>>57772141Manga fics were never alive in the first place.
SM but specially so Journeys killed the Anime fics super hard. I still remember how during XY there was a gorillion Amourfics and even after the League you still had a lot of fics rewriting/fixing Ash's journey except with Amour added to the mix.
You saw some SM fics trying to lean more on the "comfy" SoL aspect of Alola but they never took off. All the SM fics, both anime or games, that I have seen have taken off have gone for a more serious tone more inline with the actual games, their implications, and the stuff they've tried to retcon away like Lusamine.
Journeys absolutely murdered Ashfics. Revenge, Betrayed, Smart Ash, Competent Ash, Aura Ash, Rewrites or Fixfics as a whole. All the usual stuff you saw everywhere all the time. They all petered out super hard. You do see some What if Ash went to Galar instead of Journeys here and there but they're far in-between. You would think there'd be a shitton of fics trying to re-write the M8 considering how godawful that was but there's very few of them too.
It's honestly pretty crazy when you look back on it and dwell on it.
I suppose another reason why Ashfics died off is that SI/OC/Isekai is the new meta and Ash is the natural enemy of such a type of MC considering he's well the Anime MC and the Chosen One and blah blah blah. Kinda clashes, so better to do away with him completely.
But ultimately, I think people just fucking got sick of him.
Nowadays the setting meta is a mix of all settings with game but game is the core and pillar and base of everything. Mangafags were always a massive minority but it's crazy how hard the majority turned their backs on the anime.
Crazy how this is yet another thing you can trace back to the Kalos League loss. Incredible how much stuff that affected and how to this day we're still feeling the after-shocks through the entire franchise. Genuinely the most dumb choice the franchise ever made. 