Did you like how the anime portrayed villainous pokemon teams in the anime?

[skynerel]

By villainous teams I mean Team Rocket, Magma, Aqua, Plasma, Flare etc. Did you enjoy their arcs in the anime?

 

[BigDocFan]

Team Galactic had the better arc I feel, Team Rocket were overused and too comedic outside of when Giovanni was involved in BW, the other teams felt underused, Plasma were over in about 11 episodes

 

[-PokemonBattleFanatic-]

J >>>

 

[UxieLover1994]

The arc between Teams Magma and Aqua was poorly written, had horrid dialog, and the animation is really showing its age. The morally grey aspects of Team Plasma from the games was also ignored in favor of an outright black-and-white, good vs. evil morality tale. The writers removed all sympathetic aspects from Team Skull and lionized the Aether Foundation, right up to Ash and Pikachu temporarily joining them.

And obviously, overuse of Team Rocket, mainly by having the trio be the antagonists of game-adapted plot points that were done by other teams in the games and other media (such as the Poke Ball factory in Kalos) or have an occasional arc with a high-tier member who we never saw before and will never see again.

Changing the concept of the villainous teams to be strictly "evil for the sake of evil" in the anime doesn't make these teams' portrayals appealing to fans of the games.

 

[Emelie]

Not a fan of Plasma's portrayal. Even if the first arc wasn't banned they would still have been more similar to BW2 Plasma who weren't all that interesting. I would have liked to see Ash replaced and have the protagonist's arc with awakening Zekrom and their rivalry with N be the focus.

Kind of weird how they never did anything with Team Rocket despite Jessie and James being in almost every episode. Seeing Silver's plot with his father could have been neat. Oddly enough Paul seems to be a replacement for him, maybe because of HGSS during Gen 4.

Team Galactic were alright, Hunter J's death was shocking. I would have loved to see a movie with Cyrus and Cynthia in the Distortion World instead of focusing on a random guy.

Team Aqua and Magma were bland. There are so many possibilities. Why not use the weather disaster to create suspense? My favorite creepypasta has always been Drought which uses the Aqua/Magma plot as cli-fi/horror. Perhaps they don't need to go that far but the stakes could have been higher than a generic evil possessed Pikachu plot.

I haven't watched enough of Journeys but there was no Bede and he is the only character from Galar that I care about lol.

Lusamine was too OOC just like in USUM.

Sada and Turo are more interesting than the Explorers (who has too many members).

Team Flare are bland regardless of media. At least Ash was cool and the gym leaders got to do something. I wish Serena was more relevant and the plot with Zygarde was given to her instead of Bonnie. Her Zygarde outfit in Masters makes you think of what could have been.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Team Flare are bland regardless of media. At least Ash was cool and the gym leaders got to do something. I wish Serena was more relevant and the plot with Zygarde was given to her instead of Bonnie. Her Zygarde outfit in Masters makes you think of what could have been.

Serena didn't really have a bond with Zygarde though. She cared about it, but she wouldn't have been able to reach out to it like Bonnie was. While I can understand wanting Serena to be more involved, she still helped out in the Team Flare arc, so she wasn't tossed aside or irrelevant at least. Plus, Bonnie singing her song to stop Zygarde is easily her best moment of the series, so losing that wouldn't have been worthwhile in my opinion.

Aside from Team Galactic and to a lesser degree Team Flare, I don't think that the anime really has the best track record with the evil teams. I can kind of understand why they didn't do much with Team Rocket. Not only because they wanted to keep the Team Rocket trio around, but they weren't really interested in adapting much of the storyline from the first generation either. Stuff like the Sliph Co. takeover and Giovanni disbanding Team Rocket after being defeated were kind of important. Without doing Team Rocket disbanding, they couldn't really do much with the Team Rocket admins looking for Giovanni. They could have potentially figured out a way to include Silver during Johto, but that was more about a rival as opposed to the evil team.

Team Magma and Aqua were really poorly handled. Their appearances felt random, few characters really stood out and the climax itself was a mess. I still remember being surprised at how either team could have taken a Legendary Pokemon when neither group really came off as that strong or competent. I actually didn't really mind that they used Lance instead of Steven during the climax though. It wasn't good to treat the regional Champion as just a generic COTD, but I thought that bringing back Lance was a cool bit of continuity. It might help that I didn't really see much appeal for Steven in the original third generation games, but he did come off better in OR/AS.

Team Galactic was terrific. Each of their appearances were pretty significant, they came off as easily the most competent evil team with even having some victories under their belts and their climax was pretty solid. While Hunter J's death is the most shocking, Cyrus himself also pretty much died unless his new universe had food, water and air for him. It also had some satisfying payoff with the DP trio connecting with their respective Lake Guardian.

Team Plasma was handled pretty poorly. Much like Team Rocket, it's hard to be really that upset about it when they were dealing with factors beyond their control. They couldn't really capture the moral grayness of Team Plasma or the conflict between the two different versions when the time skip in B2/W2 was pretty important for that. It's still pretty bad and I don't think that the anime was able to showcase why they were such a good refreshing evil team at the time, but there wasn't much they could have done. Even if the original two parter had been able to air, I'm still not sure how well they could have done a good job with adapting that storyline.

Team Flare themselves are still pretty bland in XY like they are in the games, but I think that the anime handled them relatively well all things considered. They were setup in the Mega Evolution specials, came off as relatively competent in their first few appearances in XY and their climax is really great. While I still prefer the Team Galactic climax for having years of setup being paid off, the Team Flare climax was still good and easily a highlight of XY. Ash had some really cool moments, all of his friends got something to do, which is something most of the movies could never really figure out, having the Gym Leaders involved was pretty cool and it ended in a satisfying matter.

Team Skull wasn't terrible, but I think it could have been handled better. Not introducing Guzma until so late into SM was a poor choice. I think he still came off pretty memorable and I liked his appearances, but he still lacks the development from Sun/Moon and especially US/UM that made him more endearing. Turning Lusamine into more of an overbearing kind of mother also never sat right with me. You could argue that she was still emotionally neglecting Lillie, which wouldn't be inaccurate given that she never seemed to look into why she developed a fear of Pokemon, but at the same time, it really lacked the emotional gut punch of seeing Lusamine being more blunt with her emotional abuse of her children from the games. To be fair, I really think that they wanted to backtrack from that aspect of her characterization in US/UM too, so it might not have been entirely due to the anime either.

Team Yell appeared for one episode and that was all they really needed.

 

[RetroPokeFan]

Team Rocket: Eh, their shining moment was probably in Unova when they attempted to capture Meloetta. Aside from that it's pretty much the TRio with the actual corporation hiding in the shadows.

Team Aqua/Magma: Ha ha ha, NO. That two parter is easily up there as one of the worst in the series.

Team Galactic: Second best for me, they were easily intimidating and even had some of the most shocking moments of Unova.

Team Plasma: They sure loved their mind control machine to death that they forgot to be even remotely interesting. A major step down from their game counterparts.

Team Flare: They weren't very good in the games so if anything the anime dumping the game's stuff and focusing more on Zygarde did near wonders for them. The arc at the near end is still probably the best one for me.

Team Skull: I do enjoy Tupp, Zipp and Rapp but it still felt somewhat awkward to not see Guzma until towards the end of the series. But his battle with Ash was still pretty decent.

Team Yell: Nah these guys ain't villains. More nuisances if anything and they only had one single episode where they weren't even the main focus anyway.


Villain wise it's a mixed bag with some shining like Galactic and Plasma and others being completely awful like with both Aqua and Magma and even Team Plasma.