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Not a huge fan of Ash's eighth badge coming after the Grand Festival. It seems like a major step down in tension, unlike in AG where the Hoenn League followed immediately after (with one dumbass filler in between because May was stupid enough to take plane tickets from strangers). I kind of get it, though, because in the games you get to the League from Sunnyshore City. Obviously they don't have to, and they've shat on following geography throughout DP, but what can you do.
I've noticed that we're getting close to the end of DP though, and so far there hasn't been any Unova representation. Zoroark and Zorua get a movie, but that's it. AG had Sinnoh representation as early as the Deoxys movie, where Munchlax played a pretty significant role. Then of course May caught a Munchlax, James got a Mime Jr., Brock caught a Bonsly, that one cringe comedy girl from the awful filler had a Chatot, Gary had an Electivire and then the last two movies stared Sinnoh Pokemon in Lucario and Manaphy (the Lucario movie also had a Weavile in it). You could make the case that one of the reasons why DPPt did so well in terms of sales was that the anime had done such heavy lifting in propping up Sinnoh Pokemon that kids really wanted the new games to get a Lucario or whichever. If there was a Gen that desperately needed that kind of advertisement, it was Black and White, since players can't get old Pokemon until the postgame. I guess the writers really were ramping up for a soft reset for both the games and the anime, which, you know, had wonderful results for the anime and is often cited as one of the reasons why the BW games didn't sell as well, despite also being considered two of the best games in the franchise.
In other words, Ash is the reason why we didn't get anymore good games until Scarlet and Violet. Lo and behold, those were designed for the anime after he retired.