Obviously it depends on the deck, but in general you want a large number of item cards and less pokemon and energy.

Item/trainer cards provide a lot of ways to draw/recycle and support your pokemon/energy and you’ll likely want to see a bigger ratio of them in your opening hand. Especially since you’re not going to go through too many more pokemon than you have prize cards and you can only have 1 active pokemon at a time with 6 total in play.

So the exact ratio depends on the deck and the pokemon you are trying to support, but essentially you shouldn’t be running more the 15 pokemon and 15 energy on a high end. 12 pokemon is pretty standard. Most of the rest of your deck should be search and draw cards which there should be plenty of.

Disclaimer: I don’t play this game.

This is a plot point in an old manga series. I forget which one. Needless maybe?

I can imagine your service advisor smirking every time the customer complained and it brings me delight. Her and your manager make it sound like an amazing workplace.

Accelerator already touched on the side dish/main dish concept being not really a thing for the most part. That being said it is important to note, that traditionally fried rice is basically a leftovers only dish. Like you wouldn’t cook fried rice to cook fried rice. You’d cook fried rice because you had leftover steamed rice from the other night (and you’d use other leftover ingredients too). So, I suppose in a lot of those instances you’d only be eating fried rice, thus making it a main course by technicality (though it doesn’t have to be).

Source: Am part Chinese. Would cook fried rice to cook fried rice and disgrace my ancestors.