Should the original Pokemon had a major Team Rocket story?

[zoombie]

In another thread, we discuessed the difference in how Team Aqua / Team Magna was used in Advanced Generation, compared to Team Galactic in Diamond and Pearl.

Well I am thinking, the original Pokemon series didn't have that type of over laping story with its generation's video game villain Team Rocket. Outside of Giovanni setting up the plot for the first movie, Giovanni and the real Team Rocket didn't do anything. They should have had him actully plan something, and at some point Ash and crew have to encounter him.

I don't know how they would have concluded, but probably a lot of the top members of Team Rocket go to jail, but Giovanni gets away, but Team Rocket is in ruins. So he hides out to rebuild his empire, and tells his team members that are still free, to go where ever they fell like going and work indepently why he rebuilds. For Jessie, James, and Meowth that would be continuing to track and try to capture Pikachu. For Butch and Cassidy that would mean working with Professor Nanba, and following his direct orders.

[SamTheGreek]

To give Team Rocket their own story is to destroy the essence that is Team Rocket.

Team Rocket has no story.
Team Rocket has no past.
Team Rocket has no present.
Team Rocket has no future.

Team Rocket simply is.

[Terra Branford]

It's too bad that Kanto focused on comedy more than the battling aspect early on. It certainly would've made Kanto lot more action oriented than it originally was and possibly kept the fad going on in other countries. I guess it shows the improvments in the writers as time went on when they concentrated on the action aspect.

[Daxdiv]

I thought Team Rocket game wise was bad ass. I mean they did the following things:



Ran an underground base that was basically looked like a casino.
Killed a Pokemon and angered it spirit.
Held a majority of Saffron City hostage, with Silph Co. being a major part of their plan.
Sold Pokemon on the black market and as prizes. They even went as far as to sell certain parts of them as food items.
Were practically so secretive with their plans the police couldn't even touch them.



They're basically the Pokemon Mafia, there is some ground with it, but the first season was mostly about Ash's story. But if they did follow the game's plot in Kanto, you would have Jessie, James and Meowth around now would you, that and we would have a plot in Johto where everyone in TR tries to find Giovanni.

[NewcomerDC]

To give Team Rocket their own story is to destroy the essence that is Team Rocket.
That's why a remake or a new Pokemon anime would make TR more menacing than they ever were in the previous series that's still running on TV now.

But if they did follow the game's plot in Kanto, you would have Jessie, James and Meowth around now would you....
I think you meant that had the anime focused on how Team Rocket operated in the games, we wouldn't have had the "losers" that we all know and love.

[SamTheGreek]

That's why a remake or a new Pokemon anime would make TR more menacing than they ever were in the previous series that's still running on TV now.

Remake?
How can one remake perfection?
Do you not know what Pokemon is REALLY about?

Pokemon is about power.
One must obtain all of the power, and that One is Ash Ketchum.
Ash is the One.
The One must catch the All.
The All will bow before His might.

Lo, the One approaches, and He casts His mighty Pokeball.
His is the Pokeball that will capture the All.
And the people will tremble at this sight.
And the people will ask themselves, "How could this One capture the All?"
And the One will speak unto them and say, "Nay! I have not captured the All, for I AM the All!"
And the people will come to see this is true.
And they will believe.

[NewcomerDC]

Remake?
How can one remake perfection?
Do you not know what Pokemon is REALLY about?

Pokemon is about power.
One must obtain all of the power, and that One is Ash Ketchum.
Ash is the One.
The One must catch the All.
The All will bow before His might.

Lo, the One approaches, and He casts His mighty Pokeball.
His is the Pokeball that will capture the All.
And the people will tremble at this sight.
And the people will ask themselves, "How could this One capture the All?"
And the One will speak unto them and say, "Nay! I have not captured the All, for I AM the All!"
And the people will come to see this is true.
And they will believe.
And yet three clowns can't catch one high-level electric mouse, the lead makes some dumb decisions in battling and hasn't caught a new Pokemon since Gligar, Brock's sitting on the sidelines being a Pokemon battle referree or a flirt, and Dawn just being another Pokemon coordinator who I'm still angry that her first Pokemon is just another Bulbasaur with it not wanting to evolve like the other two Sinnoh starters on Ash's team.

Yeah, even with my complaints and many others about how the current series is doing in terms of storytelling and great/bland main, central, and side characters, maybe a new Pokemon anime wouldn't hurt. I mean no one complained about the remakes of anime we have now so besides it being another moneymaker, why is a new Pokemon series so risky?

