>>50720732I think Ash was given a team of Shillmons for only three reasons:
1 They were guaranteed sales as merchandise
2 Being mostly known species you didn't have to develop too much anymore, they are clones of previous pokemon, all Dragonite are powerful, all Gengar are mischievous, all Lucario are stoic, only the duck and the chimera had something new to add and were practically ignored outside of battle.
3 It is obvious that they wanted to focus the anime on Goh's captures and therefore having episodes with Goh's Pokemon in the lab and then having episodes with Ash's old Pokemon would feel oversaturated, so it was decided to sacrifice Ash's old Pokemon in favor of Goh's new captures (Which feels awful anyway, with Goh his pokemon feel more like collectible tokens than friends or characters with some substance)
As many have said PM will be remembered as the series with great wasted potential.
