Who else is sick of Team Rocket?

[Pokémon Master Ash]

I'm really annoyed by them these days. I don't know: maybe it's the fatigue of seeing the dramatic personality shifts they've experienced from DP to BW and then back again in the same series, but in general I find myself tired of their antics in general at this point.

Basically, I'm wondering who else is tired of Team Rocket at this point in general (Jessie/Musashi; James/Kojiro; Meowth/Nyasu)?

I feel they should be replaced after BW, or if not, given new styles of comedy and less "Pikachu" focus, because to me the writers have made them seem very stale in BW.

Your thoughts?

 

[MarshiyanMisutaa]

I was (mostly) sick of BW's serious TR, but, thankfully, they're gone.

 

[Moe]

This week's dub episode having Team Rocket just bluntly state their total lack of any purpose is really annoying to me, they don't even bother trying to come up with a premise for their actions, they are just there. That just a few weeks after what was supposedly their biggest operation ever and returning back to base - nothing happened and nothing changed.

I really want them to stay as characters because I really enjoy Jessie, James and Meowth as individual characters when they have been allowed to show that, but even with the latest refresh of their role in BW none of that is back - they have a bit more personality as a group, but no individualism.

Personally, I'll just hope that in XY they have a minimised role like early BW but have their DP personalities. Then I'll sit and continue to await my dream storyline of Pikachu finally being successfully stolen and then Ash hunting them down and destroying the whole organisation with fire to get him back.

As an aside I wish the games would try not having a villainous team as the main plot arc - it would be much better for the Anime if there was a storyline they could adapt where they aren't trying to shoehorn their bad handling of evil teams into the game process.

 

[Gurk]

Before TRio can be written off (which isn't going to happen anytime soon) there has to be a TR arc, which won't be made until all other regional villainous teams are '' put to sleep '' due to courtesy of Ash & Co + TRio. This will lead to Team Rocket being the biggest, the most evilest and the most successful criminal organization in Pokemon Universe, expanding TR to every region, which I think is Giovanni's goal, aside from getting powerful Pokemon to rule the world. First wipe out all the other villainous teams, and then proceed to steal Pokemon for your hearts content in all regions without any interruptions from other villains. When Giovanni's reaches his goal, that will be the start of TR Arc, where Ash is united with his old travelling buddies (or not) and together (actually just Ash & Pikachu because this always happens) they foil Giovanni's plan of world domination. TRio will either be teaming up with the twerps and defeating Giovanni together because of reason X or Y, or then they'll just be protecting Gio from all of Pikachu's thundershocks, but failing. After Gio be dead or in jail (and he is revealed to be Ash's dad, or not) TRio will either revive Team Rocket with them as the new leaders, go their seperate ways, or start their own little villainous group that nobody is ever going to hear about. Also this would probably mean, since the big bad boss is behind bars, that the anime (or the anime W/ ASH AS THE PROTAGONIST) is coming to an end.

If TRio is written off any other way than this, it'd be a bummer. Gio is still the main villain to me and you can't get rid of TRio until Gio '' gets what he deserves '' or whatevz.

But I guess more ontopic, no, I'm not sick of TRio, but I didn't like BW TRio at all.

 

[Life]

Jessie was, in my onion, one of the funniest characters, but when the show came to BW it all stopped. The serious TR is boring, and takes up space in the show that could be used for so much else, whereas I actually loved TR before BW, due to their witty humor, sarcasm and Jessie's contest styles.

The only way I would want them to return to the XY is if they stop being serious. Ok, sure, it's nice to see them actually achieve something for once, but it's boring and bland as hell.

 

[Magma Bomb]

To be sincere with you guys, both their bumbling and serious personas get on my nerves for different reasons, but their early BW personalities are a little more tolerable, even if they have the character depth of a rock.

The reason for that is simple to understand. When you play the same gag over and over for more than a decade it just stops being funny and becomes a routine. Their "funny" personas made the anime ridiculously predictable and formulaic and they got used in every episode, sometimes interrupting a pletora of important events or just handling an easy solution for the problem of the week. I just repeated it many times on this forum, so I see no reason to expand it more than that.

On the other hand, their serious personas may not have much personality, but at least they don't pop their heads in every episode with an unnecessary scheme. When they did they had a plan, a good one and actually brought some challenge to the heroes. This interpretation of theirs may have thrown their characters out of a window, but they surely worked as an eyewash for everyone that was annoyed at their constant unnecessary plots in every episode prior to BW.
But even that started annoying me when it became more and more clear the writers intended to use the new TRio as primary threat of Best Wishes instead of Team Plasma. So, basically even when they were serious they worked as anchors sticking the anime at one point and prevented the game events from unfolding properly. When Team Plasma finally appeared it was in a rushed plotline, they weren't the organization with a morally questionable purpose their game counterparts were, there was no fateful legenadry battle among the Tao Trio users (Zekrom ended up just being an excuse to nerf Pikachu since he doesn't even appears here), N barely had connections with them (which kills most of his purpose as a character), N didn't command a faction of repentant former members, and to top it all they were outmatched pretty easily in the climax. The writers are to blame for waiting for a sequel to be released in order to redo the Plasma plotline, but they insisted on using TR as replacement for them, something that greatly weakened the adaptation.

