>>57621074Pokemon as a franchise uses nostalgia as the biggest crutch in the world. To the average Pokeshipper, the Manaphy movie doesn't register because it wouldn't have interested them at the time; they grew out of Pokemon around AG, so Ash/Misty is all they actually understand.
To the more militant, I'd argue that it wouldn't have mattered either because, again, "not muh Misty". Not unless said Pokeshippers stuck with the anime all the through OS and AG, which did happen, but not on a significant enough scale. This is speculative on my part, however. Unless you want to go digging through old neocities forums and the like just to find evidence of this shit. I know I wouldn't. Fanfiction archives are the "better" metric because you can see a trend quicker.
>>57621110I personally see there being
an Ash/May/Serena throuple. 