A few weeks ago, we looked at the villains from the mainline games, so it is only natural to take a hard look at the evildoers and ne’er-do-wells from the animation side of the franchise.
Now, there’s one ground rule here and I think you’ll it acceptable:
This is ONLY anime-only villains. We will not be looking at anime versions of the game villains. I’ll certainly mention them in relevant cases, but analyzing anime version of games characters isn’t what this post is about, just what characters they created as villains for the anime. Don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely some fairly iconic versions of game villains from the anime. We can’t forget the beauty that is Giovanni’s ugly orange suit.
I actually wish that was a joke, but if you look again at the top image you’ll see that orange suits were a recurring trend in the anime. Ash even wore one once.
From our favorite failure trio, to the cruel hunters, to the fun psychos, there’s so many memorable villains that they make the forgettable villains even more forgettable. We’ll talk about prominent anime villains, the movie villains, and the villains from both TV movies. There’s almost a thousand episodes and over twenty films, so while we can’t get to everyone, we’ll certainly still talk a lot about who we have time for.
And of course, there is a Patreon to help keep this blog chugging! While you certainly don’t need to pledge, anything helps and is certainly appreciated! Now, on to the evils with Pokémon animation!
- Blasting Off Forever -
The team that not only was a lot of people’s favorite childhood villains, let’s be real here, they were very likely a lot of people’s first childhood crushes! The level of popularity Jessie, James, Meowth and even late comer Wobbuffet is something even other popular mainstream works can be jealous of. I have no clue about just how popular the show remains in it’s native Japan, but it’s still so popular over here that it’s jumped from Warner, to Disney, to Netflix in terms of who gets to boost their ratings by airing it. And a large part of that charm over here is the near-definitive evil squad goals set by these four. Despite, you know, how they tend to be incompetent most of the time…..
That’s not to say they haven’t pulled off a heist or gotten away with anything. Longtime fans or those just starting over fresh will note that in their introduction episode they are wanted and even feared criminals. It’s all a matter of character development, the show took off to levels no one expected and it’s hard to have your villains be stale and flat if you do so, and I think something that ended up resonating was how instead of keeping up that threat level, dropping it early on after enough failures, then proceeding to make fun of those failures, made this nice splash of comedy that appealed to even parents who had to watch the show with their children.
It’s a basic rule of comedy that if someone does a bad thing, punishing them thusly is usually funny, so the Team Rocket Trio got stuck in this lovely little mix of both being the recurring series villains yet also as if they were just sitcom jerks, if you will. They wanted to steal Pikachu, and on occasion were more petty than that and just jerks to everyone, or had their sights set on a biggest prize like a rare Pokémon or a treasure. A set-up scaled accordingly to the scale of the episode, and something that made you laugh when they were sent hurdling into the sky.
Of course, with popularity comes sympathy when you are the punching bag. We would later find out James was a rich kid who felt empty in his life and had to flee home after being forced into an arranged marriage with an abusive future spouse, all when he was still only 8 years old or so. Meowth it turns out learned how to speak to get the affections of another Meowth who loved humans and wouldn’t give him the time of day since he was a stray, only for those affections to still be thrown in his face with insults that he was a freak and a loser. Jessie is the odd woman out in that her past is rarely shown and didn’t really get an episode dealing with her past, but we do know that she grew up so poor that snow was considered a delicacy and there’s Japan-only audio plays that reveal her mother was a Team Rocket executive whom was Giovanni’s personal favorite before her disappearance and/or death. It’s a shame 4Kids was never given the chance to dub those, nor the newer dub from The Pokémon Company, as it not only truly expands her character but it explains why Giovanni will never fire the three outside of just rules of the show, his personal connection to the character you could argue is the de facto leader of the three.
With only the power of guessing, these backstories are a mix of the writing team really wanting to add to these characters whom are in every episode after introduction, and the sympathetic angles are all due to the characters already being pitied and loved by the fanbase. I remember being a kid and both finding it funny when they blasted off but also genuinely feeling bad for them when their humanity was showcased.
