The problem with modern Team Rocket.

[AdvancedGenGenesect]

Team rocket has gone through a lot in the pokemon anime.

In kanto they were great in the plots aalways having a new (mostly unpredictable) scheme which contributed to the plot (it also was the same in the OI saga).

At mid-Johto however they got so bad and repetetive that it stopped ms feom watching pokemon for a while but when master quest came around it became ok.

However nowadays (In kalos and SM) while The rockets may be ok in the story there are some important features they dont have anymore.

1) First of all team rocket doesn't really have any reality in them anymore for example the anime used to show how they always wondered around hungry while trying to catch pikachu and then once in a while get a job while trying to catch pikachu, and every time this happened the outcome would be different or be entertaining which gave them a relevance in most plots of episodes rather than to just try to steal pokemon to further on the plot.

2)A big problem however is predictabilty.

for example In an episode like "Thawing an icy panic" from xy this is pretty muxh what happened when team rocket dressed up as nurses and kidnapped vanilite.

Not only is this an extremely predictable and reused plot but it also had team rocket use a huge robot at the end to steal vanilite which was also reused and could've been done with a twist like the older episodes.

3) The biggest problem in my opinion ia how ream rocket is how they are never a big part of the plot but are present to forward it on.

For example an episode like "the bicker the better" where Jesse and James go against each other just like may and ash and the end of the episode was also good and actually not very predictable and very thought out ( also for a team rocket episode It is also considered one of the funniest episodes of pokemon which is very rare for xy or SM).

Or an episode like "Holy Matrimony" where james returns to his home and gets his whole backstory shown and he also gets tons of character development as he gets forced into nearly marrying Jessebele.

The biggest loss for Jesse however was however that in the pokemon contests of AG and DP she caught new pokemon, worked hard, actually won some contests (in DP) butIn xy however she didn't take Showcases that seriously and it only felt like she cared once in a while (because of the huge filler gaps between showcase episodes).

Overall though I think when BW finished and XY came around people forgot that TR didn't recover all its good qualities from pre BW and were convinced it was the old team rocket.

 

[Satomine Night]

IMO, the problem with modern Team Rocket is that they are treated like tools of the plot more often than they are treated like actual characters. For the most part, they exist for the writers' convenience, to be used as an easy source of conflict—either to unite feuding characters, to awaken a character's potential, or just to enable to a character to show off his/her battle prowess. They essentially exist to lose to the good guys.

Their schemes have also become too predictable: they attempt to kidnap a Pokémon, usually Pikachu, and usually with a mechanical contraption; they are thwarted by Ash and his friends, or by a supporting character, via a swift curbstomp; and then they are blasted off (or, in the case of SM, carted off by Bewear). There is little variation in their routine, and it makes their appearances rather boring as a result.

Additionally, they rarely contribute to a main character's character development. They sometimes contribute to the development of a CotD or PotD, but rarely to the development of a main character. And they don't really progress as characters themselves. They may grow as characters throughout a series, but then (most of) that development is forgotten when the next series rolls around.

 

[U.N. Owen]

For a long time, I thought Rica and other voice actors simply didn't do much during TRio episodes and merely said to the sound director "Here are voice clips. Edit them together. Go nuts." Stock audio is how much the plot sounds reused.

 

[DatsRight]

IMO, the problem with modern Team Rocket is that they are treated like tools of the plot more often than they are treated like actual characters. For the most part, they exist for the writers' convenience, to be used as an easy source of conflict—either to unite feuding characters, to awaken a character's potential, or just to enable to a character to show off his/her battle prowess. They essentially exist to lose to the good guys.

A problem is they're not even that effective for that, since they also tend to dumb down TR enough that any schmuck can beat them with a couple basic moves. Whenever they put up a halfway good plan the twerps are usually stuck and end up relying on DEM, making them look like bluff and bluster (at least for those who don't have other genuine battle development aside from it). Basically they are straw losers, characters who are meant to be worthless and incompetent that the more mediocre looking protagonist look remarkable by comparison. Another writing short cut.

It's more obvious in later series because they often disregard that many token good battles and face-offs using TR, the two sides don't even have a funny chemistry anymore (like U.N. Owen note, they seem to just splice together 'stock hero quotes' for the twerps) and there's always one companion that isn't much of a battler. "Ooh, but they've gotta have SOME exaggerated badass moments, even if they are superficial and crap. Pit them against some loser so we don't have to bother developing them properly."

It's balanced in SM a bit more because they are at least treating TR more like characters again and giving them their own arcs and agendas, not to mention MOST of the twerps are vibrant enough to handle stories standalone so they don't need the TRio around as plot devices to hide their blandness anymore (Mallow being an exception though she's at least not forced against TR or other crappy jobbers 24/7). It still often perks up odd stories though, and their face-offs are still some of their blandest.

