>>56579212Seems the basic timeline was
1) Yuyama doesn't want Ash to win a league (at least not yet)
2) Writers struggle increasingly with figuring out how to make Ash grow as a character (with Yuyama not letting him win a league probably being a bit of a sticking point, he was most likely supposed to win Kalos before Yuyama put his foot down)
3) After Kalos they decide to try solving the issue by revamping the show into a slice-of-life gag series that doesn't need to have Ash "growing" or "progressing"
4) It's badly received, so they throw more plot into it, including the Alola League
5) Writers somehow manage to convince Yuyama that Ash should win it
6) They're now faced with the obvious problem of "where the fuck do we take him from here" and stupidly settle on "world championship" as the answer
7) Eventually it's decided to just write the character out after that, though you have to wonder what the goddamn hell they could've done with world champion Ash as the main character of gen 9
Yuyama was honestly right, while Ash winning Kalos could've worked, it's all the dumb decisions in SM that made everything crumble. "Just have Ash win everything" was a very bad idea.
