How Much can a Character Accomplish in 1 Year?

Before you mentioned the specifics of Sapphire and Platina, I was going to guess a much longer timespan. Realistically, completing all eight gym badges should probably take a very long time, and should be quite a unique task on par with going to regional/national championships at your best. A lifetime commitment not only for you as a tactical battling trainer, but also for your fighters who are probably training every single day to compete with and defeat the best. Something truly to brag about uniquely. "Yes, my team and I defeated the very best trainer in eight different cities with eight different specialties, and that is no easy task: meaning we worked hard, meaning it took a lot of time, meaning not everyone has the sheer commitment to overcome the same obstacles."

It seems weird that any gym leader would be able to be defeated by the rando kid up the road who was just given his first Pokémon by a professor last week, or who's even been at it in a month.

As far as a time span goes? Let's say we're not including the ~4 years of training as a new trainer to be able to defeat my local gym leader with some luck, planning, and good favor. After I get my first gym badge, how long will it take for me to walk the length and breadth of Hokkaido on foot and spend a few weeks in each town re-training and strategizing against the local gym leader for seven more cities? One year for all seven remaining badges seems pretty narrow timeframe unless you have transportation and professional assistance: i.e. if you're Gary instead of Ash. Probably even more if you're multi-tasking with saving the world or taking long-distance classes whenever you have signal on your phone. So I'll say: maybe one year after getting fully started for someone who's really busy with training and traveling.

 

Here’s how I see it: Kids most likely all own Pokémon, and train/play with them for most of their childhood.

Once they hit their teen years, that’s when it gets real. Some kids will stay in school and battle casually for fun, and others might drop out of school to take on the gym challenge. The latter group of trainers will try and train each and every day because their goal is to make it to the elite four/become champion.

I kind of see this as how some kids I know play musical instruments for fun, and others drop out of public school to become homeschooled in order to focus on making a career out of it. The average prodigy (that I know) will learn a piece in about 1 to 2 weeks and go on to perform the next. So let’s say the most hardworking, dedicated trainer takes 1 and 1/2 weeks to get ready for a gym, plus the time it takes to travel from city to city (for foot, I’d say a week. By Pokémon, maybe 3 days?). Each gym would take approximately 2 weeks to train for. To get through eight gyms, it would take an insanely skilled trainer 16 weeks or 4 months. I’d say four months is the minimum.

You don’t have to use this analogy—this is just my way of making sense of the Pokémon world because it’s very hard to figure out what constitutes as a “regular journey.” But if you do, I suggest leaving out some of the days in between major events just because if you explain each mundane aspect of the journey, it’ll be an insanely long fic. Each chapter could have a little bit of time distance by 1-3 days in it, I’d say, or more.

I hope this helped