I am so sorry. I feel that the best way to begin this is by saying that, I am sorry. It has been seven months and I have not done anything relating to Champions. The reason for this is that I have lost my motivation for this story. I feel that I have been unfair in that I haven't even tried making a new part until now. But, onto the matter at hand.

Until I am motivated again to write about Ash and the crew, Champions is on hiatus. I don't know when or even if I will come back to the story. I just feel so defeated by the anime right now that I can't bring myself to write anything. I have spent these last few months trying and I just can't.

Sun and Moon is the leading cause of my lack of motivation. PokemonRangerBoy12 on YouTube made a great video describing how I am feeling with the franchise right, so watch that too. You will find that I will be saying some of the things he did in his video, but like I said, he captured my feelings for S&M. To understand why S&M feels like a gut punch to me, you have to understand my mindset coming into XY.

I hated Ash Ketchum.

At that point in my life, I thought that he was the worse character of all time and that the series had nothing good left in it. Then I saw an episode of XY and I was hooked again. I saw Ash's slimed down and amazing redesign, his badass new team and his newest traveling companions and I loved it. But, it truly wasn't Ash who had initially brought me back. It was Serena. I won't deny that at first, it was because I was only interested with how they would pursue the fact she had a crush on Ash. But as I continued to watch the show and they showed more of who she was, I became invested in her character. She, like myself at times, had no goal or dream to follow. She was just there for the ride. And then she found her calling in being a Performer and I truly felt happy for her.

I loved watching the series, seeing the rises and the falls. I got to the Pokémon League and I was so sure that Ash would win. And then came the first gut punch. By no means was Ash's and Alain's battle a bad one, but it felt so disappointing that Alain still won, even though we've seen that Greninja could have taken Mega Charizard down. It almost took out Diantha's Mega Gardevoir for crying out loud. It was easy to get over, however, because of the badass battles against Team Flare and the kiss in the last episode.

And then the second gut punch was thrown. I've talked about my feelings on S&M and how Ash was going to be going to school, but at that point it looked like that would only be for a single arc. Now it is evident that this is going to be around the entire series. S&M just seems so bad in comparison to XYZ that I barely recognize the series that I had just come to love again. I just felt so repulsed and demoralized by it. S&M has nothing that I loved of the Kalos journeys. I honestly don't care about any of the characters and I only hope that Ash will beat each of the trials because the faster he does, the faster this series will be over with.

I have once again begun to hate Ash Ketchum.

He shows none of the character progression that he did in XY and XYZ. Remember that depression that was central to the middle of the XYZ season that just showed how much of a person Ash actually was and that he could only take so much? Well, apparently the writers have, as he seems to have once again regressed as a character and I highly doubt that with the tone that S&M has that we will ever get something that mature for a while. He just doesn't seem like the character I grew to love. As pointed out by PRB12, Ash is shown as only being concern about his friends when he gets something out of it and this isn't the Ash I came to respect. This isn't the Ash Ketchum who put off his own dream so that they could go to something that he had no stake in. This isn't the Ash who I thought could win a League. And I hate him.

People talk about whether or not Serena will come back in S&M and my opinion is this; if the series doesn't improve soon, I hope we don't see her. Like I said, I love Serena and the very thought of what S&M could do to her terrifies me. If she comes back, she could be the same impulsive girl that left her home town to be with some boy or even worse. I want to see the strong willed girl that she became by the end of the series, the girl who would leave everything behind to better herself and to continue on her way to realizing her goal. I want to see the girl brave enough to run up to the boy that she had a crush on and kiss him on the lips. That's who I want to see, not who she was before.

But, I am sorry. This was meant to be an apology, not a rant. Like I said, I am planning on continuing Champions and finishing the story, but not right now. Maybe not for a while. But I will. And that is a promise.