Sorry to go off-topic for a bit but if Ash is this "big" hero, then how come he hasn't been famous, let alone, popular to other Pokemon trainers in the series by now?

[Rolling Cloud]

Pokemon is about power.
One must obtain all of the power, and that One is Ash Ketchum.
Ash is the One.
The One must catch the All.
The All will bow before His might.

Except, pokemon's original message wasn't about 'catching every pokemon,' merely 'getting pokemon'. =P

[SamTheGreek]

Sorry to go off-topic for a bit but if Ash is this "big" hero, then how come he hasn't been famous, let alone, popular to other Pokemon trainers in the series by now?

His fame will grow slowly and steadily.
And as the people will come to believe, the other Pokemon trainers shall hear of his fame.
And they shall be afraid.
And they shall conspire.
And they shall spread lies.

They shall accuse him of being a trickster.
But they shall fail, for His miraculous wonders shall stand testimony to the truth.
They shall accuse him of being a lecherous drunk, who travels with loose women and despicable men.
But they shall fail, for the people will not judge, but see the goodness in His heart and praise the power of his friendship.

But one day, the day of the final PokeSacrifice shall come.
He shall have dinner with his PokeDisciples, and He will speak unto them.
He will say, "I tell you all truly. One of you will betray me this very night."
And though they deny it on their lips, in their hearts they know it to be true.
And it shall come to pass.

And the devious, conspiring Pokemon trainers will come for him.
And they shall take him before the judges.
They shall say, "Here he is! The blasphemer who claims to be the only son of Pokemon Evolution. Such blasphemy!"

And He will not deny it, for it is the truth.
And they, the non-believing judges, shall mistake it for blasphemy.
And they shall put him in chains.
And they shall take him before the governor...

[KPTitan]

I was gonna point out the Mewtwo Returns special, the Lugia three-parter, Red Gyarados two-parter, and the Legend of Thunder episodes, but now I see what you guys are reffering to, like a finale for them.

[NewcomerDC]

I was gonna point out the Mewtwo Returns special, the Lugia three-parter, Red Gyarados two-parter, and the Legend of Thunder episodes, but now I see what you guys are reffering to, like a finale for them.
Plus Jessie, James, and Meowth needs to figure out what to do with their lives. I mean can you imagine them 65 years old with Meowth as a skeleton still trying to catch Pikachu?

[Rolling Cloud]

Plus Jessie, James, and Meowth needs to figure out what to do with their lives. I mean can you imagine them 65 years old with Meowth as a skeleton still trying to catch Pikachu?

They have other goals set in place, already. Musashi wants to become a top coordinator, Kojiro would probably be happy staying with her and Nyasu just wants to be the boss' favorite pokemon.

Sure all together, they want to get famous, spread Rocket gang's name and live good but, they have other stuff to fall back on if they get stuck.

[Light Lucario]

They have other goals set in place, already. Musashi wants to become a top coordinator, Kojiro would probably be happy staying with her and Nyasu just wants to be the boss' favorite pokemon.

Sure all together, they want to get famous, spread Rocket gang's name and live good but, they have other stuff to fall back on if they get stuck.

I agree. Even though they still want to catch Pikachu and other rare Pokemon for Givoanni, Jessie, James and Meowth have desires and goals besides being in Team Rocket. In a way, I feel like they're still in Team Rocket since they feel quite content with it and don't feel the need to break away from the orgainzation.

While it might have been cool to see some of the Team Rocket storyline in the first season, especially the whole Silph Co. part in the game, I don't think that would have worked for the tone of the first season. It was fairly light for the most part and some of the stuff Team Rocket did in the games was pretty dark. Besides that, Jessie, James and Meowth work well as comedy villains and I wouldn't want the writers to have done the same thing with all of the other regions' teams by having three members follow Ash around the region until the team dissolved.

[Mad Mod 49]

It's too bad that Kanto focused on comedy more than the battling aspect early on. It certainly would've made Kanto lot more action oriented than it originally was and possibly kept the fad going on in other countries. I guess it shows the improvments in the writers as time went on when they concentrated on the action aspect.


So everything that followed Kanto which was more action/battle focused but with far less story and originality showed that the writers improved? :confused: If anything, battle direction and animation improved. Good writing isn't really required to make good battle scenes.