 

[SH65]

When Serena can beat them with spaming and only that. You start to see how dumb down they are.

 

[ash&charizardfan]

Well the biggest issue with the TR trio is that they are the tools to provide humour to the auduence. That's the sole reason for there existence for so long. They existed longer than even brock. I think that was the reason for the changing of TR in BW from the serious to funny mode because the target audience didn't like them. Though I would like the idea of them joining the senior TR grunt like for example that TR grunt in the raikou trio in pokemon chronicles part (that guy was just awesome). This way they could provide funny moments and there main boss could provide some serious tone. .

 

[Satomine Night]

A problem is they're not even that effective for that, since they also tend to dumb down TR enough that any schmuck can beat them with a couple basic moves. Whenever they put up a halfway good plan the twerps are usually stuck and end up relying on DEM, making them look like bluff and bluster (at least for those who don't have other genuine battle development aside from it). Basically they are straw losers, characters who are meant to be worthless and incompetent that the more mediocre looking protagonist look remarkable by comparison. Another writing short cut.

It's more obvious in later series because they often disregard that many token good battles and face-offs using TR, the two sides don't even have a funny chemistry anymore (like U.N. Owen note, they seem to just splice together 'stock hero quotes' for the twerps) and there's always one companion that isn't much of a battler. "Ooh, but they've gotta have SOME exaggerated badass moments, even if they are superficial and crap. Pit them against some loser so we don't have to bother developing them properly."

Team Rocket are rather effective as tools of the plot. That even non-battling characters are easily able to defeat them just reinforces that point. Of course "any schmuck" can beat them. Their main role is to be jobbers to the good guys; they wouldn't be fulfilling that role if they were hard to beat. I don't see them as "dumbed down" when they are like that most of the time. That non-battlers are able to curbstomp them is more a reflection on Team Rocket than on their opponents.

Team Rocket rarely aids in the development of a main character (and I don't think they are going to start doing so anytime soon), so I don't know why you always bring that up as a ding against the main characters.

 

[TheWanderingMist]

Team Rocket are rather effective as tools of the plot. That even non-battling characters are easily able to defeat them just reinforces that point. Of course "any schmuck" can beat them. Their main role is to be jobbers to the good guys; they wouldn't be fulfilling that role if they were hard to beat. I don't see them as "dumbed down" when they are like that most of the time. That non-battlers are able to curbstomp them is more a reflection on Team Rocket than on their opponents.

Team Rocket rarely aids in the development of a main character (and I don't think they are going to start doing so anytime soon), so I don't know why you always bring that up as a ding against the main characters.

I think DatsRight is trying to say that they want TRio to be treated as characters instead of just how they're usually treated as plot devices. And really, couldn't they contribute to a main character's development at least a few times?

 

[DatsRight]

Team Rocket are rather effective as tools of the plot. That even non-battling characters are easily able to defeat them just reinforces that point. Of course "any schmuck" can beat them. Their main role is to be jobbers to the good guys; they wouldn't be fulfilling that role if they were hard to beat. I don't see them as "dumbed down" when they are like that most of the time. That non-battlers are able to curbstomp them is more a reflection on Team Rocket than on their opponents.

Team Rocket rarely aids in the development of a main character (and I don't think they are going to start doing so anytime soon), so I don't know why you always bring that up as a ding against the main characters.

Because the narrative keeps playing off like standing up to Team Rocket and beating them is some major breakthrough in character development (or at least is meant to make the twerps look cool) in spite of it's easiness. You can tell whenever they run out of clever ways to progress a protagonist and make them seem remarkable or dynamic that they just have them job TR non stop for scout points. So they're easy targets and yet they're supposed to look like an accomplishment to beat (and ironically whenever they really are, the twerps need dumb luck). I feel like the twerps turn into scripted robots whenever they're around, with no specific talents, personality or reactions to what's going on and essentially defeated the TRio the same boring way every time, it's the 'rest time' when the writers know they don't have to put any real effort in.

It gets cheaper when they start interrupting other stories and face offs which would have been more fulfilling. Basically trading lots of potentially tense promising stories for the same old face off with the cannon fodder non stop because it's easier.

I think DatsRight is trying to say that they want TRio to be treated as characters instead of just how they're usually treated as plot devices. And really, couldn't they contribute to a main character's development at least a few times?

Exactly. Remember in early episodes when the TRio not only had halfway challenging face-offs with the twerps, but they actually played off their personalities to make them decent foils. Manipulating a key flaw or dilemma one of them suffered from and what not. Basically antagonists that compliment the protagonist's character rather than dilute or cheapen it. Even some equally pathetic villains are swiftly capable of that (e.g. Eggman in Sonic Boom).