Speaking of their humanity, there’s an episode very near to my heart that I feel isn’t talk about nearly enough. The episode where we said goodbye to two of the show’s original cast. No, not Misty and Brock. I mean Arbok and Weezing:
I’ll always say that a great yet overlooked season was the start of Advanced. They explained Ash’s continued journey very well, introduced May effectively, added new and lovable Pokémon for all the cast including the Rockets, and gave a goodbye to some characters you really wouldn’t have expected to get one.
Ekans and Koffing were in the very beginning, and yet these days I feel both Meowth and Wobbuffet are the remembered Pokémon of the Rocket cast. In fact, the Pokémon Jessie and James actually use seem to rotate out these days. The anime seems to wait on which Pokémon get either a “cute” and/or “creepy” reaction from their respective games and let the Rockets catch it, but in the early days they always had Ekans whom evolved into Arbok and Koffing whom evolved into Weezing. Lickitung and Victreebell were around too, but Lickitung got traded for Wobbuffet accidently and I hear Victreebell just fell in love and ran away. No Pokémon outside of the big blue blob and the wisecracking cat got respect with the exception of the smog cloud and the purple snake.
In the episode A Poached Ego, the Trio come across a poacher named Rico who specializes in catching poison-type Pokémon. Not only is he stealing several Ekans and Koffing, he threatens the Rockets into giving up their Arbok and Weezing after they refuse. What we end up getting in this episode is one where Ash and the gang are not the protagonists, and one where we see our beloved baddies take a beating to save some wild Pokémon instead of steal them for themselves. Poachers have always been a harsher evil in the series than the typical villains, they’d get even worse later on, and in this outing poacher Rico is a villain who makes the Rockets look much better by comparison and is one of the times they show competence and technically get the chance to win.
It’s an episode near to me as I really never expected to say goodbye to the loyal henchmen, and yet I’m glad I did since I was always into humanization for Jessie, James and Meowth. After Hoenn, the full series no longer followed a full canon as much, which also means this moment is one of the last true impacts for the overall story. James catches Cacnea later in the episode, and Jessie catches Seviper not long after, both those catches managed to have a familiarity while being their own Pokémon.
By this point in my life, I try to watch a few episodes for the newest series but have my full pretty early and call it good. That’s not saying I’m even all that positive of the older episodes barring certain stand-alone episodes, certain arcs, and especially certain movies. What I’m getting at is, I don’t have much to talk about with modern Team Rocket, but I’m also aware by this point they are stuck in the same loop Ash is in, where they are just legacy characters and as such they’ve lost a lot of their deeper characterization due to how the serialization has kicked in from longevity, but do have their moments. I’m ultimately fine with this now, it’s just what happened, but obviously the golden age for Jessie, James and Meowth has passed and I’m still so glad we got what we got. They wanted to steal Pikachu, but I think even they know they just ended up stealing our hearts. Sometimes nasty, constantly funny, and more compassionate and caring the more they got the spotlight. Fans often love writing happy endings for them for a reason.
- The Movie Villains -
Elephant in the room time; there are too many movies with villains to give them all equal time. Ultimately there’s shared types we can discuss, but even then it gets a bit much just because there really is a lot of them. We have redeemable villains, pure evil villains, underdeveloped villains, and weirdly there’s a specific motive many villains end up sharing due to the popularity of the earliest example. If you don’t believe me in that there’s so many, I literally made a collage for every movie character who could be considered a villain:
The best part? I decided to not count animalistic Pokémon or forces of nature that could not be considered villains even when antagonists, so no, THIS IS NOT EVERY ANTAGONIST FROM THE MOVIES, ONLY THE VILLAINS! And yes, some of these characters are in the same movie, but even still, this is why I can’t talk about each one individually. We’ll instead talk about the recurring types of villains, first the least evil, to more evil, then the most evil, and then the overly-specific goal many of them shared. Now, I realize you can’t really tell whom all these characters are, and even if I’d numbered them I don’t think saying their number would really help you see whom is whom, so I’ll give a quick description of their looks.
To start off with the least evil, we have the easy answer of movie villains who sought redemption at their end or even just in the credits epilogue. Just under Mewtwo is a white-haired villain name Zero, which accurately describes how I felt about him during the movie but to be fair does NOT describe his personality. Zero wants to summon Giratina, goes to very brutal lengths to do so, but within the movie a former friend of Zero’s teams up with Ash, Dawn, and Brock to stop his former friend yet very openly wants to patch things up with him. I led with him to start the latter description, as Zero doesn’t do anything seemingly redeemable in the movie but in the credits of the following movie there’s a hint his old friend convinced him to come back to the side of good. The first three Diamond & Pearl movies were canon with each other and led into each other, so using the end credits of the final film to redeem a villain was actually my favorite part of Zero. While it wouldn’t have worked in his actual movie, having the breathing room and also after a darker yet more sympathetic villain in the following movie made Zero seem not beyond hope after all.
Someone who did seem way too beyond hope was red Genesect, leader of the evil Genesect group in the final Best Wishes film and a thoroughly disgusting and just plain badly written character. Red Genesect refused to understand what was going on after waking up in a new world and took it out on innocent people, and genuinely was just as bad to his own lackeys. Yet, we are supposed to believe that seeing the Earth from space was enough to make him turn good, and it’s completely unbelievable. Red Genesect is considered one of the worst villains in the anime’s history and I completely agree. he’s irredeemable and not even interesting before the unbelievable redemption. The movie itself felt pointless and it’s villain no exception.
To round off the redeemed we’ll go with a pair: Butler and Molly. Molly is the little girl at the top and Butler is the purple haired man right under her. Molly loses both of her parents from completely mysterious reasons and Butler is a former Team Magma scientist who was laughed out of the organization. Molly gains a friendship with the Unown and ends up reeking havoc in her town while Butler seeks to create an artificial Groudon. The Unown seem to be acting without specific purpose and thus weren’t included in my villains collage, but fake Groudon drains the life out of everything it sees and seemingly is actively malicious so it was included to the left of Butler. In both these baddies cases, neither truly know the damage they were committing until they nearly won, and both were redeemed through the power of love. Molly is promised by Ash’s mother that she has more people in her life who care about her than she thought, and Butler finally realizes just how much Diana cared about him. They are favorites of mine for almost the exact same reasons, but they are still different characters with different motivations and reasons. Molly is the more sympathetic while Butler genuinely needs to learn his lesson, for starters.
Of course, some movie villains get a bit meaner, and even when having good moments do not receive redemption.
These are the least common, so we’ll only do two. The red-head with a weird hairdo at the bottom left is Markus, and the pirate captain near the middle is Phantom. Markus forsees the ruination of his people and decides to turn against not just his close friends but also Arceus themselves whom is treated like a harvest God or the like, while Phantom is only out for a great jewel but does live by a personal moral code and treats his enemies with some respect and his crew well. Both baddies receive very different ends, Phantom’s muscle-building suit gets broken and he’s arrested by the Pokémon Rangers, while Markus has his platform crumble around him and falls to his death.
Both are villains I like quite a bit. I understood why Markus felt the way he did despite seeing him as needing to be stopped, while Phantom proved to be entertaining and threatening. Markus still believed in protecting his home and people, he was just willing to sacrifice too much and grew ruthless despite not losing sight of his goals. Phantom was only out for the riches but is willing to give Team Rocket a cleaning job without problem, and is visibly sad that he wasn’t the one to hatch Manaphy’s egg. Neither are walking a line as both are clearly evil, but both have moments of humanity which was not always the case for movie villains that didn’t get redemption.
So then, we need to talk about the villains whom had nothing but evil in their hearts. Grings Kodai and The Iron Masked Marauder will do for now, but we do have some more once we leave the realm of movies.
