This year, 2021, is the 25th Anniversary of the Pokémon franchise. As with practically everyone else in my age group, I have a connection and history with the games and also the anime. Even when there isn’t an anniversary I enjoy reminiscing about my past with Pokémon and talking about my present and future with Pokémon. Some of the games I love to their core, some I honestly just think are okay with some very clever concepts or ideas, and even the one I really didn’t like still had some unique takes.
I think the biggest element, at the very least one of them anyway, that showcases both the strengths and the weaknesses of the series writing and immersion is the villainous groups you encounter and defeat as the protagonist. Sometimes the game has a great villain, one who sticks with you, one you are proud to say you defeated and whom you can’t help thinking about among many other video games baddies. Then there’s the complete clunkers, villains whom failed at depth or true motivation, felt flat on arrival and never became any better, but that admittedly you do can’t forget at the very least.
From the would-be fascists, to the organized gangsters, to the phoney animal rights groups, to the environmental extremists, to the juvenile delinquents. Evil is all over the map in the world of Pokémon and just like with Disney villains, these characters are a market all their own and thoroughly worth dissecting. So, let’s do so. Let’s look at them under categories instead of purely individually to save a bit of time and to help out some of the lesser characters. Some of them are my all time favorites, some are examples I’d use for what not to do.
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- The Several Rockets -
Team Rocket is unavoidable in a Pokémon character discussion, whether or not you are focusing on just the villains. In some ways I’d argue this is even more true for the anime (which I will also be tackling the villains of), but to say they didn’t leave an impact on the games core formula would be a lie. If we never had Team Rocket, there wouldn’t be villains in these games. The original Red and Blue/Green is known today for still changing the world yet aging differently for many, and one of those ways is that the story is notably lacking. I’ll admit I only ever played the remake Fire Red, but as someone who’d started with Gold and Silver and constantly played Ruby and Emerald, it is clear there’s less of a focus on a true overarching narrative in the first games compared to gens 2 and onward but the sense of adventure itself works as a story, especially for immersion as the characters are given simple yet effective elements to connect to.
Team Rocket in Fire Red does feel a bit lacking in some regards because of this, they don’t really seem to have an overall plan and are just doing whatever they feel like as criminals. Not that this really is a bad thing, as the game is more in the slightly-forgotten genre of adventure, having meandering villains whom you still constantly come across do work to help sell that sense of going on a great journey. The manga and the anime do flesh out more of Boss Giovanni’s true goals, but as a criminal enterprise whom just so happens do be a gym leader is a good way to make just another boss fight feel more connected to the player’s journey, you get a final showdown with a character you’ve been directly fighting already, capping off both that part of the story and preparing you for the final stretch in the same blow. While the villains tended to get much more involved in following games, Team Rocket as a whole still gave players a unique NPC to battle against, where the stakes were higher and the chance for heroism could be felt.
In fact, Team Rocket themselves became villains with more story than Team Rocket!
In Gold and Silver, Giovanni is stated to have just vanished and the organization is in dismay. They refuse to disband, instead, they are doing even dirtier deeds in an attempt to convince Giovanni to come back. The shift is noticeable when looking back-to-back. To give credit of course, in the first game a member does murder a Marowak off-screen, and it’s the darkest action any character commits in the game. As for Gold and Silver:
They cut off Slowpoke tails to sell them as goods while keeping the Pokémon alive and imprisoned, they mess with the radio frequencies around the Lake of Rage to drive the local Pokémon into a violent frenzy and forcibly evolve them to make them more profitable, and said signals are created with a group of Electrods they are clearly abusing in order to make them stressed and angry. Money and power were mentioned in the first games, but their sequels make it very clear those are the two things Team Rocket cares about, and lack any empathy for anything they could use to gain said money or power.
Along with the spike in evil actions we also gained a bit more character. The Rockets hierarchy ended up being given names, and the remakes Soul Silver and Heart Gold even gave them more unique designs and screen time. Petrel, Archer, Ariana, and Proton are now remembered characters specifically for these entries. Some were in the original versions, some even had a mention in the very first games, but fans remember Soul Silver and Heart Gold’s Rocket Executives for their cool designs and personalities. In some ways, Team Rocket is a more powerful team with Giovanni gone, since these four truly took charge.
