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>it's a /vp/ argues about canon episode
The only thing that matters is that the Kanto protagonist is a boy named Red and that the rival is named Blue. Everything else is left ambiguous on purpose, like with Norman mentioning his child (he doesn't explicitly state "daughter" or "son"), or how BW2 refuses to refer to the past protagonist with he/she pronouns or even mentioning their name unless you used the Memory Link, to avoid showing whether Hilda or Hilbert is the hero. BW1's mom also mistakes BW2's protagonist as her child before looking at them, and she's facing away, to prevent people from thinking BW1 and BW2's protagonists have to be the same gender.
The games also try to allude towards alternate universes lately, with BW and ORAS talking about how things could be slightly different had things gone differently, referencing the opposite versions, or how Zinnia mentions the non-Mega universe and Anabel's appearance in SM. There's also in-universe applications like the PSS and Festival Plaza, which allow people of different times or universes to communicate with one another.
If you really wanted to go there, you can even say Leaf is canon, but not in the universe we see in the recent games. After all, Pokemon you catch as her are transferable, and have the in-game description of "passing through time and space to meet you", which is accurate, since her Pokemon aren't from the universe you transferred to, where Red is the Kanto protagonist.
