User:Modikisha/Team Rocket (anime)

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If you were looking for the group consisting of Jessie, James, and Meowth, see Team Rocket trio.

Team Rocket
ロケット団 Rocket-dan
Rocket-logo.png
Domino and Giovanni.png
Domino and Giovanni alongside with Team Rocket Grunts
Leader Giovanni
Region Kanto, Johto, Sinnoh, Unova and Alola
Admins Unknown
Major targets Lake of Rage, Dreamyard, Battle Subway, Milos Island, Twist Mountain, Abyssal Ruins
Base locations Team Rocket HQ
Anime debut Pokémon Emergency!

Team Rocket (Japanese: ロケット Rocket-dan, literally Rocket Gang) is a recurring villainous team in pursuit of evil and the exploitation of Pokémon. They are based in the Kanto and Johto regions.

In the anime

 
Team Rocket as seen in Pokémon the Series: Black & White
 
The new Team Rocket logo in the anime

Infrastructure

In the anime, Team Rocket is based in Kanto, much like the games, with many smaller branches across Kanto and Johto. Like in the games, Giovanni was the Gym Leader of Viridian City's Pokémon Gym during Ash's journey through the region; however, he was later revealed to have abandoned his duties.

An underground school for aspiring Team Rocket operatives is present somewhere in the region, while the organization's headquarters were formerly near Pallet Town. The headquarters was relocated sometime during Ash's journey in Johto or Hoenn to a large building in a canyon following damages it sustained due to Mewtwo's anger at being controlled.

For the original series, Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire, and Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl, the Team Rocket insignia from the games was used. However, in Pokémon the Series: Black & White, a new, anime-exclusive 3D logo was introduced, being retained for most Team Rocket material well into Pokémon the Series: XY. A variation of this logo with a circular symbol behind the insignia was introduced in An Explosive Operation!, subsequently being utilized in Giovanni's office. Since Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon, the logo is flat. It has two variations, one with a circle behind it for Giovanni's office, and a red one that is used on the trio's balloon. The older logo is also used. This continues into Pokémon Journeys: The Series, where multiple variants of the logo are used at different times.

Members

Team Rocket trio

Main article: Team Rocket trio
 
Jessie, James and Meowth

A trio of Team Rocket field agents, Jessie, James, and a talking Meowth, were defeated on an assignment to steal Pokémon from Viridian City's Pokémon Center by rookie Trainer Ash Ketchum and his Pikachu, and since then have followed him everywhere on his journey in order to steal the Pikachu that humiliated them. After following him through Kanto, the Orange Islands, and Johto, coming in contact with many other Team Rocket members along the way and being shown as incompetent compared to said members, the trio followed Ash to the Hoenn region under directions from Giovanni to establish a branch of Team Rocket there (though this was really only a ploy to get them out of his hair). When Ash returned from Hoenn after competing in its regional League Conference, the trio returned to Kanto as well, empty-handed. After following him through Kanto once again, Giovanni assigned the trio to the Sinnoh region, again with the directive to establish a Team Rocket branch there.

 
Team Rocket in their black uniforms as seen from In The Shadow of Zekrom! through A Venipede Stampede!

Giovanni claimed before to not even recognize the three agents. Meowth often fantasizes about pleasing Giovanni with Pokémon captured using one of the trio's many harebrained schemes and mechas, at which point he would then replace Giovanni's Persian as "top cat", however this is hindered by both the fact that Ash and his friends defeat the trio each time, and formerly Giovanni's low opinion of the three as well, who have managed to eat up much of Team Rocket's funding with their failures.

While Giovanni viewed the trio as "bumbling idiots who can't do anything right", they have occasionally shown that they can do things right, if only by working on the side of Ash and his friends. It should be noted that when other Team Rocket members have come into contact with Ash or any of his friends they've been often just as easily foiled as these three.

The trio has often been shown as poor or having little money. This may be due to the amount of machinery and costumes they use in their attempts to capture Ash's Pikachu. They often take on side-jobs like selling food at stadiums or creating fake items and selling them to the public. Several episodes after the series began, they notably started speaking in rhymes from time to time.