Although after Ultra Sun and Moon, I can’t finish speaking about Team Rocket without mentioning Rainbow Rocket. Sadly, I can’t talk about it too much, as while I bought Ultra Sun I ultimately gave it to my nephew as well as my 3DS before I played that much of it. I loved Pokémon Moon but like many fans I didn’t give the Ultra versions that fair a chance, and I’ve now since heard they changed up a lot more than I expected and have minor regrets, but not enough to fully regret giving away the device. Maybe they’ll get a Switch port, it’s not too unlikely with now much Nintendo is embracing the practice for this generation finally.
I do know whom Rainbow Rocket is though; a Giovanni from another reality where he won and learned how to jump realities, teaming up with other series villains whom also won in their continuities. It’s an interesting concept, especially considering just how different many villain’s goals were. Of course, the does also bug me. Archie and Maxie hated each other, but both would be appalled by Ghetsis and Lysandre, and while they might understand Cyrus though but the word is might. Ghetsis also was too self-centered to be a true team player but then again that might mean I’d be happily waiting for the expected twist. Without playing the game I can only say it’s an interesting idea with holes I have no idea if they filled up or smoothed out to work.
And yes, Giovanni and surprisingly Archer make their appearances in the Let’s Go games, doing the same good job that is there in the originals but just somehow better for me personally this time around.
Money grubbing and heartless, Team Rocket became iconic and started the trend of needing to defeat evil before becoming the Pokémon Champion. Although sometimes those villains are more evil than others, even when talking about just the Rockets.
So less go for something even less evil than the nicer Rocket members. Let’s talk about the teams who kind of only barely qualified.
- The Punk Youths -
Villains whom are really nothing more than rascals are the newest idea. Because of that, we only have two examples. Team Skull, and Team Yell.
Despite both having similar ideas; taking a more obnoxious type of youth and making them the bad guys, purposefully downplaying a role usually saved for genuinely evil or at least dangerously misguided type, Skull and Yell proved to be very different characters at the end of it.
Skull were actual delinquents, showing up wherever they were just to annoy and pester the local townsfolk. Further into the story you end up realizing these are, kids, mostly homeless and unwanted kids at that too. Even with some of the misguided villains we had before, they ended up becoming the least evil and most sympathetic types we came across in the series. Even second-on-command Plumeria ends up coming across as a tough-love motherly figure just trying to keep everyone happy and in-line, and real boss Guzma just reveals himself to be a bit of a stand-offish punk who’s more easily used than he thinks.
Yell doesn’t even do things as bad as that. They are just the fans of trainer Marnie, and are way too loud in their embarrassing levels of support. In short, they’re sports fans with a favorite player. They don’t have a leader, unless you want to count Marnie as they certainly see her as one, even if she certainly doesn’t. Sword and Shield reenvisioned the Pokémon journey as a grand sport that only a lucky few were even able to truly last in, so having obnoxious sports fans whom aren’t actually evil in the slightest were pretty much a perfect antagonist for that type of adventure. Some fans felt Yell was either not used the best or was too close to Skull, but as I said, I think they worked great and were radically different under a similar sounding outer layer.
Both teams had one big similarity too; both were eventually red herrings to the true villain. Skull traded off for a villain whom really stuck with me, and Yell led to a villain I genuinely was hoping wasn’t going to happen as that one felt like a repeat and nowhere near as interesting. But, those villains did also at least have different personalities, so they will be in their own sections. Honestly, let’s do the latter next:
- The Well-Intended -
Sometimes the worst of crimes come from the best intentions. The Pokémon franchise has no problems showing those kinds of bad guys, and their intentions varied, even as much as the very first time they tried it.
As I said in the third part of my Games I Played in 2020 list, Pokémon Emerald is my favorite game. As such, you better believe I can talk at length about Team Magma, although maybe not as much about Team Aqua. See, I started Gen 3 with Ruby, so Aqua was originally a group of heroes or anti-heroes at first to me, until they showed their evil sides in Emerald alongside Magma yet while still opposing them.