 

[Zoruagible]

What they need to do is something that hasn't been done since DP. TR and the twerps working together to survive, they've just been plot devices apart from their criminally low number of focus episodes....
Also they need to be threats in competitions again like James was a Pokeringer pro and Jessie was a Pro Coordinator.... and XY decided to ruin it and make them incompetent at stuff.

Thank **** they at least have personality again, their Pokemon too. Inkay barely had any personality at all compared to Gourgeist!

 

[Twilight-Kun]

What they need to do is something that hasn't been done since DP. TR and the twerps working together to survive, they've just been plot devices apart from their criminally low number of focus episodes....
Also they need to be threats in competitions again like James was a Pokeringer pro and Jessie was a Pro Coordinator.... and XY decided to ruin it and make them incompetent at stuff.

Thank **** they at least have personality again, their Pokemon too. Inkay barely had any personality at all compared to Gourgeist!

Did...you miss the episode with the evil Malamar?

It showed off how much Inkay adores James and was as heartwarming as the time Jessie's Pumpkaboo evolved

 

[DatsRight]

What they need to do is something that hasn't been done since DP. TR and the twerps working together to survive, they've just been plot devices apart from their criminally low number of focus episodes....
Also they need to be threats in competitions again like James was a Pokeringer pro and Jessie was a Pro Coordinator.... and XY decided to ruin it and make them incompetent at stuff.

Thank **** they at least have personality again, their Pokemon too. Inkay barely had any personality at all compared to Gourgeist!

There was a few enemy mines in BW and XY, sparse ones but they existed.

I wouldn't say Jessie was an incompetent performer in XY either, just outclassed by Serena. She was forbidden to outperform her without some sort of excuse on the latter's end, and even then it felt contrived because Serena's performances often came out pretty bland, compared to DP where Jessie was an effective rival and forced Dawn to spruce things up to win, thus felt relevant in some way.

This is what I'm talking about; the straw loser effect. Making a set of characters that always fail against the protagonist to make them look better relatively, over actually developing the protagonist's talent.

I loved Inkay though.

 

[AdvancedGenGenesect]

Very Important: I also forgot to mention that when johto was about to finish the writers had a big choice. Either to remove misty or TR from the anime and they chose misty because they belived that TR was Unreplacable.

Nowadays it seems like the writers don't even care about them.

 

[Crystal]

Very Important: I also forgot to mention that when johto was about to finish the writers had a big choice. Either to remove misty or TR from the anime and they chise misty because they belived that TR was Unreplacable.

Nowadays it seems like the writers don't even care about them.

In retrospect, I think the writer(s) and director board had made the biggest irredeemable mistake in choosing TR rather than Misty.

For villain characters, each regional villainous team can do the work, hey they even developed some original villains like Hunter J. So if there need conflict there is always other alternative characters to do the job.

For comic reliefs, I don't think this is a privilege limited to only TR. When there pops up a CotD in every now and then episodes, can't they design some idiot joking characters for laughing purpose? I think the comedic effect might be better because CotD had the largest creativity freedom, so the variety of jokes and slapstick could be much larger than the limited TR running gags which has no potential to expand further but only reused over and over. If not CotD, why not joke and banter between the twerps themselves? Other than the OS group, none of Ash's group in other regions can self-created so many comedy and slapstick between themselves. Why is that?

For instant problem creation, why it must be TR interruption? Is the CotD unable to create problems that must be solved immediately within one episode? There were so many nasty hostile CotD/PotD that were giving problems to the friendly CotD/PotD or Ash themselves, I think those are already enough to make the day, why there then need the extra bonus TR? Within these self-contained daily problems, the TR interruption were 90% of the time didn't help anything nor adding any extra weight, but only eating screen time.

Also like some people mentioned previously, TR didn't contribute much (or more specifically, anything) towards the main characters' development. Even other villainous team members and possibly CotD/PotD contributed more than them...... Character role functionality-wise, the influences TR made to other characters is so trivial that is either unnoticeable that will be forgotten the next episode, or the writers can always find another alternative no-TR ways to made the same contributions. It just need a little writing creativity to do so.

To be fair, at that very moment of thinking of replacing either Misty or TR, it already deemed the three are also replaceable characters. So I do not understand why they are irreplaceable, other than the reason of personal preference of Shudo Takeshi. It is only thanks to the irrational love of the former head writer and the ungrounded thinking of Misty is unpopular from some character-biased higher-ups, TR won this knock-out competition. But one should understand, this doesn't make TR become more story-plot-wise useful than what Misty could had offered, if it was she instead of the three won that knock-out competition.

