Totodile never beat anyone in the Johto gym battles. He got it after Bugsy. It lost to Miltank both times that Ash fought Whitney and was never really used after that battle. Honestly, Justice for Totodile. It was never really used for anything else, besides the Whirl Cup, losing to Macey's Electabuzz without beating anyone, and beating Harrison's Sneasel, only to lose to Hypno.
That was the joke.
Fair enough. I know that part of the reason is that the Johto team had to share some time with the Kanto team, but it really is surprising how little some of Ash's Pokemon were used, like Totodile, Noctowl, and even Muk.
Tbh since Hoenn Ash didn't use his reserves at all or minimally, but I haven't seen the Journeys episodes, but I heard he doesn't use his best old pokemon there either which doesn't make sense if it's the World Championship you want to use all of your best Pokemon even if it's the Pidgeot you left to protect pidgeys years ago, go and get it in your team lol. Anyway the focus is always on the new pokemon and that kinda makes sense cause Ash would want to catch them all, except he doesn't even come close to catching them all. Also it kinda makes sense cause if you use the same pokemon over and over again then you become predictable and stagnate into just another gym leader that any 10 year old can beat and Ash doesn't want that, so he doesn't use reserves often to grow as a trainer and grow his Pokemon. That's all fine. Unfortunately, mostly his Pokemon don't evolve to the final form which doesn't make sense and is sad in a lot of cases like Bayleef or Corpfish and many other, they battle so much but don't evolve to final form. Saying that it is completely different in the league conferences where it's just good sense to use an older Pokemon like Heracross or Snorlax because they are versatile, high level, experienced and have type advantage. Like why didn't Ash use Heracross vs Tobias' Darkrai? Or Snorlax vs Latios? Doesn't make sense. It's just writers not wanting Ash to win and that's it. They just don't think Ash should win any leagues, cause then the show would be over, in their opinion, which I 100% disagree with, cause even if Ash won the league and vs Elite 4 and vs Champion, its in his character to go to the next region and compete again and win again. I think from Sinnoh League onward he should have won every league. What they did in Unova series it's abysmal and disgusting, Ash is a 5 year old there. And Ash winning Alola is just a sham, it's like the Orange League only worse, cause Ash should have won the Kalos League and again only lost cause the writers were afraid we wouldn't watch the next sesons. We would, cause Pokemon has always been about the journey and growth, not the destination, so even if he won everything in 1 league, there is always room to grow and catch new pokemon, new adventures. Especially if Ash grew up a bit and became even smarter and faced even smarter opponents, like in Sinnoh and Kalos, that wouldn't hurt, that's beneficial to the story and to viewers.
I think Ash used so many Kanto pokemon in Johto, because he was very slow at catching Johto pokemon. In Season 1 he had a starting 6 by episode 12 and adding 4 others - Crabby, Primeape, Muk, Tauros by episode 35. Compare that to Johto where he caught 5 Pokemon in 37 episodes with big pauses between each, but then a huge pause until Episode 113 where he finally gets Pokemon #6 when Phanphy hatches from an egg. That's 112 episodes where Ash didn't even have 6 Johto Pokemon. He left Charizard in E18, while Bulba and Squirtle much later. Noctowl, great pokemon but Ash didn't know how to use Psychic abilities and didn't train Noctowl whatsoever. P. S. I don't get the typing Normal/Flying when it's clearly a Psychic/Flying pokemon with loads of Psychic moves and only the basic normal type moves.
