Although it is no secret that the members of Missile Team is and always Pokémon villains, their enduring legacy isn’t really villains – and an original animated episode proves it.
Team Rocket appeared before the 1998 anime as the video game villain in the original Pokémon Game Boy game. However, the iteration fans are probably most familiar with wasn’t introduced until the second episode of the Pokémon anime and that lineup is Jessie, James, and Meowth. These guys have become synonymous with the Team Rocket brand, and they’ve completely lived up to the level of low-stakes villains in the original video games. Their story isn’t quite wrapped up in their Team Rocket affiliate, however, as Jessie and James are perhaps even better known for a completely different – and much more embarrassing – reason.
Team Rocket’s Jessie and James are the worst students at Pokémon Tech
In Pokémon: Indigo League episode 9 (written by Norman J. Grossfeld, Michael Haigney, and John Touhey, and directed by Masamitsu Hidaka), Ash, Misty, and Brock encounter a student named Joe who goes to Pokémon Tech and haunted by a number. of his classmates. Ash and the group quickly come to Joe’s aid, and in return for their kindness, Joe gives them a tour of his school. During their time there, Ash, Misty, and Brock were exposed to Pokémon trainers of varying levels, who chose to have a formal education instead of traveling the world and learning on the go. transfer (like Ash). One such student, Giselle, was at the top of her class at Pokémon Tech and was actually the one who allowed the underclassmen to piss Joe off. When Ash finds out about this, he challenges Giselle to a Pokémon battle in an attempt to prove that she and her school aren’t so great, and that they can’t just choose who they consider to be. inferior to them. While all this is going on, Team Rocket is watching Ash and the group from afar, as they are still chasing his Pikachu. However, they were reluctant to follow them into Pokémon Tech because they were students there, and they went down in the school’s history as having the lowest end-of-term test scores ever.
While this embarrassing history with Pokémon Tech is clearly still on Jessie and James’ minds in this episode – even years after attending the academy – the reality is that they are, quite literally, the Pokémon Tech’s worst student is no secret to the current student council, either. When Team Rocket finally attacked, they were laughed at by Giselle and her army of mean students. They just need to look at them to know who Jessie and James are, and it’s not two scary members of Team Rocket, but two of the worst students in Pokémon Tech history.
This revelation is truly a hilarious one and a perfect fit for Jessie and James. While they’ve always been nasty villains, trying to steal Pikachu and really any other Pokémon they deem valuable, they’ve never been seen as a serious threat. And, with this episode, it’s revealed that they will never, like Missile Teamit’s embarrassing Pokémon legacy is not villains, but bad students.
