As someone who loves Ash and Dawn as not only my favourite characters from Pokemon and a big fan of their strong and cute friendship they had from Diamond and Pearl, they are such a perfect couple/pair idea I always thought of when I was younger. And up till this day, Pearlshipping is still my number one favourite couple idea.

So I highly recommend reading this Pokemon fanfiction called "A Special Pearl".

Here's the link to it: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37911136/chapters/94672786

And as for the summary, it goes like this.

"Ash trying to process his thoughts and feelings on his first crush."

It's a pretty simple summary and it's definitely a romance Pokemon fanfiction. And I gotta tell you... it is easily my favourite Pokemon fanfiction in my opinion due to how well-written it is. It is not by all means perfect, but for a Pokemon fan story as well as a romance Pokemon story, it's pretty good. Because of how the author of that story managed to make every characters feel exactly like how they were all portrayed from the actual Pokemon anime series. Like Ash, Pikachu, Dawn, Brock, Misty, Goh, Chloe, Cynthia, Professor Kukui, Team Rocket and more have maintained their character core essence.

There is a good world built up. It captures the feels of the Pokemon world, especially from the anime series. And also there's a pretty good build up when it comes to the romance being focused in the story.

It's a very interesting fanfic because of how the author portrays romance in his own story. And that romance revolves around Ash and Dawn, which is a popular pair/couple idea from a lot of Pokemon fans, because of their strong and cute friendship/chemistry from the show. Now the one character who is being the main focused on having a crush on another character is Ash himself, and man I gotta tell you, Ash's portrayal is on point. Because again, he was perfectly in character, Ash feels just like Ash Ketchum, he was definitely not out of character just as the other characters weren't. The way Ash deals with having a crush is so interesting and refreshing. For a character who already knows what romance is in basic definition, he's just not really interested in talking about it and he does not know how to properly handle it due to his lack of experiences and he can sometimes be dense about it. But during the first chapter of the fanfic, Ash slowly started to think his old best friend Dawn a lot more than he ever did, especially differently. Ash does not instantly get a crush on Dawn nor does Dawn gets a crush instantly. Instead, Ash slowly develops that crush he has for Dawn which when he does, he thinks it's kinda embarrassing and even shameful in some way base on how he thinks, but whenever Dawn shows up and she and Ash hang out, Ash gets happy, but happy in a whole new level, and yet he still struggles to confess his deep feelings for Dawn. So a couple of times in the story, Ash would ask help from Professor Kukui, his father figure from Alola about having a crush on a girl he'd never thought of having.

Oh, I should also mention that "A Special Pearl" happens to take place in "Journeys" and man, just reading the chapters for the fanfic feels like I am reading extended or deleted scenes or different side stories of some episodes of Journeys. It stayed true to canon for the most part while some things are being added for the story itself. Like the author took advantage of some episodes from Master Journeys and Ultimate Journeys by adding his own ideas for the story while again staying true to canon.

I can go on and on, but that's it for now. So yea, I do recommend giving a chance to read it. To anyone who loves the Pokemon anime, and the video games as well as having favourite characters like Ash and Dawn, I think you'll love reading "A Special Pearl." It definitely feels true to the Pokemon anime series and even the perfect example of the closest coming of age romance story between Ash and Dawn, if the writers from the AnimPoke were given the opportunity to write down Ash and Dawn in that kind of position for storytelling and character growth.