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Has Team Rocket Become Less Significant as the Anime has Progressed?

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Kazamatsuri

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To start off with, when I say Team Rocket, I'm not just referring to the ever popular trio of Jessie, James, and Meowth. I'm talking about the TR organization as a whole.

My answer to the title question would be yes.

During the original series, we've seen countless new members of Team Rocket appear at least once in the series. This includes (in order of appearance) Jessie, James, Meowth, Giovanni, the Rocket Grunts, Butch, Cassidy, Mondo (in CD Radio Drama released in Japan only), Domino, the Iron-Masked Marauder, Professor Namba, Professor Sebastian, Hun, Atilla (Side Note: The special in which the three mentioned just before this side note aired shortly before the Red Gyrados episodes), Wendy, Tyson, Annie, and Oakley.

But since the beginning of Advanced Generation, no new members of of Team Rocket have been introduced to the series. And other than Jessie, James, and Meowth, few others have appeared throughout the series. Their have only been a few episodes where the big boss man (Giovanni)himself has appeared (not counting Meowth's fantasy sequences), Two with Butch and Cassidy, one featuring the Rocket Grunts, and a cameo appearance from Professor Namba (who now appears to be in charge of missions assigned to Butch and Cassidy). It seems that Team Rocket has been overshadowed by Team Magma and Team Aqua in Advanced Generation, and now Team Galaxy in Diamond & Pearl.
 
mogoldmember said:
and now Team Galaxy in Diamond & Pearl.
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Ha. Hahahaha.

Anyways, yes, I would say they decreased in importance, but that also can be said because they don't have headquarters in Houen and Shinou. Well, I'm not so sure about the former, but I'm positive about the latter . . unless I'm thinking of the dub.
 
They should give Team Rocket a power house Pokemon and let them steal Pikachu and give it to the boss. They could make a season just of Ash trying to get Pikachu back and battling all of Team Rocket to do it, or something like that along with the help of Misty, May, Dawn.
 
mogoldmember said:
It seems that Team Rocket has been overshadowed by Team Magma and Team Aqua in Advanced Generation, and now Team Galaxy in Diamond & Pearl.
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Magma and Aqua didn't overshadow *anybody*. They got, what, four episodes? Total?

And Galactic hasn't had enough screen time yet to make the call.

Either way, Hoenn and Sinnoh are areas where the Rockets don't have influence, so of course they're not going to run into random other agents there. Granted, this doesn't excuse the lack of Rockets during the Battle Frontier arc, but still.
 
I personally think the writers are trying to make most people forget about the organization. Then at the final season of the show(hopefully a long, long time from now), they'll make them capture several new legendary Pokemon, and they can't be stopped. So in short, the writers will probably wait for the right time to show off each agent's true power.
 
As an organization, I think it doesn't have nearly the significants in the show that it had, yeah. I don't think that can really be denied with the points made. It makes sense, really, since the first two gens had them as the prominent bad guys, and I think really the only ones that are much of a threat: they don't focus so much on one thing like the other teams, particularly Team Galactic, and so- while they're still pretty small operations, like the breeding center- or an isolated case like Mewtwo Returns- they can still have a pretty big impact just because they're more widespread. It's harder to crack down on something that's got pockets of criminals. Granted, the others, at least in the games, nearly managed causing some huge shit to happen. Team Rocket had only really made Mewtwo and in the games he just holed up in a cave. In the anime...eh, he was a bigger threat, but I don't think in the original translation he was looking for world conquering and more like "shit I'll show you asshats"..?
 
Maybe, but we have absolutely NO reason to assume they're working with Giovanni, other than the dub version, which claims they're Rockets...
 
I think the reason TR as a whole get shown less is because...they're not in the new games. You're forgetting that in the G/S games the Rockets still existed, but in R/S and D/P...there is no Team Rocket organization. The G/S hero disbands them at the end of that gen and they never appear again.

So in terms of the anime, they didn't have Ash disband TR or anything because they want to keep Jessie/James/Meowth in the show. So we still see Giovanni (the real one, not the Meowth daydream one) every...70 episodes or so, and Butch/Cassidy get their cameos as well.

But since the games don't feature that evil team anymore, the anime shows them a lot less as well. Maybe if the 5th gen has Giovanni revive TR again, the anime will show them more heavily as well. But that's kind of a stretch.
 
Id like to be a spy :P I just wish Team Rocket was just more evil. I remember how tough and evil they looked in the first episodes of Pokemon.
 
*IF* there was a G/S remake...
and IF we went back to Johto in a sidequest with Ash or a miniseries following May:

I hope we'd get to see Shum and Kart. I always wanted to see them in the anime. Along with Will and Karen. Plus, you never know. Now that Ash has been gone from Johto for a while, maybe returning would be 3 years later as it was in the game. That would always be interesting.

Anyway. If it had not been for the comment made about Team Rocket's absence during Battle Frontier I would have said we dont know they are less significant. But thats a great point.

The writers may not have felt like doing more with Team Rocket again. Theres not really that much of a game-related story (aside from Johto) that the anime didnt take care of already.
 
absol_trainer said:
*IF* there was a G/S remake...
and IF we went back to Johto in a sidequest with Ash or a miniseries following May:

I hope we'd get to see Shum and Kart. I always wanted to see them in the anime. Along with Will and Karen.
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That would require Mask of Ice. Which would require them to revisit Pryce and find that everything they knew about him is upside down.

Sir, I like your way of thinking. Although how would they have MoI *and* Giovanni at the same time? Hmm...well, in the RP I'm in, MoI is the regional TR leader for Johto, they could do something like that...

I think MoI's motives would have to be changed, or at least his backstory. Since I think lost Lapras would have been mentioned by Sheila.
 
I honestly don't think they'll go back to using Team Rocket, there's not really a whole lot that can be done with them now. They steal Pokémon and work like a mafia/yakazuka.

There's only so much that can be done. Reviving something over and over again doesn't make them cooler, but plays them out more and more. It only tends to cheapen the dramaticness of previous "final days". Besides, the fandom already suffers from an enormous nostalgia bias that pretty much permiates practically every aspect of the fandom. Using an element that's now as old as the hills will only make it worse.

It's better that Team Rocket is no longer in the limelight and is being filled by more threating forces. Teams will goals that can potentially be far more catastphoric then merely "stealing Pokémon for profit".
 
Blackjack Palazzo said:
I donno...that's basically J's entire motivation and she pulls it off well.
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But she isn't a dead horse. Which is what Team Rocket as an organization is. Due to Jessie, James and Meowth's baffling stupidity, I doubt Team Rocket will ever be taken seriously by anyone anymore.
 
Which is why when they end this the final season should be a serious smackdown. Aqua and Magma were poorly ended? Well, TR hasn't even really ENDED at all ... Gio's still in business (at least in Kanto ... and he seems to be doing well considering the new HQ he built), the cops aren't swarming over TR all the time (which suggests Gio is doing more "legit" stuff to hide his activities ... or Mewtwo's little mindwipe made him forget a lot of his goals), J&J are still around ... TR is in serious need of AN ending, preferably a war with Team Galactic. That would make me squeal in delight.
 
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