satoshi gets a kick out of people underestimating him sometimes. usually it's annoying, like when he gets treated like a naive child just because he "acts immature", whatever that means to the other person, or like when people refuse to explain something to him just because they automatically assume he won't understand what they mean.
it used to be incredibly frustrating in battle, too. he hadn't fought battle after battle & gone through league after league to be treated like some rookie just because he hadn't yet gotten to properly work on a pokémon he'd only recently added to his roster. but somewhere around kalos the underestimations tapered out some, people there tended to see satoshi for what he really was which was a competent battler who'd learned a thing or two after six years of travel. & he realized he missed the push-back. he actually liked having a grain to go against, something he bewilderingly realized whenever they ran into the flare gang, & during the kalos crisis, as much of a traumatic whirlwind as that had been. in alola, he had fun defying his classmates' expectations, defying gladio's expectations, defying the island kahunas' expectations.
in his rise through the pwc's rankings & side-tournaments, he came to enjoy letting people underestimate him, only for them to battle him & have that smug look wiped off their face, or the indifference melt into curiosity or the shadow of excitement. satoshi tends to adapt to people's expectations, acting as whatever they need in the moment or according to their preconceived notions about him, but in battle he loves nothing more than to surprise & knock off-kilter.
it's gotten a bit more difficult with his many years in the spotlight & many opponents analyzing him on their own time, but an unintended bonus of dropping off the grid for so much of the year is that he still brings something few know about to the field when he does return to the spotlight, especially with his tendency to bring new pokémon into his public roster for every new season.
