I love Pokémon because they were a part of my childhood. I love the Pokémon battle and huge amount of different and individual Pokémon. I might be too old for the cartoon but the games are fantastic and the only why I´am considering to buy a 3DS

I don't think the characters in the pokemon series are any more facepalm worthy than any of the popular cartoon/manga series such as Naruto or Dragonball. Yeah they're mostly idiotic in the grand majority of the episodes, but that's part of their charm. Having said that, I mostly watch the series for the battles, I always loved how different they make the anime rules from the game rules .

The Hoenn series was probably the worst of the bunch and Diamond/Pearl wasn't much better, but thankfully Best Wishes (the B/W one) has been as good as the first ones.

Never watched Naruto and was probably too young to notice when I watched Dragonball, but yeah you sum the characters and battles up perfectly, the tournaments and league competitions were usually the best episodes. Eventually they just had far too many filler episodes. The first series had between 50-60 episodes, whilst Diamond and Pearl spanned about 4 years so had 200+ episodes.

I agree with you on the filler part. Even Best Wishes has tons of filler episodes, although they have been more careful with them this time around, by giving them much more action and actual importance to the overall plot. 

My favourite episodes will always be the gym battles ones, especially Claire's mostly because of the amount of insane things Ash usually pulls out to win the badges (usually after getting his ass handed down to him on the first try). Who can forget that in the very first gym battle Ash used Pikachu to take down Brock's Onix with a frigging thunderbolt .

Play Pokemon Red/Blue or FireRed/LeafGreen and find out.

Honestly, just give it a few hours and see if you get addicted. It's a well made JRPG, probably the best offered for the GB/GBC and the game mechanics are so polished, the franchise still stands up today.

You might not love it though, it's just a well made game which is accessible and simple, no different from Zelda or Mario.

Also, what got me back into pokemon is the ability to franchises method of continuation. Meaning, since I can transfer all my Legendary (super strong and limited to specific games) Pokemon from the original Pokemon to by modern copy of Black/White. This motivates me to make a super party after beating the game, and with so many Pokemon, there is always room to change the party up.

Really, that's your order of preference?

For me it's I = II > V > III > IV

Diamond/Pearl were the worst, but I thought Ruby/Saphire also marked a lowpoint in the franchise. Black/White to me marked a rebound in quality, but nothing will match the quality of the first 2 and the uniqueness of those two generations of Pokemon.

Why did they get lazy? and why didn't they introduce new types after Gen II?

My preference is 5>3>2>1>4. I just think Pokemon generally got better over time, not counting remakes. That said, the generation 2 remakes are between 5 and 3 IMO.

I find it fun as all hell. I'm 20 and I still enjoy the games. Not a fan of the cartoon anymore but the Kanto and Johto seasons were pretty cool. It's just innocent and cartoony fun. You get a ton of team customization from name to moves and it's really much deeper than just some monsters and 4 moves. There are a shit ton of things people consider when developing their team. I don't take it as seriously. I can't explain it properly but it's just fun and addictive.

More types would complicate things.  The current system is fine as it is.

My agreement was only with Gen II being the best =P

I haven't clocked V yet and I also think that III/IV were pretty weak.