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Team Rocket fans, are you dissapointed by the way we’re handled in this series?

Pokegirl Fan~

Liko>>>>>Ash
Yes...I wish that they didn't show up at all instead of every once in a while.
 

Gingertail24

Well-Known Member
Let's be honest. TR was doomed before JN. They just exasperated the issue. They were always stagnant. At least Ash gets to be a monarch and actually grow.

TR on the other hand. They're the ones that truly get reset every region. Jessie showcases and contest? Never mentioned. James? He is basically just there. Meowth? The only development he gets is falling in love with the new cat Pokemon from each region. And they're mons? Left behind or sent to TR where they are never seen again

What makes it worse is that now we know JN is the last time we will ever see em. Which makes that butch and Cassidy episode even worse in hindsight

They're always gonna be used for some end of episode conflict and that's it. I'm not gonna miss them all that much tbh
 

Sham

The Guardian of Ruin and Birth
They were less of an annoyance than having Ash for all of these years. I actually am gonna miss these guys. The fact that they made them social medial influences with a selfie stick is iconic to date.
 

Shadao

Aim to be a Pokémon Master
The problem with Team Rocket has and always will be their desire to catch Pikachu and deliver him to the Boss, Giovanni. Unlike Ash's goal to become Pokémon Master, this is a goal that has one step and that one step will never happen no matter how hard they tried. Catch Pikachu and deliever him to Giovanni will either end the show on a downer note or spell the end of the Team Rocket organization (as Ash will move heaven and earth to get Pikachu back).

Because it's a one step process, Team Rocket cannot become better. They can be better in contests or side jobs or a radio show, but never in their main profession of stealing Pokémon (especially Pikachu). And they always throw away the things they are good at for a goal that they will never succeed in. Truly static characters.

Team Rocket worked back when Ash was a rookie and immature trainer surrounded by friends who often bicker with him alot. Ash, Misty and Brock... they're best friends but they do quarrel over directions, training methods, and food. And their quarrels offers a lot of unique chemistry when Team Rocket intervenes with their own relationship chemistry. Recall how Misty called Jessie an old, ugly hag and how Jessie raged like Vulpix. Or Meowth cheating in a Pokémon match by throwing water at Brock's Onix. Despite being incomptent, Team Rocket was on equal footing with the original trio.

But when the original trio parted ways, Team Rocket began to lose much of their antagonistic dynamic with Ash. Ash being on his own and later becoming somewhat of a mentor to May meant that Ash was maturing as a person. He was growing beyond the rookie he once was. May, on the other hand, had less of a reason to truly hate Team Rocket (most of her rivalry revolved around a disguised Jessie in Contests) and while Brock did come back, the cracks were showing in Team Rocket. Every time Ash got a new companion to travel with, the rivalry with Team Rocket became less and less organic. They just hate Team Rocket for simply being bad guys that annoyingly show up, not because of a long history like with Ash.

Meanwhile, Ash was growing to new heights and facing bigger challenges. He was fighting Frontier Brains, Elite Fours, and even Champions now. He was getting better while Team Rocket remained the same. Consequently, Ash could now just blast off Team Rocket whenever he feels like it. And this wouldn't be as a bad if it weren't for the fact that in the AG and DP eras, Team Rocket showed up in every single episode... and most of the time, as the villains. When Team Rocket go from unique characters to just mandatory obstacles, you know something went wrong for them.
 

SoraFan23

Generation 4 was how I got into Pokémon
No and to be honest they have been milked dry in the Pokemon anime. Its always the same thing with them. They try to come up with a plan to capture Pikachu, trying to battle Ash/Friends to get it, but fail miserably, and of course they are "BLASTING OFF AGAIN" I might be in minority but I am glad that they are retiring because they haven't really done much in Journeys.
 

Platinum fan.

RetiredPokemonMaster
Not sure how they were handled in the newer seasons, but I don't know how you even salvage something like TR and keep it going. @Shadao basically covered the overall flaw with this group. They cannot change and refuse to. Even though we see Jessie, James, and Meowth have heroic sides to them, and they aren't all that bad. For whatever reason they continue to follow Ash and try to steal his Pikachu or any Pokemon in the region he's in. And they were just a pain in the backside for the main cast, who were forced to pretend they were a threat whenever they appeared.

Then there is Jessie's Contest career which in retrospect was a big waste of time that amounted to nothing since she quits and chooses the life of TR over it, despite getting fairly decent at it. Then BW tried to make them serious in the first half only to drop it and go back to basics and XY was more of the same. I stopped there so I don't know how they were in SM and Journeys.

Team Rocket ran it's course, especially when other evil groups started appearing in the anime who had much bigger impacts on the plot form the games the came from, like Team Aqua/Magma and Galactic.
 

Ignition

We are so back Zygardebros
I'm not even that crazy about TRio one way or the other, but this was such a lame season for them. They had like 3 good episodes.
 

solrocknroll

S-Class Indigo League Fan
They were pretty heavily mishandled, but I have faith the miniseries is going to give them some final closure that will make up for it. Thinking of the last year in hindsight, the Butch and Cassidy episode was definitely foreshadowing I would say. I think it’s pretty likely that Jessie, James, and Meowth will be hanging up their uniforms by the end of MPM 2023.
 

solrocknroll

S-Class Indigo League Fan
Very disappointed.

I hope they can meet some of their own old Pokemon in the 11-episode special, but I'm not feeling too optimistic.

I’m hopeful too, but there’s a lot of loose ends in Hoenn and I’m not sure which they’ll get to. Latias if it isn’t the Alto Mare Latias, as well as Serena, Arbok and Weezing, and potentially May somehow and Togetic. I hope they can do justice to all those things.

At the very least, I can imagine Mareanie, Mimikyu, Stufful, and Bewear will appear one more time.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Somewhat disappointed, but not exactly surprised. They'd been slowly receiving less screen-time since Best Wishes, so I wasn't taken aback by their general lack of relevance to the plot in Pocket Monsters 2019.
 
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