Games - Team Rocket

Home > Listing Index > Games > Team Rocket

	Games - Team Rocket

Team Rocket (ロケット団 Roketto Dan in Japanese) is an evil organization bent on world domination in the fictional world of Pokémon, which steals and exploits Pokémon for profit. It is headed by a man named Giovanni.

In the animated series, the term Team Rocket is used to refer to the three most-frequently-appearing members: Jessie¹ (Musashi), James (Kojirō), and Meowth (Nyaasu). Jessie and James's names are a parody of the infamous outlaw Jesse James, and the same applies for their rivals, Butch and Cassidy (Butch Cassidy).

Kojirō and Musashi are voiced by Shinichirou Miki and Megumi Hayashibara in the Japanese version of the Pokémon anime with Inuko Inuyama voicing Nyaasu. While Hayashibara was pregnant with child and after her birth, needing time off to take care of her child, Akiko Hiramatsu replaced her for an eight episode arc in the Hoenn (Advanced Generation) series. In the English version, Ted Lewis (in their first eleven episode appearances) and Eric Stuart do the voice of James while Rachael Lillis voices Jessie and Madeleine Blaustein (who has been mistakenly credited as Adam Blaustein) voices Meowth. Jessie, James, and Meowth also appear in the Pokémon manga series (Dengeki Pikachu/Electric Tale of Pikachu) and the Ash & Pikachu
manga.

In almost all the episodes of the animated series in which they appear, the trio attempts to steal Ash Ketchum's Pikachu or a Pokémon introduced in the episode. To do so, they employ various machines and contraptions, often including rubber or otherwise shock-proof equipment to protect themselves from Pikachu's shocks. They also have a hot air balloon that resembles a Meowth and a submarine that resembles a Magikarp or a Gyarados in older episodes. Each attempt ends in failure, either through the actions of Ash and his friends (whom the trio refer to as "the twerps"), the Pokémon introduced in the episode, or their own incompetence (often manifesting in the form of mechanical failure of their devices), or a combination of the above. They are often flung into the air as well, usually with a cry of "Team Rocket's blasting off again!", although in one episode they get blasted before they even sing their theme song and reply "We're not supposed to blast off yet!". As a result, the trio has fallen out of favor with Giovanni, and is usually strapped for cash, working other jobs to raise the money to buy such devices. There are, however, a few episodes where Team Rocket is the protagonist, while the main characters are relegated to secondary roles. In many of these episodes, Team Rocket is portrayed in a more favorable light. The pejorative "twerp" is an English translation of the Japanese word jari, which, roughly translated, means "ill-mannered," "brat," or "rude person."

The trio is characterized by their dogged determination to succeed, and complete incompetence at any task they attempt. More opportunistic antagonists than real villains, even their attempts at legitimate work are usually disasters. The trio also have a penchant for using amusingly bad puns during conversations.

The nature of the villainous trio (a strong willed, confident woman, and two loyal though not generally bright henchmen who tend to strike overly dramatic poses) is a common staple in anime, although due to the popularity of Pokémon in the US, Team Rocket is sometimes applied as an affectionate nickname by fans to any such group in a series (E.g. Grandis, Sanson, Hanson in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water; or Leblanc, Ormi, and Logos in Final Fantasy X-2).

In the Pokémon films, Team Rocket often acts as the comic relief, and on occasion, aids the main characters in times of need. In later movies, their roles were diminished bit by bit, often being characters that just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although, they are almost always the characters with the film's last lines.

The trio

Jessie and James wear white uniforms, while most other Team Rocket members wear black uniforms, extending the fact that they become (semi)good characters in the later Pokémon seasons. While they are still of the grunt status (they were demoted to grunt status during a Johto episode), they designed their own uniforms. The white tone is perhaps alluding that they, unlike the rest of the Team Rocket organization, are not truly bad people. Their goal in the Pokémon series is to capture and present Ash's Pikachu to their boss. Jessie and James are presented as masters of disguise, and even when their costumes are very unconvincing to the viewers (which becomes increasingly common over the course of the series), they always fool the other characters. The only exception is when Jessie disguised herself as Nurse Joy, and Brock, who is obsessed with the Joy family, was able to "sense" that she was not really a Joy.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Team Rocket ]

Searches on eBay

team rocket

Games - Team Rocket

The trio

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay