>>58819646
Please. Even Delia knows that Ash lacks a sex drive.

>>58819686
That's really sad and probably true

Once upon a time everyone believed that these two would end up together.

I was mad Bill went on a date with Misty in the games. That's Ash's girl

>>58819701
KEK

>>58819700
Watching the dub, any person with a brain would conclude that Ash and Misty were explicitly in love with each other and are just too young to act on it.
Watching the sub, Misty absolutely is romantically interested in Ash, but Ash doesn't reciprocate at all aside from one odd episode where he is jealous.
People lie and say that it was absolutely meant to be, or lie and say that the dub invented all of it. Shippers are an unreliable bunch.

>>58819646
The mother/sister who assumes you're fucking all your female friends is one of the most annoying tropes. I'm enjoying the Trails games but Cecile is a pretty annoying character because of this

>>58820438
Nigga, Lloyd gives her ground to think that, literally everyone thinks that shit because he goes around spewing bullshit and even Randy told him to stop because he was falling for it too

Ash is a fag, I don't think she's too worried

>>58819700
Nobody anticipated that the series would extend to 20+ years and cover 5+ generations. If the series was slated to end much earlier, the writers would have been more than happy to wrap it up with a ham fisted confession.

>>58820564
And Team Rocket would have been the wingmen 1100%

Ash going home to Pallet after the Orange Islands with Misty and Johto being Gold and Marina's turn was the ending we SHOULD have gotten! Want to know one of my favorite Terraleak revelations? Every one of the anime's problems like Ash staying ten forever can be blamed on the ONE man who replaced Shudo! Everyone including Gamefreak was begging for Ash to retire by Hoenn but this one retard didn't listen to any of it! Fucker should have died in an earthquake!

>>58820564
>Nobody anticipated that the series would extend to 20+ years and cover 5+ generations.
Or, the anime could have just started using the game protagonists back when Brendan debuted alongside May.

>>58819701
That never happened.

>>58819646
And then ash ended the series by splashing pikachu’s anal walls his genetic code.

>>58820668
>Everyone including Gamefreak was begging for Ash to retire by Hoenn but this one retard didn't listen to any of it!
Baby logic to assume one person had that kind of sway. Ash became an albatross for the brand because all the international marketing and cultural impact of Pokemon centred around the anime. That cast of ~10 human characters were more recognizable than some of top 10 Pokemon.

Of course GF wanted the anime to fall in line with their games. They want to operate with some insularity, that's why TPC exists, to manage the broader brand rollouts. It was the marketing machine of TPC, NoA, and international partners that had a vested interest in Ash. Going into gen 2, it was all about maintaining momentum and familiarity. As gen 2 petered out, it was about retention and playing it safe. They likely looked back on the previous toy megabrand, Power Rangers, and how that series tried to revitalize itself with a significant rebrand/overhaul. These brands typically have a 3-5 year lifespan, and Pokemon was no exception, but Pokemon overcame the slump because it dug in its heels with the anime while branching out with the games. I don't love gen 3, but I have a lot of respect for how it managed this previously impossible feat.

>>58819762
In the Pokemon music CD she even singing about him, when he wakes up is also adorable.

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147 KB JPG

I think the later seasons shipped Misty and Brock.

>>58819762
Pretty much, and I've only seen up through the kanto tournament episode where some girls Bellsprout goes sicko mode
Curious when OP's image is from or what the context is

>>58821716
Gen 3 was a soft reboot anyway, unlike Gen 2 being a direct sequel. It was a perfect time to dump Ash, nobody cared that he went to Hoenn since he had to box all his Pokemon. Then for the DP series they did THE SAME SHIT AGAIN
Meanwhile Yu-Gi-Oh got an entirely new cast in GX and it was still as popular as ever.

>>58822410
Ashbros......

>>58820564
>nobody anticipated that the series would extend to 20+ years and cover 5+ generations
According to Takeshi Shudo, they told him that they expected the franchise to last at least 10 more years, this was by Gen 2.

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1.86 MB PNG

>>58820564
>If the series was slated to end much earlier, the writers would have been more than happy to wrap it up with a ham fisted confession.
Such a thing would never happen in a Japanese kiddie anime. They have cultural taboos about kids openly doing romantic stuff. It would be different if the characters were teenagers, but Ash and Misty are canonically 10-year-olds. They will only ever drop hints so that the audience will think they'll grow up and get married someday. They pretty much confirmed it in Misty's return episode during the epilogue mini-arc.

>>58822669
>They have cultural taboos about kids openly doing romantic stuff.
Abe-san, we failed you...

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3.68 MB WEBM

>>58822669
>They pretty much confirmed my mental delusion
You mean, when they brought back Latias, centred Ash's endstory around finding and helping a Latias which knew HIS Latrias and finished up giving Bianca!Latias her debut anime appearance? Pokémon isn't scared of pokephillia-related topics. That extends to the anime writers calling back to the romantic sub-plot of a prior movie, because they don't want to *officially* ship an OC with a canon character.

>>58821692
Lmao

>>58819686
>>58819687
>>58820508
Ash just doesn't care at all about romance, he considers his career far more important, he's also ten years old. It's really that simple.

>>58822925
The Pokémon franchise has never had a proper positive portrayal of human X Pokémon. It's safe to say that the franchise is against human X Pokémon. And that's not because it's a safe-for-kids franchise either, there's other safe-for-kids franchise that do have unarguable positive deception of human X non-human, Pokémon is just not one of those franchises.

>>58824236
>never
There are several instances of Pokemon wanting BHC IN the franchise.
Only female humans are really seen in the reverse who lust after Pokemon but it is glaringly clear that there are humans who at the very least desire Pokemon dick as well.

Also>>58821692

Why do people care so much about shipping Ash of all characters anyway?

>>58822410
Based

>>58825487
For non-spics, self-insertion. Ash is such a nothing character that it makes him extremely easy to project themselves onto, and thus the shipping discourse becomes more about how much the shipper wants to hook up with the character being paired with Ash.
For spics, severe mental illness and a misguided belief that Pokemon is a shonen anime following the Dragon Ball formula where the hero, at the height of his journey, will get the girl who's crushing on him, which is why most spics believe in Amourshipping (Ash and Serena).

>>58822669
They do it all the time.
They are just not explicit, only using a very telling handholding on looking at each other in the end.
Misty's lovestruck tsundere thing went nowhere because Ash ended up stuck in this limbo because replacing him as the protagonist was risky.

>>58825615
AshxSerena was just the Asian anime writers indulging in their AMWF fetish at the very first opportunity where there was an explicitly European female companion to have crush on and kiss the Asian Ash

>>58822455
>it was still as popular as ever
That's not saying much...