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So here we are, approaching a thousand episodes and 20 years of the Pokemon anime. It looks like Ash will return in the Sun/Moon chapter of the show, but anything beyond that is a question mark at this point.
Ash has added several tenacious Pokemon from the Kalos region to a growing list of strong options at his disposal: Charizard, Snorlax, Heracross, Sceptile, Infernape, Torterra, etc. Coming off his highest placement ever, he should be a threat in the Alola region. But remember, winning the League isn’t enough — there’s still the Elite Four and the Champion to deal with, and we know these exist in the anime.
At the show’s current pace, Ash’s next attempt at the Pokemon League (if he even gets one) wouldn’t happen until 2019 or 2020, by which point I’ll be in my mid-30s.
These posts are meant as humiliation not for an eternally 10-year-old cartoon character, but for the writers who continue to dangle his goals in front of him like a carrot on a stick, only to cruelly pull them away over and over again. When I wrote the original post, it was primarily satire. Ash isn’t literally the “worst” trainer of all-time — he’s come across many who were less smart, less kind, less adaptive and less creative.
But when you consider his success (or lack there of) relative to the opportunities he’s had, and the fact that his goal from the beginning was to be a Pokemon master and he’s come nowhere close, that’s when reality sets in:
Ash Ketchum is the worst Pokemon trainer ever.
