Which Time of the Anime was Team Rocket best in?

TR's Best Year

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SonansuMan

SonansuMan

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Hi everyone! I'm back with my sparingly made polls. We all have mixed opinions for TR. Some of us are darn right dedicated, some of us like them as much as the others, some are neutral, some don't really like them, and some hate them to guts.

Over the years people have seemed to become less interested since not only did they appear way too often, they got annoying from time to time...

In this poll, this is asking which series had TR's best for you. Do you like them in the 1st Gen, 2nd/Filler Gen, 3rd Gen, 4th Gen, 5th Gen or 6th Gen? Or did you just hate them to begin with or don't care anymore?

Answer both above and below!
 
I honestly think they were on point in Diamond and Pearl, probably their coolest team with Seviper, Carnivine, and Yanmega, there were tons of great episodes about them, and they got to be competent quite a few times like Jessie doing fairly well in Contests and the time James and Carnivine literally saved the main cast from being blown to bits by Team Galactic.

And then Best Wishes happened...and things were never the same.
 
For me, it's hard to say. I didn't mind them in Gens 1-3. They got a little tedious in Gen 4, and seemed to be showhorned into every single episode. In Gen 5, they were good, in my view, since they were competent and had seemingly decided to be true bad guys once more. In addition, they were not in every single episode. That was, up until the Decalore Islands arc, where they returned to their less than stellar form. As for Gen 6, I don't like them. They weren't so bad in the first episode or two, but after that, they began to show their age once again.
 
The OS, followed by XY

They suck the rest of the time.
 
Maybe the writers decided they liked them being goofy villains, hence their return to incompetence in the middle of B/W?
 
Their best handling was in pre-episode N Unova, for reasons we all know.

However, their best characterizations was in Johto and Kanto, I found them quite funny while at the same time being not-quite-likable villains.
 
The absolute best time for them was in that one AG episode, where Team Magma captured them in rings and they escaped by letting the air out of their bodies.

Other than that, I (surprise, surprise) prefer their BW selves. Much more entertaining, cool and exciting. The Litwick mansion episode was their most hilarious for me because their antics were unsuspected, and it clashed with their serious selves.
 
Gen 5, before they became what held them back before then. I don't have a problem with them being funny; I have a problem with them being annoying. No matter what version I see (and by the way, in my mercifully short time with it, I felt that as bad as they could be in the dub (and as a dub fan, I can admit they've been given some rather bad lines), they're worlds worse in the JP version), that's their biggest problem. Their running jokes got run so far into the ground that they could be on the opposite side of the planet.

SkyWarriorT found an interesting post detailing what exactly is wrong with Team Rocket, and it explains it better than I ever could:
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View: http://ultraericthered.tumblr.com/post/59459381818/team-rockets-characterization-marches-on-again
 
I gotta say Gen 4, if at least for Jessie's contest performances. After that showing (top freaking 4 in the Sinnoh GF), Gen 5's TRio was rather jarring at best.
 
Gen 5 by a landslide. By the time of DP I found TR to be absolutely unbearable and hard to sit through. BW was a breath of fresh air and I loved seeing them being competent and most of all, not show up in every. damn. episode. I'm glad XY has continued that latter trend, although I didn't like seeing them return to their goofy shenanigans. Honestly, the post Ryu Taylor linked up above pretty much sums it up for me as well.
 
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While I was never a fan of BW as a whole, I did appreciate Team Rocket's return to form in the early episodes of that series. Of the TRio I've only ever really liked James consistantly, but BW made me appreciate the TRio as a team.
 
