May (anime)

"My bike's barbecued!"

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

May is a young 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 gloves with navy fingertips, 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, white gloves with black fingertips, 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 and hot-tempered at times, when disagreeing with Ash or with 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. She became angry at her Munchlax because it was eating food that belonged to someone else and ran off when she didn't keep an eye on it, she had Max give Munchlax "pink suprise" in order to stop Munchlax's appetite and prevent it from eating.

Skills
May has a knack for finding various food places to eat, which amazed her friends. May has grown to make good Pokéblocks. Even with the recipe from Professor Oak that could satisfy Snorlax's appetite. She also became a good battler and performer for her contests.

Advance Generation Series
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 started 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 decided to follow her rivals to Johto.

Diamond and Pearl Series
May meets up with Ash, Brock, and Dawn in Sinnoh, wearing a green bandanna like her game counterpart in Pokémon Emerald, then sometime later participates in the Wallace Cup at Lake Valor. 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 and participate in Pokémon Contests there.

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.

Caroline and Norman
Caroline and Norman are May and Max’s parents. May cares deeply for her parents, and she would do anything to make her parents proud and get their support. May felt let down when her dad lost to Ash in their gym battle, but she knew her father fought hard, which she felt was what mattered to her. She was bummed out when her mother couldn’t come to the Kanto grand festival to watch her, but understood her reason, and was happy she had her mother’s support.

Max
May and Max fight a lot like most siblings do but they do care about each other no matter what happens. Despite their sibling rivalry, May would go out of her way for him, especially if they get separated or if he is sick or needs protection.

Ash
May and Ash developed a fond sibling-like relationship over their traveling period together. When May was depressed and sad because she couldn't let go of Manaphy into the sea where it was destined to be, Ash helped her out. They are seen to bicker a lot but it has been shown numerous times that they are best friends.

Brock
May sometimes is exasperated by Brock's constant falling-in-love with most girls he meets. She thinks he might be a nuisance but doesn't deny the fact that he is a great cook and has a good reputation with Pokémon. She thinks she had a lot to learn from him, always curious about how to treat a Pokémon properly.

Dawn
Although she haven't really share a long bonding time with Dawn, during their Wallace Cup battling, it is seen that she greatly admires and respect Dawn's coordinating skills. Their friendship is not yet deeply developed but it is clear that they both have positive appreciation for each other.

Drew
At first, his first impression towards her was bad and ill-mannered. He commented on her lack of confidence a skills, thus agitating May. But as the series went on, Drew seemed to genuinely care for May; appearing at a contest he's not competing just to see her and even coming to her rescue when she was being tricked into using the wrong skills at a contest. It is even seen that he was at one point holding her hand while they were falling down a water fall. He always seems to produce a thorn-less rose for her, always insisting that it was for her Pokémon, Beautifly. He is even heard to be referred as her "boyfriend" by a third party but never denied the fact.

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
 * Hindi:
 * Urvi Ashar (Cartoon Network dub)
 * Neshma Chemburkar (Hungama dub)

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: however, she did not know how to command it to attack Poochyena and ended up getting hit in the face with a Water Gun attack.
 * Another Mudkip would do the same later on when she and the others stumbled across a Mudkip breeding ground. Brock would take ownership of a third one after chasing Team Rocket out of the area.
 * May shares some Pokémon in common with Ash: Their first caught Pokémon is a Bug/Flying type: Butterfree for Ash and Beautifly for May; they both have members of the Bulbasaur and Squirtle evolutionary lines, and have both had them alongside their fully-evolved -type starter (Ash's Charizard and May's Blaziken, respectively). But while Ash's Bulbasaur and Squirtle are still in base form, May's have both evolved at least once; lastly, they both own a member of the Munchlax evolutionary line. May’s Munchlax remains in base form while Ash has a Snorlax (which he caught long before Munchlax was revealed to be its pre-evolution).
 * May and Jessie were both hoping for Beautifly after they both caught a Wurmple. May was the lucky one when she actually got Beautifly, as nobody (except Professor Birch, James and Meowth) knew that Jessie’s Wurmple was actually evolving into Cascoon, which then evolved into the Bug/Poison Pokémon Dustox.