Rocketshippers go here!
Butch & Cassidy
Jesse and James. Butch and Cassidy. Even Annie and Oakley. Who could be next?
Buffalo and Bill? Doc and Holliday? How about the Sundance Kid?
This clever yet shameless plug of the famous figures that adorned the American West pre 1900 is only following the trend set by the Japanese.
Cassidy's Japanese original was named after a battleship that defeated a battleship named after Jesse's Japanese original.
But the show must go on.
Butch and Cassidy first made their appearance in the Indigo episode The Breeding Centre Secret and just like a second rate Doctor Who villain, keep reappearing to put the wind up our regular villains.
They are what is called Class A agents, Giovanni's number one team although they in turn have been foiled by Team Twerp and Jesse and James each time.
If there is one thing that Jessie and James don't like, it's competition. And Butch and Cassidy are big competition. Their ideas are usually similar to those of Jesse and James but on a much grander, more expensive scale.
Sporting slightly hipper uniforms (Jesse and James' were home made) and an all to familiar motto this Team Rocket claim to be "on the same team, but in different leagues" to Jesse and James.
Although Butch and Cassidy have been thrown in jail on three separate occasions, Giovanni has bailed them out. Jesse and James have had to escape.
Butch and Cassidy do their fair share of disguises when carrying out a scheme, although Butch himself is not a master of voice aerobics and gives him away instantly. To the viewers at least.
Despite their efforts they lack the flair and theatrical talent that Jesse and James have when it comes to masquerades.
Butch and Cassidy have been involved in at least three large-scale pokemon stealing operations.
They opened a 5 star Breeding Center, in which they promised trainers that their Pokemon would evolve in the luxury of a high-class spa with the help of pokemon love power. Jesse and James break into the centre to steal the pokemon that, unbeknown to them, had already been stolen.
Their plan is foiled.
In Pikachu Re-volts they used a Drowzee who has a PHD in Boogying Down to hypnotise the pokemon in the area bringing them under their control.
Again their plan is foiled, this time by Team Twerp and team Rocket working together.
In Fortune Hunters they sold phony pokemon fortune telling books to trainers. If the trainer's type doesn't match one of their pet pokemon, they they offer to hold on to the pokemon until a replacement can be found.
Again their plan is foiled, this time by a flaming moltres.
And most recently they helped an evil scientist capture a baby Lugia in a nail-biting two parter.
Let us look at them team more closely.
Let's face it people, Cassidy is a ginge. A carrot top. A ginger snap.
There is no denying it.
As mentioned in Jesse's biography, her and Cassidy had a fling. It could have been in the early days of Team Rocket, it may have even been before they joined. Whenever it was, it ended messily and the two have never resolved their issues.
Put two equally strong and dominant women in bed together and you know there is going to be trouble.
And hell hath no fury like a woman scored. And boy, someone was very very scorned.
Jesse mentions that Cassidy was jealous because Jesse was so beautiful, that she had bigger boobs, was a better lover and had a sexier arse.
Well, not in so many words, but it's there.
It's a claim, of course that Cassidy denies claiming that Jesse is still a spoiled little brat and spread the rumour that Giovanni might be throwing Jesse out of Team Rocket.
Cassidy has the upper hand here, because while Giovanni tired of Jesse, Cassidy it seems has not failed to disappoint. It is not known if Cassidy slept her way to the top like Jesse had planned, what is assured tough is that all of Butch and Cassidy's plans work (when they are not confronted with Ash) and they catch better pokemon.
Everytime she is confronted with Cassidy her blood boils and promises to "show her who's the Queen of Mean!"
Cassidy likes to talk............... and talk.................................... and talk, and with the voice that Butch has, we get down on our knees and thank the gods in the heavens that this is the case.
James had never met Butch before the the Breeding Centre incident.
Harvey Fier.....ah we mean Butch, has obviously been chain-smoking for years now considering his voice has the texture and quality of toilet paper made from a combination of gritty rocks, sandpaper and barbed wire.
Not much is know about Butch's past, he has never been romantically linked to James unlike Cassidy and her counterpart, and James is not attracted to Butch in the slightest.
If anything, Butch fascinates him in ways which we cannot explain.
He has no time for nonsense and it enrages him when his name is mispronounced as Botch by James, an unsavoury character whom he considers to be inferior to himself.
Needless to say his names lives up to his work habits being a trifle more masculine and more intelligent then James is. Not once have we seen Cassidy whip out a rubber mallet and wallop him over the head.
While Mewoth is the smarts for our Team Rocket, Butch is apparently the brains for his.
And their team seems to be exactly that, a team, where Jesse and James' team is decidedly a one sided affair.
During their schemes, Butch stays in the background much more than Cassidy or James for that matter. he has none of the theatrics or joi-de-vivre that James displays. You would never catch him in a ballerina outfit or, god forbid, a moltres costume.
No we have not seen the last of Butch and Cassidy.
