How does Team Rocket function, anyway?
Mar. 25th, 2006 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaTeam Rocket's pretty unknown despite all their involvement, generally functioning as the generic villains. The canon's pretty weird and inconsistent, and it really doesn't add up well.
#1 - Stealing pokemon.
This has never really made much sense to me. Poaching makes more sense (just think of how easy it'd be to get one of those damn RBY tauroses if you could just fight them normally...), but I suppose if one ignores the later attempts and goes by early show canon and common sense, stealing pokeballs containing pokemon without a fight might actually be a good idea. It's still rather questionable given how spotty canon is on how much strong pokemon matter and how hard or easy it is to raise them, but it might make some sense, especially if they focus on rare pokemon. It fits rather poorly with the fact grunts seem to all have standard common pokemon, though. Perhaps they're selling them.
Interestingly, despite this being the first thing that springs to mind, it's on shaky ground as it's purely show canon.
#2 - Steal valuables.
Less concrete but makes more sense. Gamewise you have the theft of the Dig TM and Silph Scope, plus the attempt made for the Masterball. All of these are pokemon-related, but then, pretty much everything in the game is. Plus their involvement with the Lavender Town cubone suggests they've out for money, as does their connection to the Celadon slot prizes. From this, it's reasonable to infer they might be stealing on a larger scale. Jesse and James' antics are pretty shaky evidence, but they do repeatedly attempt to steal interesting/rare/expensive things, so it's probably true Team Rocket deals in items as well.
Who are they stealing from, though? The problem is that for any large-scale organization, you'd be able to systematically hit pretty much everyone after a while. They'd clean out museums and then work their way through people's private collections. Possibly if they exist in a proportionally larger area, and if they resell the items regularly, they might be able to get around this, but they'd need a pretty large area to avoid rich collectors repeatedly encountering their own stolen items on the market.
So that requires a huge area and also that it not be a major facet of their business model.
#3 - Experiments
Both interesting and thematically fitting, but poorly explained. Funding and equipment are both pretty expensive. If #1 and #2 are productive, they might be able to generate enough cash to manage this, but that still begs the question of why.
It seems there's some expected return (Mewtwo, etc), but one wonders how much research would be tolerated without results, and also how large the facilities could be.
There's also manga canon, where they're developing new items. This is pretty reasonable, but not half so interesting as psychotic ditto monsters.
#4 - Caged pokemon
Canon, but weird. (Especially Giovanni building a whole glass tank for his kingler) Possibly for experience gained out of battle, but this would then come into conflict with the idea of pokemon aging (unless, of course, the pokeball stasis theory doesn't hold). Alternatively, it could be that pokemon are expected to be killed at some point rather than living a full life, making it a moot point.
Thematically nice, though.
#5 - Vast underground structures.
Canon. I'm not sure how much sense it makes, but possibly if certain pokemon are able to help (onix, for example) the cost might be more reasonable.
#6 - Bad lighting
Canon at times, unless my TV needs adjusting. Either this is just a standard thematic cliche or Giovanni felt the need to cut costs somewhere after blowing a few billion on Mewtwo. Really doesn't make sense.
#7 - Members
We only see age twenty-plus individuals involved, both gamewise and showwise. Even manga canon, to my limited knowledge. But game canon does have them recruiting younger trainers, so they should theoretically have a wide range of ages. Unless the guy on Nugget Bridge was really intending to just club you over the head and steal your pokemon, which I wouldn't put past him.
This might be explained by segmentation of units and assignments. A twelve year old trainer would probably find it easier to steal a painting from an old rich guy than pokemon from another trainer, so Team Rocket would probably find it easier to order the trainer to get the painting.
#8 - Infrastructure
There's the gym, of course, the base at Celadon, and theoretically there must be several other bases due to the fact Giovanni abandons the Celadon base without much preamble and manages to still mount a full-scale invasion of Silph Co later on. Possibly the gym doubles as the other base and so there are only two, but it seems pretty reasonable to assume there are a number, as Giovanni always seems to take the discovery/destruction of one pretty calmly. There might one in each area Team Rocket appears, so a minimum of five, plus one if gamewise Mewtwo had a Team Rocket connection. Johto might have only the two bases found, although it could easily have more.
At any rate, this would require a massive investment, although it would be feasible if they were disguised as legitimate buildings, as in part of a business.
#9 - Speaking of business...
It's pretty up in the air what the business model is. RBY-wise they control the game corner in Celadon, and are either poaching from the Safari Zone or else control that as well. They're also involved in whatever market the cubone skulls and slowpoke tails factor into and had a significant reach into Silph, possibly helping to fund certain research areas. In the show Giovanni's involved in a number of apparently harmless business ventures as well. How much is invested in any given area seems unclear, though.
It's impossible to say if Giovanni is focused primarily on making money, with the other areas subordinate to this goal, or if he's planning to create a super pokemon army to take over the world and needs money for that, or if he's really focused on amassing a vast store of pokemon and the research and money are to further that goal.
