Will a new Pokemon protagonist without Ash ever happen?
 

Do you think we'll ever get a new protagonist for the Pokemon anime whether it's an entirely new anime in a different continuity or in the same continuity as the current one?

As far as the same continuity, highly unlikely at this point as the creators seem to make it clear that Ash is the main character. Would be nice to take a break off him.

I think if they were to do a completely new anime (like Pokemon Origins), they obviously would though.

(Didn't think this would be my first post for 2019).

Sadly no, which is why i just stick with the multiple manga

I don't think Ash will ever be replaced. We might get new protagonists, but only for specials and not permanently (The Legend of Thunder being an example). As long as Pikachu is the mascot of the franchise, you can expect Ash to be the main character in the anime.

When you look at Ash, he's literally the face of the franchise when looking at human characters. Ash's influence even extends to the games , where you can obtain Ash Greninja and Red has a Pikachu as his signature Pokemon because of Ash and not the other way around. Even the game Pokemon Yellow was made because of the anime's popularity, and if it weren't for Ash, we probably wouldn't be playing as Pikachu in Super Smash Bros.

Let’s be honest. We’re lucky that the live action film isn’t ash

We don't really need two Pokemon threads, at the same time, not enough discussion for separate threads. The anime won't get a new main character until it's rebooted but counting Japan loves their endless anime where the main character gets closer to his goal but never achieves it a la Case Closed/Detective Conan that's what we'll continue to see. Unless the actual show is cancelled and they reboot it.

Origins was not a new anime and more of an advertisement campaign for XY similar to the one they did when SM came out with PKMN Generations and even Black White had one with the anime commercials also Mystery Dungeon ones. The specials were a great way to show what happened with the other characters and plotlines but they only really did them in generation 2/3 and after that they barely even bothered, which sucks since it was really cool. Legend of Thunder showed the potential but they really didn't do anything with that concept for years until XY with the Mega Evolutions side series which I think didn't do so well and was cancelled and eventually finished the story in the main anime, it'd be cool to see something like that again but I doubt it.

Who knows where they'll take the series for Gen 8, we saw they took a radical new approach for Sun&Moon which I haven't seen but people seem to like but might go on a more traditional approach for Gen 8 with badges. Ash/Pikachu will definitely stay, Pikachu is bigger than Ash and teh face of the franchise, he'll always be there and Ash is replaceable even if they won't do it but Pikachu isn't. The anime should've really replaced Ash for Gen 2 and have him appear as a badass trainer later on like Red became and each gen with their own new characters like other anime do but I guess they were afraid to scare people with new characters especially after they saw the backlash with Tracey and the Ash/Pikachu relationship, the formulaic episodes with Team Rocket would've needed to change, also would've been hard to accomplish with a new main character.

I do think that with the new Pokemon movies we might get one without Ash, after the XY movies bombed in japanese theaters they retooled for the S&M generation, we got the I Choose You remake with a new Ash and a new adventure and it had potential, too bad it sucked. Last year we got The Power of Us which has the same nu-Ash but it does whatever it wants with the story even ignoring nu-Ash being more artsy and taking risks the anime would never do. This year the movie is entirely CG, likely with nu-Ash as well and they'll do new stuff and not take into account anything from the past movies since this nu-Ash is more of like "yeah it's nu-Ash but nothing from before affects the current story", experimenting. The movie after that will also be something different since it seems to work for box office numbers in Japan, unless the CG movie is a huge hit and every new movie is entirely CG now but I could see an Ash-less movie coming out, especially since they sort of played with that idea with last years movie.

They're going big on nostalgia for Detective Pikachu so I wouldn't be surprised to see Ash/Misty/Jessie/James making some sort of cameo.

Disagree on the Pikachu in Smash because of Ash but the rest is right, also for years in Japan they distributed some of Ash's Pokemon at stores, mainly Pikachu. The first time they did it in the west was with Ash Greninja which surprised me but it's still hella cool they did it and also that same generation they did the Ash Hat Pikachu and that was worldwide so I guess canon wise Ash exists in the Pokemon games since Sun and Moon since before that it was a bit iffy, especially since Red=Ash no matter how much people say they aren't.

It's possible someday. There was a time people didn't think Misty or Brock would ever be removed permanently (and for Brock to leave again after he came back for Johto), and it happened. And Team Rocket also don't appear in every episode anymore and haven't since BW, in fact TR missed a large chunk of eps in BW, XY and SM even if they're still in the show.

Misty is only in 25% of the animes total episodes now, and Brock has also been gone for 8 years (man, time flies), since DP ended way back in 2010.

It's mainly just Pikachu keeping Ash around, but if they ever choose to wrap up Ash and have different Pikachu's on the cast every gen, it could happen someday.

I mean probably not for a while, if at all. They didn't even boot him out when rebooting the movies.