How is Ash based on Red?

[Kathylikestoread]

Bulbapedia says nothing about it. They don't really look alike, unlike how Jimmy and Marina take on the appearances of Ethan and Kris, respectively. Is it because they're both from Pallet Town and have a rivalry with Blue/Gary Oak, or was it confirmed by the writers? Not to mention how his outfit gets modified every series to look like the male player characters of each generation.

 

[Greninjaman]

I assume its due to him being the anime version of him. It makes sense to me anyway.

 

[Daren]

Ash was redesigned a decent amount, but he shares Red's backstory and the games even gave Red a Pikachu as his highest level Pokémon in gen 2. That said, the original series did diverge a bit more from the game's plot than some of the later ones did. It could be argued Ash is also the equivalent of Ethan, Brendan, Lucas, and so on. But he's from Pallet Town and got his starter from Oak, and he's ultimately derived from Red, that being the only mainline game out when the show started.

In fact, back in the earliest fandom days the two were pretty much treated as the same character ("Ash" was even online used to refer to the first game's protagonist) and it was mostly later the two were kept firmly separate.

 

[Nicolas721]

The resemblance is very evident when comparing both first designs for each character. The shirt is the same, the jeans and belt are the same and the jacket is the same. The hat is very similar too. The only thing is that Ash's jacket color was changed to blue I think to contrast more with Pikachu. Whether Red was with time made more unique is another discussion but it's obvious that at the time they were supposed to be the same character like Gary and Blue.

Another evidence is that there's artwork of Red pulling back his hat like Ash did and that Red got gloves (as well as members of Ash's team) in Gen 2.