May (anime)

"My bike's barbecued!"

- May after Ash's Pikachu accidentally charred her bicycle.

May is a young, tomboyish and energetic Pokémon Coordinator currently traveling through various regions to compete in Pokémon Contests. She started her journey traveling throughout the Hoenn region accompanying Ash and Brock, along with her little brother Max. On the way to the Grand Festival, she met Harley and Drew. When Ash and Brock left for Sinnoh, she goes to Johto alone without Max. She appears in a few episodes of Diamond and Pearl: Battle Dimension, where she traveled to Sinnoh to compete in the Wallace Cup. She reappears in a flashback in The Dream Continues!.

Appearance
May is a slim girl of average height. She has long brown hair with a single fringe at the center with three edges secured by a red and white kerchief, and blue eyes with long eyelashes. Her single fringe on her long brown hair is nearly identical to her father, Norman's. She wears a red shirt with a navy blue semi-circle on it, a yellow fanny pack, white and navy gloves, a white mini skirt over dark blue cycle shorts, and black ankle socks along with red shoes with black and yellow stripes.

Her Emerald-based outfit is a sleeveless orange tunic with a black collar and white pockets and stripes over black cycle shorts. She also has a mint green fanny pack, a green and white kerchief, the same black ankle socks and orange, white and black shoes.

May's Wallace Cup outfit is an Arabic-themed pearl-pink veil which has a green gem at the top, pink top with saffron borders and heart on the chest area, lilac-purple skirt, saffron-colored necklace with a red heart-shaped gem, pink fabric in her waist, and brown flip-flop shoes with toe rings. In her cosplay as Nurse Joy, she wears a pink mini-dress, white dress coat, a nursing cap with a pink cross, and white Mary Jane flats, basically the outfit worn by Nurse Joys in the Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh regions. In the Diamond and Pearl series, she was shown wearing orange and white pajamas.

Personality
At the start of her journey, May didn't like Pokémon, as she only wanted to start her journey just so she can travel and visit places. However, her encounter with Ash and Brock changed that. Despite her beauty, May is a sweet and very kind-hearted person, who would help people in need. Like Misty, she can get very angry at times, with her disagreements with Ash or her brother, Max, but unlike Misty, she is able to overcome her fear of Bug-type Pokémon. However, she can get very sad, especially when she loses a Contest, but does her best to prevail. She is also shown to have a side for romance, though at rare occasions.

Biography
May is a Pokémon coordinator from Petalburg City and is the daughter of the Hoenn Pokémon League Petalburg City Gym Leader, Norman, and sister of Max. She met Ash Ketchum in Hoenn and starts traveling with him after obtaining her first Pokémon, Torchic. She has rivalries from some contest participants, Drew, Harley, and Jessie of Team Rocket, and goes on to win many contests. She picked Torchic as her first Pokémon and Squirtle as her first Kanto Pokémon.

She loves cute and pretty Pokémon and flashy techniques, competing in contests and making her own Pokéblocks with recipes that she thinks up. "May's Purple Surprise" and "May's Pink Surprise" were such examples, as everyone else rejected them after tasting them, while the only ones who liked her Pink/Purple Surprise are her Munchlax and Jessie.

When May saw a contest battle for the first time, she decided to become a coordinator. She then had to overcome her fear of Bug-type Pokémon by raising her Wurmple into a Beautifly.

While Ash and Brock chose to travel to Sinnoh, May decides to follow her rivals to Johto. However, she meets up with Ash, Brock, and Dawn in Sinnoh, wearing a green bandanna like the character in Pokémon Emerald, then sometime later participates in the Wallace Cup. Dawn once referred to her as "Princess" which makes the fact that she has an unknown identification believable.

After narrowly losing to Dawn in the Wallace Cup Finals, she leaves the group to continue her journey in Johto.

She would use her Combusken's Fire Spin and her Squirtle's Bubble to create a combination of Fire and Water. Which was dubbed by Lillian's Medichan as a Fire and Water Whirlwind. She was able to knock-out Drew's Flygon and his Absol. During her journey she won numerous ribbons in both Hoenn and Kanto and she is still using those skills and talents in Johto currently. But May did reappear during the Sinnoh saga in four episodes meeting Ash, Pikachu, Brock, Dawn and Zoey for the Wallace Cup. May also has a personal ending theme song called I Won't Lose also called Haruka's theme in Japan in two episodes of the Pokémon anime's Kanto Battle Frontier saga the theme was used as background music in Curbing the Crimson Tide! and again in the next episode What I Did For Love!. It was also used during the Sinnoh Wallace Cup saga.

Grand Festival ranking
May placed in the following Grand Festival competitions:
 * Hoenn Grand Festival (Quarter-Finalist)
 * Kanto Grand Festival (Semi-Finalist)

Achievements

 * Pokémon Contests
 * Slateport Contest: Top 8
 * Rubello Contest: Top 4
 * Wisteria Contest: Runner-Up
 * Unofficial Terracotta Contest: Winner (tied with Ash)
 * Wallace Cup: Runner-Up
 * Crossgate Town PokéRinger: Group Stage
 * Pokémon Orienteering: Runner-Up

Voice Actresses

 * English:
 * Veronica Taylor (Seasons 6 - 8, Movies 6 - 8) (4Kids)
 * Michele Knotz (Seasons 9 - 11, Movie 9) (PUSA/TPCi)
 * Japanese: KAORI (credited as Kaori Suzuki since Season 11)
 * Dutch: Nicoline van Doorn
 * Greek: Yro Loupi (Season 6-8), Stella Bonatsou (Season 9)
 * Spanish: Cristina Yuste
 * Iberian Spanish: Mariana Ortiz
 * Polish: Julita Kozuszek-Borsuk
 * Korean Hyejeong Seo
 * French: Maia Baran
 * German: Nicola Grupe, Stephanie Kellner (Movie 6 and 7)
 * Italian: Serena Clerici
 * Filipino: Charmaine Cordoviz
 * Czech: Klara Sumanova
 * Portuguese: Carla (Season 6-8), Isabel Ribas (Season 9), Marta Mota (Season 11)
 * Mandarin: Fu Manjun
 * Danish: Annevig Schlede-Ebbe
 * Brazilian Portuguese: Tatiane Keplmair
 * Iberian Spanish: Ana Lobo, Liliana Barba, Mariana Ortiz, Agustina Priscila
 * Thai: Arunee Nuntiwass
 * Hebrew: Dawn Lanny-Gabay

Trivia

 * Like Misty, and Dawn, May is last seen leaving the group and returning to her respective journey, with no mention or future appearance in the series.
 * May was the only character to give a personal narration of her introduction in the series.
 * In Seasons 6-8, May shared the same voice actress as Ash: Veronica Taylor. And in Season 9, she shared the same voice actress as Misty and Jessie: Michele Knotz.
 * May has owned two Pokémon and befriended one Legendary Pokémon from the fourth generation: Munchlax, Glaceon (can only evolve from Eevee in Sinnoh), and she had befriended a Manaphy, a Mythical Pokémon.
 * She is the only female character to have three starters (Torchic, Squirtle and Bulbasaur) and each of them are of the three elemental types.
 * The first Pokémon she used in fact was not Torchic but a Mudkip but she did not know how to command it to attack Poochyena and ended up getting hit in the face with a Water Gun attack.
 * She is nicknamed "The Princess of Hoenn", which makes her blush.
 * May's short temper is not as bad as Misty's, but she can get really angry when someone steals her food.