 
Team Rocket's Headquarters as seen in Pokémon the Series: Black & White

In Pokémon the Series: Black & White, the trio stopped being the anime's comedic relief, accomplishing several missions assigned to them and also receiving new uniforms. They have also become more of a threat to Ash and his friends. Multiple agents were also situated in Unova, who passed on information and orders to Jessie, James, and Meowth. Giovanni himself has also been featured much more prominently, regularly assigning the trio missions and passing on information. Eventually returning to their old costumes, but retaining their serious tone and weaponry, they acted under Dr. Zager to accomplish further missions.

Giovanni later returned to lead the trio in one last mission, Operation Tempest, in Meloetta and the Undersea Temple! and Unova's Survival Crisis!. Following its failure, Giovanni retreated with the trio to Kanto, but the trio later returned in New Places, Familiar Faces!. At first returning to their original goal of capturing Pikachu, they later came into conflict with Team Plasma and eventually aided Ash and Looker in defeating Ghetsis.

The trio returned fully to their previous role as comic relief in the Decolora Adventure! arc, roles they continued to retain during Pokémon the Series: XY and Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon, but they still had advanced technology until the end of XY. Jessie's Wobbuffet rejoined them in The Dream Continues!, at the end of the Decolora Adventure! arc, and accompanied them to Kalos in XY and Alola in Sun & Moon as an effective fourth member of the group to steal rare Pokémon from those regions. Despite once again being comic relief, Jessie and James seem to have become much better at battling, immediately posing a challenge to Ash and his friends several times. Giovanni also continued to support them; he no longer admonished them for their failures and relied on them to accomplish Team Rocket's work in Kalos and Alola. However, Team Rocket had no presence in Kalos and Alola other than Jessie, James, Meowth, and Wobbuffet. Starting in First Catch in Alola, Ketchum-Style!, they have lived in a Bewear's den on Alola's Melemele Island. In A Seasoned Search!, they finished building a secret Team Rocket base inside the den.

In Pokémon Journeys: The Series, the trio operate out of a base hidden underground in Vermilion City and travel to different parts of the world searching for new Pokémon to steal. They are now equipped with new tools, most notably a Rotom Phone and the Rocket Prize Master, a capsule toy machine that provides them with Pokémon from Team Rocket's stock. As a result of this, they no longer use Pokémon of their own, although they have forged interactions with some of the Pokémon contained in the Rocket Prize Master.

Other members

Many other members of Team Rocket have appeared besides the aforementioned boss and the trio, most of them are field agents as well. In addition, at least in the dub, one of these members, Domino, implies that Team Rocket had agents in even the most innoculous places such as a university. A recurring duo who are rivals with Jessie and James, Cassidy and Butch, show up from time to time. This pair reports to Dr. Namba, rather than Giovanni directly. As revealed in JN095, however, Cassidy and Butch have since left Team Rocket and gone their separate ways.

Attila and Hun, operatives from Team Rocket's Johto branch, were featured as antagonists in The Legend of Thunder!, where they played the same role as Jessie and James do to Jimmy, Marina, and Vincent. Other Johto operatives include Tyson, who was in charge of the Lake of Rage experimentation; Domino, an elite Team Rocket member that was part of a mission to recapture Mewtwo; the Iron-Masked Marauder, a high-ranking agent who managed to capture a Celebi in one of his Dark Balls; and Professor Sebastian, a high-ranking Team Rocket scientist involved in both Attila and Hun's and Tyson's plots.

Jessie's mother, Miyamoto, was at one time a Team Rocket member under Giovanni's mother. However, she disappeared without a trace on an expedition to find and capture Mew.

Matori, Giovanni's secretary, first appeared in the final episode of Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl. She appeared on occasion throughout Pokémon the Series: Black & White and Pokémon the Series: XY to debrief Jessie, James, and Meowth. Her role was expanded in Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon, becoming a sort of rival figure to Jessie, recruiting an Alolan Meowth to her cause, and leading a special unit of Team Rocket known as the Matori Matrix, which consists of other grunts such as Gozu. In Pokémon Journeys: The Series', the Matori Matrix has been shown operating and targeting areas in Sinnoh. In A Little Rocket R & R!, the Resort Area was targeted to steal Pokémon from trainers on vacation. Later on in Nightfall? Nightmares!, the Matori Matrix attacked Cresselia on Fullmoon Island.

