and what about Kiyo (Nicolai)? It's interesting to note that he, Nanako, and Naoshi were all beginning trainers encountered at the beginning of their respective saga, and they've all recurred at least once now. In the case of the former two, I guess it would be assumed that they'd be rivals who'd make progress in collecting badges along with Satoshi, but as subsequent appearances would show, they couldn't collect badges at near the same rate as Satoshi if their life depended on it (given the supposed difficulty of gyms, I guess it would make sense to play them up as more of a challenge, with the likes of Satoshi, Shigeru, and likely Shinji being special cases), and because they just couldn't keep up, the writers had no choice but to ditch them (though, in Kiyo's case, they kinda brought the guy back for one episode just for the hell of it, only briefly touching upon the fact that Senri kicked his sorry ass, and he never shows up again).Naoshi's probably gonna be no different, but given, his second appearance certainly seems better than Kiyo's was at least. I think he collected both a couple badges (one of which even Satoshi had yet to receive) and a ribbon, if I recall correctly. However, if he has a third appearance, he could still go the way of Nanako. She seemed like she was making good progress by the bug competition, only for her third appearance, near the very end, to reveal that she only has about half the badges Satoshi had.
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