The 4th gen seasons are some of my favorites too. I'm so envious of the kids who will forever hold tearful memories of emotional episodes like the ones centered around Chimchar or Dawn's contest losses...

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I remember Chimchar and how Chimchar was abused and how Ash decided to make Chimchar his own. Ash was so sweet in that episode. (Which makes me wonder why everyone bashes on Ash and treats Red like a god, despite the fact that Red is just a cookie cutter character that happened to be a pokemon master in G/S/C.)

And when Dawn first lost a contest it surprised me...well May has lost before but at least she always made it to the second round, it was a great way to build Dawn's character.

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Are you sure you're not misunderstanding that people might be talking about Red in the manga and not the Red in the game? If it's Red in the game, then yeah, he's a very plain, very boring character. However, Red in the manga is much, much more of an interesting character. I'm personally not too big into Pokemon media and the like, but I did find myself enjoying Red's character from the manga much more than Ash in the anime. Granted, I only ever watched the first couple of seasons back in the day before I ended up getting bored. I enjoyed reading up on how Red overcame adversities, how he triumphed over fierce competitors and villains, how he used his Pokemon in fun ways, and how he even developed his character over time as he went forward and actually became a legit Pokemon master. Even his interactions with Blue and Green were fun to read as well as some of the neat fights he had with Team Rocket and some of the villainous Gym Leaders.

What I hated about Ash, from what I used to watch, was it seemed that after he seemed to get strong enough in a region, and even had a little bit of development as a character, it was like the reset button was hit and he started over again as a plain slate, and I hated that. Same thing with his Pikachu. Build him up to be strong, see it can beat a Charizard, enter a new region, watch it get beat up by a weak Chikorita. What I appreciated about Red was he and his teammates were constantly growing. Yeah he's not the best written character out there, but he was much better written than Ash at the time. Heck, at least when you see him in the Johto arc, he's rightfully earned his place as a Pokemon master and you can be content about it, seeing as you got to read up on his adventure and how he got there. At least there's no stupid reset button on his character or Pokemon. At least his Poliwrath doesn't end up losing to a Pidgey just because he's entered a new region.

If Ash's character has gotten better since then, if he's stayed developed since the other regions since then, that's great. I just won't ever get back into the series myself, it already left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm sure the writers just wrote him that way so it would be easy to pick up on the series, but honestly, I think it's a terrible decision. It leaves me wanting more from the character. There was only so much of watching him be completely naive to Team Rocket and having Pikachu taking away that I could stomach.

And I don't care who bashes me, I'm sure the Gen. 4 anime may have been good, but while I'm here, I'll voice my opinion on this. From the games themselves, I think Gen.4 (Outside of Heartgold and Soulsilver) are the worst games in the entire franchise. They're not bad games themselves, but they're very weak for the series. Gen. 1 is close behind, but I cut it some slack as it was the first game of its kind. Gen. 4 has no excuse since they've done it before. That being said, I think Black 2 is probably up there as one of my favorites in the series and I'm glad to see after the screw up that was Gen. 4, they finally got it right.

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I am talking about Red in the game whom everyone calls Chuck Norris's son. -_-;
You make some very sound arguments, and sadly I have never read the pokemon manga, it's not like I'm uninterested it's just I've never got the chance to.
And at least you don't give the first gen. praise just for being the first and the most nostalgic.

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The only manga series for Pokemon I've ever been caught up on were the DP and BW sagas...they were pretty decent I think.

That said, I still think the best thing about the anime is not the characters, but the battle scenes. Even though occasionally something ridiculous happens in battle (Thunder Armor, anyone?), it's still always magical to see the Pokemon in action. Maybe once the games reach this level (which they very well might soon), then maybe the anime will lose its appeal to me but I'm still gonna stick around.

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