Is Ash done wrong

[Pkmgod]

Why is it every journey ash forgets what he learned on the last? I felt like the disrespect was him losing to people he actually should have won against. He would've been crazy good if the combined all the skills and tactics he learned each season. His moves would be more sharp.

 

[GameBunnyAdvance]

I do feel that there is a lot of inconsistency in Ash's character between seasons, particularly in the odd-numbered seasons: in the third, fifth, and seventh generation seasons, he feels painfully inexperienced when compared to previous seasons. I suppose a general reset was necessary to make each season a good jumping-on point for newcomers to the anime, but when viewed historically it makes his character development and growth feel wildly inconsistent. I think without this it could have made the anime a more tedious watch than it was at times, though - Pikachu would have won literally every single battle it entered had that reset not happened.

Although there is the argument that they could have found more creative ways around this inevitable powercreep: Ash's final battle against Brandon had his Charizard taken out very early on, for instance. An Ash that retained his experience from each consecutive season could have made a more interesting character as well, considering how hard he took some of the losses he had when he felt he should have won: he really threw a tantrum when Brawly beat him. Having him repeatedly humbled, struggled to develop relationships with his weaker new Pokemon, resist the urge to call upon his stronger ones to just steamroll Gym Leaders, and grow as a person, would have made him a completely different character. It's a shame they never took that route, but it would have been interesting to see.

 

[CoolKid575]

Well, yeah. It doesn't make much sense from a logical perspective for Ash to "reset" every other gen or so; but you have to keep in mind that the showrunners didn't really expect people to watch all the way from season 1 and certainly didn't pander the show to them. They expected for people to grow into the show, enjoy it for a while and eventually stop watching as they aged out of it's target demographic. It's not like One Piece where mysteries and plot threads set up in the early 00s are still being followed through on today. Through that lens, it makes perfect sense for Ash to reset every so often so they can reuse the same set of lessons and have Ash go through the same growth for the new generation of kids while the older generation was expected to have moved onto other things by that point.

 

[Corveone]

The anime is done wrong.

If you want to continue a series/franchise and your protagonist(s) have nothing else to learn, and nothing else to offer... what sounds more logical? creating a new protagonist or resetting the old protagonist as if he had amnesia so that you can keep teaching the same things to him over and over again?

Keeping Ash and Pikachu literally just because they were popular is an awful reason as far as storytelling is concerned. The more a story lets character popularity rule over it, the more garbage that story becomes. The anime is now finally doing what it should have done long ago, getting a new protagonist. In fact the anime would have likely been way better if they introduced a new protagonist at least every couple of seasons.

 

[shadowmoon522]

The anime is done wrong.

If you want to continue a series/franchise and your protagonist(s) have nothing else to learn, and nothing else to offer... what sounds more logical? creating a new protagonist or resetting the old protagonist as if he had amnesia so that you can keep teaching the same things to him over and over again?

Keeping Ash and Pikachu literally just because they were popular is an awful reason as far as storytelling is concerned. The more a story lets character popularity rule over it, the more garbage that story becomes. The anime is now finally doing what it should have done long ago, getting a new protagonist. In fact the anime would have likely been way better if they introduced a new protagonist at least every couple of seasons.

don't forget that the reasoning behind misty and brocks first removals adds more to how poorly handled the first anime was.
brock was removed at the start of the orange islands because the writers where afraid having a darker skinned character would get them more of the same backlash jynx got.
misty & later may was removed: to "give the boys new eye candy" this also ended up with more of the weird thing with female characters designed to be older where being force fitted into being 10-year-olds. like may should have been around 12 like her game counterparts where later confirmed to be, dawn should have been around 15 like akari & rei are in pla, serena should have been 17+ like her game counterpart. hell, even ash should have been older than he was. it would have made more sense for him to be around 12 at the start of RS, 14-16 in DP, 17+ in XY. alas,they opted to revert him back to 10 the year after the episode where he more or less stated he was 11 got banned in japan and they kept doubling down on the eternally 10 nonsense until they finally realized there was no future in keeping him when gamefreak made a game where the main plot point was the main character being the first champion of the region. the first anime was always bound to the games with the same major evens always having to occur and new gimmicks being used and later forgotten like pikachu having the static ability. the biggest hints that his time was almost up was 1) when he became the champion without something stupid like selene coming out of nowhere and trouncing him occurring & 2) at the end of the alola arc where burnet was shown to have gotten pregnant offscreen and it became more obvious when her newborn child was shown in journeys.
in this regard, pokemon special has done a hell of a lot better job of it. pokespe has always kept to the games stories while improving upon them and giving each game a protag without stunting or scrapping any of the character's growth hence the reason its still going while the first anime was scrapped and replaced with something that isn't forced to follow any of the major events of the games.

 

[MykelTheSuperfan]

I was really mad that ash was being retired because they basically ruined his character in gen 7 right after that anime improved in gen 6. they wasted his potential then discarded him.

 

[GameMangaAnimeFan]

Why is it every journey ash forgets what he learned on the last? I felt like the disrespect was him losing to people he actually should have won against. He would've been crazy good if the combined all the skills and tactics he learned each season. His moves would be more sharp.

I think one of the biggest issues with Ash, is that he lacks any real character growth through out the whole series. That like with Goku in Dragonball, he is only meant to come out on top at the end of the series, yet his journey got stretched one too many times until he finally came out on top in Galar. Only to finally decide to ask what it would take to be a true Pokemon Master.

 

[Lysander]

I'd have preferred it if he was only the main protagonist for the original series, I feel like each season afterwards would have been better with a new set of main characters rather than just dragging one character's story out to the end of the Earth.

At the very latest he should have left after the Sinnoh League, the league he should have won, especially when Black and White was supposed to be a soft reboot for the series overall. The Black and White anime would have been so much better with a new main protagonist rather than bringing Ash back and writing him to be sort of like a novice all over again.