loved it. This is an example of her growth - from someone who initially disliked Pokémon to someone who cared deeply for them.

With her Pokémon, May was able to come up with different attack combinations to use during her Contest Battles. For instance, she would use her Combusken's Fire Spin and her Squirtle's Bubble to create a combination of fire and water, dubbed "Fire and Water Whirlwind" by Lilian, after witnessing Tucker use it against Ash with a combination ofWater Pulse and Fire Blast. This even got a rival of hers mad, thinking she thought he was not worthy of the move so May did not use it against him.

She also developed a love for making her own Pokéblocks with recipes that she thought up, including ones called "May's Purple Surprise" and "May's Pink Surprise" (Japanese:Haruka's Delicious and Haruka's Delicious 2). Unfortunately, the only ones who liked her "Purple Surprise" were her Munchlax and Jessie. Her "Pink Surprise" came from the recipe Professor Oak uses to make Ash's Snorlax's food. Thus, after May first fed it to her Munchlax, it was automatically made full. This Pokéblock was regularly used to feed Munchlax in order to prevent it from eating the food of others.

During her journey, she found a rival in Drew, a skilled and sometimes arrogant Coordinator. Drew became one of her main inspirations to try harder to sharpen her coordinating skills. At first, Drew had claimed that May had "no style" as a Coordinator, but by the end of May's second Contest campaign, when she beat him in the Kanto Grand Festival, he recognized her growth and skill. Another rival of hers,Harley, is a flamboyant man who goes to extremes to beat May. And example of Harley's depravity was seen in A Cacturne for the Worse, when he recorded Max telling him a story from May's childhood. May had been wearing a blue swimming cap in the ocean, and her mother had mistaken her for a Tentacool from afar and attempted tocatch May with one of her Poké Balls. Harley played the recording of this story during the Izabe Island Pokémon Contest to embarrass May into losing. May was able to beat Harley in the end, but she claimed that she had never been more humiliated. Another example is when Harley joined forces with Team Rocket in an attempt to sabotage May's performance with Combusken, which ironically ended up contributing to a more dazzling appeal.

At the Kanto Grand Festival, May also competed against Solidad, an experienced Coordinator to whom she lost to in the semifinals. At the end of the Advanced Generation series, she left to compete with Drew, Harley, and Solidad in the Johtoregion, aiming to find her own battling style. The decision to stop traveling with Ash was an important one for May's character. Because Ash played the role of a mentor to her through most of the series, she was largely influenced by his offensive battle style. By the end of their journey through Kanto, May had realized that an offensive style was not necessarily the best for her and for Contests. Her constant use of dazzling attacks ultimately proved to be her downfall at the Kanto Grand Festival, when Solidad was able to recognize and counter these moves by leading May to attack and then successfully dodging. Her goal to find her own style was therefore also a goal to improve her Contest Battle skills and ultimately become a Top Coordinator.

May has Contest Passes to compete in Hoenn,Kanto and Johto. She also has a personaltheme song, ''I Won't Lose! ~Haruka's Theme~'', performed by KAORI. It was first used as background music in Curbing the Crimson Tideand was used multiple times after that during May's Contest performances and battles. The song became the ending theme of the show between ''Pokémon Ranger - Deoxys' Crisis! (Part 2) and Home is Where the Start Is!''.

Diamond & Pearl series
May reappeared from Our Cup Runneth Over!to Strategy With a Smile! to participate in theWallace Cup. During this period, she wore hergame counterpart's outfit from Pokémon Emerald. She shared that many of her Pokémon had evolved and that she had already won three Johto Ribbons. Dawn recognized May upon meeting her and said that some people in the Sinnoh region called her the "Princess of Hoenn", causing May to blush. During the Wallace Cup, May battled against Dawn's rival Zoey and was able to beat her using Beautifly. She made it all the way to the finals but narrowly lost to Dawn in the end.

Character
May is generally a very sweet and optimistic girl. She enjoys feminine and cute things as well as shopping. In fact, she and Brock occasionally went on shopping trips together throughout the Advanced Generation series. May cares about her appearance, sometimes spending so much time in front of this mirror that it caused her traveling companions to become frustrated with her, such as in The Bicker the Better. May also is interested in helping other people with their romantic problems.

