Yeah, but still, assuming they do return to Johto, they may end up making it an entirely new series rather than a filler arc (because, let's face, how will making HGSS a mere saga in the
D/P series make any sense? I mean, at least with the Kanto Battle Frontier/references to FRLG, it was understandable, as the series it was in focused more on the GBA games in general rather than a specific series of said games.)
Frankly, I saw many problems with that saga as well (more than just the lack of true focus on Season 1, BTW), I mean, they had May return for no reason whatsoever [I mean, they already have
a girl for Kanto, yet they just stuck with May which would not make sense advertizing-wise. And if that wasn't bad enough, they also never gave Leaf any appearances at all [I mean, at least with Brendan and Lucas, they got appearances in the World of Pokemon Segments of the movies, What did Leaf get? Nothing, nadda, Zip!], I mean, if they REALLY needed to use the Battle Frontier for promotion of Emerald, they should have just placed it in the exact same place as the games, and instead of giving May Squirtle, give her a Totodile (to advertize the fact that the Johto starters could be given out to those who complete the Hoenn dex in Emerald.).
Plus, once again, they threw out the perfect opportunity to finally give a proper explaination of what a Pokemon Master was, and not only that, but have Ash deny it a little while longer (for goodness sakes, he's supposed to be wanting to become the world's greatest pokemon master, yet he rejects the perfect opportunity to actually achieve that goal?!)
Not to mention what happened to Brock during OI.
And yeah, I recall the problems they had when they ditched Misty (something that, unfortunately, the show will never recover from unless they rectify that mistake.), and our bitterness of what they did grew only worse on that day of WPM's interview where it confirmed the true reason for her removal (I'll never forgive the writers for deciding to act like Chauvinist Pigs and decide that they should only allow girls whose physical assets are far bigger than persona, intelligence, or positive behavior, and basically treating the girls as nothing more than tools for us straight males.).
And even then, 4kids made it seem as though One Island was an anime only location and not a part of the games.