[Fool's Gil]

I don't think Team Rocket needed a major story, Pokemon as a whole just needed more antagonists, less screentime with the trio, and any time they did show up, it was for something more than Pikachu.

[RonDrakenfan17]

Meh I got used to what they've been doing now, trying to catch that darn Pikachu LOL.

[Jacob T. Paschal]

A great and huge story could have been done in Saffron City, however the writers dropped the ball.

At least Adventures/Special didn't screw it up.

[J. B. Warner]

I don't know for certain why they didn't make the Rocket-dan more prominent in the first year, but it seems that's the main reason why people have such a negative opinion of the Rocket-dan in general these days. Everywhere you look, you see people complaining that Musashi and Kojirou should either turn into serious villains or get the heck off the show.

But these people keep forgetting that "Pokémon" is primarily a comedy adventure series. They'll do the occasional dramatic arc, but that's not what they want for the series as a whole. It's a fun little adventure spree designed to show off various aspects of the video games, which is where the real adventure takes place.

And you know, the Rocket-dan's goal is extremely vague. They say they want to steal Pokémon and use them for evil, but what exactly does that mean? How would that translate into a multiple-episode story arc? Even in the video games, you never really find out what they're up to. There is the whole Myuutwo thing, of course, but they made a movie out of that, and they only lightly touched on the Rocket-dan's involvement in the project, 'cause Myuutwo himself proved to be a more interesting character (in the Japanese version, anyway, but let's not open that can of worms).

The Pokémon Special manga did make the Rocket-dan out to be much more sprawling and sinister, but they approached the entire Pokémon world differently than the anime did. Three of the Kanto Gym Leaders were revealed to be Rocket-dan commanders, and Musashi and Kojirou weren't used at all, in an effort to make the organization look more competent and serious. But again, that flies in the face of the anime's depiction of Pokémon in general - funny and adventurous vs. dramatic and mysterious.

Ultimately, I have no problems with what the anime did with the Rocket-dan. Musashi, Kojirou, and Nyasu are my personal favorite characters on the show, and I'd much rather see them play off of each other for laughs. I highly doubt I'd enjoy the show as much if they were the stereotypical sinister villains everyone else wants them to be.

[sdp]

Well they probably wanted a villain to be prominent in each episode so they created J&Jw/M. After that they did kind of set up the organization as being more of a threat.

Since the show was obviously going to last a long time and before the next game came out they opted to not fully integrate the TR storyline since if they played it like the game Ash would have defeated TR when he got his 8th badge and J&J would have no purpose. So yeah the main reason was they needed villains after the show finished adapting the game and without TR they couldn'/t have J&Jm which are basically main characters.


And mostly because of that they will never be resolved.

TA/TM and TG are obviously a one game deal so they don't care they also aren't main characters.


Thats at least why I assume they never made a major TR storyline.

[Fool's Gil]

I don't know for certain why they didn't make the Rocket-dan more prominent in the first year, but it seems that's the main reason why people have such a negative opinion of the Rocket-dan in general these days. Everywhere you look, you see people complaining that Musashi and Kojirou should either turn into serious villains or get the heck off the show.

But these people keep forgetting that "Pokémon" is primarily a comedy adventure series. They'll do the occasional dramatic arc, but that's not what they want for the series as a whole.

I think the need for more serious Team Rocket characters is because for a long, long time, they did nothing that mattered and became if anything self parody. All in all, alot of people believe there should be some change. Like for me, I just want actual pokemon battles, not Pikachu using thunder on some mechanised giant Pokemon, followed by an explosion. I'm sure alot of people don't mind it's a comedy series, but the formula's stale imho.


It's a fun little adventure spree designed to show off various aspects of the video games, which is where the real adventure takes place.

You know, I actually read this from an interview, that the guy in charge of it all doesn't feel a need to change the series because of this reason. Thing is though, Pokemon is huge, and throwing old fans a bone I doubt would turn off the newer generations from the empire that is.


The Pokémon Special manga did make the Rocket-dan out to be much more sprawling and sinister, but they approached the entire Pokémon world differently than the anime did. Three of the Kanto Gym Leaders were revealed to be Rocket-dan commanders, and Musashi and Kojirou weren't used at all, in an effort to make the organization look more competent and serious. But again, that flies in the face of the anime's depiction of Pokémon in general - funny and adventurous vs. dramatic and mysterious.

I enjoyed Pokemon Special, but alot of the changes turned me off to it.


