@No:
Still, the Digimon series', regardless of all the flaws they have, are superior to Pokemon in pretty much every way,
Pokemon has the better games.
yet the mindless series that repeats the same three plots every episode,
Pokemon added fashion shows later. And they have a league contest at the end of each series. So it has at least 5 plots.
never had anything remotely similar to a story arc,
It does. It involves having a rival and training up crappy things with weird quirks from scratch while bonding with them. Not much of an arc, but its an arc. There's also the ocassional baddies try to conquer the world thing, but the anime tends to screw that up.
and never progresses is the one kids like better.
The show progresses. Just ASH resets to square one every series. His friends all grow and change and move on.
I never got that.
Again. Better games.
Especialy since Digimon season 1 has actual goddamn stakes and the Digimon do die, in a sense anyway.
Death doesn't count for much when they constantly undo it.
It's better then the whole series being based on forcing your animal-like companions to train so they can physicaly harm each other to the point of unconsciousness as a sport, and then being shocked at the violence of them beating each other in the Movie.
Monster Rancher was the best show of the three, didn't have training, AND had the best plot and character development, and it ran for the shortest time of all.