Unpopular Opinion(?) : PM’s animation has looked just fine for the majority of the series. I think many Pokémon anime fans are super unaware time consuming and stressful the work is. It would be nice if we could normalize disliking things without throwing the actual creators under the bus. There’s no such thing as a “lazy” animator if you ever drawn art seriously and given a crack at the process you would see how frustrating it all can be - just how much work is put into SECONDS of good animation let alone minutes.
Just looking at Yuhei Takobashi’s efforts in #69 or Hiroaki Takagi’s beauty in #65 people get solid/great episodes and scenes of Sakuga than want more in the next episode of a weekly series during a pandemic and then start tearing down the staff when they don’t get it without acknowledging how much time (deadlines) and labor it cost.
They certainly aren’t paid enough on average and if anyone took a shot at it for a day they’d see how “not lazy” these professionals are. Especially if you’re already an artist and have drawn single pieces on your own or even done commission work. It’s always the people that can’t/never draw (even regularly) who have the most to say. Sorry for the rant - a lot of anime fans are aware of that and it just seems many Pokemon anime fan westerners aren’t aware. Let’s not even get in Japan’s grueling work efforts and hours (mainly what I’ve been educated of from family/friends who live out there from the states)
I can't speak for everyone but here's what I have to say about it. I've gone through the sakugabooru posts, learned to identify which animation teams worked on an episode, familiarized myself with different animators, and read through the credits of every PM2019 episode.
I have no problems with each episode not having sakuga; that's ridiculous to expect. My problem is that compared to both XY and SM, the average animation quality is lower and there are less peaks. There is less movement and it looks worse. A few good scenes like the ones you mentioned do not indicate the overall quality. Even before the pandemic, there was a clear downgrade.
By this point, SM had already had the first 2 grand trials and the Kanto gym battle, which PM2019 has yet to surpass. For example, look at one of Takashi Shinohara's XY/SM episodes and compare it to one of his PM episodes. There's also the other issue where the quality doesn't look as good as it previously did. Characters are constantly off model, especially in Iwane's episodes to the point where I can barely even watch them (but this issue started in SM to a lesser degree). I watched an XY Iwane episode and the difference was night and day. I went through the credits and most of the talent that gave us top tier animation during the past 2 series have disappeared. You can't deny that there is a downgrade.
The rest of your post is just a way to villainize people who have issues. I don't want the animators to overwork themselves, I want whatever OLM did for XY and SM's animation. Is it that hard to expect the quality to improve with each new series, let alone stay the same quality?