[I'm just copying and pasting my off-site opinions, BUT]
I’ve had more time to think about it, and I think this could even help the Pokemon anime.
On one hand, it’s a huuuuge franchise, so even if the anime isn’t massively successful, it’d be the weakest part of something huge, so it could still have enough funding to be kept on, especially with how we’ve only gotten budget increases from series to series–it’s probably gonna stay at SuMo’s quality, which is already great, or if it DOES drop back, it’d what, drop to XY quality?
Slightly more limited animation could let them focus on art style again and the majority of the fans seem to appreciate style over fluidity, so either works!
But the other thing I thought about was if the money-driven higher-ups no longer care, get this, they might just interfere less with the plot! Maybe the writers will have more free reign, if they truly “don’t care about the anime anymore,” maybe it’ll give more power to those on board who do love and care about the characters and plot to just do what they and a lot of fans want, we might get more older characters (since the likes of Iwane-san and Shinohara-san are nostalgic and clearly express wanting to see them in series again…), etc.
And yeah, Pokemon and Satoshi could still have a place, they’ve achieved their own little timelessness of sorts, with the soft-reboot-like starts and the greater focus on episodic adventures, friendships, etc. ;3; I forget who said it, someone on the cast (was it his own seiyuu? Or perhaps Shoko-tan who grew up with Pokemon?) that he was like a cool older brother or a peer that gets to go on adventures and be a hero to kids in the audience, then more like a dear little brother you can watch with fond nostalgia to older fans… he can serve that kind of purpose.
Maruko-chan is huge, but mostly in Asia! Pokemon is a world-wide thing, even if the anime isn’t as widespread as it once was, it’s still got more of an international following.
For these reasons, it could still have a pretty good chance, even if it's a modest domestic success, it would still be a reliably successful worldwide. All we need to count on is that it continues to appeal to the target demographic and doesn't hurt itself aiming at a periphery audience to the exclusion of the target age group (as XY did).
Iwane-san has been expressing since late Best Wishes! that he wanted Shinji/Paul to reappear again--a drawing of him, fully-coloured, in the modern art style, is his twitter banner. He also has been drawing a LOT of old characters, in colour, just out of love for the series... he's also drawn Iris in her Champion dress saying he'd like for her to reappear in the anime in it. Shinohara Takashi has drawn many beautiful, dynamic, and coloured drawings illustrating the episodes he worked on when he joined during the Best Wishes! era.
On the level of writers, animators... the Pokemon series and characters are loved by a good number of them. It's on the corporate level that it's viewed as a show meant to sell games and merchandise alone. Corporate interferance led to things like Best Wishes! plot getting weirdly derailed a bit in the second season to advertise B2W2, sequel games no one really expected, when they were clearly originally headed to battle Drayden and have Iris' plotline wrapped up then too, but then Roxie happened and the return to the Village of Dragons was delayed, etc.
Even huge gaffes like the GS Ball which still embarrassed writers was caused by corporate types being like "Celebi's in that thing? It's better for marketing if you put it in a movie, drop that plot."
The 20th movie was originally going to have an all-star cast of Ash's old companions (or at least, this is one of the ideas Yuyama talked about), but they didn't think they could make it work (one movie, Ash's many, many, many friends... obviously, a whole bunch will end up with very little plot relevant things to do or barely get any lines or screentime and upset fans, etc.), so, they expressed an openness to the idea of bringing back old companions in show [especially after teasing Kasumi's/Misty's return and then, we got that little Kanto field trip!] later on...
This could be their lucky chance if the corporate types really don't care what they do on the show anymore.
