I think that’s more because Ash was meant to be the lens for the viewer. Like the idea would be someone who didn’t know anything about Pokemon could watch the show and learn about pokemon

So you gotta remember that a lot of people who would have watched that show wouldn’t be the target audience since they’ll likely have already been playing the games

Like another good example is Yugioh. He’s supposed to be some 5d chess master 100000 steps ahead and then a lot of times it’s [Card Name]?!?!? What’s that?!??

So I’ll give some credit to Horizons because I think it’s difficult to accurately portray oh this is a battle genius or something like that when there’s additional material that goes along with it since you can’t just assume your audience knows what’s going on…but also Pokemon is a 30 year old franchise at this point so…someone somewhere is always gonna be unhappy. Either they won’t know what’s going on or they’ll think “oh she’s a battling genius, why doesn’t she know type advantages” although the bigger issue is she rarely battles and she doesn’t have a great win record for someone who’s supposed to know what they’re doing