You've mentioned the opinions of people who didn't agree with the direction the franchise is headed in, not exactly what I'm asking for. I want to know what they've said about the anime ending (and Takeshi Shudo really wouldn't count here, considering that he's dead).
Except we see what he warned against in full play during AG and even to some extent DP and afterwards, so his warnings do have some merit even if he is dead. After all, Karl Marx is dead by the time of the Soviet Union, yet no one denies he was responsible for the horrors of communism (especially when his letters made clear he intended for those horrors to come). Not to mention a lot of the complaints made about the show AG onwards actually match up with what Shudo feared would happen.
And I hope that you'll forgive me for being skeptical of how much genuine concern you have for a series you've claimed not to watch anymore.
I do care about the show. I may not watch it anymore thanks to some bad policies the show is making, but that doesn't mean I don't care for the show at all. I used to watch it as a kid, and I really dislike it when the writers are making a lot of mistakes in writing and planning with the show.
I'll ignore the fact that new episodes of The Simpsons are aired in a different country towards a different demographic during a different day at a different time of that day on different network, and ratings between the two shouldn't be compared.
Actually, both Pokémon and the Simpsons air at the same time of day (around nighttime, the 7 pm range). And my point was that the Simpsons still gets better ratings than Pokémon DESPITE the fact that it has vastly declined in quality.
And for the record, the fact that Pokémon is supposed to be geared towards kids while the Simpsons is intended to be a grown up show means it would be extremely improbable for the show to lose a large amount of ratings since kids and families are pretty much a reliable ratings area (yes, kids grow up, but then they're easily replaceable, so it wouldn't really cause much problem with ratings barring a holocaust or a population boom).
Despite the fact that their ratings and viewership arguably have declined even more than Pocket Monsters (both in viewership and quality - Pocket Monsters was never anything more than a mediocre show with occasional moments of greatness; The Simpsons used to actually be brilliant), The Simpsons still remains one of the tentpole programs of FOX's Sunday Night lineup (the other being Family Guy). This is with a loss of roughly twenty-three million viewers between the first season, 1989-1990, and the twenty-fifth, 2013-2014. And FOX still refuses to cancel the program. In fact, The Simpsons have already been renewed for a twenty-seventh season! This is why looking at ratings and loudly announcing the end without considering context doesn't give you the whole story.
Pokémon was never that mediocre. Actually, Kanto, the Orange Islands, and even Johto were actually within the two-digits range, and the Original Series was a hit Anime. Sure, it may not have been up to the Simpsons level, but it was pretty close to that. And as far as the Simpsons, they may have announced the 27th Season, but unless they actually air it, announcing it means nothing (especially when Season 26's premiere got a really bad reception thanks to bad wording by the press as well as overhyping). Don't forget, E-Readers for the Game and Watch series were announced, and those got silently cancelled (I remember going to Best Buy to get some cards, only to discover that they haven't even come in, and they never even announced it was cancelled. On the contrary, Nintendo Power did a coverage on the Game and Watch cards the issue of the month it was due to be released and made it seem as though it would be released). Heck, the Love Hina anime actually had plans for a second season and even released its first few episodes of that season until sudden loss of revenue forced it to end prematurely.
Fans of The Simpsons and even someone who worked on that show have all come out talking about its decline, and it still remains on the air for the foreseeable future. The Simpsons only helps prove the points that long-running franchises get less popular over time and that fans of these things always get ahead of themselves announcing their end.
Yeah, except even the Simpsons wasn't anywhere near as in danger ratings wise as Pokémon is right now or even during AG.
No, but until such time as the anime is actually cancelled or shows clear signs of being so then it should be kept in mind that this is speculation, not fact. I'm not saying the situation is good or bad, or that I know what the future for the series is. I don't know how to judge that, and I really don't care.
Nope, but I do know some business aspects and ratings from advertisements due to my uncle and aunt having ties to that industry, and I do know that low ratings generally means it's definitely within it's death stages. And for the record, many times it's not immediate. A lot of people pointed to the third season of NBC's Heroes' bad writing as the time of its downfall, which was eventually proven accurate when Season 4, either from caught up karma or otherwise similarly bad writing decisions, basically proved to be the last season of the series in what was clearly a premature cancellation (there are also those who claim Season 2 was responsible, though in all fairness, it being rushed was the result of the Writers Strike).
I am saying that you're getting ahead of yourself in predicting it's cancellation. Yes, the anime is going to end at some point. No television show will last forever (and this is why talking about how an eventual cancellation of the anime at some undefined point in the future - the vaguely-defined "long-term" that you mentioned - proves this is dumb). But there should really be some greater hint that it's happening right now.
Maybe not, but when it's actually losing ratings rapidly and all of that, it definitely is showing that at the very least, cancellation is going to be happening in the near future. Besides, as IrregularHunterZ, DBZ Fan, and Poke425 pointed out several times, there are plenty of other long-running shows, both here in America and there in Japan, some actually exceeding Pokémon's length, that not only are actually stable as far as fans and ratings and concerned and are not only not losing them, but in actuality are gaining them largely because they are doing things Pokémon is not doing at the present (like actually trying to keep its cast consistent while at the same time actually making sure there's effective and efficient character development and plotlines).
It's more about mkt revenues than ratings.
