>>50677388In the anime, Ash's mom tells him it took his father 3 days to reach Viridian City when Ash reached it on his first day. There's no sense of scaling. Obviously this is the anime and they're going to be less specific with real world events especially as the franchise ages. The only way to get an idea is to see where technology is at. The easiest way is at the very start of every game by looking at the console in your room.
And then if you want to acknowledge timelines, there are games where Mega Evolution just doesn't exist and games where it does. LGPE are incompatible with FRLG, but Mega Evolution is in the former while it doesn't exist in the latter. ORAS plays with the idea that the Gen III universe is its own separate thing where Mega Evolution doesn't exist. RSE was concurrent with FRLG. USUM has Giovanni gather the Gen III versions of Maxie and Archie. But none of this really matters because it's about seeing how old Ash would be in modern times if he aged realistically. And the answer is 36.
