The Pokemon series contains many riveting fights and battle sequences and is home to a lot of fun and creative tournaments and battle systems. One of the systems that were the most successful was the Pokemon contests.
Similar to a league challenger, a Pokemon coordinator must take on the contests in the region and acquire as many ribbons as they can! After their fifth ribbon, they qualify for the Grand Festival, which is the coordinator equivalent of the League championship battles. Anyone who wins the Grand Festival wins the title of Top Coordinator and has a world of opportunity waiting ahead of them. The contests in the games, however, have no such functionality and are relegated to more of a side quest position in the game. The contests in the anime are superior for many reasons, and this is not an unknown fact.
8 Sparkling Seals
When thinking about the best coordinator appeal rounds in the anime, the ones that spring to mind are often ones that have stellar seals. To simplify, showing off a Pokemon's nature and beauty is easier when the moves used are combined with the appropriate seal.
Although seals are only introduced in the Sinnoh region, they are so effective in what they were introduced for that they leave a lasting impression on the mind. Even then, the seals in the games are much more static than in the anime, and it is never properly specified if they truly help in the game's appeal rounds. In the anime, however, we see that seals are very effective and somewhat necessary to have a successful appeal!
7 The Representation It Offers
One of the things people appreciated so much about the contests is that they offered an aesthetic alternative to the more straight-and-narrow way of league challenges. In general, the anime feels a lot more fluid and people have more avenues to express themselves and their Pokemon.
The coordinator was introduced as a different path to battling, and something that gave more flamboyant characters some limelight. Although it is viewed as an "effeminate" activity, the viewer will see countless examples where this is verifiably false. From androgynous presenting characters like Zoey to more femme-appearing characters like Dawn and Solidad, we see a wide range of characters that are able to present any way they want and showcase their Pokemon accordingly.
6 A Career Choice
As mentioned earlier, contests in the anime feel like a real career and less like a side option that one pursues in their free time. Not only that, but winning the title of Top Coordinator unlocks many doors for the coordinator extraordinaire.
The anime is not just all about gym battles and challenging the elite four, as it juxtaposes the stories of Dawn, Drew, May, Zoey, and countless others against Ash's own story, one that is very set on becoming the Pokemon master via the League challenge route. The viewer is never told that contests are secondary to Pokemon gym battles or official battle tournaments, but that they are just as valid as the gym challenge!
5 In The Spirit Of Collaboration
A big part of contests in the anime is that it is a collaborative effort between the coordinator and the Pokemon, and the Pokemon with each other. There are times that the anime underlines the importance of this collaboration and the consequences when it is lacking.
When Princess Salvia enters a contest with her beloved Togekiss and gets to the battle stage, she has a tough time getting a grip on the battle between Jesselina ("disguised" Jessie from Team Rocket) and herself. It is made very obvious that this is her first time participating in a contest, and as such, she is very unsure of how to guide Togekiss to secure a steady victory.
4 The Creative Bent Of Mind
Creativity is a tool that contestants are judged on pretty heavily. The more creative the contestant's appeal moves, the more points they get.
The contest appeal rounds in the anime have some of the most artistic and beautiful ways of showing off a Pokemon's natural appeal, and the games could never figure out how to translate it well. Dawn's grand festival appeal with the ice slides and the smokescreen fake out to reveal a frozen Pokeball with Buneary inside and Cyndaquil lighting it up with its natural flames is a sight that is not easily forgotten. It would've been fun to explore the same dimension to contests in the games, but some things are harder than others to fully capture on another screen.
3 What's In A Rival?
This is an issue with the games overall, and somewhere, that adds to the repetitiveness of the formula of the game. The rivals in the anime, on average, tend to be more multidimensional than the rivals in the games.
This, combined with the fact that there are no assigned rivals for contests, makes contests have no real stakes in the games. In the anime, however, the coordinator rivals are vibrant, fun, and have actual personalities. When May defeats Harley and foils his plans to embarrass her in front of the audience, the viewer actively feels vindicated for not liking Harley and warms themselves to May.
2 Battling For Different Purposes
One of the things that contests in the games suffer from is that they have no contest battling. Contest battling in the anime is when both coordinators fight against each other and against the clock and must do their best to show off their Pokemon and amass points while taking away points from the other.
Contest battling is one of the best aspects of the Pokemon Contest system in the anime and it really created some very memorable moments. This is an incredibly missed opportunity on the part of The Pokemon Company and GameFreak. Contest battling could have been implemented, and it would be popularly enjoyed by the community.
1 The Right Form Of Pageantry
The absolute best part about the contests in the anime is that they seem like an art form. Not only are they a career choice and a real system, but being excellent at contest performances is a skill in pageantry that matters.
Not only should one look presentable, but they also need to know their Pokemon's personalities, move sets, and how to best optimize the nature of their Pokemon. In short, they all need to look and be their best, and to achieve that, they need to have really strong bonds with each other. Both May and Dawn, the contestants that the viewer follows the most, have similar journeys where they grow closer bonds with Pokemon and learn how to take care of them. What people see on the stage is just the culmination of a lot of hard work and overcoming their inherent biases.