At what point would you say Ash should've been retired?
After the Orange Islands?
After Johto?
After Sinnoh?
After Kalos?

Since the GBA was a reboot for the game series, the anime should've rebooted after Johto too.

>>57901063 (OP)
After Johto.

Johto

Johto is the correct answer.

>>57901063 (OP)
Johto should have been after a timeskip and the series should have ended with Ash vs. Gary. They didn't build up Misty as a tsundere love interest just so she could be pushed to the side and replaced with whatever girl they just used to cross promote the games with.

>>57901063 (OP)
Orange Islands, I guess. Gave him an opportunity to be a success. Satoshi was more of a stand-in for Red, and felt out of place moving forward, usurping future protagonists and body-snatching his way amongst their family and friend groups.

>>57901063 (OP)
What's with the threads? It isn't friday yet

>>57901063 (OP)
Never? He kept hustling and won out in the end.

>>57901172
After lowering the bar.

That's not a win, that's a consolation prize.

>>57901063 (OP)
Johto was when the anime took a nosedive

>>57901063 (OP)
The second he lost at the Kanto tournament infront of millions on live TV because his Charizard decided to throw
How do you recover from that?

>>57901063 (OP)
ash should've retired after johto and just become a wandering pokemon trainer that the new protags run in to once in a while. there was literally no reason for them to constantly have ash and pikachu be the front face of pokemon for almost 30 years and he's won matches you can count on with just one hand

>>57901063 (OP)
Ash was so powerful that his Shounen versionade millions of people who hadn't watched the anime in almost a decade or more want to tune in to witness him finally win a Pokemon League Championship.

People who say he should have been retired are just ash-antis.

First best chance? After Johto.
Second best chance? After Sinnoh.
If he'd won Kalos he could have continued and perhaps gotten a steady stream of proper victories, but they didn't let him, and that sealed his fate towards getting kicked out after getting unsatisfying consolation prize pity wins first on a toddler league and then making all the Champions retarded.

After Kanto. Each region should have had their own protagonist and they eventually get to meet their predecessor.

Gen 4 would've been a great ending. It was the last Japan series, and Ash had built a decent reputation. I think retiring him too early would've made the show less popular. Other series like Digimon or YGO have new protagonists, but aren't nearly as successful as Pokemon has been.

>>57901458
Based

What was the point of continuing after Sinnoh. Ashfags, why did you keep watching after the soft reboot? Literally the anime turns soulless after they stop referencing older characters and events. One of the best things about the old Ashime was the callbacks.

>>57901063 (OP)
Johto.
You can only do "lose the league to learn that you can move on" once. If you stuck after that you basically told OLM you're a drone that will accept whatever they shit out.
Obviously Johto should've been completely different in the first place for that to work, but fucking up every single aspect is kind of the ashnime's brand.

>>57901172
For years winning "wasn't important" though.

>>57901458
>People who say he should have been retired are just ash-antis.
Yes? I mean "reasonable people" is a better descriptor but yeah, people who hate ash are indeed anti-Ash.

>>57901063 (OP)
When they replaced Veronica Taylor as his english VA

>>57901063 (OP)
Orange Islands would've been the best since he was based on the Gen 1 player character and won a Hall of Fame there. Johto would've been second best since it was part of the original series along with Kanto and Orange. After Johto, he long overstayed his welcome as a main character and Advanced Generation being a reboot should've meant an entirely new cast.
That said, being the stand-in of the Gen 1 player character meant he had many opportunities to return to the anime as a supporting character.
>Gen 2: Somewhere near the end if there was a Kanto arc.
>Gen 3: A main or major supporting character if there was a FRLG saga.
>Gen 4: Does HGSS return to Kanto? Yes? He might be there.
>Gen 5: POKÉMON WORLD TOURNAMENT ARC
>Gen 7: Coin flip between Kanto anniversary and LGPE shilling.

>>57901274
>Johto was when the everything took a nosedive
FTFY

>>57901458
They artificially extended it for several gens longer than they should have. DPP should have been the last series with Ash at the latest. Really it made no sense to break up the classic Ash/Brock/Misty trio but if you have to keep things going it's best to end it where Ash has his best and strongest team instead of giving us Tobias and then resetting everything just to repeat the process with Alain and then finally give him the league victories in the two worst seasons in the entire franchise.

>>57901063 (OP)
Episode 1

>>57901992
If he won the DP league then they did a proper E4 challenge run that ended with a Cynthia battle that would've been a solid conclusion. I believe he actually did meet each of the E4 this season too so the setup was there.

>>57901988
I think the anime was responsible for that, lots of my friends hated how Togepi sucked out Misty's personality

>>57902024
Nah that would have been way too much of an escalation in power m from previous seasons for a proper conclusion. Going from being beaten by a Meowth to facing off one of the strongest champions in the very next season would look like rushed wish fulfilment. They would have needed to really build Ash up from Indigo (e.g. not having him lose so early there, win Johto championship but lose to the first E4 member, lose to the final E4 member in Hoenn) only thrn would having him face Cynthia be a proper conclusion.

>>57902079
Not sure I really agree there. His Hoenn placement was with his regional team. The battle frontier happened before Sinnoh and he was at quite a high level when using reserves. Besting frontier brains with legendaries and then going to E4 members is a fair enough escalation.

In a scenario where they didn't build up to it throughout the seasons like you suggested and they were told during Sinnoh to "wrap it up", I don't think an E4 challenge is that out there.

