Pokémon Adventures Manga Has The Coolest Team Rocket Leaders
Pokémon's Team Rocket have become iconic villains, but leadership in the games was often missing. The Pokémon Adventures manga is here to change that.
Fans of the Pokémon games and anime are missing out on some of coolest Team Rocket leaders who only appear in the manga. A core element of the franchise has long been the presence of an evil "team" that's menacing the region, often with a plot that somehow involves the local legendary. The announcement of the new team is often just as highly anticipated by fans as the reveal of new Pokémon, as these enemies tend to heavily shape the tone of the game. There have been many such teams over the years, with ambitions from freeing all Pokémon to destroying the universe, but the most popular and most enduring is the original, Team Rocket.
While many casual fans are likely to know of Team Rocket from the anime's trio of Jesse, James, and Meowth, these characters weren't originally in the games, although they've made appearances since. In fact, in Pokémon Red and Blue, the only named member of Team Rocket is the boss, Giovanni. But an organization with the apparent size and scale of Team Rocket should have other top leaders, rather than Giovanni handling everything himself. Later games would correct this by adding named executives, but for writers of manga adaptations during generations 1 and 2, the only solution was to create some unique Rockets of their own.
In Pokémon Adventures, the longest running and most popular of the Pokémon manga, several gym leaders are revealed to be members of Team Rocket, in part to solve this problem. Aside from Giovanni, other gym leaders affiliated with Team Rocket include Koga, Sabrina, and Lt. Surge, meaning that half of the gyms in the region are tied to the organization. The characterization of these three is thus quite different from most of their appearances. Additionally, Blaine is identified as a former member of Team Rocket's research division, bringing yet another gym leader into the mix.
In later chapters, Pokémon Adventures introduces some new high-ranking Rockets who mark a distinct change in the organization. The first pair, Carl and Sham, appear in the Gold and Silver chapters. Their visual design takes inspiration from the unnamed executives seen in those games, who would later become Archer and Ariana. Character-wise, however, they are far more vicious, with Carl triggering an earthquake and destroying the lighthouse in Olivine City, and Sham chains some underlings to a wall as punishment for failure. Rather than serving under Giovanni, Carl and Sham are working for the mysterious Masked Man who has taken over during the former boss's absence. The Masked Man himself is also extremely brutal in his approach, using mind control, kidnapping children and raising them to be his loyal servants, and trying to drown the protagonists.
As the series moved into covering the remakes, more Rockets appear, including the canonical admins from the games like Archer. The most interesting, however, are a trio known as The Three Beasts of Team Rocket. Orm is a large, hulking man who primarily uses grass and bug types; he's quite loyal to Giovanni, and his design is said to take inspiration from Frankenstein's monster. Carr is a short, blonde man with great ambition, a bad temper, and a preference for bug and steel type Pokémon, which he often uses as living bombs. The last is Sird, a cold and brilliant woman who makes sure to place herself first. The Three Beasts have little in common aside from being skilled and powerful trainers, and are eager to prove themselves as Giovanni's successor. Their contradicting desires lead to a massive amount of conflict between them, with Carr nearly destroying Team Rocket's Airship and throwing Sird overboard at one point. He tries to revive Team Rocket later on as well, but is defeated by Archer and others.
Sird, however, is the most interesting, as she is one of the only characters in Pokémon to have belonged to more than one of the evil teams. As Pokémon Adventures reaches its Diamond and Pearl chapters, it's revealed that Sird has only been posing as a member of Team Rocket, and that she's actually a follower of Cyrus and admin of Team Galactic. She is also responsible for turning several of the Pokédex holders to stone and offering a magical sword and armor to Teams Aqua and Magma. And, while Carr is last seen jailed, and Orm seemingly dies, Sird manages to escape, and hasn't been seen since, meaning she's a Team Rocket executive to actually survive. Her design also takes inspiration from a Team Rocket Admin TCG card, making her one of the few manga-exclusive Rockets to be designed by Pokémon legend Ken Sugimori.
Pokémon Go players may find these descriptions a bit familiar, as the trio of Rocket leaders in that game seem to have taken a few cues from the Three Beasts. Cliff is a massive, muscular man with an intense loyalty towards Giovanni, much like Orm. Arlo is ambitious and hot-tempered, consumed with rage over his losses, and he's the shortest, similar to Carr. Sierra and Sird are both the only women on their teams, and seem to be the most competent, as well as the most self-interested. The Go Rocket Leaders and the Three Beasts also share some type preferences with the Pokémon they use, as Arlo's reward Pokémon have mostly been bug or steel, and Sierra's have largely been dark and water/ice. While nothing official has ever been stated by Niantic about the Team Go Rocket leaders or their inspirations, it seems like more than a coincidence that they mirror their manga counterparts so well. And, since Pokémon Go has been known to include some obscure nods before (such as the Eevee name trick), these similarities could be an intentional call back.
Other manga have featured some very cool Team Rocket members too, although never for so long or in as much detail as Pokémon Adventures. The How I Became A Pokémon Card manga, which often focused on Team Rocket-related cards, features a team of Rocket grunts attempting to pull a scheme by disguising themselves as the Kimono Sisters, a group in Johto's Ecruteak City which uses Eevee's evolutions in dance shows. The all-female Grunt team have custom uniforms and wild hair, which causes them to resemble the Eevee evolution they specialize in. As they're only featured in one chapter, there's not much characterization to go on, but they're certainly unique.
While Jesse and James made the leap from anime to games, appearing in both Yellow and Let's Go, it's unlikely any of these Team Rocket leaders will do the same. There have, however, been a few characters to transition from manga to games recently, like Green in Let's Go, so Pokémon players may yet have a chance to do battle with them some day.