Pierce and Dr. Zager are two high-ranking members of the organization introduced to assist Jessie and James with their missions in Unova. Dr. Zager currently has a relationship to Jessie and James similar to that of Dr. Namba in relation to Butch and Cassidy, directly coordinating their missions and providing machinery. Among his creations were an energy cannon using the power of Roggenrola and the "Ghost Train".

Team Rocket has attempted to do many major and potentially globally-altering operations, including cloning DNA of Mew and altering it to create Mewtwo. This stemmed out of a desire of Giovanni to appease his mother's obsession with Mew, although he ultimately desired Mewtwo for use as a weapon. When Mewtwo finally finished developing, he deceived Mewtwo into working for him, using him in Gym Battles against such Trainers as Gary Oak (who suffered his first of only four losses in the anime to date). Team Rocket also attempted to capture and control a Lugia and Celebi, and it also created a device that could force Pokémon to evolve. It also successfully managed to capture a Rayquaza, although it is never revealed whether they maintained control of it or if it managed to escape.

They have various means of transportation, such as boats, submarines, and helicopters.

In the manga

Pokémon Pocket Monsters

  This section is incomplete.
Please feel free to edit this section to add missing information and complete it.

Giovanni is the leader of Team Rocket.

In the TCG

Trivia

  • In the anime Team Rocket has operatives in the Orange Islands and Unova. It is also implied that they had operatives in Hoenn and Sinnoh after their respective villainous teams were disbanded.
  • In the anime, Team Rocket has tried to obtain the most Legendary Pokémon for their own uses (by Jessie and James) out of any other villainous team.
  • Both Jessie and James have befriended or owned a Pokémon whose species are known to frequently work for the good of common people, a Chansey and a Growlithe respectively, with Chansey being known to work as nurses and Growlithe (along with Arcanine) being often used as police dogs. This is unusual, considering Team Rocket's association with crime and illegal activities.
  • Team Rocket's uniforms vaguely resemble bōsōzoku uniforms.

Names

Language Name Origin
Japanese ロケット団 Rocket-dan From rocket
English, Danish, Dutch
French, German, Italian
European Spanish, Swedish
Team Rocket Same as Japanese name
Korean 로켓단 Rocket-dan Same as Japanese name
Chinese (Mandarin) 火箭隊 / 火箭队 Huǒjiàn Duì * From 火箭 huǒjiàn, rocket
火箭團 / 火箭团 Huǒjiàn Tuán *
Chinese (Cantonese) 火箭隊 Fójin Déui * From 火箭 fójin, rocket
火箭兵團 Fójin Bīngtyùhn *
Arabic عصابة الرداء الأبيض isabat Ar-Redda Al-Abiadh Literally "The white robe gang"
Bulgarian Тим Ракета Tim Raketa*
Екип Ракета Ekip Raketa*
Отряда Рокет Otryada Roket*
From English name
Croatian Tim Raketa From English name
Czech Rakeťáci
Tým Raket
From English name
Finnish Rakettiryhmä From English name
Greek Ομάδα Πύραυλος Omáda Píravlos From English name
Hebrew צוות רוקט Tsevet Rocket From English name
Hungarian Rakéta Csapat From English name
Icelandic Eldflaugarliðið Literally "The fire flying forces"
Indonesian Tim Roket From English name
Norwegian Team Rocket
Team Rockets*
Same as English name
Similar to English name
Polish Zespół R
Drużyna R*
Brygada R*
Grupa Rakietowców*
Literally "Team R"
Literally "Group Rocket"
Brazilian Portuguese Equipe Rocket From English name
European Portuguese Equipa Rocket*
Team Rocket*
From English name
Same as English name
Romanian Echipa Rachetă From English name
Russian Команда Ракета Komanda Raketa*
Команда Р Komanda R*
Команда Рокета Komanda Roketa*
From English name
From Polish name
From English name (misspelled)
Serbian Tim Raketa From English name
Latin American Spanish Equipo Rocket From English name
Thai แก๊งค์ร็อกเก็ต Gang Rocket Same as Japanese name
Turkish Roket Takımı From English name
Ukrainian Команда Р Komanda R Same as Russian name
Vietnamese Nhóm Rocket*
Băng Hỏa Tiễn*
Same as Japanese name
Transliteration of Japanese name

Related articles

References