Grings Kodai is the guy on the bottom with the purple hair spun up into what just looks like a beret. The thing about Kodai is that, he’s literally just a ruthless business man. Using the legendary Pokémon Celebi he goes forward into time to see what the best investments and decisions are, so like many men of his ilk, he is taking the easy way out to ensure he and only he is the king of the marketplace and richer than he would ever need to be. No, it’s not a unique motive yet it is a unique way to achieving the motive. What’s next is how using Celebi like that brings instant ruin around the spot, and Kodai already knows this because it happened last time he did it, he brags about how he couldn’t care less that it is likely to turn out the exact same way. He’s also kidnapped another Pokémon and nearly tortures a child Pokémon to death. Kodai is just a cold CEO without anything to stop him and does whatever he wants, which despite the fantasy element of Pokémon running around proves there can be villains who feel close to home. The question is if he works as an antagonist or not. The fanbase is split, some people really love how evil Kodai is and some people think he’s too flat for them. I’m in the middle, I think they went far enough that his evil is threatening and realistic enough to be interesting, but like the rest of the film there is just something that didn’t fully get my interest anyway. He’s still one of the biggest monsters from the films, and he’s earned his spot in the minds of his fans as far as I’m concerned.
Then the other pure evil film character who funnily enough also deserved the power of Celebi, the Iron Masked Marauder whom is pictured in the top right with a goatee, a black Pokeball and of course an Iron Mask covering his face. While Kodai was a character that came really close to intriguing me, Marauder is a villain I found did not work. His plan felt too much like it needed to change randomly for the sake of the plot, his motives never felt completely established. Not only that, but for a character whom the entire cast feared and who is clearly meant to have no altruistic qualities, he never goes so far to be shocking which is a very important aspect for this kind of character. Kodai could believable kill someone on-screen, but the Marauder came across as somebody who wouldn’t have realized that was an option. Kodai wins at being more evil and Marauder loses the contest of overall better villain.
I said I’d talk about the most recurring theme of motivation, and to my own lack of surprise, I’ve already mentioned a few of those villains already.
In the top middle with spiky green hair is Lawrence the Third, the villain of Pokémon The Movie: 2000 and the start the biggest movie trend. For all the love Mewtwo got, it was his immediate successor who really shaped how the movies flowed. Lawrence the Third was a collector, his only goal was to capture legendary Pokémon to see with whatever he saw fit, in his case to have a private museum.
Which later inspired the writers of Zero to make him want Giratina. For Iron Masked Marauder and Grings Kodai to want Celebi. Phantom to want Manaphy. Butler to want Jirachi and technically Groudon. A quick glance up at my own collage, and yes, at least half of the villains had their plans revolve purely around catching the legendary Pokémon on the poster for personal dirty deeds. Sometimes the Pokémon are pretty much unrelated but mostly, they need to catch the Pokémon and often are fully obsessed with them. It’s a motive that, well, completely makes sense for the premise of the franchise itself making it both unsurprising it was used so often, shocking it took them until the second film to do it, and also a bit tired for a couple of films. Sometimes the depth wasn’t there, and fans such as myself called the villain a '“Lawrence the Third clone”. Other time it was stellar and fans such as myself would point out exactly why this example worked.
When used well you can use the legendary Pokémon for trivial things like ancient treasures, or grand things like saving your nation at a horrible cost. Other times you have a character with a motive that feels like, nothing, just an excuse to give this legendary Pokémon their turn on the poster. The difference between nothing but marketing, and making a form of art despite the origins of marketing.
And speaking of, did any of you know there were TV specials made in honor of franchise milestones? the first was a celebration and sequel to the first anime film, and the second was the 10th anniversary of the anime!
- Special Agent 009 In: Mastermind No -
Mewtwo Returns sees Giovanni finally track down the formerly evil Mewtwo to try and force him back into Team Rocket, and we are also introduced to his top agent coded double-o-nine. She called herself Domino, and the fanbase called her the reason to watch the special.
