>>27935864....They tried to address that In Diamond and Pearl, but forced to kick Ash out of the League once Black and White were announced. Then in the following Anime, they rushed the whole thing through since they didn't expect that generation to last long with the release of the 3DS; multiple factors messed that up as well, (mainly Seismic disaster of 2011, and the annoucement of B2W2).
This generation shows that the writers are now playing safe now that Game Freak became as unpredictable as ever in these past generations (especially when said director wanted to make each new installment unique than the previous ones). Ash doesn't get a Key Stone out of fear that Mega Evolution will be a one gen feature (which was realized when Sun/Moon ditched that in favor of Aloha forms, and Z-moves), and instead create a character to focus on said feature while Ash continues to showcase all the pokemon that the region have to offer; because that's his job. Ash and Pikachu are meant to show case the Pokemon of every generations to both the veterans and newcomers. It's also nice that they created their own third version when it became obvious that Game Freak no longer do that; though it's nice for them, along with the rest of PokeCo, to bring Zygarde's new forms to the next generations of pokemon titles. It as if both the Anime Producers and the Game Producers were butting heads on who will keep up with whom.
As for Ash's goals: refer to these two posts because I don't want to repeat myself again and again:
>>27950044>>27949165But keep in mind that he'll never reach that goal until the producer's license expires, or that the franchise is dead and buried.