Ultimately, I have no problems with what the anime did with the Rocket-dan. Musashi, Kojirou, and Nyasu are my personal favorite characters on the show, and I'd much rather see them play off of each other for laughs. I highly doubt I'd enjoy the show as much if they were the stereotypical sinister villains everyone else wants them to be.

All in all, everyone just want to see the series grow as they did. Maybe they should make a new series for that reason.

[PC!]

Team Rocket becomes more and more of a joke every year. I really wish the writers would find some way to bring in some Team Rocket grunts, at the very least. Considering Team Rocket doesn't have a base in Sinnoh, it'd be a shame for everyone who encounters Jessie James and Meowth to think that the entire organization is full of singing, dancing buffoons like them. C'mon, Giovanni, strike the fear of God into Sinnoh's heart.

[J. B. Warner]

Team Rocket becomes more and more of a joke every year. I really wish the writers would find some way to bring in some Team Rocket grunts, at the very least. Considering Team Rocket doesn't have a base in Sinnoh, it'd be a shame for everyone who encounters Jessie James and Meowth to think that the entire organization is full of singing, dancing buffoons like them. C'mon, Giovanni, strike the fear of God into Sinnoh's heart.

I don't think Sakaki really cares about Shinou. I suspect he just sends Musashi and Kojirou off to these other regions just to get them out of his hair for another year. (Wouldn't you?)

[thedanmachine]

I personally would like to see Team Rocket catch Pikachu for maybe an episode or two and try to get in contact with the boss only to figure out that they can't. They discover that Team Rocket has either A. moved on and dropped them as members or B. disbanded completely, leaving Jessie and James to have been fighting for nothing.

[Mad Mod 49]

It's a fun little adventure spree designed to show off various aspects of the video games, which is where the real adventure takes place.

Only...the adventures are no fun anymore. :p

And I'd rather have a story based on the games than a commercial for them. Especially one that doesn't do the games justice at all.


And you know, the Rocket-dan's goal is extremely vague. They say they want to steal Pokémon and use them for evil, but what exactly does that mean? How would that translate into a multiple-episode story arc? Even in the video games, you never really find out what they're up to.

They want to use pokemon to make money and control the world. I thought that was obvious. :sweat:


The Pokémon Special manga did make the Rocket-dan out to be much more sprawling and sinister, but they approached the entire Pokémon world differently than the anime did.

Yeah, they made the Pokemon world more faithful to the games depiction. Which is why it's awesome! :cool:


Ultimately, I have no problems with what the anime did with the Rocket-dan. Musashi, Kojirou, and Nyasu are my personal favorite characters on the show, and I'd much rather see them play off of each other for laughs. I highly doubt I'd enjoy the show as much if they were the stereotypical sinister villains everyone else wants them to be.

Why are you calling them by their Japanese names all of a sudden? Especially "Rocket-dan"; it's meant to be either "Team Rocket" or "Rocket Gang." You shouldn't translate things so literally.

And many people don't want them to be stereotypical sinister villains. I'd rather they stay funny while still being actual villains who provide actual conflict to the show, rather than the annoyances that nobody takes the least bit seriously that they are today.


I enjoyed Pokemon Special, but alot of the changes turned me off to it.

Hmm? Like what? :confused:

[Fool's Gil]

Hmm? Like what? :confused:

A good amount of the Gym Leaders being evil. The lethal force on the pokemon, and sometimes the trainers themselves. Those sort of things.

[Mad Mod 49]

A good amount of the Gym Leaders being evil. The lethal force on the pokemon, and sometimes the trainers themselves. Those sort of things.

Aside from Giovanni, of course, the only evil Gym Leaders were Lt Surge, Sabrina, Koga, and Pryce. (And the Elite Four if they count.) Nearly all of them reformed in some way or another, so it didn't really bother me. I even thought that making them evil at first was a great way of giving them more prominence as characters, as opposed to the standard bosses that they are in the games and the one-shot punching bags for Ash that they are in the anime.

And as for the trainers...are you refering to Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald? They're the only ones that really bothered me.

[Fool's Gil]

And as for the trainers...are you refering to Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald? They're the only ones that really bothered me.

Posted that wrong. I meant the Pokemon would attack trainers with lethal force at times.

[Jacob T. Paschal]

Posted that wrong. I meant the Pokemon would attack trainers with lethal force at times.

Well, in a war with Pokémon that makes the most sense.

Besides, it's more exciting that way!