Still fucking mad they had to use that bullshit to give Ash a reason to lose. Sinnoh was the one he could have won and they could have easily played around with filler instead of wasting a literal year of episodes (52) in-between his 7th and 8th badges.
>Cut out most filler between 7th and 8th badges
>Sinnoh League occurs little under a year before B/W are coming out
>Ash faces Paul in the Semi-Finals, Tobias in the Finals
>Doesn't bring shit like fucking Gible to fight against a Darkrai
>Ash actually manages to defeat him
>He can now face the Elite 4/Champion
>Turns out they are currently based in Johto, linking HGSS to the series like FRLG was linked with the Battle Frontier in Kanto
>Dawn also enters the Contests there, providing more stuff to do and reason to visit more cities outside of the 5 battles Ash will have
>Maybe use the Team Rocket story slightly to plant the seeds of Giovanni and Team Rocket actually being competent in the next region
>Ash defeats or loses to Cynthia in the end, it isn't that important
>Cynthia suggests Ash go to Unova for a new challenge, since she has a holiday home there and is familiar with the area
>No one there has any clue who "Sinnoh League Champion" Ash is, since in canon Unova is really far away from the first four regions
>He likes being completely unknown so he only keeps Pikachu with him, providing a logical reason for the "lol restart my team from scratch"
But nope, another literally who appears with a team that makes no sense and is never expanded upon. At least Sceptile got to be the only pokemon in the entirety of Sinnoh that took down his Darkrai, so it gets to have a claim to being Ash's strongest pokemon.
