The "realistic" takes on Pokemon are as stale as the franchise itself, and this shit has been around for over two decades, so I'm not going to bore you with snarky comments about ten-year-olds beating up and capturing wild animals. I won't belabor the flaws in world-building, premise, or plot. I'll just say this. Pokemon: Indigo League is twenty years old. It looks like crap. The acting is bad and the pacing is garbage. Ash monologues exposition, and then it's invariably repeated by the narrator or his Pokedex. You hear everything twice, and it's not like it's scintillating the first time. If you love Pokemon, there are probably better animated series to start with. You might get something out of Indigo League if you are a die-hard fan scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Recommend: No.
It’s onjectively bad in all the ways you mention, and in many ways it hasn’t gotten better, but if you were to grab the most entertaining episodes from every season you could probably fill a decent sized dvd.
Do you have a list? 🙂