>>57484209That's usually what happens to things that start as a light novel though. In terms of mass appeal, anime dubbed into one's mother language is the highest, it requires the least amount of effort to process. This is followed by subtitled anime, followed by manga, followed by LNs, getting more and more niche. Obviously the numbers in Japan are much higher, I've personally seen people reading LNs on the train, but I've also seen them reading manga and even watching anime. But the general pattern is that an LN will branch into more accessible mediums to raise awareness of it.
But Pokémon is a different kind of beast. It doesn't follow a single branch, but rather has a trunk (mainline games) with many equal branches (spinoff games, mobile games, anime, manga, etc). That's what a standard media franchise does. Special is an advertisement for Pokémon, much like the anime is. It's serialized in magazines that kids 8-12 read. It does its job, and investing resources into making an anime for it is a waste of time and money, especially nowadays when TV anime is bleeding live viewers and everyone DVRs it or watches it on a streaming app later.
