u/Amour_Boy

While there are many ships involving Ash Ketchum, I believe Amourshipping is the only one that received a near-perfect conclusion. About Amourshipping one of the main criticisms is that it is one sided but it did not remain that way forever. Serena confessed her feelings and kissed Ash at the end of the XY series.His reaction was initially shocked but then his eyes started to glimmer and he smiled. The story ended there leaving us with perfect ambiguity, Does Ash love Serena? Fast forward to Pokemon Journeys and that same ambiguity continues.Their meeting was sudden and short and they shared their goals with each other as the boat pulled away, bringing the scene to a close. This makes viewers wonder what could have happened if they had more time. This is what we call the "Maybe Ever After" trope in storytelling. The writers could have easily made Ash and Serena meet for a longer time, as if nothing had happened, just like they did with other Pokegirls but they didn’t. Unlike some ships like Pokeshipping whose interactions were mostly purely platonic even across those final 11 episodes Amourshipping was not portrayed in the same way.

The dataset covers Season 1 to Season 22. Data for Pokemon Journeys and Horizons is limited as most of their episodes recorded ratings below 1%.

Original Series The mean average rating of the series is 12.15%. The peak rating was 18.6% (Episode 33) while the lowest rating was 5.3%. And 77.6% of the episodes appeared in the Top 10 Japanese TV ratings each week.

Advanced Generation The mean average rating is 7.1% representing a 43.2% drop from the Original Series. The peak rating was 11% (Episode 1) and the lowest rating was 4.0% (Episode 186). About 41.3% of episodes appeared in the weekly Top 10.

Diamond and Pearl Series The mean average rating is 6.40% a 9.86% drop from Advanced Generation. The peak rating was 9.3% (Episode 1) while the lowest rating was 4.1% (Episode 156). And 92.8% of episodes appeared in the Top 10 weekly rankings.

Black and White Series The mean average rating is 5.26% a 17.81% drop from Diamond and Pearl. The peak rating was 9.3% (Episode 1) and the lowest rating was 2.2% (Episode 77). Around 83.8% of episodes appeared in the Top 10.

XY Series The mean average rating is 4.15% marking a 21.1% drop from the Black and White series. The peak rating was 6.4% (Episode 18) and the lowest rating was 2.0% (Episode 129). About 63% of XY/XYZ episodes appeared in the Top 10.

Sun and Moon Series The mean average rating is 3.04% a 26.75% drop from the XY/XYZ series. The peak rating was 4.7% (Episode 52) while the lowest reported rating was 1.1% (Episode 134). And 57.3% of episodes appeared in the Top 10.

Pokemon Journeys Although complete data is unavailable due to many episodes falling below 1% ratings it is known that only 6.6% of episodes appeared in the Top 10 weekly rankings.