I never get when people say BW Team Rocket were a "return to form". Even in their very first appearance they still made a few funny faces and got defeated by a starter Pikachu, "special" or not. By EP004, their third appearance, they were already mostly comic relief-- didn't they make their mecha out of cardboard and were chased away by a swarm of Beedrill? In EP005 they didn't contribute anything to the plot at all and that was only their fourth appearance ever. Yes they were presented as a bit more menacing in the first half or so of Kanto but they still were doing more or less the same shtick. They were pure comic relief in EP009, EP014, EP016, EP017, EP020, EP023, EP024, and the list goes on. BW Team Rocket post-meteorite had them doing literally the same stuff they were doing in every other series except for those weird two-part legendary episodes and Episode N. Sure they were """cooler""" but it was pretty much just that they made more "evil" faces and more menacing music would play when they showed up. They'd still forget to lock cages and wouldn't account for the abilities of the Pokemon-of-the-day, they'd still get defeated only after a few blows from a twerp Pokemon, and they still just generally sucked at their jobs.

And they honestly weren't even that bad in Diamond and Pearl. I know this isn't true with nearly everyone who criticizes their role in that series but I do think a big amount of people who didn't like them in that series was because of how they were dubbed. I know that for me personally I couldn't stand them in TPCi's dub and for years I thought it was just how their characters were in that series, but then I watched them in the original version and my opinion completely changed. Again that's not saying everyone who disliked them in that series did so because of the dub, but a sizeable amount probably did.

Anyways onto my actual answer for this topic, my favorite would probably be Orange Islands - early Johto but only because I loved how they were dubbed back then. I'm much more familiar with dubbed Team Rocket and how they progressed as I've only regularly seen Best Wishes and XY in Japanese so I think it's only fair I judge them based on the dub. I'd like them a lot more in XY if they didn't recycle motto animation and referenced their past more often/had more character-driven episodes.
 
kantoskies said:
And they honestly weren't even that bad in Diamond and Pearl. I know this isn't true with nearly everyone who criticizes their role in that series but I do think a big amount of people who didn't like them in that series was because of how they were dubbed. I know that for me personally I couldn't stand them in TPCi's dub and for years I thought it was just how their characters were in that series, but then I watched them in the original version and my opinion completely changed. Again that's not saying everyone who disliked them in that series did so because of the dub, but a sizeable amount probably did.
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I'd be one of them. My distaste for DP Team Rocket is despite knowing how they are in the original (and for the record, as I said before, I think they're even worse in that version in all sagas). That said, dubbing can and has only changed their spoken dialogue; it can't change their exaggerated animation.
 
In Black and White/Gen V their serious personalities and plans were a great improvement, but I've never liked them and probably never will.

Also I reaaally hope James will become a good guy one day... PLEASE!
 
Diamond & Pearl definitely. I never took them serious. So anytime they tried to make the team serious and drone-like it just made me wonder "Why not just throw new bad guys?". I like their silly comedy and I'm more interested in Musashi and Kojiro as characters than as villains. In fact, the only reason I'm not a big fan of them showing up so often is because I think the anime needs to rely on them a little less for actual episodic threats.
That said despite constant intrusion DP had my favorite portrayal of them as characters. I don't care for their schemes so much as I care for the goofiness that ensues. So the less funny they are and more one-dimensional, the worse.

So yes, I also hated TR in Best Wishes. But I thought they were the most annoying, by far, during the Johto arcs. Way too many intrusions, multiple in single episodes very often, just adding to the already tiring flow of Johto itself.
 
I think that in DP the Rocket trio were escended to Writer's pet status, which is the reason why their role in that series is sometimes more controversial that their role in BW.

I mean, in the second episode we already have a reason to like them when James caught his Carnivine, and just look at their friendly faces in the first opening!
 
It's a little hard for me to choose just one (would you have guessed?!)

I loved them best in OS & DP, with XY coming in a close-ish 3rd. As Nicholas said above, they were clearly the teacher's pets in DP, and of course the same in OS when Shudo was building the anime. They were pretty flat in the first half of XY but I feel that they are starting to be fleshed out again quite well. I really wasn't fond of their characterisation in AG, when they seemed to be at each other's throats all the time (obviously less so in the original than the dub bit it's still there), and the less I say about BW the better for us all.

I am always surprised by how divisive the characters are, on this forum at least. People seem generally drawn to one extreme or the other. I hope the writing decisions for S&M remain on my side, tee hee! :p
 
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