However since 2013's summer in Japan, there were signs that Pokemon was fading too strongly in Japan. According to 2 surveys:
Video Research (videor.co.jp) (yeah, the company that provides tv ratings in Japan)
Video Research's X-Mas 2012 favorite series/character for kids had Pokemon placed on 6th of 20th place (the highest the franchise had on that marketing survey, and until that survey, Pokemon was always inside the upper top 10 of a top 20 of franchises in Japan since that survey was started in 2009), but 2013's summer survey had pokemon placing 13th of 20th, that year there wasn't X-Mas survey because of Sochi olympics, but 2014's summer survey had Pokemon placing even downer than that survey, 14th of 20th.
Yeah, that would definitely indicate that XY is doing terribly right now.
and Bandai/Cross Marketing survey (the most classical one, made by the biggest toy maker in Japan)
since the survey was made on 1996 Pokemon was placing very high on Bandai's surveys. Even in Advance Generation, when ratings reached an all time low for that age (The tube queen Azami ep had 4,0%), marketing surveys still placed Pokemon very high (always inside top 5). Last time Pokemon had a pole position place was in 2013 when Episode N was being aired (3rd of 10), but past year Pokemon fell down too harshly on the 8th place according to that survey.
Yeah, agreed. And it says a lot when even AG came across as being good by comparison (and that series was frankly mediocre as a whole. I never get why Johto gets excessively bashed while AG is treated as truly great. At least Johto actually HAD Ash increasing in rank in the leagues, Ash actually beating his rival, and overall doing much better than during the Indigo League. Hoenn had him getting the same rank as before, thus making it seem as though he never really improved, and even the Gym Leaders came across as weak). XY may be better than BW slightly, but it's still not that good. And that's not even getting into how the writers decided to treat their own audiences with cynicism by, as Hidaka put it, simply using the female leads starting with AG solely as eyecandy purposes.
So, if you count the marketing survey for kids... Pokemon actually is doing very very badly. Very much like Dragon Ball GT post Giru in Machine Planet M2 chapters.
Yeah, and I think GT should be a good comparison and a good way to predict the future of the Pokémon Franchise.
The true reality is that... none of the Anime!XY shippings are really popular because of the lower popularity that series has in Japan (and even SatoSere and [Yaoi/Bromance] SatoShito being the ones who outstands of that series, given the fewer people who follows that series, that is pretty much an understatement). So, it's understandable why SatoKasu and ShuuHaru are still really popular in Japan. They're pretty much established when the tsundere romance was on its peak in late 90's - late 00's time range.
Yeah, which really shows the writers are making a huge mistake trying to promote Amourshipping when it isn't even viable.
And japanese people has another vision of romance. For a series centered on gag, slapstick comedy and nekketsu cliches "they hate each other superficially, but deep down they want to f**k very hardly every night" pairing is the de facto one (that's the reason because Ranma x Akane, Satoshi x Kasumi, Kyousuke & Kirino, and even NaruSaku before the heavy promotion NaruHina had this year. Even yaoi ones like Taichi x Yamato, Goku x Vegeta, Naruto x Sasuke and Satoshi x Shigeru are insanely popular because of them having a tsundere and dynamic trait). So, unless a more "normal and harmonious pairing" (very much like SatoSere, NaruHina, Goku x ChiChi "pre-Saiyajin saga" and other ones that i can't remembah ryt now) gets a heavy and blatant promotion on anime and movies, the "dynamic and tsundere one" is the de facto one and the fan favorite. They don't believe in love at first sight surprisingly. Goddammit, even Goku x Bulma was absurdely popular in late 80's (even Shounen Jump's editor in that year, Kazuhiko Torishima, wanted Toriyama to put both of them to be together despite the 4-year age difference, but Toriyama said f*** *** to the fans and his editor and decided to put him with ChiChi because he admits he sucks at writing romance development and he believed ChiChi fit Goku better).
Heh, funny, because I heard Japan were pretty huge fans of Disney films even by American standards, and several of their films dealt directly with Love at First Sight (it certainly was the case with Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, even Aladdin and Pocahontas to some extent). Plus, didn't Romeo and Juliet get Pokémon-ized at one point, THE Love at First Sight production? Still, I guess that explains things.
Again, go to my first reply in this post. It's more about merchandising. Pokemon anime doesn't promote the games directly really, only the toy and other merchandising they release.
So, the Anime doesn't directly promote the games? Well, I managed to boycott most merchandising of the franchise that wasn't the games, and even the games I made sure to avoid buying as part of my boycott for reasons relating to Misty.
And then how One Piece, Detective Conan, Sazae-San, Doraemon and Shin Chan are longrunners and they have a very harmonious and cohesive fanbase with lots of new people still entering?Well, that's because Because they weren't exchanging the core cast every saga or generation with only mantaining the main male lead and his villanous counterpart only.
Yeah, agreed. And many of those franchises above are actually doing far better than Pokémon is right now (I think Doraemon even managed to beat out the XY movie). Plus, at least they do treat their girl characters with actual respect and not solely as eyecandy in a cynical attempt to attract male viewers as Hidaka mentioned (and even Shudo, who BTW regretted removing Misty after the fact, basically didn't have many good things to say about her claiming she's not "girl enough" even though she demonstrated plenty of girly instances in addition to tomboyish aspects, and in fact was one of the reasons why she was highly popular).