To put it short, both incarnations ended up being failures. The "funny" route is annoying and formulaic, the serious versions just made me realise Team Rocket has no point to exist anymore and became artifact characters since the game doesn't use them for 3 generations and counting and they are just anchoring the anime on Gen I.

 

[Neo Blaze]

YES. I'm extremely sick of them now. Man, they were so forced and unfunny in DP, they had been that way for a long time by then but in DP they only got worse imo. Most episodes of DP were a huge chore to get through for me partially due to Team Rocket.

Then BW came, and what they did there with Team Rocket was very good. Most people complain about how they were boring and unfunny here, but for me it is different. In DP I found them to be boring and unfunny. I agree that they weren't funny in BW either, but they didn't need that. In my opinion they were pretty solid villains who -even though you knew they would be defeated empty-handed at the end of the two-parter- felt refreshing and a threat to the main characters, villains that you could take serious. I liked that they showed up around every 25 episodes, because then their appearances felt good and not forced. I actually looked forward to their two-parters. At the same time, I knew that they wouldn't be able to keep up with this forever and this would feel forced too eventually.

In Episode N they slowly started to regress again, but their appearances there were still okay to me. Now in DA! they're the same unfunny and boring bunch of unneeded so-called villains again which truly is a shame. At this point I rather see them go, even though they were part of my childhood too, you know, just as Ash, Misty, and Brock were.

 

[Pokémon Master Ash]

This week's dub episode having Team Rocket just bluntly state their total lack of any purpose is really annoying to me, they don't even bother trying to come up with a premise for their actions, they are just there. That just a few weeks after what was supposedly their biggest operation ever and returning back to base - nothing happened and nothing changed.

I really want them to stay as characters because I really enjoy Jessie, James and Meowth as individual characters when they have been allowed to show that, but even with the latest refresh of their role in BW none of that is back - they have a bit more personality as a group, but no individualism.

Personally, I'll just hope that in XY they have a minimised role like early BW but have their DP personalities. Then I'll sit and continue to await my dream storyline of Pikachu finally being successfully stolen and then Ash hunting them down and destroying the whole organisation with fire to get him back.

As an aside I wish the games would try not having a villainous team as the main plot arc - it would be much better for the Anime if there was a storyline they could adapt where they aren't trying to shoehorn their bad handling of evil teams into the game process.

So essentially BW TRio is DP Brock 2.0. XD.

To be sincere with you guys, both their bumbling and serious personas get on my nerves for different reasons, but their early BW personalities are a little more tolerable, even if they have the character depth of a rock.

The reason for that is simple to understand. When you play the same gag over and over for more than a decade it just stops being funny and becomes a routine. Their "funny" personas made the anime ridiculously predictable and formulaic and they got used in every episode, sometimes interrupting a pletora of important events or just handling an easy solution for the problem of the week. I just repeated it many times on this forum, so I see no reason to expand it more than that.

On the other hand, their serious personas may not have much personality, but at least they don't pop their heads in every episode with an unnecessary scheme. When they did they had a plan, a good one and actually brought some challenge to the heroes. This interpretation of theirs may have thrown their characters out of a window, but they surely worked as an eyewash for everyone that was annoyed at their constant unnecessary plots in every episode prior to BW.
But even that started annoying me when it became more and more clear the writers intended to use the new TRio as primary threat of Best Wishes instead of Team Plasma. So, basically even when they were serious they worked as anchors sticking the anime at one point and prevented the game events from unfolding properly. When Team Plasma finally appeared it was in a rushed plotline, they weren't the organization with a morally questionable purpose their game counterparts were, there was no fateful legenadry battle among the Tao Trio users (Zekrom ended up just being an excuse to nerf Pikachu since he doesn't even appears here), N barely had connections with them (which kills most of his purpose as a character), N didn't command a faction of repentant former members, and to top it all they were outmatched pretty easily in the climax. The writers are to blame for waiting for a sequel to be released in order to redo the Plasma plotline, but they insisted on using TR as replacement for them, something that greatly weakened the adaptation.

To put it short, both incarnations ended up being failures. The "funny" route is annoying and formulaic, the serious versions just made me realise Team Rocket has no point to exist anymore and became artifact characters since the game doesn't use them for 3 generations and counting and they are just anchoring the anime on Gen I.

