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ultraericthered · 5 years

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Team Rocket’s Arc In The Alola Region

As has been clear for a while now, the Team Rocket foursome pictured above are the stars of their own little subplot in the current Sun and Moon series of the PokeAni. This plot gradually expands their position and capabilities as it’s protagonists (as in something beyond their usual positions of recurring antagonists or comic interlude generators, positions that put limits on their capabilities), and with it the prominence and impact they have in the larger narrative of SuMo (the main story starring Ash and his friends in the Kukui Class). To a lesser extent, the same has been getting done in this plot with Giovanni, Matori, Alolan Meowth, and other higher ranking operatives of the Team Rocket organization as antagonists in said larger narrative, with our usual TR agents becoming a spinning coin in terms of where they’ll land and what positive or negative effects their actions will have on both their own organization’s side and the main characters’ side. This post details which episodes have advanced the TR subplot and how it’s been paced throughout the SuMo series up to the point of this writing.

SM003 (Loading The Dex!) - TR comes to Alola so that they can obtain valuable Pokemon as per Giovanni’s orders. We see their tourist guises, them meeting both Mimikyu and Bewear, and their first run in with Ash and the Kukui Class.

SM004 (First Catch In Alola, Ketchum-Style!) - Jessie catches Mimikyu and TR finds their Alolan home in Bewear’s cave den, with Bewear becoming their chaperone and caretaker.

(8 episodes later)

SM012 (The Sun, The Scare, And The Secret Lair!) - Giovanni and Matori call TR in their lair, wanting them to catch new Pokemon and letting them know they’ll be checking in regularly for status updates and progress reports. When out looking for Pokemon, James attracts a Mareanie that he ends up catching. TR also beats Ash in a battle and nearly gets Pikachu.

(6 episodes later)

SM018 (A Seasoned Search!) - TR has made the upper level of Bewear’s den into a high tech, highly decorated secret lair where they can store all their technology and supplies.

(7 episodes later)

SM025 (A Team-On-Team Tussle!) - TR tries to get a Z Crystal for their own Z Ring so that they can perform Z moves themselves and boost their Pokemon’s power. They compete with Tupp, Wrap, and Zip of Team Skull in an unofficial trial which TR wins, with Mimikyu defeating the Totem Raticate and TR obtaining the Darkanium Z.

(13 episodes later)

SM038 (Mimikyu’s Disguise!) - Character development episode for Jessie and Mimikyu.

(4 episodes later)

SM042 (Alola, Kanto!) - TR is invited to Kanto by Matori for a mysterious briefing, along the way facing their old nemeses Misty and Brock, whom they might not have seen the last of.

(3 episodes later)

SM045 (Now You See Them, Now You Don’t!) - TR goes part-time into the Malasada Donut business in order to make a profit to compensate for having missed the Kanto briefing, which was apparently a blunder so severe that it downsized them back to the pre-elite Agent level. They see Ash with Nebby, which James dubs “ProtoKoffing”, and make a nearly successful attempt to steal it to present to Giovanni and Matori for extra credit and a promotion.

SM046 (Deceiving Appearances!) - Branch Chief Faba of the Aether Foundation meets TR at their Malasada truck and they accept an internship from him, hoping to steal Pokemon and resources from Aether Paradise as well as catch up with that “ProtoKoffing.” During their rummage, TR learns info on the Type NULL project they weren’t supposed to know, so Faba makes a subtle threat in order to keep their compliance with him. And earlier in the episode, a Stufful is seen among the Pokemon at Aether Paradise.

(3 episodes later)

SM049 (Mission: Total Recall!) - Believing them compliant with him, Faba turns to TR to help him catch Lillie so that he can wipe her memory using Hypno’s hypnosis. TR is appalled that Faba would think to do something like that, deeming it unethical even by their standards, so they tell him off and quit their internship at Aether Paradise.

(3 episodes later)

SM052-SM055 (Nebby Arc Climax) - In hopes of catching Nebby and figuring out it’s ties to Alola’s legends, TR heads the twerps off at Grand Poni Canyon only to be held up by Bewear, who makes them stay there and watch the Ultra Wormhole that appears in the sky until the twerps, with Lusamine retrieved, come back out from it. TR is empty-handed but satisfied with this experience, and this should have been where they detailed said experience in a report to Giovanni, who’d then start looking deeper into Alola’s legends.

