There's a couple of reasons why Kanto has the fastest pace. The anime was originally only suppose to last until Kanto and even when it was known that they were going to extend it due to the new games the pace didn't slow down as badly because there was only about a 2 year gap between the first episode and when Gold/Silver was released compare to the 4 year gaps between games. It also helps that they transfered about 35 episodes to the Orange Islands instead of making them filler.
Roughly 200 episodes is a lot considering most important battles last for only 1 episode at best. With the pace BW has gone I'm expecting either something that DP did between the 7th and 8th badge or the battle frontier like RSE had. I'm expecting the latter since half of Unova would be left unexplored otherwise.
Why include him if he's no longer the champion, though?
The anime uses the third game as cannon when it is released. So he ends up disappearing. He's probably still up in a cave waiting for Ash.
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