>>52787820Like there is a wonderful episode that features that one trainer AJ and his sandshrew. Ash naively thinks that AJ is being too hard on his pokemon for putting them through such training. He rubs it in AJ's face multiple times that obviously Sandshrew ran away from him (AJ) because sandshrew didn't like him, this is when team rocket stole sandshrew on accident instead of pikachu. Also of Ash trying to convince AJ's pokemon to abandon AJ and join him instead. This is also an episode in which Ash gloats about having won 10 times in a row and having two badges. Then proceeds to get his butt thoroughly kicked by AJ's sandshrew who had won at that point 98 times in a row, what also makes that sting for Ash more is that Ash not only lost but lost when using 3 pokemon vs 1 pokemon. Ash even goes full on conspiracy level trying to explain and justify that AJ somehow cheated as Ash had his perspective challenged.
Its honestly such good foreshadowing of what happens far later in the indigo league.
>>52787868>Show Ash having mental anguish about being failure and trying to overcome thatYeah, a pinch of that would help in the orange island. As that league was really showing an Ash who grew as a proper trainer.
>Johto being the same as it wasIf you mean for the Silver conference, the gyms, what pokemon the trio caught, and other such relevant things sure. But the writers really dropped the ball hard with Johto. They thought having an overarching plot revolving around Celebi and a movie also around it was redundant so they just hoped viewers would forget about the GS Ball when Ash left it with Kurt. This would come to bite them in the butt, as they now had to fill the series with a total of 40 episodes, all of which were filler. This in turn would cause the the show to experience lower ratings and by extension require the shakeup that would be Ruby & Sapphire to try and revitalize it.