(3 episodes later)

SM058 (Fighting Back Tears!) - Character development episode for James and Mareanie.

(4 episodes later)

SM062 (Acting True To Form!) - TR mistakes an Alolan Meowth for their own Meowth and takes him to their lair. Alolan Meowth is recruited to help TR try to get Pikachu but ends up ditching them, stealing their passports and traveling to Rocket HQ, where Matori adopts him into her own unit, getting TR praise from her and Giovanni, but it feels hollow to TR.

(11 episodes later)

SM073-SM076 (Ula’Ula Island Arc) - Mareanie learns a Dark move that can be powered up into a Z Move by the Darkanium Z. When TR gives this update report to Giovanni and wonders where they could get another Z Ring to increase their team’s Z Power, Giovanni tells them to go see Nanu, the Kahuna of Ula’Ula Island who’s an old friend of his, so TR flies their balloon to the island while putting robotic dummies in their place at the lair to keep Bewear oblivious about it. At first Nanu lies about his identity and sends TR on their way, but they then accidentally release a Totem Gengar and set off an island trial misadventure where they put their Z Power to the test, uniting their spirits to get Mareanie to use her Z Move to bring Gengar down. After witnessing this and hearing that they work for Giovanni, Nanu rewards TR with a special Mimikyunium Z from his protege, Acerola. The next day, TR sees Ash has come to Ula’Ula for his trial and, realizing they have an opportunity to use their new Z Power against him and possibly take Pikachu. While they’re keeping track of Ash’s progress and training Mimikyu for the inevitable encounter, Giovanni makes a phone call to Nanu, asking him about the legendary “Blinding One” that he’s become interested in pursuing. Finally, TR ambushes Ash at an abandoned thrifty mini-mart and nearly beat him with their Z Moves only for Pikachu to protect itself with a new move it learned and then Ash uses his and Pikachu’s own Z Move on Mimikyu, finally defeating the resentful specter in a true battle. Bewear, who’d shown up earlier in the match, then takes TR away in a shopping cart and off from Ula’Ula.

(11 episodes later)

SM087-SM090 (Necrozma Arc) - Detecting a looming power from an Ultra Wormhole, Giovanni has sent Matori and her special elite unit of Team Rocket, the Matori Matrix, over to Alola to investigate the Ultra activity and determine whether or not the beast creating the strange effects in the islands’ environment is in fact the Blinding One. Once Matori Matrix get there, however, the effects hit them and they start feeling drowsy like all the other adults. Nonetheless they still attempt to navigate the airs in their craft and try to catch Necrozma, even getting contact from our usual TR agents already in Alola. Once Necrozma departs back through Ultra Space and the drowsiness effect subsides, Matori Matrix tries to get their act back together only to be opposed by the Aether Foundation, leading to Gozu and his grunt followers battling against Faba and Professor Kukui. Meanwhile, our TR’s own attempts to head off the Ultra Guardians and catch the Alola Legendaries are met with near hits that are ultimately misses, and they’re prompted by Bewear into partaking in offering up their energy to help stop Necrozma’s rampage and restore it to it’s original self, Matori Matrix is forced to retreat, and TR is taken back to the lair by Bewear before they can attempt any final ambush.

SM091 (A Plethora Of Pikachu!) - Mimikyu’s hatred of Pikachu is reignited by a visit to the Pikachu Valley, where TR uses Mimikyu’s Z Move again, once again resulting a near success for them.

(5 episodes later)

SM096 (Don’t Ignore The Small Stufful!) - TR returns to Aether Paradise in hopes of making a big Pokemon heist for Giovanni, but they ultimately only attract the resident Stufful to their side, which turns out to be Bewear’s long lost cub. Bewear takes her cub and TR back home with her.

