Have him be like Red, have him had a Kadabra, Eeveelution, evolve his Pikachu to a Raichu, be atrracted to Misty/Dawn/May instead of Serena
So he needs to become an abusive, unfeeling jerk?
How would Ash catching a Legendary Pokemon improve him? It's not like they're even a big deal these days; Ash has defeated several of them, so their once hyped status as strong battlers is almost moot now.
1. Yeah, as much as I want Ash to really get improved upon, he really shouldn't adopt Paul's traits, that would just make him even worse. He could adopt Gary's traits of raising Pokémon, however. Yes, Gary's a bit hardheaded and a bit of a braggart, but at least he actually does care for his Pokémon without sacrificing his potential.
2. Eh, they're still pretty high battlers anyways, and besides, only Pikachu and Charizard have actually BEATEN Legendaries anyway, so it's not like he's made them look bad anyways. Now, if he managed to beat a Legendary with, say, his Caterpie, THEN I'll agree with you on how that's rendered moot.
Didn't Pikachu mutual-KO Latio/as in the Sinouh league, while Sceptile managed to take down Darkrai in that same match?
Ash's incompetence is what frustrates me the most in Pokémon (I guess this is kind of obvious). Now, animes can do with incompetent characters, for instance (these will all be Yu-Gi-Oh analogies since I watched this series the most), in yugioh Zexal, the main protagonist starts incompetent, with the same "screw optimal plays, I am going with my heart" kind of mentality that Ash has. In the beginning he was annoying, especially since by then we were used to almighty main protagonists and yugioh duel monsters, gx, and 5ds. So he starts kind of annoying, but in the second half of the show he gets better, actually becomes competent, still retains his mentality, and it became much more satisfying to watch him. So Ash being clueless and reckless in the first season was fine, as he was still learning. But then, every season he loses to some random trainer, forgets that electric types don't work on ground types, and so on. And I mean, I get this self imposed challenge of "lets start fresh every region", but doesn't it make sense to sometimes call older Pokémon? Like early in BW there was this time Trip made fun of Ash because he only had 5 Pokémon and one less badge than him. Couldn't have Ash just be like "hold my beer" and show him he actually has 40 badges, transfer Snorlax, and have him eat Trip's pathetic Pokémon?
My point is, that Ash already MADE the journey from nubcake to competent. Making him go over it time and time again is ridiculous. The way I see it, the only way to save the Pokémon anime is: either make Ash suddenly magically competent and get him to be good and win, or just forget about him, finish whatever you having going on, make him die in a plane crash or something, and make a new protagonist. Maybe try a competent protagonist for once. Most of the people who play the games try to play semi-optimally. Obviously, not everyone is meta-master, but a lot of people do try to variate types and type advantages and stuff like that. So watching a protagonist who does that consciously and deliberately would be appealing.
So yeah, I kind of believe he is hopeless at this point.
I'd give Ash Paul's personality traits, that's all he needs imo.
Why? He has like 40 different species of Pokemon in storage already at Oak's place that he doesn't do anything with except during certain Leagues (the last time being in DP 8 freaking years ago), and even then not all of them get to battle. So how would him catching every single Pokemon be beneficial when all it would lead to is him having 800+ neglected Pokemon that we would only see approximately once every half decade at best?
Maybe don't reset him at the end of every season? Have him actually catch all the pokemon instead of doing a super lackluster job?
Personally, I'd just get rid of him entirely...
When they do stuff like what they did with greninja, saying how it developed such a strong bond for ash it transformed, etc., and then just forget about him next season, it really just kills off any emotions I had towards it.
Ash does need to quit releasing his Pokemon
Oak still asked him to fill up the pokedex though, so it is a goal in the showThe emphasis on catching every Pokemon was mainly a dub concept though, and mainly emphasized in the early years of the show. The whole "gotta catch 'em all" motto didn't exist in the Japanese version (they just had a vague "get Pokemon" tagline instead iirc). It's been kind of clear for over 15 years that Ash and even other notable characters can't actually catch every Pokemon since there are just so many of them, hence why we don't see Ash even attempting to do that these days.
EXACTLY!Ash does need to quit releasing his Pokemon. In Greninja's case, it just makes their bond seem like a gimmick that only existed to give Ash a Kalos powerhouse and nothing more.
Oak still asked him to fill up the pokedex though, so it is a goal in the show
When exactly did Oak ask him to "fill up the Pokedex"? Because it's been 21 years since Ash got his first Pokedex, and the fact that he only caught around 80 Pokemon overall out of 800 kind of proves that filling the Pokedex isn't Ash's goal anymore. :/
1. Yeah, as much as I want Ash to really get improved upon, he really shouldn't adopt Paul's traits, that would just make him even worse. He could adopt Gary's traits of raising Pok?mon, however. Yes, Gary's a bit hardheaded and a bit of a braggart, but at least he actually does care for his Pok?mon without sacrificing his potential.