>>57902180
>His Hoenn placement was with his regional team.
And thats part of the problem. Ash was much stronger than his poor league results showed and he handicapped himself with constant team resets, preventing us from truly seeing his growth as a trainer over time. Him intentionally underperforming for the first three seasons right up until the end then taking the gloves off to beat the Battle Frontier and then suddenly facing Cynthia the next season would just be dumb since it raises the question about why he didnt do this earlier. If he wants to be the best Pokemon trainer, why wouldnt he go all out all the time to try and win these leagues with his best mons? There wouldnt be any build up at all, it would basically be "so after all those years of losing i actually decided to actually try and I beat the battle frontier, sinnoh elite four and the champion! The end!". The writers oviously knew how dumb his OOC BF feat looked and made sure to pull him back the next season to a more reasonable level.

>>57901063 (OP)
Kalos really kind of felt like some kind of grand finale for him.

>>57901063 (OP)
Each new region should have been a new protag, with previous ones occasionally making cameo appearance as older and more experienced versions of how we first saw them.

>>57901541
what about JoJo and Doctor Who? both reset their protagonist all the time and yet are hugely popular

>>57901063 (OP)
It's obvious looking at the final episodes that even the writers thought it should have ended after Johto.

>>57902575
Doctor Who killed itself when it got rid of David Tennant. Ratings slowly fell off and even bringing him back for another season hasn't saved the show. JoJo killed itself by going seinen.

>>57903170
don't forget years of consistently shitty writing

>>57901282
Kanto and Johto share the same League in the games, they could've made it work with a redemption arc.

>>57901063 (OP)
After Sinnoh was the perfect time to retire him

>>57901541
This will never make sense. Yugioh and specially Digimon were never nearly as popular on their peaks(prior to ever changing protags) as pokemon.
Also the ashnime is fundamentally conceived for kids who don't know what happened prior so its not like it ever affected them.
The ashnime is just more popular than them because pokemon in general is.

>>57901063 (OP)
After Sinnoh

>>57901063 (OP)
People keep saying Johto but Ash was not believable as being a competent trainer throughout his travels there Plus Johto goes to shit once they leave Goldenrod

Battle Frontier was the best opportunity. He should have accepted the position of Frontier. He’d also learn that life’s not about being the no. 1 trainer but about more than that, that perhaps the conventional route wasn’t for him. Being a Frontier Brain would mean:
>Could easily still live near his mother, his Kanto friends or travel as needed
>Have all his Pokémon at once at any given moment
>Have fun battling the strongest of trainers and spending time with Pokemon for the rest of his days

I'm really glad that public discourse has changed concerning this subject. If this question was made 5 years ago, about 80% of you would've chosen DP. Johto was clearly the thematic best time for Ash's finale:

>Johto and Kanto were basically a single region
>seeing Ho-oh inspired Ash on Day 1, best to end the story on its own turf
>Ash was using a mix of Kanto/Johto mons
>Ash finally beat Garry, his long-time rival
>AG was the PERFECT reset point (female lead, contests, abilities, etc)
>Pokeshipping was still going strong

>>57901739
I agree completely, Gary had to show up more, Misty and Brock should've done more, Togepi should've evolved or died, Heracross should've been used fucking once, etc.

>>57901992
>>57901541
>waiting almost 700 episodes for Ash to win a league
Fucking kek, anyone who parrots this opinion clearly did not start from OS.

>>57901063 (OP)
Johto. It’s the one that makes the most sense and means the most to Ash. It would also have made cameos more fun in later gens. Brendan, May, and Roxanne should’ve been the MCs of Advance.

>>57904670
People still say DP generally.
This thread is just a happy oddity.

After him waking up from the coma.

>>57901541
digimon frontier ruined it but i heard digimon tamers was not liked in japan
ygo anime still was popular until arc v ruined it and vrains and rush duel killed it

>>57901063 (OP)
Ash was a mistake from the beginning. Pokemon should have been a mahou shoujo.

>>57901063 (OP)
gen 2 or gen 4 they fucked, the anime is going to be canceled later or sooner, first were the movies second they already canceled ash. they really cant make a good protagonist even less a girl lol, gundam gqux using take desings they look like pokemon did a more likable protagonist than liko and roy

You had perfectly good opportunities to retire him multiple times throughout the different anime series.
Johto, Sinnoh, Kalos.
All three were completely fine stopping points for Ash, and the fact that we know from the teraleak that his status as MC of the anime was forcibly extended unnaturally shows that they were just complete retards about the whole thing.

>>57905120
Ending with Kalos would have been the ultimate cuckjob.

>>57905406
Why?

>>57904525
>People keep saying Johto but Ash was not believable as being a competent trainer throughout his travels there
You could say that for his companions when they were main characters and how much their teams have progressed once they're no longer in the spotlight. It seems that once they leave Ash, they become competent.

>>57901063 (OP)
After Journeys.

>>57903170
Smith was better than Tennant and seinen JoJo is better than shonen JoJo.

>>57901071
It later had Kanto in it too. Which justifies Brock's presence. I'd say after Gen 3. Gen 4 should have carried May over. May was the best girl.

>>57904792
What the hell are you even trying to say?

I think you have to ask yourself "Does Ash deserve to lose?" and only stop when your answer becomes "No, not really. Based on how well he did and the trainers he would've fought, he would've won if it wasn't for this contrived bullshit that only exists to ensure he can't win".

>>57910072
Yuyama was a cancer

>>57905120
>Sinnoh, Kalos
No, you can only do "lose the league and improve" once. Stopping at Sinnoh means you did it three times.

>>57910072
Ash isn't a real person, he's either made to be good or bad enough by the people who decide what happens in the show, whether he "deserves" to win or lose is predetermined.