Guest post by Andrew, ENTJ

Pokémon Anime Franchise

Extroverted Feeling (Fe): May’s values come mainly from the outside world.  When starting off on her journey, she does not even like Pokemon…but she decides to become a Pokemon trainer anyway, as this is the socially acceptable way for a child her age to travel the world.  She is a very girly girl, from the long periods of time she spends taking care of her appearance to her love of shopping.  May is very open with her emotions, and although she is usually positive and bubbly, she is irascible in special circumstances; she even flies into a blind rage when Team Rocket stand between her and the food she is planning to eat.  May likes to believe the best about other people; there is an instance when her malicious rival, Harley, purposely gives her bad advice for her performance in a key Pokemon contest.  May takes Harley’s advice in this situation despite the fact that Harley used dirty tactics against her previously.

Introverted Sensing (Si): May’s initial dislike of Pokemon comes from a traumatic experience in her past; on vacation with her parents, her mother mistook her for a Pokemon swimming in the water, and tried to catch her in a Pokeball!  Conversely, she learns to like Pokemon through bonding with her own Pokemon (as well as Brock’s and Ash’s) while traveling.  May is very family-oriented, and before starting her journey, she is not nearly as close to her father as she would like to be (it is implied that her dislike of Pokemon caused a rift between them).  Since she knows next to nothing about Pokemon before starting her journey, she leans heavily on others, especially Ash, to teach her about Pokemon types, attacks, and battling.  Eventually, however, she gains confidence in herself through her increased knowledge and experience.  Since Ash is her primary mentor, May incorporates many elements of his battling style into her own.

Extroverted Intuition (Ne): Once May sees that she has options beyond battling in gyms and entering Pokemon League competitions, she takes up one such possibility – Pokemon contests – and throws herself into it.  She takes to it extremely well due to her seemingly endless imagination; she keeps coming up with more and more new ways to show her Pokemon off.  She also prepares Pokeblock (a special treat for Pokemon that is reputed to boost their performances in contests) following her own recipes; some are successful, others are not, but the failures do not stop her from trying again.

Introverted Thinking (Ti): Although May has trouble thinking for herself early in her journey, she learns to do so eventually.  After losing to her rival, Solidad, in the semifinals of the Kanto Grand Festival, she asks herself why she lost so decisively.  Reflecting on her battle with Solidad, she concludes that she battled too aggressively.  Furthermore, she realizes that her aggressive battle style was because of the heavy influence that Ash’s battle style has on hers.  Her solution is to stop traveling with Ash, striking out on her own to continue improving herself.

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Author’s Note: I was going to type May as ISFJ, but there are two problems with this typing.  Firstly, we have May’s willingness to take advice from Harley, even when she knows that he doesn’t like her, and that he enjoys publicly humiliating her.  We see the clash of her two upper functions: her Fe wants to believe that Harley feels remorse for his past behavior and wouldn’t try to embarrass her again, but her Si remembers the how Harley betrayed her trust in the past.  Since she takes Harley’s advice against her better judgment, her Fe seems to be stronger than her Si.

The other problem is that May’s Ne (which is frequently seen in her contest performances)appears much stronger than her Ti (which we don’t really see until May has traveled for a while).