>>57443877DP Ash was a culmination of actual character development from OS through AG and finally to DP. In a nutshell, OS was about Ash overcoming and eventually burying his childhood insecurities about Gary, completed once he defeated Gary at the Johto League and Gary gave him his half of the Poké Ball from childhood; then in AG, Ash was tasked with mentoring someone less experienced in the world of Pokémon than him (May), and, once May discovered and decided to pursue contests instead of gyms, Ash now had to mature to actually care about the legitimate goal of his traveling companion (as opposed to Misty and Brock, whose nebulous goals never forced Ash to sidetrack from his gym quest, and so he could essentially treat them as sideshows in his mind, if he ever thought about them), and we got to see some of those growing pains when Ash had to forego immediate gym battle gratification so May could go somewhere else to compete in her own thing; and then, finally in DP, we have an Ash that is becoming more strategic in his battling, an Ash who is having his entire Pokémon philosophy openly challenged (by Paul) and thus needs to justify all that he's done and believes, and an Ash whose "taming" by May (so to speak) into respecting contests as a legitimate profession placed him in a much better position to respect Dawn than either AG or definitely OS Ash would've been.
