Bguy7
The Dragon Lord
Thinking about it again I've just recognised that this episodes seems to fall into what Science Fiction writers call the Hitler's murder Paradox - If Ash and his friends travelled back in time to stop Yolton from taking over the hotel by helping Rotom win it's battle, then it erases the need for Rotom to send them back in time in the first place. Hence the question is why did they travel back in time in the first place. This is actually a problem with the two other main time travel episodes in the anime, "Time wrap heals all wounds," and "Celebi and Joy." In all three of the episodes apparent illogicality this seems to get glossed over and goes unchallenged when in reality it actually defeats the whole plot. The only thing that saves it is the parallel universe theory that suggests altering events in the past creates a parallel universe in which the future is different. Perhaps the anime should stop dabbling in Science-Fiction themes. The idea would have worked fine without the time travel element - This has made me realise how silly the episode was.
In the episode's defense, almost all time travel stories in almost any media falls into the exact same trap. Also, there are much worse traps to fall into when it comes to time travel. I would argue that since time travel is beyond our knowledge, it's really hard to actually know what the rules would be, so authors of fiction are allowed some leeway, but only if they stay consistent. The problem comes if you change the physics of time travel every time you travel in time. The series Star Trek is actually really bad with that as an example, time travel works completely differently in almost every episode. Also, as a side note, the quantum multiverse is canon in Pokemon thanks to the Delta Episode, and, to an extent, the Mirror Dimension episode.