Magma’s goal was to heat up the Hoenn region, feeling that there is not enough land for the Pokémon that live on it and using any means they can to do so. Aqua feels there isn’t enough ocean for all the Pokémon in it and want to cause a massive rain to expand the seas, again using any methods. In Emerald you admittedly spend more time fighting Magma, but considering Maxie and Archie’s different personalities it’s more fitting for the both of them. Maxie is the more intelligent and calculating one, while Groudon is on his radar it seems to be his final idea instead of his only one, he’d rather try out the volcano first and he even has another last ditch effort he planned in advance with the rocket fuel. As for Archie, he’s more aloof yet brutish, his only goal is Kyogre and as such every thing he does is just part of that one plan, and while it does have it’s steps they also do sometimes seem to just be randomly thought up at times.
For both being environmental extremists, both basically using forced climate change to gain what they think they want, and both seeing their error of their ways almost as soon as their plan comes true, Magma and Aqua were still radically different in terms of how and why and they’ve both stuck with me over the years even if you don’t have to twist my arm to make me admit I like Magma more.
Speaking of Magma, while both teams have higher ups whose names I remember (Tabitha, Shelly, Matt), it’s Courtney who has my attention the most and that is now true for many others. She’s basically a grunt with a good design in the original Ruby, a psycho who is still redeemable in the manga, and even more psycho and somehow redeemable in Omega Ruby. She’s loved for her design and for being easily the darkest character from both teams, while not really erasing this gens ideals of having anti-villains who mean well yet don’t understand what they are really doing. Courtney might love fire, but she was still a flawed human willing to earn up and do better. All of which is very impressive for a character that ended up being cut from Emerald!
Now when it comes to the rest of the well-intended, we pretty much have solo characters and a half-example for a team. So, let’s start with an example I feel, may honestly be the weakest example we’ve had, so I guess spoiler warning for Sword and Shield:
Chairman Rose spends a good deal of Sword and Shield feeling like a goofy and well-meaning CEO. However, the last CEO from a Pokémon game turned out to be the true villain, and since there was also a team of rebellious youths as the fake-out villains, myself and many others assumed well in advanced Rose was going to turn evil. And unlike the previous twist villain, Rose fell completely flat for me.
I was really hoping Team Yell and rival Bede would be as evil as the characters got, just obnoxious fans and a mean spoiled rival whom both turn out not evil by the end, which really worked for the overall adventurous atmosphere. I suppose I can say one thing good about Rose is that at least his motive is far different, Rose believes that true tragedy must befall the world in order for it to truly prosper afterwards. There’s a myth in Galar about that exact thing happening, and with the philosophy of “it’s always darkest before the dawn.”, sure, I can see why someone might be deluded enough think it really is the best thing. He’s still evil, but he counts as well-intended which makes him different from the last twist villain yet ultimately a lot less interesting.
He’s not just another twist villain after a twist villain, he’s also just a character who feels more flat than the last twist villain. Even his design doesn’t feel as good, his own henchwoman seemingly has more character, and while I do still like the game he’s from I will say he’s not only the weakest part of it, he’s now one of the weakest villains from the games and it already starting to be the first one I’m forgetting about. There’s one whole team I despite more, but I won’t forget them, and that might mean Rose is technically the weakest villain in the whole game series.
So we’ll now go from weakest solo villain, to a group whom I have started to understand a bit better over the years. I don’t know if they entirely count for this slot, but whenever I think them over, I kind of realize they almost fit here as there’s a sympathy I feel for two different reasons. One is that how the whole group is just being duped, and one is how the leader duping them has reasons the game did a decent enough job making the sympathy come through. It’s not who you think I’m talking about, believe it or not, I’m talking about Team Galactic and Cyrus:
Who you likely thought I was going to talk about, he’s next.
Honestly, I think even as much as I used to really not like Team Galactic or Cyrus, thinking back on my Platinum experience there’s a dramatic irony and tragedy there that while not as well-written as it should have been, is worth revisiting to try and really understand their plight.
So that starts the question, what exactly is Team Galactic after? I don’t mean Cyrus, whose end goal is to create a new dimension purely for himself, I mean what do Team Galactic actually want? That’s the thing, I still really don’t know what the individual members want. Sure, it’s been over seven years since I last played Platinum, which is still the version with the better writing for Team Galactic from what I understand, but I really don’t know what Team Galactic was trying to do.
And neither did they.
