>>57961224Go a bit of the Special/Adventures route. Let Ash slowly age with the original audience, maybe not in real time but like a year per gen, while mentoring the new protagonists who are just starting out. Just look at all the zoomers who love May and Dawn because they grew up watching them. The other characters would be just as beloved to the kids who started with them, while keeping Ash around would keep the oldest members of the audience invested even more than it did in reality because he'd be more relatable without seeming to get a complete reset every 2-4 years while still getting to do all the cool adventure stuff real life doesn't allow us to do.
We could have had Johto with Gold and later Kris joining the group, then Misty and Brock leave around the league. We'd have 3 strong, familiar trainers to cheer for and it could've ended with Ash vs Gold so Ash losing again wouldn't feel so cheap. Revisiting Kanto so they can get those badges would give us a chance to briefly see everyone again and then Ash could sit the next league out and head to Hoenn to get even stronger for next time, avoiding another cheap loss for him and letting Kris get 2nd place to Gold so she'd have a reason to go keep training or become a researcher or whatever and Gold can be too busy with challenges as 2x champion to travel much. Change Hoenn to have Brendan around as Birch's son, Wally popping in every once in a while, and let Ash get the league win and go looking for more adventure in Sinnoh, etc.
Going by the emails in the leaks, the main problem they had with Ash was if he kept character development he wouldn't be relatable to new kids who need someone to learn with, but he was a large part of the brand and starting over without him would lose a lot of older fans. Then they decided on moving on but like one director refused and refused until even all new formats weren't working and he finally had to give in. This would solve that, at least better than what we got did.
