"I want to be very best, like no-one ever was.
To catch them is my real test; to train them is my cause.
I will travel across the land searching far and wide.
Each Pokemon to understand, the power that's inside."
The video game, card game, and anime series of Pokemon, is essentially the story of a strange dystopia wherein a whole world finds it acceptable to take the entirety of the animal kingdom and turn it into some kind of elaborate rock/scissors/paper beast baiting tournament. It is never explained what kind of circumstances arose to cause this state of affairs, or even why people find animal baiting interesting but not once does anyone question the moral fitness of making animals fight (possibly against their will). The nearest equivalent that I can think of Pokemon in real life, is nature, where the beasts to battle it out for supremacy and the ultimate prize of eating each other. Taken to its logical conclusion, the winner of Pokemon in the natural world is not the Lion, Tiger, Shark, or Bear (which are all apex predators) and it is not even Humans which have beaten all comers but Godzilla, King Kong, Mothra and Gamera who as the four legendary monsters of the real world, have won.
It came across my radar that the next series of the anime Pokemon will no longer feature Ash Ketchum as the main protagonist. This makes sense. If we assume that Ash was 10 years old in the very first series back in 1998, then he would have had to have been born in 1988 and thus be 35 years old today. Television show timelines if they aren't periodically rebooted, end up like The Simpsons, which is officially supposed to be stuck in 1992, even though the world has moved on several times over. In universe, Ash Ketchum has an electronic device called a Pokedex; which would have been based on something like a Palm Pilot. 25 years' later though, 10 year old children are now running around with Mobile Phones that are so tricked up that they can watch movies on them, browse the internet, and make phone calls; which is something unheard of in 1998.
It makes sense that after 25 years, Ash's story should either come to a narrative end or move on. Keeping him 10 years old forever takes the series into weird places that have to be constantly retconned.
As a counterpoint, a successful example of a series rebooting is Dennis The Menace which is up to its fourth Dennis. The implication is that the previous Dennises (Denii?) become the father of the next Dennis. This explains quite nicely why previous iterations of Dennis' Dad have been bald and why the current Dennis' Dad is not. Current iterations of Dennis do get new technology and there have even been meta-discussions in the comic strip about previous Denii being uncool and out of it. Some things never change though, as all iterations of Dennis carry a slingshot and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of rocks.
Rebooting the Pokemon anime series so that it has a new protagonist makes a lot of sense. The world which has been built across multiple generations of the game, is vastly more expansive then the mere sandbox world of 151 Pokemon of that this game and series. With the number of Pokemon almost reaching a thousand and the various games having opened up the idea that various regions are almost nation like, having Ash Ketchum who should have grown up and moved on by now, finally doing so, is a fitting conclusion and end point. As it is, the default protagonist in the Nintendo games has been rebooted several times over; often playing back into the anime series as new characters.
One thing that is never really addressed and is actually a little bit sad though, is that the real tragedy of the Pokemon saga to date is that Ash Ketchum is the product of a broken home. His father has abandoned the family and his mother who is seeking to have an affair with Professor Oak, abandons her child to the world. Ash spends years as a wandering child, which is surely a case of both child abandonment and endangerment, and while he does meet some kindly people along the way, the world within Pokemon seems to be strangely fine with this set of circumstances. I suppose that a world which has determined that beast baiting is morally acceptable, is also fine with subjecting children to that same sort of moral circumstances. It even makes me wonder if in the world of Pokemon, whether or not parents will abandon children on hillsides as is supposedly reported that they did in ancient Sparta.
Nobody ever asks Mrs Ketchum why her son lives the life of an itinerant wanderel, who engages in what amounts to animal baiting for sport. Nobody ever asks why Professor Oak has engaged with this conspiracy with intent to abandon and endanger a child. Ash Ketchum does meet some friends along the way and they do in fact travel with him for a while but they eventually leave and lead lives of their own. Brock eventually forms a family and gets his dream job of being a registered breeder. Misty returns to running the Gym in her home town. Tracy Sketchitt just kind of leaves. Klikitt who had dreams of being a photojournalist is probably a victim of the modern news media reorganisation.
When the reboot of the series happens with new protagonists, the world itself won't have attempted to wrestle with these issues and while Ash Ketchum whom we can assume was born in 1988, is likely an adult, the story of him working through personal trauma and other issues such as apparent illiteracy and total lack of education, will also never be addressed. There are lots of people with gainful employment in the series but for poor old Ash who doesn't seem to have any portable skills, he seems to live a hand to mouth existence; living off of the prize money which he can gain from Pokemon beast baiting.
From what I can determine, the new protagonists will exist in a world which has moved on from Gen-1 to about Gen-8. Next Generation Pokemon Trainers (of which Ash Ketchum was one), now have registration numbers and presumably proper employment contracts within the world. Also, it appears that in the upcoming rebooted series, Ash Ketchum will still exist in some capacity; possibly as a parent to whomever the next wandrel child will be. If this is true, then the cycle of neglectful parenting has perpetuated; which is the saddest story of all.
Aside:
Ash Ketchum in 25 years of the anime series, managed to capture just 77 Pokemon; of which 30 were Tauros. This means that he caught on average, a little over 3 per year and if you adjust for the number of different kinds, it falls back to just 2 per year.
He did a bad job at catching them all. 48/1015 = 4.7%
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