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I just realized there's no lore or plot in the Pokemon anime at all.
It's like Ash's memory resets after every season. He dumps friends like Brock and Misty and never remembers them afterwards. Not once. He says farewell to countless of Pokemon, hoping to see them again, and we never hear from them again.
The core setting is always the same: Ash stays 10 years old, Pikachu doesn't level up or evolve, and Ash is always aiming to become a Pokemon master but never quite gets there. Team Rocket is fixated on stealing Pikachu no matter how many times they fail at it.
The people around Ash are expendable, as well as the colorful orcs he meets and catches. Nothing really matters in this anime. The producers came up with the base code for the show and for new seasons they just swap the talking heads and colorful orcs to get more material.
Either that, or every season is an alternative universe of what could've happened after Ash initially got his Pikachu from Professor Oak and you're not even supposed to think it's a linear story.
Either way, it makes me sad to watch Pokemon knowing these new friends don't mean jack shit to Ash. He smiles with them, has adventures with them, only to throw them away like trash.