I still don't think Ash will be removed. I think my idea about having to journeys going on at once is still a better way to handle it. But I wouldn't mind it if they made it more story oriented. Pokemon is still neck and neck with Yo-Kai Watch in some weeks with still over 3.3m viewers. And Pokemon is still extremely popular in the united states. And I can tell that for a fact by how much pokemon stuff is being sold so quickly and by how many times I see kids looking at pokemon stuff that are a good amount younger than me. While Yo-Kai still suffers miserably in the US But I am sick of talking about ratings for Pokemon when really it means nothing for Japan. Especially when they continue to make shows that get less that 2m viewers.
Most of those series you alluded to at least managed to get decent sales, while if IrregularMaverickZ is to be believed, Pokémon merchandising sales in Japan are awful (not to mention the box office receipts for the movies. In fact, the Hoopa movie managed to actually beat out Pokémon Heroes as the worst performing Pokémon film EVER).
And BTW, if ratings truly mean nothing, why even bother posting them? They exist for a reason. And besides, the Love Hina anime got prematurely cancelled largely BECAUSE of bad ratings.
They definitely should make the anime more story oriented, though, and if they do end up keeping Ash for the Aloha region, they'd better bring Misty back (it's a perfect opportunity anyways. First primarily-water-based region since Hoenn, the promise of finding a lot of water Pokémon, and a chance to allow Misty to actually CONTINUE her stated goal instead of being forced by her sisters to work at the gym. Not to mention it's going to be the 20th Anniversary of the anime anyhow, so what better than to have Misty, an original member of the series, actually come back by that point [they'd need to do something far bigger than a 20th anniversary special in any case]. In fact, I'd even argue that the release of that GEM Misty figure alongside Ash may have been foreshadowing Misty's return. Brock hasn't gotten a GEM figure, not even in his original series depiction, and the only other characters besides herself and OS-era Ash to get a GEM figure are Team Rocket, and even then, considering their uniforms, BW aside, are pretty much the only constant in this series. And I find it suspicious that they are releasing it now especially when they haven't even gotten to the actual 20th anniversary of the anime [right now it's the 20th anniversary of the games, next year is the 20th anniversary of the Anime].). Oh, and actually HAVE Ash age this time around. They might keep the girl character depending on whether she matches the criteria, but if they can't have her, they definitely should bring back Misty, since let's face it, she definitely needs to actually complete her goal or at least have the promise of doing so, considering she alongside Max are the only mains who HAVEN'T completed their goals or even been given an opportunity to do so (Misty was forced to leave for the gym by her sisters, and Max is underage, and thanks to the writers' stupid insistence on making the characters Ageless even with explicit references to time passing, we can NEVER hope for Ash to fight him, or for Max to actually become a trainer). Besides, May's voice actress quit the profession and became a pop idol a'la Hillary Duff (not to mention even if she didn't, Alola most likely won't have any contests anyhow), and it's unlikely Dawn will really have much use in Alola especially considering there aren't likely to be any Pokémon Contests there. And Serena's most likely going to leave the series anyways (if they couldn't keep Iris despite Best Wishes' promising a fresh start, they definitely won't keep Serena), and it's not even clear if Showcases will even BE in Alola, so it's probably not worth keeping her in. And Iris is so far the only girl who hasn't made ANY cameos in the current region as of yet, and if they don't do it now, they probably won't ever have her cameo.
In any case, if Ash really is going for the semi-finals in XYZ033, that means if Ash beats Sawyer, we've got at LEAST one more episode of the league due to that being focused on the finals, and if he wins (which he most likely is), he'll gain access to the Kalos Elite 4. There definitely has to be a reason why they're airing the league right now instead of, say, in October or even November. This league's definitely going to be better than the Sinnoh League (especially when it's pretty obvious the only reason Ash didn't win the league there was because the writers had procrastinated for far too long), and certainly better than Unova. I'm definitely looking forward to it.