Though she is generally kind, she occasionally argues with her little brother, Max. The two had arguments since Max's debut episode, but one of their most notable was inTake This House and Shuppet. May's harsh words to Max made him declare that he hated May and he ran away for a portion of the episode. Even though she had been angry, May quickly felt guilty for hurting Max's feelings and became very worried that he would be hurt on his own. In a later episode, May revealed that she had promised her mother to always take care of Max on their journey. So even though the siblings had many quarrels, May deeply cares for her brother and would go to great lengths to protect him.

In A Ruin with a View, May heard Brock used to act as a cook during Ash's journeys. As she, Max and Ash were hungry, she was the one who asked Brock if he could prepare some food for them. If a person or a Pokémon were to steal her food she would become extremely angry, which was demonstrated numerous times. Food was one of the few things May would become angry about, so it was an important tool to show a different side to her usually cheerful character. When May returned for the Diamond & Pearl series, she expressed excitement over the chance to eat at the Seven Stars Restaurant, but having her meal stolen made her enraged. She was later shown enjoying a large cookie, once again affirming her love of food and sweets.

When May first left her home, she was only interested in the traveling aspect of aPokémon journey. This sparked one of May's most memorable quirks in Hoenn, "May's Expeditions". Starting from A Mudkip Mission, May would occasionally make a camera lens with her fingers, pretending she was the host of a traveling show.May's Contest cry is "Take the stage!" (English) and "Stage on!" (Japanese). In the English dub, she also uses variations, such as "On stage!"

Pokémon
The Pokémon she acquired on the course of her journey appear to resemble Pokémon that Ash had obtained at some point at the beginning of his own journey. She prefers cute Pokémon, dazzling techniques, and has a tendency to rely on luck, often using herSkitty's Assist or her Munchlax's Metronome to win.

Hoenn Ribbons

 * Fallarbor Ribbon (Come What May!)
 * Verdanturf Ribbon (Disguise Da Limit)
 * Lilycove Ribbon (Lessons in Lilycove!)
 * Izabe Ribbon (A Cacturne for the Worse)
 * Pacifidlog Ribbon (Pacifidlog Jam)

Kanto Ribbons

 * Saffron Ribbon (A Hurdle for Squirtle)
 * Silver Ribbon (Weekend Warrior)
 * Chrysanthemum Ribbon (Spontaneous Combusken!)
 * Gardenia Ribbon (What I Did for Love!)
 * Mulberry Ribbon (Going for Choke!)

Johto Ribbons

 * Three unknown Ribbons (prior to A Full Course Tag Battle!)

Grand Festival ranking

 * Hoenn Grand Festival - Top 8 (Rhapsody in Drew)
 * Kanto Grand Festival - Top 4 (Channeling the Battle Zone!)

Other achievements

 * Pokémon Orienteering - Runner-up (Off the Unbeaten Path)
 * Pokémon Contests
 * Slateport Contest - Top 8 (Win, Lose or Drew!)
 * Rubello Contest - Top 4 ( Cruisin' for a Losin' )
 * Wisteria Contest - Runner-up (Harley Rides Again)
 * Unofficial Terracotta Contest - Winner (tied with Ash; Home is Where the Start Is!)
 * Wallace Cup - Runner-up (Strategy with a Smile!)

Trivia

 * As of the end of the Best Wishesseries, May is the only female companion that did not have a Pokémon regularly disobey her (Misty had Psyduck, Dawn had Piloswine/Mamoswine, and Iris has Dragonite).
 * May owns four starter Pokémon, the most of any of Ash's traveling companions.
 * May has competed in at least one Contest in each region where Contests are known to be held in the anime.
 * All of May's major rivals have Bug-type Pokémon: Drew has Masquerain andButterfree, Harley has Ariados, and Solidad has Butterfree.
 * May is Ash's only female companion to have both of her parents appear.
 * May is the first of Ash's traveling companions to have a relative also travel with them, the second being Clemont in the XY series with his sister Bonnie.
 * May is Ash's only traveling companion to have traveled with him from the first episode of a series all the way to the last.
 * May was the first character to own a Generation IV Pokémon, with Munchlax.
 * May is so far one of only two former traveling companions who hasn't appeared in at least one Pokémon Sunday/Hoso-related spinoff episode after leaving the series, the only other being her brother Max (Misty and Tracey had appeared in some Pokémon Chronicles episodes, Dawn appeared in SS024, Brock, aside from appearing in the Chronicles episode A Family that Battles Together Stays Together, also appeared in SS025 and SS027, Cilan appeared in SS027 with Brock and met him, and Iris appeared in SS028).