When it came to Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon, the Mastermind is revealed to be none other than the good Doctor Yung, a researcher kicked out and disgraced for his apathy towards Pokémon as beings and obsession with creating the most powerful versions of them.
Both characters were dripping with evil, Domino clearly loving combat and not afraid to threaten killing a baby Pokémon to intimidate someone into cooperation or information. Dr. Yung claims to be doing everything for research but clearly loves watching his Mirage Pokémon attack both real Pokémon and humans, and has no empathy towards not only his perceived flawed specimen but even for the ones he deems a success.
Dr. Yung is less remembered since his special is infamous in the West, it was the first piece of anime to be dubbed after 4Kids lost the license and fans were truly not happy to lose the voices they associated with Ash and company. As such, I can’t tell you what people think of Dr. Yung since he’s rarely talked about. Personally, I really liked him and he is one of the few villains I wish came back. The special is rushed at forty minutes, so more time with this total madman obsessed with stronger and more powerful fake Pokémon had a lot of potential. Instead, he ends his special shrugging his shoulders that his ultimate mirage Mewtwo was felled in battle and walks back into his laboratory as it burns and crumbles. Ash and the gang assume he had a plan to escape, which felt true to a character like Yung who did plan his steps out well, but thanks to the fact he never appeared again I do know at least one YouTube channel considers him to have just committed suicide. Considering continuity is not completely flowing in the newer seasons, Dr. Yung may as well have died since I doubt we’ll ever see him again. It’s a shame, as I always loved the character maybe more than the special, and I do quite enjoy the special for what it is.
But like a lot of fans, there’s barely a single villain whom stuck out to me more than Domino.
The black-and-white Rocket outfit that was used on every Rocket member besides our main trio just looks so unique on Domino thanks to the pink highlights and the pink-and-white hat. From a design point alone you do kind of get her personality, there are hints of a bubbly and fun type inside her and she’s not afraid of finding things cute. However that’s not to say she’s a softy, she’s also fun and bubbly when it comes to the carnage and cruelty. She’s not a punch-clock type, she openly enjoys committing evil and unlike most Rocket members she is VERY good at it, out performing everyone around her. Fans have even noticed she is the only on-screen Rocket member to talk back to Giovanni, it’s never attempted by another and all she gets is him hanging up on her and only when she does it a couple of times. Anime Giovanni is able to feel apathy towards his cronies and often does, so seeing one of them get angry at him without consequence is just some weird layer we’ll only be able to speculate about. She’s taken out by a fluke and even that isn’t a mark against her, for me it’s something to note how it’s pure luck that can beat her when nothing else did.
The special made it to DVD and VHS in the states and Domino alone is many people’s reason to wish it was more widely available all these years later. It’s not on digital and hasn’t been in print for years, so it’s an item worth scouring garage sales and Goodwill’s for.
Both of these TV specials gave us villains who were outwardly cruel, devious, intelligent. Villains whom needed a combined effort from both the entire cast as well as other Pokémon to lose, let alone budge. Both were characters I would have loved to see again, and yet, both of whom I’m aware I partly love because we only got them once. Dr. Yung was pure evil, Domino had the slightest bit of a heart but crossed many lines onscreen with a smile on her face. They had many things in common, but ultimately two different types of villains, some of my favorite of the anime. Between them and my general taste for the specials, it really makes me wish the anime did more specials, which admittedly seems to finally be happening between Generations and Twilight Wings.
And now, to leave the grand melodrama of the films and the minor melodrama of the TV specials. Let’s get back to the nitty gritty. Let’s talk about the villains who only appeared in one episode, but dang did they make those episodes something.