(5 episodes later)

SM102 (Alola, Alola!) and SM103 (Heart of Fire! Heart of Stone!) - TR puts in a call to HQ but are answered by only Alolan Meowth, who taunts them with words suggesting that since they’ve achieved nothing noteworthy and haven’t accomplished anything other than fund income from their basic jobs, they’re practically back at Grunt level now, not worth Giovanni or Matori’s time. James takes these words seriously, realizing that if they don’t up the ante with their evil schemes and get substantial results for the boss, they might get phased out of Team Rocket altogether and be left as nothing but legit Malasada salesman, a notion that horrifies TR. So they concoct a scheme to use a Z Powered, Gundam-esque Meowth mecha to steal Pokemon with, but since Misty and Brock are vacationing in Alola for the weekend at that time, they help the Kukui Class defeat TR and their mech twice.

(8 episodes later)

SM111-SM112 (the Meltan Special) - TR’s plot intersects with the Meltan plot when Meltan invade their secret base and Malasada Truck, eating up James’ metallic bottlecaps. TR tries to catch the Meltan in hopes of sending such an unknown, valuable Pokemon to Giovanni, and for James, avenging the bottlecaps.

(2 episodes later)

SM114 (Beauty is Only Crystal Deep!) and SM115 (The Dealer of Destruction!) - The first is a character development episode for Meowth in particular that also highlights the family dynamic TR has made with Bewear and Stufful, the second has TR finally re-encountering Tupp, Wrap, and Zip, who this time aren’t alone, as more Skull grunts and even Team Skull’s boss, Guzma, are with them. TR gets utterly annihilated in an off-screen battle with Guzma.

(7 episodes later)

SM122 (Spying For The Big Guy!) - Matori returns to Alola along with Alolan Meowth and her Matori Matrix force to personally check in on TR’s progress and take from them the Bewear they’d accidentally promised to give the boss way back in SM012. After TR distracts Matori and Alolan Meowth with spying on the Kukui Class or bogus Pokemon capture attempts, Matori decides to spare Bewear but take Stufful back to HQ instead so that she won’t return empty handed and her mission can still be considered fulfilled. TR is conflicted as they wish to follow Giovanni's orders but value the bond they’ve forged with Bewear and Stufful. Jessie distracts Matori while James and Wobbuffet retrieve Stufful and Meowth swaps places with it. When Meowth is found out on board Matori Matrix’s aircraft, Matori and Alolan Meowth threaten him only to be stopped by Bewear, who damages the aircraft and sends it hurdling off to who-knows-where. Once back at HQ, Matori attempts to resume spying on TR and possibly condemn them for treason, but Bewear makes a threatening gesture towards her and Alolan Meowth before breaking the Rocketbot that’s giving them their camera view.

(5 episodes later)

SM127-SM140 (the Alola League/Operation Profit!) - As the Alola League approaches, Jessie comes up with an idea on how to utilize their Malasda sales in way that can benefit Team Rocket best: in addition to making sales to a huge turnout of League trainers and spectators, Jessie and James themselves would enter the tournament and one of them could win and become Alola’s first ever Champion. That person would then reveal themselves as one of the Malasada salesmen, giving more profit and legal power to the business to the point where it can not only monopolize Alola, but spread to other regions around the globe too! With all the combined funds getting sent to HQ, TR becomes powerful both within and outside of their organization, powerful enough to rule the world! Predictably, this ends up not panning out, as Jessie and James end up facing each other in a battle, and even when James wins, he’s defeated by Gladion the very next round. TR decides they’ll compensate by working overtime with the Malasada sales, but they soon get so lost in it that they forget to utilize the business for anything evil, putting them at risk of going legit! So they hastily put together a scheme to use the funds (all the remaining funds they’ve got!) for creating the biggest, baddest Giga mech they’ve ever created, which they plan to turn against the League and steal as much of the Pokemon gathered there as they’re able to! During all this time, they’d left Bewear and Stufful at a natural spa in the care of a robotic Oranguru programmed to keep Bewear occupied at all times so that she doesn’t meddle in their affairs this time. But eventually, the robot loses battery power and shuts down, which allows Bewear to finally get on her way back to TR. But by the time she and Stufful get to Manalo Stadium, it’s being attacked by Guzzlord. Fighting one of the Guzzlord to protect both TR and her cub Stufful, Bewear inspires TR to turn their mech towards a cause of goodness and love rather than evil as they pummel the Guzzlord aside and rescue Bewear and Stufful, carrying them off for a change as the take off into the night with their Bewear-shaped mech, feeling the love shared between all of them as they do. It’s capped off with a scene of this family enjoying a spa night together.

