Quoted By:
The most insane gaslight of this anime was the filler allowing Ash to win to make it seem like he wasn't a complete fucking jobber. Orange Islands and Battle Frontier made the Kanto/Johto/Hoenn losses feel not so bad while the Sinnoh loss was a literal middle finger and then he would proceed to lose two more times in a row. By that point it was too much and Ash went from a character that was reasonably competent to one that was tremendously worthless and actively held the anime back from being an advertisement because kids wouldn't want to be associated with such a massive embarrassment
The anime stopped feeling sequential too when they stopped promoting new Generation Pokemon at the end of the previous Season. He should've won Sinnoh at the very latest and any further Season was pure incompetence that would make Toei blush
