To think, none of this ESL autism would exist today if that one faggot with ultimate authority didn't keep insisting that Ash HAD to stay a fixture of the anime for all those prior years and just let the boy fuck off after Johto.
His character was basically good as done there, he made significant progress as a person, improved his skills to earn the respect from his most problematic teammates like Charizard, and most importantly, buried the hatchet with Gary, the ultimate show of growth on Ash's part. That was the reason he turned into a bland shitcake afterwards, because he matured and subsequently became boring for it.
Hoenn would've went way better if we got a whole new cast with the actual game characters, with whole new lessons to learn and approaches to familiar goals, and then you could repeat the cast swapping for every successive region.