Giovanni
Giovanni is the Founder and the charismatic, ruthless, sharply-dressed, evil mastermind behind Team Rocket, a
hugely wealthy man who longs for power and rare Pokemon in equal amounts, and the vile bastard who responsible for commissioning the cloning of Mewtwo.
As the Team Rocket Boss, Giovanni is in charge of all the TR agents, including high-ranked members from Butch, Cassidy, and Domino, to lower-ranked members like Jessie, James, and other minions.
Giovanni is a Gym Leader at Viridian City, owns the amusement theme park The Island Of The Giant Pokemon and was behind the creation of the phenomenally powerful Mewtwo, which handed Gary his first defeat
There, trainers battle him for the Earth Badge, the final badge needed to enter the Pokemon League, and it was there that Gary and Ash had their first encounter with the mysterious and most powerful pokemon, Mewtwo.
Giovanni, like many James Bond nasties, has a favored pet, a Meowth.
He allowed Meowth into Team Rocket because he is the only talking
Meowth in the world, and for a time was his favorite. But after his two newest recruits - a sexy young woman called Jesse and a dynamic, talented ar-teest called James - proved to be incredibly incompetent, he sent the streetwise, tough talking Meowth to snap them back into action.
Unfortunately the incompetence seemed to be communicable and soon Meowth has fallen from grace and let leadership fall back into Jesse's domineering hands, while Giovanni's new favorite became a Persian.
ALTHOUGH, when suffering in the face of near defeat at the hands of Mewtwo, Giovanni threatened Persian with a backhand incurring the wrath of SPCAs all over the world.
Jesse, James and Mewoth are determined to impress Giovanni by capturing exotic or numerous pokemon, and are often imagining receiving his praises and being richly rewarded.
However, when Jessie and James struggle to capture Togepi, they present it to Giovanni only to find Giovanni only wants rare and powerful PokŽmon, he asks what it does, and they hum and haw before finally claiming that it'll make a great paperweight.
He developed a short fuse when it comes to Jesse and James.
When stranded on the Island of the Giant Pokemon, Jesse puts through a collect call to Giovanni.
Giovanni wants to know why they're bothering him so early in the morning. Jesse and James however, rather than actually tell their boss their predicament, go over all dramatic and start up the Team Rocket motto as a tinny telephone cover of their theme music starts up.
"NITWITS!" snaps Giovanni, "HOW DARE YOU ANNOY ME WITH YOUR NONSENSE! NEVER EVER BOTHER ME LIKE THIS AGAIN!"
He tolerates Jesse, James and Meowth for reasons all his own, perhaps using their bumbling and antics as a cover for the more sinister background activities of the other Team Rocket members, including Butch and Cassidy.
Giovanni often communicates with the teams via a video phone and for a time his face was cast in shadow, it was in The Battle of the Badge that we see the real Giovanni for the first time.
Giovanni, being the power hungry capitalist that he is, wanted the world's most powerful Pokemon, so he commissioned his scientists to genetically engineer Mewtwo, a super-clone of Mew.
He would keep Mewtwo in his gym and, fully armoured, this pokemon would do his bidding and beat the living crap out of any trainers that came for the Earth Badge.
When Mewtwo, sick of the eccentricities of the bourgoise, rose up against him and upon realising that he wasn't real destroyed the laboratory and escaped to plot his revenge with a clone army, Giovanni attempted to capture him.
Unlike the other characters, Giovanni's memory of Mewtwo had not been erased when the clones flew off to find a new, peaceful home at Mount Querna.
Enlisting the help of Team Rocket agent Domino, Giovanni located Mewtwo's whereabouts and sent the TR Attack Squad to capture Mewtwo and his cloned friends.
Giovanni used robots to attack Mewtwo and threatened to hurt Mewtwo's cloned friends unless he submitted. Ash rescued Mewtwo from Giovanni's clutches in a humiliating turn of events.
This time Giovanni's memory of Mewtwo was erased for good. Confused, Giovanni demands that Domino explain what they're
doing
on an island but she doesn't know, only suggesting that maybe they're on a mission so top secret not even Giovanni knows what it is!
One thing is for sure though, it won't stay top secret for long
if they don't haul ass out of there and Giovanni agrees, although he does mention to himself that he's got the feeling somehow that he's been
completely and utterly defeated, but not knowing how, by who or why.
Giovanni isn't just all dastardly schemes and plotting, revenge and robots, he enjoys his vacations too. And goodness knows he can afford it.
While relaxing in the Seafoam Islands, he makes Jessie and James dig for clams, a task of which James comments, "first the boss has us swabbing the deck of his yacht now he has us digging for clams like a couple of clam-diggers."
Recently Giovanni has only turned up in episodes where Butch and Cassidy are involved or in the illusions of grandeur of Team Rocket.
After his defeat by Mewtwo he has returned to his shadowed evilness and while Ash has only ever come face to face once with Giovanni, we can only wonder when their next meeting will be, because they certainly don't remember the last one.
Return to Team Rocket Page
![[Anime Web Turnpike]](gifs//trixie1a.gif)