- Lasting Evil Impressions -
Okay so, I forgot that in the thumbnail I used a character we did see more than one episode of. I guess, screw it, let’s talk about Pokémon Hunter J:
J is a notable villain, she’s both a third party and also an expansion for a game villain team. See, as the name implies, Hunter J is a Pokémon poacher. A type of villain usually saved for darker storylines in the anime as already discussed with Rico and The Iron Masked Marauder. J was hired by the anime’s version of Cyrus to capture the Lake Trio for his plan, also making her a part of Team Galactic. Still she was introduced as a stand-alone villain with those ties coming later, meaning we saw other captures like the Riolu in the above picture. J’s method involved freezing the Pokémon in some sort of bronze-colored contraption, the implication is that the Pokémon know full well what is happening while they are frozen, and it even works on humans. In her debut, she had respect for Ash, but immediately after she saw him as a nuisance and attempted to kill him on the spot every time they ran across each other.
For me, Pokémon Hunter J was unfortunately another thing that showed me the anime was starting to get into something I didn’t care all that much about. I liked the idea and I found her ruthless, but something about how dark the show got felt unnatural and disinteresting despite how she was a good fit for a villain in this darker saga. I haven’t rewatched the Diamond and Pearl sagas in a decade or so, and I basically watched out of some commitment to nostalgia. To be fair to it, rewatching the original series had problems for me, and I can’t help but assume I must have liked more than I realized in D&P if I kept watching since I quickly gave up on Best Wishes, so ultimately I’m willing to try them again someday other than the fact I recently finally saw the films which were of pretty good quality for the series.
Hunter J meets her end in her last appearance, one of the few characters to full-on die, villain or otherwise. Her airship explodes around her, and when it lands in the water all we see are her broken glasses in the depths, either drowning or blown to pieces. Being nothing short of evil, viewers don’t mourn her death with the exception of her fanbase, as as a fan of villains like Dr. Yung and Domino I understand them.
I’m also a fan of this one-off monster. You saw him in the thumbnail too, and props if you recognized him, it’s the unnamed Mayor from the Orange Islands:
PokéTuber Suede brought up how this was a personal dislike of an episode for him because he can’t stand villains like the Mayor. To him, villains without any redeemable qualities are hard to understand and simply irritate him, and I understand him yet respectfully disagree. You already know that I feel pure evil characters can be compelling when they go far with it, and with the Mayor I feel they end up accurately portraying a type of real evil.
Mayor is a corrupt politician, the title should give it away. In the first half of the episode his response to the mysterious monster spotted around town is to just force a military operation to deal with it however he feels like for the sake of boosting his chance of winning re-election. He impedes Ash and the gang just because they may undermine this and attempts to make Officer Jenny arrest them for the duration. All evil enough, but when it’s revealed the monster is a giant Bulbasaur that the Mayor released as a kid because he didn’t want it anymore, I as a viewer expected the boring and formulaic change of heart.
But no. He doesn’t change his mind, he goes for the kill just the same and refuses to admit the truth that was just exposed.
He’s a man whom never had a heart, gained the kind of power he always wanted, and only planned on abusing it just to keep it and repeat the cycle of abuse. It’s a thing we know is real, even with the fantasy elements that Pokémon brings to the table.
As a one-shot episode, he’s not a strong enough character to be compelling evil, he’s instead the other powerful reaction of pure evil villains; the kind of character we love seeing get what’s coming to him. That’s the thing about villains not always discussed in celebration lists like this. We talk about how they do the things we know are wrong and maybe sometimes secretly wish we could do, or how we can sympathize with how they turned out rotten. Sometimes though, a good villain is just the guy we laugh at for getting punched in the face at the end of the film. The unnamed Mayor was simply a creep who always did every single single he wanted to do, never facing consequence until now and never caring about what happens to anyone else. Without morality or discipline, he’s everything people shouldn’t be whether powerful or not.
Which leads us to our final pick. A villain whom like Lawrence the Third, created a sub-genre of Pokémon anime villains. Plenty of clones, some with their own fanbase and personalities, but this was the little blue-haired punk whom started the trend:
Damian was the trainer who left Charmander out in the rain, bragging that he would have been happy if Charmander died waited from him. Thanks to the format of the series, Damian is actually the first true one-shot villain. Characters like the Samurai may have been in the antagonist role, but he turned out to just be a regular guy. Many fans, myself included, argue that AJ was genuinely evil despite what the episode stated, but according to the episode he too was just an antagonist and not a villain.
