Now that I think about it, it's amazing that Amourshipping even came to be. Before XY, Tpc usually paired Ash with some random Cotd that appeared in a few episodes and never returned. Furthermore, the ships between him and the main heroines were all fanon, the best that the writers could do were teasing and giving vague hints.
However, when Serena made it into the show, they decided to finally be ballsy and actually made her the canon romance figure for the protagonist. They marketed the pair everywhere from the anime to the magazines, official illustrations, polls, etc. And ultimately, the kissu *on the lips* happened. They wanted everybody to know that SatoSere is THE ship.
This level of romanticism that Tpc showed during the XY era was the biggest that they’ve ever done. Further proven by the fact that after Gen 7, they tried to pretend that Amour was never a thing and they never mentioned it again until Gen 8. Even so, the romantic scenes between Ash and Serena lasted for like under half a minute in JN. With all of this in mind, we’ll never see such a popular couple in Pokemon ever again.
