It's actually pretty crazy and impressive to me how a League that happened over 20 years ago is still the one that has the best Ash-defeat to this day. None of the others up to this point were that ''satisfying'' so to speak.
Hoenn may have felt underwhelming, but I don't think it should be because of him losing to a Meowth. I think it suffered from once again introducing a league rival for Ash to lose to incredibly late into the show: too late for them to properly establish their strength in a way that doesn't seem like they're telling, not showing. Had they introduced Tyson earlier on in the series and showed off his Meowth's strength, I don't see an issue with Ash losing to a Meowth, especially considering how his own unevolved pokemon can be extremely strong.
I get your point and fully agree with it. but at the same time... it's just that... a Meowth? Really? So many Pokémon to choose from and it's a Meowth of all things that takes Ash down?
At least Meowth was fresh while Pikachu had already fought a pseudo legendary Metagross, plus it was very close, so you can at least argue that Ash might have won in other circumstances.
Slightly off-topic lol, but man, they really liked OHKO type of battles back in the day didn't they?
Case in point, later in the battle Corphish battles Tyson’s Haryiama. After kicking major ass and proving itself a worthy and powerful force throughout the tournament, our mighty crab attacks its opponent... only to be casually taken out in one hit, ending its league career in, quite literally, one fell swoop.
I've said this once before, but I think it bears repeating: the reason Ash lost to Tyson is because he made some serious fumbles in the order he sent out his Pokemon: he sent out Corphish to battle Hariyama after the Fighting-type beat Torkoal instead of sending Swellow out right away, resulting in Corphish getting thrashed and Ash being one Pokemon short for no reason. He's honestly lucky that Tyson got hit with the dumb stick himself and stuck with Hariyama afterwards. Then Ash makes a bad call again by sending out Grovyle to battle Metagross when none of Grovyle's attacks could hit it for even neutral damage, with predictable results. If Ash had at least reversed the order in which he'd sent Pikachu and Grovyle out (send the former out to deal with Metagross first and save the latter for later), then the last fight in that match would have been Meowth vs Grovyle, and I feel that Grovyle has a lot more tools to deal with Meowth, since part of the reason Pikachu lost aside from already being worn down by Metagross was because Meowth's moveset could parry/counter all of Pikachu's tricks, which he wouldn't have been able to do as easily with Grovyle: Bullet Seed at least would have been a great way to get past Double Team, for example.
Idk, although what you said makes sense, I don't like that Pikachu lost to Nyasu due to the fact it was the climax of the Houen League... For me it just felt anticlimactic and not a very good way to finish a league competition. When I watch the final league battle in which I know Satoshi will lose, I usually expect for a big final match with two strong evolved Pokemon, or in the case he uses Pikachu, at least it should lose to a fully evolved one so it doesn't seem cheap imo.
I mean, I'm not sure why that's so cheap. I agree that maybe Tyson should have had more screentime to better establish his Meowth's power, but it's not like it was randomly strong with no explanation (Tyson's statements about it being more than ready to evolve and the Meowth's refusal). Unlike Cameron's Lucario, who was insanely OP to the point that it defeated a fully evolved Flying-type as a Riolu, literally just because.
To be fair, one could argue that the reason Ash didn't improve his League ranking is that he relied entirely on a team of fresh newbies instead of supplementing their strength with his more experienced reserves. Notice how he actually did better at the Sinnoh League and also won the Battle Frontier (where reserves were called upon both times).
I always thought that Ash getting to the Top 8 in the Hoenn League was a sign of improvement though. He didn't rely heavily on his reserves like he did in Johto and he lost to the trainer who ended up winning the League. I don't recall a lot of fans having an issue with that back in the day, but to be fair, my memory on that detail could be a bit hazy. Admittedly, it's not a noteworthy improvement compared to some of his other League rankings, but I don't think it's accurate to say that he hadn't improved at all during AG because he reached the Top 8 again.
I didn't think that Ash's quest was on the backburner, especially when they did have Ash training his Pokemon during a few of May's Contests. A good portion of the first Grand Festival was devoted to Ash training Snorunt to learn Ice Beam and then its evolution. I'm not sure if that was part of their rationale for not giving Ash rivals in AG either. It's certainly possible when they probably wanted to make Contests more engaging for the audience by giving only May rivals, but I kind of appreciated that Ash didn't have a rival. They just ended his rivalry with Gary, so it was probably a better choice to just focus on this new journey with new friends and Pokemon for Ash instead. They didn't really have a lot of options from the games and I think creating another anime-only rival might have backfired, mainly due to how Trip felt coming right after Paul. Having a rival could have given more weight to Ash's Hoenn journey, but I don't think he really needed one.
I was about to bring up Sylveon for this list too, but then I remembered Valerie's Sylveon, whom I personally headcanon as male if only because it is a male in the games, and I personally tend to assume that any character who is from the games has their Pokemon's genders match their game counterparts' unless specifically proven otherwise (for example Bertha's Hippowdon and Skyla's Unfezant, the latter of whom was most likely only made male so that Ash's own Unfezant could stand out).
And of course we can't forget what the Anime did to the Cosplay Pikachus!
I don't recall fans ever having too much of an issue with Ash's loss to Tyson years ago. He didn't regress that's for sure, so he showed he was continuing to improve as a trainer, and he did it without using his reserves. After that, the fans only grew more and more frustrated, with it all amounting to a massive explosion of rage after Ash lost in a league he absolutely should have won. I recall people were pretty mad about Ash losing to Tobias and Cameron, but nothing compared to the sheer amount of anger fans felt when he lost to Alain and that OP Mega Charizard X because that was a battle he should have won.
Also unlike Johto the person who just barely beat him went on to win the whole thing, and of course he did the BF right after and won it. I think AG is the series along with the OS where he most clearly showed improvement from earlier parts of the show.
I think the Kalos backlash is also partly because he got to the finals and for the first time the ending wasn't spoiled by episode titles.
Also, are we forgetting the ep was literally called ''Kalos League Victory! Satoshi's Ultimate Match!!"?????? It's actually pretty funny because I watched it on the english dub for the first time and wasn't aware of the japanese title yet, and when I saw what the jp title was I vividly recall audibly letting out a ''Bruh'' quite loudly.
