>>51855661Fr, I rewatched again and ash and the gang were all bastards, ash stole shit, was stupid and causing trouble with ignorance and clumsyness, misty was exactly like how you remembered and gave trash dating advices to brock which made him act the way he did. Gary was antagonistic and undermining ash the whole way but actually cared for ash in some battles. Brock also uses ash to do his bidding when necessary just to help please gals and maybe get with one.
Heck even ash's mom was terrible to him at times, but when ash was near death It was more real, when they have moments of kindness they feel true like the blizzard episode where pikachu not going in the pokeball dilema got brought back for tension, and outside of those the pokemon were also bastards (yes mainly pikachu and charizard), team rocket had tragic backstories and were unhinged in capture methods while oblivious, goofy and stupid all around.
The new takes on them you see in recent stuff like the galar anime just aren't the same characters at all, they only kept a bit of ash' stupidity and really changed him into this altruistic nice guy that the plot puts in bad situations instead of both his mistakes and scenario needs which isn't so bad but just isn't the same at all. I liked the alolan anime and XY so It wasn't all bad of course, just not the same show by that point, Ash got more manners by Black & White's gen and a bit less thieving by Diamond & Pearl and you can argue he got this "hero" feel by gen 3, It's a slow slope into the big leap the last galar gen made right now, and I give slack to alola for not being meant to be taken as serious while providing fun episodes with It's limits
