Shamus (Pokémon)

Shamus (Suwama in Japanese) is the main antagonist of the Pokémon the Series: Black & White episode "Evolution by Fire!", as well as the previous abusive Trainer of Ash's Tepig before he abandoned it. His goal is to make a team of Fire-type Pokémon named "The Fire Warriors".

Why He Sucks

 * 1) He is in fact a rehash of Damien (the former owner of Ash’s Charmander), if he was a sociopath and a sadist with generic plans to torture his Pokémon to make them stronger while winning Pokemon matches and gym badges along with wanting other trainers (including Ash) to be toppled down.
 * 2) While his design is decent, especially when we see a close-up of him making a psychotic grin to the nerve if he wins a Pokémon match.
 * 3) He has a very immoral way of building his Pokémon team, as he forces other Trainers to give him their Pokémon and abandons them if they're too weak for him, basically treating Pokémon as disposable tools. An ideology which several of the protagonists in the series openly disagree with.
 * 4) He committed animal abuse by abandoning his Tepig because he thought it was too weak, and tied it to a pole by its snout. Since Tepig was unable to open its mouth, it was unable to eat and would have died from starvation had Ash not rescued it.
 * 5) *He also emotionally manipulated Tepig by pretending to feel sorry for it, then laughing about it once he was out of Tepig's sight.
 * 6) *This resulted in Tepig suffering from trauma and, due to Shamus's actions, feared that Ash would abandon it too.
 * 7) The episode he was only appeared from doesn’t bother to give any reason of abusing his Pokémon.
 * 8) When Ash and Iris tell him to apologize, he says "Not on your life!" before proceeding to kick Tepig in the face.
 * 9) When confronted about his actions during Cilan's imaginary courtroom, Shamus didn't just show zero remorse for his crimes... but he openly bragged about what he did, causing Iris to straight-up call him "disgusting".
 * 10) During his battle against Ash, Shamus forced his Emboar and Heatmor to attack each other as a strategy, as he believed that making his Pokémon take damage from their own attacks would help make them stronger.
 * 11) When Tepig evolved into Pignite and single-handedly defeated Shamus' Pokémon, Shamus tried to convince Pignite to return to his team with an obviously fake apology, while also calling Ash a "loser" and expecting to get away with his actions scot-free.
 * 12) *His apology is also hypocritical, as he expected Pignite to forgive what he did even after he literally left it to die.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) His involvement in the episode gave Tepig/Pignite character development.
 * 2) His defeat was satisfying when Pignite rejected his fake apology, used "Flamethrower" on him and chose Ash due to him being a better trainer.