Later games as in initial rematch in FrLg and HgSs?
The anime series here ended roughly at
The Purr-fect Hero, which was around year 1998 and then aired for a bit until year 2001. Note that I'm talking about the Japanese-Cantonese dubbed version here. Then the Original series returned in year 2006 here (you
aren't reading it wrong, buddy. Original saga in year 2006. You know
which generation belongs to year 2006.)The delay itself caused the decline here rather than the infamous Johto's obnoxious amount of filler episodes.
On the gaming department, GSC was the peak here. Unfortunately the gaming declined after Crystal version because of the Pokémon anime. Pokémon Movies were a huge thing here as well. The last movie on screen was either
Pokémon 3: Spell of the Unown or
Celebi - Voice of the Forest, I forgot which. The movies had to stop because of the decline, secondly it's obviously inconsistency as Ash was still using his Kanto team in the TV series while the movies has his updated Johto team.
The grow up to mature thing here occur in year 2004, pronouncing your love to the Pokémon series was no different than asking to be a laughing stock.
The Hoenn saga started airing here in year 2007 which concluded in 2009. The remaining original fans here were actually very surprised with the Hoenn saga airing,
that moment felt like... Needless to say it was a welcomed decision, nevertheless it was too late already.
The AG and DP anime series saved the whole Pokémon's butt, it was so well received that the first DP movie got into screen again... :') Just for a day though and they were just testing the waters. :P There were rumors that the local TV Station was reprimanded by Pokémon International for the delay, while no one can verify the authenticity of that rumor. Undeniably my region had the most delay globally. :P DP made its debut on the cold Sunday time slot. Six months after DP's premiere, DP received an additional time slot, Saturday. But the delay was too much, as BW has been airing in Japan so a mid-series cancellation was actually considered. In order to finish the DP series, it was finally moved to the popular time slot -- Monday to Friday.~ While Pokémon still couldn't restore to its former glory, but it's definitely better when Pokémon was out cold. Nowadays we have XY here. ^^
'The few remaining original fans were turned off by Gen 3's hard reboot (no backwards compatibility, all new region and Pokémon) and obvious pandering to new, younger fans over older ones, and many of them just dropped Pokémon and never looked back.' That reminds me, the reboot might be intended. But I'll further elaborate my theory on the next reply, as my reply this time was too long. xD