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World Championships in the anime

Honestly, a knockout tournament system would be a bad way to execute it and would end up being rushed.

The 1000 top trainers gives the opportunity for a lot of past characters, League Conference roadblocks and rivals to be brought back... as well as game characters never introduced in the anime. A decent format would be duel challenges where one trainer travels across the world to challenge the one ranked above them (this gives Ash some 'title/placement' defense matches) or do it in a League format (as in real sports Leagues, where every 10, 20, 30 etc. challengers battle each other and the top two face off in the final to attain the highest ranking among them).
 
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This is actually a great opportunity to bring back some of his past rivals like Paul, Trip, Sawyer, Allan or even league rivals from the past. Not Cameron though, he’s too stupid to compete and would just get lost on the way to the competition.

Agreed, especially about Cameron

He'd probably only bring 1 Pokemon to a 3 on 3 match or head to Alola instead of Galar to compete
 
Probably the best way about it would be to have some kind of culminative point based system - where you need to keep winning to earn the necessary points to get into the Top 8 and losing doesn't mean elimination but just losing points so you could have characters reappear and keep fighting instead of just being CotD. It could also be that challenging people in higher brackets nets you more rewards so that could give Ash a reason to specifically target the Gym Leaders (both new and old) without it being a badge quest.

Just a few ideas.
 
What I'd like to see: Old rivals and characters.

What I'm expecting: We'll see some old characters from the games (like we saw Lance), but no old anime-only characters like Paul or Harrison, and reserve Pokémon will only appear if they belonged to someone else and can be retconned into Ash's (I guess we'll have a better idea of the latter soon enough once Ash registers and starts some ranked matches, although I suppose it's possible if not likely it'll be like DP and he'll use reserves in the tournament but not beforehand)
 
Probably the best way about it would be to have some kind of culminative point based system - where you need to keep winning to earn the necessary points to get into the Top 8 and losing doesn't mean elimination but just losing points so you could have characters reappear and keep fighting instead of just being CotD. It could also be that challenging people in higher brackets nets you more rewards so that could give Ash a reason to specifically target the Gym Leaders (both new and old) without it being a badge quest.

Just a few ideas.
That's exactly what Go said. Everyone starts at the bottom (unless they have a previous ranking), and based on their performance (not just the win/loss ratio), they're assigned to either the Super Class (999-100) or Hyper Class (99-9). From there they have a chance of climbing up to the Master Class (8-1). It definitely isn't a knockout system and is a lot fairer than a league tournament.

The question is whether or not Ash will jump straight to the Hyper Class, where a lot of the Elite Four members probably await. I don't really care about rivals he's already defeated, except for Gary since he had the last laugh in AG. Janine and Sabrina (she never lost) would also be cool, as would some old vs. new gym leader battles (like Misty vs. Nessa).
 
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It definitely isn't a knockout system and is a lot fairer than a league tournament.
I do like this system since it means seeding won't have an effect on people reaching the highest possible rank.

I don't really care about rivals he's already defeated, except for Gary since he had the last laugh in AG.
It always seemed a bit weird to me that Gary came back to defeat Ash after their rivalry was resolved, especially since he'd become a researcher while Ash was still engaged in heavy training. It was just a one on one battle where he had a huge advantage (Electivire sort of hard counters Pikachu) but it still struck me as an odd writing decision.
 
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After Ash beats Leon, it turns out that the best is yet to come ... in the form of Cynthia as his final opponent. Since Ash confimred in this week's episode that winning the Pokemon world championships is just one step towards becoming a Pokemon Master, I'm sure there's some body else and stronger waiting for him
Just like in Pokemon Blue and Red when you thought you had won after defeating Lance, but the actual champion was still waiting
 
After Ash beats Leon, it turns out that the best is yet to come ... in the form of Cynthia as his final opponent
Just like in Pokemon Blue and Red when you thought you had won after defeating Lance, but the actual champion was still waiting
She didn't make it to the Top 2 the first time, so she has some toughing up to do.
 
If she didn't enter then, why now? Jealousy?

Anyway, I find it a lot more likely that the next region's champion will be the winner.

Yeah, if they are going to set up another dream killer, it would likely be the generation 9 champion, not an old character like Cynthia.
 
I mentioned this before in another thread, but calling it now: Rose is the host/major sponsor of the World Championship.

It would be fantastic to see Steven again since he could show up in so many ways. He could be a participant, but he could also show up as a Devon Corp representative as a sponsor for the Championship. I doubt a tournament this huge - with participants from all over the world - would rely on a single sponsor.
 
While I like that they explained what Ash's goal will be, I'm also sightly confused by the explanation given. How are the battles measured? If it's by the Pokedex, when will it be upgraded? Does any battle count or just those in official tournaments? Only battling with those from your rank counts or you can raise your bank battling noobs? Why do league placements and his Alola champion title don't matter? Will Ash have to battle someone important to rank up? It would be cool if we had "Club Battle" tournaments only for people in the same rank once in a while.

Also, I don't think the chances of Ash meeting previous important characters have raised. In the Master Cup, sure, it will be a fanservice fest, but for the other ranks I don't have much hope, specially with CotDs becoming very common once again.
 
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The idea of using this tournament as a chance to run into older characters and rivals does sound really cool, but I wouldn't bet any money on it happening right now. The anime generally doesn't seem that interested in revisiting older characters. It isn't impossible. I don't think anyone expected for Misty and Brock to appear in SM, but it just seems too unlikely with how the anime doesn't tend to do much with characters after their runs on their respective series are over.
 
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