>>56787803Kris did not exist until Crystal, so Ethan's partner would've been Whitney, and also Bugsy in place of Brock.
I don't think we were robbed. The only actual change would've been the ending of each season, with the protagonist winning the League and retiring. Since Ash was only the male protag replacement, nothing else would've changed past Johto, we already had May, Dawn, etc. Also, the movies would've been doing crossovers between the generations, much like tokusatsu, passing the torch and whatnot. And BW would've also been a shitshow because the Tohoku earthquake fucked everything up there.
The anime's problem was never Ash, it was the writing and the attitude. They never tried hard enough. It was terribly formulaic because Pokemon is not a story-focused series and the writers couldn't be arsed to come up with interesting original stories beyond basic worldbuilding.