But like the Mayor, when Damian was given his chance to redeem himself he spat that concept in the face. I wouldn’t give him the moniker of complete monster like I would Yung, Marauder, Kodai, or the Mayor, and yet despite also being less evil than Giovanni, Markus, or Domino he’s a thoroughly despicable character whom the fanbase hates for all the right reasons.
Damian is a braggart, someone who shows off to his friends and seemingly only picks friends exactly like himself. He’s a full on domestic abuser, his lies to Charmander are to be better and to just forgive him for past transgressions while openly saying his real thoughts out loud when away. He cared about powerful Pokémon who would obey him and nothing else, feigning compassion when it suited him. When he is literally burned by his previous victim, he is also literally never seen again. But, figuratively, he’s seen several times later.
On the left is Cross from Pokémon: I Choose You!, in the middle is Paul from Diamond & Pearl, and on the right is apparently Shamus from Best Wishes but I gave up on BW way before he was introduced.
Each one of these trainers abandoned a fire-type starter, just like Damian. From what I know about Shamus he’s hated near-universally since they apparently did nothing with his character and made him feel like nothing but a rip-off.
Cross is technically the biggest rip-off since I Choose You! is a film retelling of the original series and Cross is just that film’s version of Damian. However, like everything else in the movie, Cross was an improvement over the original for reasons I won’t spoil. I think Damian still holds up as a solo villain, but I’d still prefer Cross since he was given more character moments partially just thanks to being the villain of a movie instead of an episode. Damian is certainly a realized character, it’s just that Cross is allowed to have a character arc while Damian was designed to be flat and then disappear from the plot forever. Neither are bad, it’s purely preference on whom you’ll like more.
Paul is, weird. Watching the episodes years back when they were still new it was kind of clear even then that different writers were using this character over the series. Paul was clearly meant to be a merciless villain in his first episodes, as heartless as Damian but this time a full rival so we would see him more often. Clearly a bad guy we’d get ready for Ash to beat. However, later writers clearly liked Paul a lot and gave him humanity with elements like an older brother he’s desperate to live up to. While this is good, Paul also ended up being weirdly proven right in situations that made no sense for him to be right. It was AJ again, where his brutal tactics were allegedly good training. Paul would have been interesting as a rival who grew out of his evil ways, but the ball got fumbled with writers who loved him and felt he was okay before the humanizing was done. These days, he’s still one of the things that make me want to try Diamond and Pearl again. I expect to still have problems, but I think I might get it a bit more, I might be willing to see how they tried to redeem him and if it did work even with the problems. Paul was much more hated years ago but seems to have gotten more popular, and I don’t know the reasons why. If it’s for his evil or his good side I can at least say he did have both qualities.
While Paul certainly has his strengths and fanbase, and Cross is the evil rival I prefer, I can’t deny that Damian started the trend. Gary Oak wasn’t evil, the School of Hard Knocks wasn’t evil, the bug catching Samurai wasn’t evil, but Damian sure was and the can of worms he opened had an impact that Pokémon fans still feel today.
And so, that’s it for the lookback of the evil side of the anime side of the Pokémon franchise. the lows were very low, the highs were very high. Some characters were anti-villains willing to turn their life back around, others had their hearts removed at birth and gleefully never looked back, and some were just somewhere in-between. As a whole, they end up more evil than the game villains tended to be for my money, and honestly I think it also suited them much better. While beating evil feels rewarding in a video game, the raw talent to put evil on the screen and make them compelling and interesting is something the anime did more often than you might suspect.
Thank you for reading the blog, and if anything I mentioned sounds like a good watch, I’d recommend checking them out as soon as you can! It’s never too late to get into this wacky little franchise, or to find something new to love about it if you already did.