(5 episodes later)

SM146 (Finale) - Just as TR as settled upon living with their newfound family in Alola and turning over a new leaf, a call from Giovanni demands they return to HQ in Kanto, as Giovanni and Matori require their presence out of Alola. TR finds themselves torn between their two families, and Mimikyu is crushed by the prospect of having to end things without having gotten any closure with Pikachu. Mimikyu goes off on his own to engage Ash and Pikachu in one final fight only to find he doesn’t have the heart for it anymore, which leads him to sulking off and giving Pikachu his final goodbye. Meowth talks him through the situation and cheers him up afterwards, showing how close the two have become since the start. Finally, unable to resist the call to more criminal escapades from their beloved boss, a somber TR opts to leave Mimikyu and Mareanie with Bewear and Stufful as an inseparable family - Team Rocket’s Alolan family that they can always return to whenever they drop by Alola again - and even leave their Z-Ring there with them. After a heartfelt thanks and goodbye to Bewear, and a surprisingly gentle hug from her, TR gets set off in their balloon out of Alola by the light of the full moon, off with a new blast again...

The only gaps in the pace of this subplot were between the obtaining of the Darkanium-Z and the Jessie and Mimikyu episode, between Alolan Meowth’s debut and the start of the Ula’Ula arc, and between the Ula’Ula arc and the Necrozma arc. While the first gap was forgivable since the anime needed the largely TR-free Akala Trial arc at that point, the other two suggest an increased struggle for the director and writers to come up with substantial content for TR to engage with whenever they weren’t sitting episodes out in the wait for the next point of advancement for their subplot - the sheer amount of times they’ve been shoved into that damn Malasada truck for their entrance into episode plots is evidence of this as well. Year 3 picked up the pace a bit more for their plot, but the cost was the actual content and true advancements made became very lacking in a very noticeable way. The worst offense was how the writers needing to force in the SM102-SM103 two-parter AND the SM11-SM112 two-parter due to Let’s Go! promotion and deciding to use those as places to advance TR’s plot led to TR learning they needed to up the ante with their evil schemes, try to get Pokemon that would impress their boss, and make better use of their profit-making venues or else they’d get phased out of their organization entirely...only to then act completely counterproductive to that realization until around the time of the Alola League where they suddenly remember they need to put in a better effort at evildoing, re-learning what they’d already learned before!

On the whole, though, this subplot was very neatly paced and exceptionally well executed, giving the TR Foursome and their new Alola family a story of their own that saw them grow as characters from being their fiendish Kanto criminal selves to becoming their more loving, heroic “Alolan Forms”, which validated their presence in the series. Having them hit a peak of dangerous villainy in the middle of the final year (SM102-SM103) and from there start to find, despite their efforts, they might be better suited for heroics and making profits through legit business by the end of the same year, was a nice way to wind things down with them.

In my view, the biggest failing of this story would be not with its leads, but with the more antagonistic forces in both Team Skull and the rest of Team Rocket. Team Skull seemed so promising as rivals for Team Rocket over turf and advancement of crime in Alola, yet they only contended with them thrice! Meanwhile, Year 2 was the only time TR’s plot and the larger main plot intersected to the point of overlapping, the only time where Giovanni and the Matori Matrix unit had relevance beyond being TR’s overarching antagonists, and the only time the clashing of the two units made for a legitimate danger for the heroes that could’ve impacted the future of the Alola saga...except they didn’t: Matori Matrix never challenges the heroes again even when they do return to Alola, TR’s own clashing with them is done away from the heroes who are left none the wiser of it, nothing comes out of Matori Matrix’s return to Alola outside of some further heroic development for TR, the Blinding One is not seen or heard from again, Giovanni’s interest in it is never spoken of again, Nanu and Giovanni’s past together isn’t further elaborated on, and Giovanni never pays a visit to Alola himself despite all the Gen 7 material that would suggest this as an inevitability. What a rip-off!

#pokemon #anime #sun and moon #team rocket #alola #alola region #subplot #analysis

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