May (anime)
| May ハルカ Haruka | |
| File:MayDiamondPearl.png May in the Diamond & Pearl series | |
| Age | 10 (as of debut) |
|---|---|
| Gender | Female |
| Eye color | Blue |
| Hair color | Brown |
| Hometown | Petalburg City |
| Region | Hoenn |
| Relatives | Max (brother), Norman (father), Caroline (mother) |
| Trainer class | Coordinator |
| Game counterpart | May |
| Anime debut | Get the Show on the Road |
| English voice actor | Veronica Taylor (4Kids) Michele Knotz (TPCI) |
| Japanese voice actor | KAORI |
May (Japanese: ハルカ Haruka) is a ten-year-old Pokémon Coordinator from the anime and a traveling companion of Ash. Her goal is to compete in Pokémon Contests and win ribbons, win the Grand Festivals of the different regions, and become a top Coordinator. She traveled through Hoenn and Kanto with Ash, Brock, and her little brother Max. She is the daughter of Norman and Caroline, and her starter Pokémon was a Torchic given to her by Professor Birch.
Character
May is a young Coordinator who loves shopping and eating treats. She has a particular fondness for food, especially noodles; when someone steals her food, she gets angered from head to toe. May is generally very sweet and optimistic, though she shows a tougher side sometimes, such as when she argues with her little brother, Max. Even though they argue often, she has shown that she deeply cares for her brother.
She loves cute Pokémon, flashy techniques, and has a tendency to rely on luck, often using her Skitty's Assist or her Munchlax's Metronome. She sometimes takes an interest in helping other people with romantic problems. She loves making her own Pokéblocks with recipes that she thinks up, including ones called "May's Purple Surprise" and "May's Pink Surprise" (Japanese: Haruka's Delicious and Haruka's Delicious 2). The only ones who liked her Purple Surprise were her Munchlax and Jessie.
It was revealed by Max in A Cacturne for the Worse that as a small child, May was afraid of Pokémon. There was one instance in particular that truly embarrassed May. One day she was swimming in the ocean and was suddenly surrounded by a flock of Tentacool. May got scared and called to her parents. She was wearing a blue swimsuit and a matching blue swimmer's cap, leading her mother to believe she was actually a Tentacool. Her mother tried to catch her with one of her Poké Balls. One of May's opponents in a contest recorded Max telling him this to embarrass May into losing.
When May debuted in the anime, she did not like Pokémon at all and was only interested in becoming a Pokémon Trainer so she could travel. Everyone expected her to become a Trainer, to follow in her Gym Leader father's footsteps. However, after seeing a Contest in All Things Bright and Beautifly!, she decided to become a Pokémon Coordinator. Though she was initially shown to not know much about Pokémon or attacks, she gradually gained experience through her journey and soon became a talented coordinator, with her skill being displayed in her Grand Festival rankings in the Hoenn and Kanto regions. Dawn once referred to her as the "Princess of Hoenn" when they met.
As a Coordinator, May was able to learn more about Pokémon. For her Contests, she was able to come up with different combinations of attacks. She was able to use these combinations in battle. An example of this would be using her Combusken's Fire Spin and her Squirtle's Bubble to create a combination of fire and water, dubbed Fire and Water Whirlwind by Lilian. This even got a rival of hers mad, thinking she thought he was not worthy of the move so May did not use it against him.
During her journey, she finds a rival in Drew, a skilled and sometimes arrogant Coordinator who was one of her main inspirations to try harder to further her skills. Another rival of hers, Harley, is a flamboyant man who goes to extremes to beat May. At the Kanto Grand Festival, May competed against Solidad, an experienced Coordinator to whom she lost to in the semi-finals. At the end of the Advanced Generation series, she left to compete with Drew, Harley and Solidad in the Johto region, aiming to find her own style. May has Contest Passes to compete in Hoenn, Kanto and Johto.
May reappeared from Our Cup Runneth Over! to Strategy With a Smile! to participate in the Wallace Cup alongside Ash, Dawn and Zoey. During this period, she wore the Emerald Version of her outfit. May made it all the way to the finals of the Wallace Cup, but narrowly lost to Dawn in the end.
May has a personal ending theme song, I Won't Lose! ~Haruka's Theme~, performed by KAORI. It was first used as background music in the episode Curbing the Crimson Tide and again in next episode, What I Did for Love. The theme was also used in the Appeals Round at the Wallace Cup for May's performance.
Pokémon
On Hand
Status unknown
 Torchic → Combusken → Blaziken |
Borrowed
 Hitmonchan |
- Hitmonchan: Borrowed from Kyle Hamm in Pasta La Vista.
Ribbons
Hoenn
- Fallarbor Town Ribbon (Come What May!)
- Verdanturf Town Ribbon (Disguise Da Limit)
- Lilycove City Ribbon (Lessons in Lilycove!)
- Izabe Island Ribbon (A Cacturne for the Worse)
- Pacifidlog Town Ribbon (Pacifidlog Jam)
Kanto
- Saffron City Ribbon (A Hurdle for Squirtle)
- Silver Town Ribbon (Weekend Warrior)
- Chrysanthemum Island Ribbon (Spontaneous Combusken!)