#10 – Units
You've got Jesse/James and Butch/Cassidy, plus the two I don't remember, but those both seem exceptions to the general trend (as well as a case of the anime being a bit too clever for its own good – come on, coed pairs?). Meanwhile there are massive numbers of black-outfitted grunts there to show up for large-scale events, such as the SS Anne and catching the tauros with Mewtwo.
So it seems the vast majority of Team Rocket is not paired. (As well as all identical, apparently cloned eyeless men…) Then there are a couple of single agents, as seen in Mewtwo Returns and the fourth movie, whatever it was called. It seems reasonable to assume there might be trios and so on, especially since anime canon sometimes treats Meowth as if he's getting his own separate paycheck. The addition of masses of others suggests there are also many who aren't in any particular group, as does the function of grunts in the game. Beyond that, there's really nothing clear.
#11 - Other work
Theoretically, there should be a lot of maintenance-style stuff going on. Someone has to feed the pokemon, chop tails off slowpoke, process cubone skulls, as well as keeping track of everyone else. And dealing with supplying them. There should be full-time trainers, grunts doing menial work for scientists, and assassins because all good fanfiction has assassins and frankly, there's no better explanation for why no one's figured out Giovanni controls Team Rocket yet. And someone needs to be cooking, keeping track of uniforms…come to think of it, many someones need to be working in a factory producing uniforms, unless Giovanni's ordering from a real store and just making liberal use of the assassins every time someone doesn't fall for the 'It's for Halloween costumes' line, which should be about every five minutes. Plus there's the building of the massive infrastructure, unless, again, we've got assassins swooping down for a kill every time some construction worker asks why they're building what appears to be a secret criminal hideout. Then there's the network of semi-legitimate agencies to foist stolen stuff off, and the network of legitimate agencies to run the real business ventures.
And you'd also need people to train the recruits. Even if we assume Team Rocket is very much a sink or swim kind of place, it'd be horribly inefficient to just hope kidnapped kids learn how to pick locks on their own. You might be able to make the older kids do it, but it wouldn't be as reliable.
Thoughts, anyone?
#1 - Stealing pokemon.
This has never really made much sense to me. Poaching makes more sense (just think of how easy it'd be to get one of those damn RBY tauroses if you could just fight them normally...), but I suppose if one ignores the later attempts and goes by early show canon and common sense, stealing pokeballs containing pokemon without a fight might actually be a good idea. It's still rather questionable given how spotty canon is on how much strong pokemon matter and how hard or easy it is to raise them, but it might make some sense, especially if they focus on rare pokemon. It fits rather poorly with the fact grunts seem to all have standard common pokemon, though. Perhaps they're selling them.
Interestingly, despite this being the first thing that springs to mind, it's on shaky ground as it's purely show canon.
#2 - Steal valuables.
Less concrete but makes more sense. Gamewise you have the theft of the Dig TM and Silph Scope, plus the attempt made for the Masterball. All of these are pokemon-related, but then, pretty much everything in the game is. Plus their involvement with the Lavender Town cubone suggests they've out for money, as does their connection to the Celadon slot prizes. From this, it's reasonable to infer they might be stealing on a larger scale. Jesse and James' antics are pretty shaky evidence, but they do repeatedly attempt to steal interesting/rare/expensive things, so it's probably true Team Rocket deals in items as well.
Who are they stealing from, though? The problem is that for any large-scale organization, you'd be able to systematically hit pretty much everyone after a while. They'd clean out museums and then work their way through people's private collections. Possibly if they exist in a proportionally larger area, and if they resell the items regularly, they might be able to get around this, but they'd need a pretty large area to avoid rich collectors repeatedly encountering their own stolen items on the market.
So that requires a huge area and also that it not be a major facet of their business model.
#3 - Experiments
Both interesting and thematically fitting, but poorly explained. Funding and equipment are both pretty expensive. If #1 and #2 are productive, they might be able to generate enough cash to manage this, but that still begs the question of why.
It seems there's some expected return (Mewtwo, etc), but one wonders how much research would be tolerated without results, and also how large the facilities could be.
There's also manga canon, where they're developing new items. This is pretty reasonable, but not half so interesting as psychotic ditto monsters.
#4 - Caged pokemon
Canon, but weird. (Especially Giovanni building a whole glass tank for his kingler) Possibly for experience gained out of battle, but this would then come into conflict with the idea of pokemon aging (unless, of course, the pokeball stasis theory doesn't hold). Alternatively, it could be that pokemon are expected to be killed at some point rather than living a full life, making it a moot point.
Thematically nice, though.
#5 - Vast underground structures.
Canon. I'm not sure how much sense it makes, but possibly if certain pokemon are able to help (onix, for example) the cost might be more reasonable.
#6 - Bad lighting
Canon at times, unless my TV needs adjusting. Either this is just a standard thematic cliche or Giovanni felt the need to cut costs somewhere after blowing a few billion on Mewtwo. Really doesn't make sense.
