And many of these people were likely just caught up in the initial fad of the series. Its the same way they don't like that there's nearly 600 pokemon now instead of 150.
Why do you think you rarely see people online who say that AG or DP was their first sagas? Its because most of the people watching those sagas were older fans like us who started in the Kanto era. Most kids who did start watching with those sagas simply don't come online I guess.
Eh i could argue they're more frequent than some would think. Im not so much sure about DP, but many fans you can see on pokemon boards indeed grew up with Ag generation with Kanto and Johto not being first sagas they watched.
And here is defeating statistic and wake up call about older fandom. About half of older fans you can encounter on serebii, bulbagarden and similar sites don't follow anime at all anymore or stopped right after Johto just checking in to see if some new info about their favorite characters or pokemon popped up. Many of those posters aren't fully informed about newer sagas at all only basing their knowledge on screenshots and what they heard. There is also large chunk of fandom which don't even come in anime sections hanging around in clubs or shipper community quitting with anime long time ago.
Add to that large number of people you can meet on youtube, deviantart , pokecommunity and similar sites who "boycott series" until Misty comes back reuniting original trio, or those who drifted away when fad died out losing interest along with incomparably lower ratings new sagas have over older ones and it becomes obvious how only tiny fraction of once huge older fandom which was counted in millions in reality stick with anime.
If you combine all current older fans from OS era which follow anime i doubt number would exceed 5 digits.
Yeah I agree. I just fund this " and the majority of the fandom continued watching well into AG and DP" a bit weird but I do understand what you mean now.
It dosen't matter because they attract new people?
Majority of older fandom which followed pokemon since Kantop definitely didn't watched Ag or DP. Its enough to take look at ratings Kanto or Johto had and compare it with viewing figures Hoenn or Sinnoh had. They were significantly lower being reflect of people interest for pokemon fading away not being so popular anymore like it used to be in its prime time.
Pokemon is unfortunately one of those anime which mostly pay attention to advertizing rather than well written story as well suffering from courage to try out new things with established cast breaking its overused formula, only relying on cast cycling.
And as result of that show is in constant decline with every new generation having lower ratings than its predecessor. If character replacements in such frequent manner is good idea to go with returns would as result of it go up, instead of down.
It also brought nonexistent continuity and destroyed story with little to none references to past regions,friends or pokemon being present, with anime which is supposed to exist in same timeline as one entity making it look like joke compared to other shows.