May's Combusken evolved one episode before May left the series...

I honestly remember Dawn having more negative experiences during contests. And I'm not talking about rivals, just other characters in general.

And it's entirely possible that I'm incorrectly remembering the Hoenn arcs.

I don't care, she has one and that evolution line is badass.

Dawn bombed two contests because she messed up the appeal round, it had nothing to do with characters. Not sure why you would think that, as Zoey and Kenny were entirely nice to her and Dawn never had any "mean" rivals like Gary, Paul or Harley.

Considering you said Torchic evolved out of jealously which is just plain wrong, I'd say so. Torchic evolve to protect Corphish from being beaten up by a bunch of wild Breloom, May wasn't even in that scene at the time. It was one of those episodes where the groups Pokemon get separated from Ash and co. because of Team Rocket's explosions.

Alright then...

I think your mixing some things up, because I have no idea what the relevance this has with anything. I specifically stated that I'm not talking about rivals, so you...Continue to bring up the rivals?

The circumstances =/= the cause.

Like I said, I could very well be remembering the Hoenn arcs incorrectly, adding that they aired around 8 years ago and they featured a character I didn't like, lots of things tend to get blurred over the years.

i wonder whom Ash's new travel companions will be.

I'm hoping it's the usual female trainer, or just for laughs make it Tierno.

http://i.imgur.com/Q0SiUGv.png
I'd guess her.

I know Iris is a gym leader/champion, making it a 2-2 split (2 female gym leader companions, 2 female player character companions), so there's no 100% way to be certain, but I'm putting my bets on her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCjlbBiUiKQ
The animations looking good that's for sure.

Also Fennekin sneezing from it's ears. KAWAII.

I never liked it when Ash got all 3 starters on his team.
I hope we get the female player character so he can only get one or two of the starters.

One of the nicest thing about the Hoenn era was that he got just one starter while his companions got the others. It makes it more fun so that he could free up slots for other Pokémon.