Yeah, sadly, I must agree with you.

Funny TRio used to be funny, until they started to do the same thing over and over again. The TPCi's dub writing has not helped them at all in maintaining their appeal in this vein, IMO. I really can't understand what they are trying to say when they are goofy in DP and BW these days.

Conversely we have the serious TRio who was actually less annoying and in hindsight a better conclusion to their tale overall if it was meant to be that, but who had the personalities of rocks.

Either way, they just aren't appealing anymore in my eyes in general.

In the sub and the 4Kids dub, I prefer the goofy version of TRio.

In the TPCi dub, I prefer the serious version of TRio.

 

[Sakuraa]

I definitely am. They were doing perfectly fine in the beginning of BW when they finally got their seriousness back after so many years of failure, annoyingness, and goofiness but then in episode N they started blasting off again and now their going back to being comic reliefs. Now they've started to show up in almost every episode again to do something totally unnecessary, like trying to steal Pikachu.

I know most people hated them in the beginning of BW and like them with their DP personalities, but I feel the exact opposite. I'd much rather see serious, competent villains trying to do something important than three comic reliefs being placed in episodes they don't need to be in just for humor or to effect the plot in some ridiculous way. If they're just going to go back to their old personalities, I'd rather them not be there at all.

 

[CrystaI]

Actually, what is their reason to stay as villains, when they don't do villainous work anymore? Rather, do they even qualified as "villains" in literary meaning?

I always hate the goofy TRio, because that is not what villains supposed to be. Moreover they are not supposed to help Ash, not even occasionally, because their position of being "villains" should have prohibit them from doing so. They may qualified as one of the antagonist Ash and co. to confront, but really not "villains".

I personally like the serious TRio at the beginning of BW, because that is what is to be called as "villains". But unfortunately that didn't last for long, until they return back to the goofy TRio with white uniform, doing the unnecessary so-called villainous scheme of stealing Pikachu, but fail and blast off again and again, appear in almost every single episode just for unnecessary comic relief as like in AG and DP.

Man, I want a real villain that is a real threat to the protagonist! Not an antagonist branding themselves as "villains" but intrinsically unqualified as villains. They even hardly act as "antagonist" because although they are opposing Ash and his friends, but they are too weak for a challenge.

 

[Darth Darkrai]

NOOOOOOOOOPE THEY ARE JUST FINE TO ME BECAUSE THEY ARE JUST PERFECT OK.

 

[Robo-Floatzel]

I have gotten extremely sick of them anymore, and whenever they use one of the other evil teams, they rarely appear and the writers always screw something up, especially when you consider how they handled Team Plasma in Episode N, they had almost nothing to do with their in-game counterparts and were basically Team Rocket with a different leader, you could easily replace Ghetsis with Giovanni, Colress with Dr. Zager, and you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference.

This is the reason I desperately want the anime to have a rotating cast of villains. I mean really, why have Jessie, James, and Meowth be the bad guys all the time? Sure the anime had other villains such as Hunter J and the other regional teams, but how frequently did they ever appear in comparison to the Team Rocket Trio? This is something I would like the anime to do is have not just more villains, but a rotating cast of villains, such as the Team Rocket Trio in one episode, another bad guy causing trouble in the next episode, and then another bad guy, and so forth. We could also have some of the villains teaming up or fighting against each other.

 

[kantoskies]

The Rockets in Best Wishes were disappointing, because they were either boringly stiff and emotionless or weaker shells of what they were in the past four regions. The only part of Best Wishes that had them be even the slightest bit interesting was way back at the beginning with the meteorite plot, and even that wasn't super exciting. It probably just seemed that way because it was something new, but then after that they kept their 0.1% personalities even when performing their daily attempts to steal Pikachu. They were irritating in Diamond and Pearl, but that was dub-exclusive so if they were to return to that in the XY anime (assuming they're even in it, has that been confirmed?) I don't know how I would feel. I haven't been completely keeping up with the Decolora Archipelago arc, but from what I've seen it seems like while they're definitely comic relief again, they aren't exciting any more and from what I've gathered (although I'm not 100% sure about this and I could be wrong here) it seems like the writers aren't using the concept of "let's not force them into episodes where they're not needed just for the hell of it" - which really was the only good thing to come from the Best Wishes Rocket experience.

And of course it doesn't help that at this point the animators are using the exact same motto animation along with the DP music in every episode.

 

[Winterdaze]

No. They are still the best characters on this show.

Also this isn't a review thread, so don't use the review prefix.

 

[garrison-san]

I think just about all of the discussion here would be covered by this thread: http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f555/do-you-like-rocket-trios-role-bw-109377/