It’s both because of my favorite gym in kalos games and huge bias of favouritism towards clemont in anime the best male replacement companion for brock to Ash…
HM:
Because she had surskit in her gym 
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Sabrina was always cool in the anime but when I played the game i was always confused because of the whip
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Was a scrapped design thing, supposedly utilized in battling. There are quite a few sprites with whips.
It still kinda fits thematically as psychic powers are domination of the mind.
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Luxray is a very solid design for an ace, and gives this trainer some real appeal indeed!
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Loved Larry as well. The best developped trainer in SV I think. This, unfortunately, is how you start to feel after passing 35. Well, a lot of us anyway.
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Misty always #1
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My favorite for an obvious reason 
is Lucy (still hoping 
for an FA with Seviper cameo one day):
It was also fun that she was one of the few females whom liked Brock back, even though he was oblivious to it.
More objectively however, solely based on the anime, I’m not sure. Brock, Sabrina, and Blaine were defintely among my favorites from the Kanto region, and I also really like all gym leaders from the Orange Islands and that season as a whole. Bruno also comes to mind.
Also, one more ‘recent’ gym leader (from the BW era) I remember liking, was the episodes with Roxie. Just watched the two episodes back for nostalgia sake, and I liked how positive her attitude was towards Ash throughout the conversations and battles, even though Pikachu initially almost destroyed some of her gym lights. 
Greetz,
Quuador
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Hmm hard to choose… but if I had to it would be this person
almost every thread I follow is made by this person
for gym leaders I would say this dude
I’ve dug through so much trash just to meet this guy..
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What I like a lot about the first three Gym Leaders as well is that they were difficult. That is something that went away later. Losing to Brock, Misty or Surge was very possible, and you didn´t go into those gyms (as a kid anyway) thinking that you would win.
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I remember when I first played yellow and tried to battle brock with my pidgey and a pikachu … oof
I spent a lot of time trying to over level eventually to find a mankey which carried me.
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Love Falkners design, partial to Flying types, Violet City is cool. Level 9 Pigeon with Gust is more than a little pathetic but at least he beefed up in R-2.
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Yeah, that and the thunderbolt Raichu sticks out. With a Bulbasaur it wasn´t that much of a problem, but anything else and those containers had to be done a lot of times. Of course later I learned that catching a Diglet was the answer, but I didn´t like Diglet, let alone Diglet cave haha.
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Past years I often had one of Scott’s Thoughts Pokémon solo runs playing in the background when coming home from work. I have learned from that that not a single leader is hard to beat if you’re willing to grind to silly levels for moves or use Struggle. But the first leaders are always a lesson for (new) players about type effectiveness, item use in battles and stat lowering moves. At least… it was like till Gen 5 (and I have to admit that I have not played a Pokemon main series game since White 1).
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I would definitely try Black 2 then. That´s actually my favourite game after the first three, mainly because the post game is really good and they altered the beginning very effective.
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I have heard this before. But getting a copy of Black 2/White 2 and a new DS (my launch model is RIP) would set me back €250+. The costs and the time investment are a nope at the moment.
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