I might say something someone has already stated. If so, I'm sorry, but I didn't manage to read all the posts.
As unoriginal as that may sound, but I go with Gen VI. The games were obviously rushed, which is why they have a disorienting story. (if you have time, though, read
this (the photos inside it contain a bit of strong language so pay attention). It explains some of the weird aspects of X and Y.)
I also dislike the anime as it is so overrated. Oh my Arceus, I see Serena everywhere. In my opinion, she's so famous just because of the love story with Ash. May has a great character development, so I don't see why the community just praises Serena as a goddess over May.
I don't however understand why people hate Gen VIII so much. Every game used to have narrow and small routes, with just a few trainer battles making them longer. But now, people have standards. The graphics in Pokémon have always sucked (compare Pokémon DPPt with other DS games. You'll understand.), and the story has always been bad: literally, Kanto and Johto have no story whatsoever, Hoenn has an evil team that wants to dry off or flood the world, in DPPt Cyrus just wants to reset everything and Kalos' story is just a mashup of random things (but again, read the text in the link above). I've excluded Unova and Alola games because their story was quite better than the other games, with Unova having a rival who is actually the enemy and an evil team with good purposes which were actually a cover-up for evil deeds, and Alola talking about multiverse and a mother which suffered so much to the point of making her kids want to escape (but Hau sucks). Hop is actually a rival that suffers: he will never be like his brother. When he loses in the final battle, he says that he fought a great battle, but in a fit of rage, and in the end, he refuses to pursue his task: he wants to be a professor. Rose fights for a stupid purpose to emphasize the fact that he has no reason to do that, and the DLCs expand on the history of Galar.
The only downside I can see in SwSh is the Dex(x)it, and it makes sense if one criticizes it, but not if one criticizes other aspects that have always been like that.