- Gardenia Town Ribbon (What I Did for Love!)
- Mulberry City Ribbon (Going for Choke!)
Johto
- Three unknown Ribbons (prior to A Full Course Tag Battle!)
Grand Festival ranking
May placed in the following Grand Festival competitions:
Other achievements
- Pokémon Orienteering - Runner-up
- Unofficial Terracotta Contest - Winner (tied with Ash)
- Wallace Cup - Runner-up
Voice actors
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In the TCG
This listing is of cards mentioning or featuring May or her Pokémon in the Pokémon Trading Card Game.
| Name | Type | Level | Rarity | Set | Set no. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May's Munchlax |  |
- | - | 8th Movie Half Deck (no English release) | 008/020 |
| May's Combusken |  |
- | - | 9th Movie Half Deck (no English release) | 002/019 |
| May's Torchic | |
- | - | ADV-P Promotional cards (no English release) | 037/ADV-P |
Trivia
- Until Dawn received a Cyndaquil, May was the only main character who has had one of the same Pokémon as Ash, which are Squirtle and Bulbasaur.
- She was also the only one of Ash's friends to catch more than one starter Pokémon up until the arrival of Dawn's Cyndaquil. However, she is still the only other main character to own multiple starter Pokémon from the same generation.
- She is the only one of Ash's friends who started off not liking Pokémon.
- She is the only beginner Trainer that was not given an introduction by the narrator in their first episode. Instead, she gave her own first person introduction.
- May was the second of Ash's friends to have a lead role in a Pokémon movie, the first being her brother Max.
- May and Max are the only friends of Ash not to meet Ash's rival, Gary Oak, at one time or another. Ironically, May took one of Professor Oak's Squirtle, just as Gary had done when he started out. Also they both ended up getting an Eevee along their journeys and evolving it into an Eeveelution introduced in the generation after the character was introduced.
- May and Max are two of three of Ash's friends who has had their father make an appearance in the anime. The other is Brock.
- May owns the second most Pokémon that have evolved twice since they were obtained, with three, less than only Ash, who has had six. Both Trainers, own the final form Template:Type2 starter from their own region (Blaziken), the final form Template:Type2 starter from the other region that appeared in Generation III's handheld games (Venusaur), and the first Pokémon that they caught from the wild, their region's native butterfly (Beautifly). These correspond to Ash's Charizard, Sceptile, and Butterfree.
- The only Pokémon she has that remained unevolved are Munchlax and Skitty. Coincidentally, both are Template:Type2, and each would only need to evolve once to reach their final stage.
- May is the only one of Ash's friends that has never owned a Generation II Pokémon (excluding Max, who does not yet have a Pokémon of his own).
- May is the only one of Ash's female friends to have never fought a Gym Leader of any sort. She did, however, initially intend to go on her own badge quest before deciding to be a Coordinator, and did in fact battle in a Gym, but with a Gym assistant.
- May's contest cry is "Take the stage!" (US) and "Stage on!" (Japan).
- All of May's major rivals have Template:Type2 Pokémon. Drew has Masquerain and Butterfree, Harley has Ariados, and Solidad has Butterfree.
- May is the only female character Ash has traveled with who has met both of the other girls that Ash has traveled with, in The Princess and the Togepi and A Full Course Tag Battle!, respectively.
- Five out of seven of May's Pokémon have an 87.5% chance of being male in the games, namely Munchlax, Blaziken, Glaceon, Venusaur, and Wartortle (however out of these, May's Venusaur has been confirmed to be female).
- When May was younger, she gained a fear of Tentacool. During the same occasion, her mom tried to catch her since she thought she was a Tentacool.
- May is the only main character other than Ash to have identified Ho-Oh (and in fact identified it before he did in Battling the Enemy Within!), though the others saw it as well.
- In Hoenn, May carried a large, gray ribbon case. In Kanto and Johto, however, May sports an orange one that slides open.
Names
| Language | Name | Origin |
|---|---|---|
| Japanese | ハルカ Haruka | From 春花 haruka, spring flower. May also be taken as 遼 haruka, far away, in relation to her father, Senri (千里), 1000 li. |
| English | May | Could be a reference to her Japanese name, as May is a month in spring. |
| French | Flora | Similar to Fleur, which means "flower". |
| German | Maike | From Mai, which means "May". |
| Italian | Vera | From primavera, which means "spring". |
| Spanish | Aura | Means "dawn". Coincidentally, and perhaps intentionally, Dawn's Spanish name, Maya, sounds similar to "May". |
| Korean | 봄이 Bom'i | 봄 means "spring" |
| Chinese (all versions) | 小遙/小遥 Xiǎo Yáo | From 遥 haruka, far away. |
Related articles
External links
- Cherry Girl, the fanlisting for May
- Haruka's Profile on Pokeani (Japanese)
- Haruka's Pokémon on Pokeani (Japanese)
- May Club on the Bulbagarden forums
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This article is part of Project Anime, a Bulbapedia project that covers all aspects of Pokémon animation. |
