>>57244476>>57247148Viewers were in the worst mood possible to receive what they were about to witness when they got their first look at the Sun & Moon anime. It was essentially the antithesis to X&Y. Gone was the much improved tone, gone was the excellent animation style, and even the premise. It was now a much more childlike slice of life with new visuals that were.... divise to sale the least. The visuals alone, let alone the whole rest of the package, were so divisive that it fractured the viewership with many immediately dropping the anime never to return.
Notably one of the translators for the main fansub group at the time, PM fansubs, a woman who went by the username Sushi immediately dropped it and never looked back. From what I know she still all these years later hasn't gone back to the Pokémon anime, for personal enjoyment or to do subs. There were some people who liked Sun & Moon and I suppose good for them but there were a LOT of people who didn't and plenty who outright hated it. It split the viewership so deeply that it has never unsplit since then. There are a lot of anime viewers who, to them, the entire anime basically ended with X&Y and who view everything that came after S&M such as Journeys as spiritual successors to thatkind of the anime and not worth even hatewatching.
