Unless they have no plans to dump him after 15 years of hundreds of episodes and 15 or 16 movies. He is based off of Satoshi Tajiri himself after all.
Yeah, and Red in the Pokemon Special manga, like Ash, was based on Satoshi Tajiri as well, and yet he still got replaced.
Winning a League tournament doesn't mean he's a Pokemon Master. All that does is allows the winner to challenge the Elite 4 and Champion. And again, why replace the character based on the creator after 15 years?
Two and a Half Men's main character was based on Charlie Sheen, yet they removed him from the series and replaced him despite being in effect the main character. Heck, Red from Pokemon Special, like Ash, was based on Satoshi Tajiri, yet the manga creator had absolutely no qualms replacing him, and that manga's still running in Japan at least.
And most of the new audience have no idea what Ash did in Kanto, Johto, or Hoenn. Possibly Sinnoh, but probably not. The older fans by now are grown adults who could probably care less about the show.
There's a thing known as reruns and DVD boxed sets, meaning that the younger generation could easily catch up. And besides, that didn't stop them from flashing back to characters who the current generation should have absolutely no idea without context anyway.
Exactly, the older audience doesn't watch the show anymore (well, most of them), so there's no concern with replacing a character when the new audience probably doesn't know about his earliest adventures.
Except the series implies that he's been through the journey for quite some time, and I'm pretty sure even a four year old would not take someone seriously who acts stupidly when he's supposed to be a seasoned veteran.
I don't think the show is meant to be watched all the way through. The original audience was expected to watch through Kanto. After 4 or 5 years, that group is not longer in the target demographic, so they move on to the next region. The show just appeals to whoever is between 6-11 years old at the time.
If the show was not meant to be watched all the way through, they shouldn't have made Ash the main character in the first place, and thus they should have removed Ash when they had the chance long beforehand. Heck, they wouldn't have had the "To Be Continued" messages throughout the show if that were the case.
The anime just promotes the game and can't truly retain all his skills or he'll just destroy everyone, like he did when he first started in Johto with Charizard on his team. Actually, the fact that he decides to go to a region completely blind as to the Pokemon he will encounter is impressive, like he decides to learn as much as he can about each regions Pokemon without relying on old strategies that may no longer work.
Maybe, but there's a fundamental difference between simply swapping out pokemon for new ones, and acting completely unfamiliar with the environment you're supposed to have been a veteran at. Think of Ash's position as a trainer as being, like, a football coach, or even a commander of a battalion, for example. A football coach, if he ends up being transferred to another team, will usually give pointers and strategies to the team he commands that helped him win the previous time. It's called using your experiences to aid in succeeding. I mean, would you take someone seriously who, despite supposedly being experienced and a hard veteran at something, is completely stupid in regards to the thing they're supposed to be experts at? I wouldn't, and I doubt most kids would.
That's why they started changing his outfit, to give him a fresh look for the audience to get use to. I liked Jimmy (mostly because he was voiced by Sean Schemmel) but he was still basically Ash with different clothes. The romance stuff...relationships are good when the show is based on them, but we all know Pokemon is about the Pokemon. The trainers teach the lessons it seems but the Pokemon are the reason anyone watches the show/movies.
And therefore, Ash truly isn't necessary in the grand scheme of things, and so should be replaced. If Pokemon is truly the sole point of the show, then none of the human characters are truly important, and thus they would replace even Ash simply because he is a human.
But why take a risk when you know the current plan is working? Ash and Pikachu work, and they've worked since the start. Kids love them. Like they say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Except it IS Broken. Otherwise, the ratings would not have decreased.
Again, when it comes to business, you don't take unnecessary risks. You do what works. If Ash still has a strong following and is selling merch, they have no need to get rid of him. So there was no "chance" to get rid of him.
In case you haven't noticed, the ratings are actually PLUMMITING since Johto, at the earliest, getting worse, so what they are doing IS ruining their business.
See, this is what I don't get. People actually seem to be building legit hate for the anime because they won't replace Ash. Akira Toriyama tried to replace Goku in Dragon Ball with Gohan and Goten, but the fans weren't happy about it, so Goku was brought back.
Yeah, and they constantly replaced the main characters of Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh multiple times, and they replaced the characters in Pokemon Special more than once, and that didn't decrease the ratings nor did it result in complaints as far as I know.
And even if that action did doom the show, so what? There hasn't been a Mario cartoon since Super Mario World, yet the Mario franchise was still continuing. Same deal with the Zelda series and the Megaman series, and it will certainly be the same with the Pokemon franchise even if the Anime dies.
And the amount of seasons he's been in mean absolutely nothing as to whether he'd be immune to being replaced, really. Brock had the second longest run of the protagonists only to Ash, yet he still was replaced and retired. Likewise, on the inverse, Brock's mom hadn't even been mentioned since the fifth episode of the original series/the entire series, and yet she still appeared nearly nine seasons later (six, counting the Hosos), and Jessiebelle took 9-12 seasons before she returned.
Unless the writers seriously make Ash actually seem competent at the profession he was supposed to be a veteran at (like Solid Snake was in Metal Gear Solid 2), they honestly should not keep Ash in the show.