May nearly sacrificed her only chance for Grandfestival for Max
To be fair, wasn't that a fairly Serena-esque section, where it was also implicit that she didn't want to leave the rest? If that were a ship, it wouldn't necessarily be seen as not slightly self-serving in context, especially as Max would be taken care of regardless and it was hence just to fulfill a promise rather than help anyone. Otherwise, it is true that May and Dawn probably have more pronounced examples of such actions than Serena, but obviously this is allowed for by contrast with their also doing the opposite in pronounced manners. You doubt that most of them had particularly complex relations to the other characters, though, so their treatment of such might not differentiate them much, in any highly notable manner.
Given that the moral of most episodes at the time was some feel-good claptrap about 'being nice,' part of why people would tend to have stopped watching it past a point, May couldn't really avoid being fundamentally allied to this if she were a main character, which was the case. As such, it might be best to assume that despite occasional differences and shenanigans, May wouldn't have taken that long to become at least 'ordinarily' compassionate, if not to the same extent of ditzy cutesiness as a Pikachu. In addition, you would perhaps see some 'gentleness' in May in the sheer amount of gimmicks she had concerning her family, with multiple episodes just involving her trying to reconcile this through sheer force of will and arbitrariness, as well as her susceptability to romantic sub-plots and gestures, and in general to adapt to whatever demands were made of her in quite a quick movement, when they were posed, and almost immediately admit she was 'wrong' in the face of social disapproval in whatever context. With May, you would have generally expected plots to reach resolution in a few minutes, rather than anything serious occurring, and if she was in Contests pandering to others, generically, you couldn't expect much but 'gentleness' of her, not to say innocuousness. The anime itself seemed to intend this, pitting her against others who were meant to be nastier than most girls' rivals, such as 'Harley,' although you wonder if they didn't miss a memo by giving such a character a gimmick involving Contests.
Now, of course, episodes can at least discuss subjects with the complexity of, 'Dancing is not fundamental to Pokemon battle,' although in attempting to promote 'performances' at the same time you can't help but wonder if they're somewhat at cross-purposes. Serena's traits may generally come out more clearly as a result, as distinguished from just the progression of the episode, but you suspect that they mostly just follow from 'innocuous childhood friend,' so if you like that kind of romantic thing I guess you might like her. Her chosen path is mostly just being loud and obnoxious. She intends to go on solemn 'dates' and 'dances,' which summarises most of her character. As such, though she might miss it, to most fans of the series she would generally come across as this rather loud interruption in what might interest them about the series. That she dislikes characters for this kind of reason doesn't come across as gentle so much as focussed, which is different. She's restrained to a single progression, restricting what assertive things she may do, while May was more free to act outside of such a pathway - she wasn't a 'childhood friend' arc, she was just there. But I'd suppose you might say such things have no absolute place in the human soul, and hence are traits of actions rather than people.
So is the conclusion then that Serena's
character is
boring? I mean, it might be. All in all, it depends where you stand, perhaps.
