Who's your favorite Pokémon trainer (both games and anime, and note: trainer doesn't have to be their occupation), and who's your favorite children's card game duelist?
Pokemon Games would be N, because boy howdy am I a predictable sad sack who loves a well-written rival. I just have a soft spot for Unova and the Gen 5 era in general, so a lot of my favourites are from that time.
In the Pokemon Anime that would naturally be Ash, of course, because baby's first crush and now he's baby's son boy. Although admittedly I haven't really been paying attention to how Journeys has been writing him since the change to the episodic format has kind of shafted him somewhat, but I actually do love the new-ish takes on him in the recent AU movies (not including the ho-oh one, because i hated that one). Making him a catalyst to help tell other people's stories and using him as a vehicle to explore the Pokemon world without, like, diminishing him as a character or letting him feel stale is really, really fun honestly, so I could absolutely go for more of these types of movies.
favourite children's card gamer is Yuma, although Vector is a close second. he was a very controversial protag when he first started out given that he was our first protag who wasn't IMMEDIATELY good at card games from the get-go, and zexal's art style was much more tecchnicolor and bright compared to othe others and people found him annoying? but oh my god he is such a good ball of sunshine aggressively dropkicking the plot and demanding to be let in . he emphasizes so deeply and so genuinely with his rivals and enemies that the standard friendship speech that is mandatory in ygo genuinely tears at me heart if it comes from baby boy yuma. that is my son child.
vector on the other hand is a horrible gremlin child and I love him. he is unrepetenantly a bastard and he does being a bastard well. love him.