 

[Tabasco Boshi]

The problem with modern Team Rocket (and by modern I mean Sun & Moon) is that now that they're finally back in character, they're underused.

OS-DP = Best characters of the show
BW = Out of character robots
XY = Recovering from BW, really bland
SM = Back in character but underused

 

[AdvancedGenGenesect]

The problem with modern Team Rocket (and by modern I mean Sun & Moon) is that now that they're finally back in character, they're underused.

OS-DP = Best characters of the show
BW = Out of character robots
XY = Recovering from BW, really bland
SM = Back in character but underused

The problem with that is that in SM theres no potential for tTR yo have an episode where they are part of the main focus instead of catching pikachu.

Also their schemes also seem more bland than before, and even if they re bland it shouldn't make the episode worse overall.

Another big problem is that because ash is in school and on a freaking island, be can't travel to many places and meet new people in a different place or with a problem so that TR could get involved in a good way like actually have an importance in the plot like in late Johto or in the AG.

Overall what I'm trying to say is that even if a charachter gets his/her original character back they still need to be significant or do something entertaining.

 

[DatsRight]

For instant problem creation, why it must be TR interruption? Is the CotD unable to create problems that must be solved immediately within one episode? There were so many nasty hostile CotD/PotD that were giving problems to the friendly CotD/PotD or Ash themselves, I think those are already enough to make the day, why there then need the extra bonus TR? Within these self-contained daily problems, the TR interruption were 90% of the time didn't help anything nor adding any extra weight, but only eating screen time.

The thing is so very often, the nasty hostile CotD/PotD doesn't actually undergo proper plot/character development against the twerps, they just suffer a TR invasion so the two have a common enemy and suddenly the nasty hostile CotD/PotD is their friend at the end of the episode. It's done this since the OS (eg. the prima donna Wigglytuff in Lights Camera Quaction). I don't consider this the writer being hindered by TR, especially since it happened in MANY MANY episodes after the 'TR every episode' mandate was abolished, but them simply using TR as a short cut plot device, because this formula is easier than legitimate character development and a more complicated plot with the twerps making the CotD see the error of their ways. Goodra's arc was a blatant example of this, they practically shoehorned TR into there with no buildup so they could cop-out on the difficult war against the grey motivated Pokemon led by Florges. They clearly couldn't think up a better resolution.

I think a problem here is that TR are considered part of the old formula, and I think by the end of DP, the writers were sick of it. Most of the filler for XY in particular was very by the numbers, even disregarding TR's role, you could tell they had lost passion for writing the classic Pokemon format. The reason SM doesn't use TR as much is because they don't NEED them, they're making use of a fresher formula and not needing plot devices and short cuts as often to ease the monotony of doing the same plot over and over (they still pop up as plot devices from time to time however, usually for stuff they're clearly having difficulty expanding on, eg. Mallow's limelight).

 

[Leonhart]

While I'll admit that the Rocket-dan have a bad habit of being predictable, I don't consider that to be their biggest flaw. Even with their never-ending obsession of stealing Satoshi's Pikachu, I feel that their methodology has lasted the test of time since no matter how much they've failed, they've proven to be the anime's most popular villains. So why fix what isn't broken?

 

[DatsRight]

While I'll admit that the Rocket-dan have a bad habit of being predictable, I don't consider that to be their biggest flaw. Even with their never-ending obsession of stealing Satoshi's Pikachu, I feel that their methodology has lasted the test of time since no matter how much they've failed, they've proven to be the anime's most popular villains. So why fix what isn't broken?

Their shtick in concept isn't bad. After all Elmer still chases Bugs, Bowser still chases Peach, etc, etc, etc. I think the problem stems more from the writers sparsely trying to make that formula entertaining anymore compared to other examples. I think that's why so many like TR but don't want them stealing Pikachu or battling the twerps anymore, because that has ironically ended up the most boring element of their characters.

Again the OS at least tried to make funny or non-repetitive examples of the formula, with the TR face-offs often feeling more character than formula-driven. It started to dumb down by Johto and Hoenn but we still had odd funny or tense face-offs like The Stolen Stones or Do I Hear A Ralts where it didn't feel like either side had been brain damaged (not to mention that friendly rivalry type element still reoccurring every now and then). Late BW had some return to classic days with more creative faceoffs but it quickly faded throughout XY. Now it's so mechanical you can predict every single quote and direction from the two sides, ironically despite most of the series now otherwise being character-driven.

 

[AdvancedGenGenesect]

I also want to mention that the voice actor of James (in the english dub) currently is so bad that he even went and trolled people on Bulbapedia that he'd do a better job at James voice even though he sucks really badly.