The grunts, Charon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, they all believed in what they were told was Cyrus’s vision but every single one of them was being played. While the Commanders where closer to Cyrus than the grunts, and did a lot of the scientific work for him, they were always going to be cut out of the final goal and that ultimately means they were doing all this work for nothing at all. Considering some grunts even mention building a better world, they end up counting here for that reason. Some Galactic members really thought they were doing evil to build a new world, not to destroy everything for the sake of one lonely man.
And that’s Cyrus ultimately too, a lonely man who feels nothing anymore and just wants something for himself. He’s still more evil than Magma, Aqua, even Rose and Giovanni, but when you dive into how he turned out this way there is a sympathy that’s not completely unfounded.
Team Galactic is as uneven as I felt they were the first time I played, but honestly, only now am I realizing that was more intentional than I thought. They are a group of people who do not really know what their own motives or end goals actually are. It’s why there’s so many genuinely malicious members and so many jokesters who are not taking anything seriously. I won’t defend some decisions from Gen IV, and am happy they didn’t come back, but Team Galactic are far more interesting than I once considered them to be.
And now dear readers, we talk about the sympathetic well-intender you were expecting:
You know you’re popular when you get a Nendoroid
Natural “N” Harmonia, one of if not the most popular of Pokémon game villains. N’s goal is to change the Pokémon world, because after multiple friendships with wild and abandoned Pokémon he not only learned how to understand what they are saying, he learned exactly how often Pokémon are abused and mishandled by their trainers. In reality this is a good thing to want, it’s morally sound, it’s just both the methods he is using and the people truly behind him that put in on the path of villainy.
And yet, N is also the most successful villain in the franchise too. NPCs who oppose him fully in the start end up listening to him in the end anyway, he gains respect from those who initially brushed him off. N does change hearts and minds, and more impressive, he even changed the hearts of real life players. Like I said, N is possibly the most popular villain to this day, and after Black and White, there was a bigger focus on Pokémon being your dear friends whom deserve your love and attention. This was part of the idea of course, The Pokémon Company was ready to start deconstructing their premise, and with one great villain they sure as hell did.
N was thoughtful, charming, sympathetic, considerate, regretful, the most successful villain from Pokémon was the one who wasn’t actually evil at all. It’s easy to see why Team Plasma was divided between members who truly saw him as their king, and members who actually knew what the real goal was.
So with that said, we have to go to the type of villains who are the opposite of N. From the character who does not ultimately count as evil, to the ones who count as nothing but evil.
- The Purest Of Evil -
The Pokémon Company clearly likes sympathetic anti-villains, considering they ended up being the biggest category. And yet, when they decide to take off the gloves and let the players fight against real evil, we got characters who were truly frightening in how far they were willing to go. While I found one to be one of their least interesting examples, the other two will stay with me for their haunting glare alone. Let’s start with the most recent, the twist villain of Sun and Moon:
So again I need to state I barely played Ultra Sun, but did hear about the differences in story. I know that Lusamine was given a new reason to search for the Ultra Beasts, a sympathetic motive and retool. Honestly, while again I didn’t play it, I can consider that sympathetic take a reason why I didn’t finish it.
Look, my love for Team Magma and Plasma should have made it clear I do heavily enjoy villains with depth and sympathy, however, there are plenty of times where being sheer evil is the more interesting character. Lusamine in regular Sun and Moon is an emotionally distant and abusive parent, she sees no value in her children nor employees as anything other than a means to an end, and her end is nothing but an obsession she just plain has. She has no real grand reason for the obsession, she just has it and it’s enough to drive her to the lowest of actions. She’s vile and cruel, one of the most disgusting characters the franchise ever saw, and it’s why I enjoyed defeating her so much. Sometimes a villain is a villain, someone who does not really have a heart and who can’t be talked down, and Lusamine was one of the few in the game side of the franchise. A true wicked mother that is more real than some people may want to admit. Like Rose, there was also a feeling she wasn’t nearly as nice as she was letting on, but unlike Rose there was legitimate foreshadowing and her character fit the story a lot better.
Sun and Moon are still great entries for many a reason, and while I’m sure there’s tons of merit in Ultra Sun and Moon, I’ll take the truly terrible and irredeemable bastard we got with Sun and Moon Lusamine any day.
