I actually think it was really neat of Anipoke to (mostly) stop chopping up and clumsily sewing together characters/arcs/plotpoints from the games in an attempt to center Ash entirely while still being able to point and yell "Look!! It's that thing that happened in the game you played!!!"
Like. For the majority of the anime, Ash would literally just replace the protagonist of the game and if they're lucky said protagonist gets a severely reduced role/importance and plays support to Ash for the rest of the generation. They might have some holdouts from their original arc and characterization but most of it's given to Ash and they get to go...Do Contests and Be A Girl and Maybe Have A Crush On Ash.
I'd say Sun/Moon is least guilty of this, but only just slightly, and it's absolutely not blameless considering how it downranked the Trial Captains to schoolmates who sometimes stumble into trials with Ash and how a large chunk of Lillie's in game role was given to Ash instead.
But guess what? This is barely an issue whatsoever in the Journeys anime?
During Journeys, Ash stays at the Cerise Institute as a research fellow. Which isn't a thing in the games. Ash's companions are Goh and sometimes Chloe. Who do not exist in the games. Ash's whole main goal is to win the World Coronation Series. Which does not exist in the games. And thats great!
Ash repeating the same repetitive gym badge/championship journey cycle every season, usually with major characters from the games who have been forcefully contorted to varying degrees into a support role , and then just running off to do it all again? It got a little old.
It's honestly refreshing to actually see him in a plotline that was written for him instead of shoehorned into the writer's best imitation of what his newly demoted companions did in the game.
It's even more refreshing to see him mostly engage with character's specifically designed for this story (which also allows for other characters from the franchise to appear when/how it feels natural and have a life outside ash instead of the previous season's style of watering down the characters and waving them in your face while giving their achievements/arc to ash).
More than anything else it's refreshing for one of the character's designed for this story to be made as an equal partner to Ash with their own unique personality and arc also originally designed for the story the anime is telling!
The storyline for Journeys isn't exactly revolutionary or never seen before in the Pokemon franchise. "Win big competition" and "catch every pokemon" are both pretty standard goals. But the story being told didn't need to be completely unlike anything else in the franchise. Pokemon plotlines are usually pretty similar even from one game to another and I wouldn't expect complete originality from the anime. The story being told just needed to be a story of it's own with characters of its own. And that's what it is!
In my opinion, Anipoke actually feels like it's standing on it's own feet as an addition to the Pokemon franchise instead of a slightly out of place remix of whatever the most recent game is featuring incredibly forced protagonist, Ash "the world revolves around me" Ketchum, for once.
The change in how Anipoke has been written is genuinely a good and needed switch that mediates the issue of how stale the Anipoke plot was getting, gives it at least a little bit of identity outside of whatever the current game is, and let's a lot more breathing room exist in places where Ash once would've been forcefully crammed into the spotlight for no good reason.
Which is honestly what annoys me so much about half the Anipoke fandom being up in arms about how "Goh is given too much attention" or "We don't get to explore Galar enough". Would you people rather we go through Galar, collect the gym badges, take part in the championship, and lose horribly, featuring companion girl Gloria who has a crush on Ash for some reason and wants to become a Wooloo Herder and barely gets any character development or something completely stupid like that? Is that your ideal? Cause to be frank, I found it in poor taste the first four times they went with that idea and painfully stale the next three.
I'd honestly prefer the Journeys anime and Goh any day and I really hope Anipoke stands it's ground on this matter.
