Ash and Go maybe encounter Darkrai as well in their trial, probably they will encounter Darkrai first who is causing nightmare to the townspeople like in DP than they will search for Cresselia for lunar wing and ask her help to get rid off Darkrai.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and B2W2 have really tainted people's perceptions of Darkrai among the fandom haven't they?
And I just realized: there even were seven islands, one for each facility. What the heck?! Seems so obvious!
What do you think was so bad about them?
Hardly. Ash makes numerous failures, including losing the Indigo League because he had spent his time goofing off rather than training his Pokémon. He hardly seemed like someone who got everything handed to him on a silver platter.
That's what's called Early Installment Weirdness. Early writing quirks that got ironed out over time. Like the fact that Melony was a psychopath for setting up potentially lethal traps, like a collapsing bridge.
Blaine's hotel is not a secret, just not that well known. And his Gym being a secret is explained in the episode: Blaine got tired of battling tourists and set up a secret Gym for Trainers who want to have a true Gym battle. Also, he didn't win a stay at the hotel because of finding the Gym. He found the inn first. Plus, him having a hotel is kind of an example of Hypocritical Humor: Blaine blames tourism for ruining the island, yet he runs a hotel himself. It's even pointed out by Misty.
He's just as incompetent in the first season as you'd expect a newbie to be. I don't see it being over the top, even for his lack of experience at that point. And at which point is Ash treated as a Gary Stu by others? I don't see that myself.
First season's fillers are actually classics and hardly ever boring. In the Orange Archipelago and Johto, though... Yeah. Those seasons had loads of bad filler. And yeah, I'll agree with you on Jigglypuff being used for nothing by meaningless filler material for 99% of the time. But overall, like I said, most of Kanto's fillers were actually entertaining and even contained loads of worldbuilding (like how can people who can't compete for Badges get a chance to compete in the Pokémon League, how Gyms are approved, and so on).
Tbh first season fillers are really good unlike Orange island or Johto which has painfully boring fillers mostly.
I am a sucker for hand-colored cel animation, so there is no way I'd agree with that. I always feel like 90s and early 2000s animé look way more aesthetic than what's being done today, although I see why the new productions would go with digital colorization for the purpose of budget and time saving.
I got the impression that they weren't really trying with the Battle Frontier arc since it seemed like a last minute addition to fill time to the delayed Sinnoh games, similar to the Orange Islands arc in the original series. Somebody just said, "why not set them in Kanto?" without even a thought to the idea of using the Sevii Islands, and the Kanto region itself was incredibly poorly represented with almost zero links to its OS representation and nearly all the landmarks were merely mentioned and not seen.
No requirement was put so everyone can enter and develop more which give us so many amazing moments with Ash's classmates battles while in past leagues Ash's companions was just there as audience, but still writers shown that there are trainers which are more powerful than league trainer with 8 badges, Illima who participated in Kalos league was no match for Guzma and Gladion is even above than Guzma, Gladion is at least more powerful than some League winners like Tyson, Kiawe shown stronger than any random trainer Ash defeated.