But just because true evil can be interesting, that doesn’t always mean it is:
While I have a bit more appreciation for Platinum and it’s villains as the years grow on, I think I dislike X and Y and Team Flare even more the older I get. I understand the competitive side was finally allowed to flourish starting here and I won’t take that away from anyone, yet I still have to stick with my guns that the story and characters from this generation are still the weakest and worst of the games.
Let’s not mix words here, Team Flare were a team of genocidal lunatics, self-obsessed fascists, they were purposefully meant to be the darkest and vilest villains yet, beating even last gen’s true monster. In so many ways I still can’t fathom, this all feel completely flat on it’s face.
Why was Team Flare constantly making really bad fashion jokes? Why was Lysandre so obviously evil to the point where it’s not even funny to joke about it? What was the point of having an Elite Four member mention off-hand that they were a member, as if that ultimately matters for a character we’d only see once and for a few minutes at most, why not a gym leader or the professor if you really wanted a shocking reveal?
If the point was to be sickened, to be shocked at the depravity, then they needed to cut the comedy by a lot. Yes, have some comedy to add levity, that’s more than acceptable especially for a kid’s game. But I ended up never taking a single member of Flare seriously, and for characters allegedly capable of killing all life, it’s an absolute shock that I could not be bothered. Even Galactic, back when I couldn’t stand them, felt more interesting and intimidating than this group of attempted mass murderers.
I will remember Lysandre as one of the biggest failures, so he will be remembered more often than Chairman Rose, but I hope something you may have noticed is that I didn’t name any of his followers. I do not remember their names, and I can’t be bothered to look them up. X and Y have more forgettable characters than other games, and sadly the ones I did remember were mostly the ones I hated, Lysandre being the biggest example. I am okay with villains who are pure evil, but it’s a character you really need to know how to write. They didn’t this time. Lysandra and Team Flare ended up so bland that any threat level they were clearly supposed to have just dried up every time one of them opened their stupid little mouths. To have characters with the power to kill all existence have absolutely no threat level is an embarrassment, let only any fictional villain with nothing interesting about them.
Which is an even bigger shock for a company that did it very right in every single way only one game generation before:
The only solo villain I think can make the argument for being even more popular than N Harmonia, would be his adoptive yet abusive father Ghetsis Harmonia. Ghetsis goes to the depths of evil that no other Pokémon villain has yet to go to still. Adopting a child just to mold him into a mouthpiece, building a group under false pretenses while making absolutely sure to still fill it up with members who gleefully know what they were really up to. Ghetsis is the walking nightmare of the Pokémon mainline games, for years we’d heard about trainers who only saw Pokémon as nothing but tools, but all the past villains had some sort of redeeming relationship with their Pokémon as even the cold and emotionless Cyrus managed a friendship evolution of Golbat to Crobat. No such thing this time, Ghetsis’s choice of Pokémon only boiled down to what worked most effectively as a weapon, even carrying into the sequel where he now searched for a legendary Pokémon for the sole purpose of using it as nothing more than an ice cannon, even bragging about how he was positive anyone trapped in the ice would still stay alive and would only be able to watch the horrors without being able to do anything.
Team Plasma gets up to criminal activity under his care even when they are playing up their false good intentions, but once he’s caught and sheds the façade he barely maintained anyway, the team’s very appearance shows his true nature. No longer the white knights whom allied themselves with N, they now dressed like agents of terror and acted like them too.
Ghetsis is a level of evil we hear about in fairy tales and hope don’t really exist, making him the perfect counterpoint to N’s naïve yet good nature. He’s not remotely afraid to kill, he enjoys tormenting others, he wants to rule the world and most likely crush it to pieces soon after. Out of ever fight you’ll have, he’s the one you really want to completely beat forever, the world is better off with him no longer ruining it.
The mainline games have almost every type of villain; greedy gangsters, world dominators, misguided animal loves, hopeless cynics, obsession chasers, even as simple as loud jerks. You can’t love them all, at least I certainly couldn’t, but the mark is passed more often than failed and I’d say that’s very good especially with the amount of homeruns.
Tune in again soon for another discussion, where I look back at the villains from the TV series and movies. And as stated before, you can keep this blog alive with a simple pledge to my Patreon! Either way, thanks for stopping by and reading what I had to say this time.