#7 - Members
We only see age twenty-plus individuals involved, both gamewise and showwise. Even manga canon, to my limited knowledge. But game canon does have them recruiting younger trainers, so they should theoretically have a wide range of ages. Unless the guy on Nugget Bridge was really intending to just club you over the head and steal your pokemon, which I wouldn't put past him.
This might be explained by segmentation of units and assignments. A twelve year old trainer would probably find it easier to steal a painting from an old rich guy than pokemon from another trainer, so Team Rocket would probably find it easier to order the trainer to get the painting.
#8 - Infrastructure
There's the gym, of course, the base at Celadon, and theoretically there must be several other bases due to the fact Giovanni abandons the Celadon base without much preamble and manages to still mount a full-scale invasion of Silph Co later on. Possibly the gym doubles as the other base and so there are only two, but it seems pretty reasonable to assume there are a number, as Giovanni always seems to take the discovery/destruction of one pretty calmly. There might one in each area Team Rocket appears, so a minimum of five, plus one if gamewise Mewtwo had a Team Rocket connection. Johto might have only the two bases found, although it could easily have more.
At any rate, this would require a massive investment, although it would be feasible if they were disguised as legitimate buildings, as in part of a business.
#9 - Speaking of business...
It's pretty up in the air what the business model is. RBY-wise they control the game corner in Celadon, and are either poaching from the Safari Zone or else control that as well. They're also involved in whatever market the cubone skulls and slowpoke tails factor into and had a significant reach into Silph, possibly helping to fund certain research areas. In the show Giovanni's involved in a number of apparently harmless business ventures as well. How much is invested in any given area seems unclear, though.
It's impossible to say if Giovanni is focused primarily on making money, with the other areas subordinate to this goal, or if he's planning to create a super pokemon army to take over the world and needs money for that, or if he's really focused on amassing a vast store of pokemon and the research and money are to further that goal.
#10 – Units
You've got Jesse/James and Butch/Cassidy, plus the two I don't remember, but those both seem exceptions to the general trend (as well as a case of the anime being a bit too clever for its own good – come on, coed pairs?). Meanwhile there are massive numbers of black-outfitted grunts there to show up for large-scale events, such as the SS Anne and catching the tauros with Mewtwo.
So it seems the vast majority of Team Rocket is not paired. (As well as all identical, apparently cloned eyeless men…) Then there are a couple of single agents, as seen in Mewtwo Returns and the fourth movie, whatever it was called. It seems reasonable to assume there might be trios and so on, especially since anime canon sometimes treats Meowth as if he's getting his own separate paycheck. The addition of masses of others suggests there are also many who aren't in any particular group, as does the function of grunts in the game. Beyond that, there's really nothing clear.
#11 - Other work
Theoretically, there should be a lot of maintenance-style stuff going on. Someone has to feed the pokemon, chop tails off slowpoke, process cubone skulls, as well as keeping track of everyone else. And dealing with supplying them. There should be full-time trainers, grunts doing menial work for scientists, and assassins because all good fanfiction has assassins and frankly, there's no better explanation for why no one's figured out Giovanni controls Team Rocket yet. And someone needs to be cooking, keeping track of uniforms…come to think of it, many someones need to be working in a factory producing uniforms, unless Giovanni's ordering from a real store and just making liberal use of the assassins every time someone doesn't fall for the 'It's for Halloween costumes' line, which should be about every five minutes. Plus there's the building of the massive infrastructure, unless, again, we've got assassins swooping down for a kill every time some construction worker asks why they're building what appears to be a secret criminal hideout. Then there's the network of semi-legitimate agencies to foist stolen stuff off, and the network of legitimate agencies to run the real business ventures.
And you'd also need people to train the recruits. Even if we assume Team Rocket is very much a sink or swim kind of place, it'd be horribly inefficient to just hope kidnapped kids learn how to pick locks on their own. You might be able to make the older kids do it, but it wouldn't be as reliable.
Thoughts, anyone?
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-26 06:43 am (UTC)Stealing Pokémon:
Though I have to agree, I'd say poaching would be more effective for things like experiments, but I have a few theories where one would want to steal pokémon:
Stronger than wild pokemon, more adequate for an 'army'
Stolen pokemon are used for the sake of manipulation
A scare tactic.. simply that, they do it to keep people wary of confronting them.. possibly.
Selling of the rarer ones, that did not fit the desired specifications of what Giovanni considered to be powerful pokémon
Stealing Valuables:
I think you've pretty much got it covered there.. they'd be necessary to fund the experiments..
Experiments:
I'd just like to point out, that Giovanni, I see him as a business man.. with great ties to the black market, capable of making money both legitimately and illegally.
Members:
younger TR members.. an interesting thought, though, wasn't there a TR special that featured a TR member that was fairly young? (never had the chance to see it..) It's also possible the reason we don't see the younger ones, because they may not have been able to get through whatever 'training' or 'initiated' required to become a full fledged TR member. Of course this also brings about the question, how does one actually go about becoming a TR member? Such information would certainly not be public, and 'invites' would be rare.
Units:
I tend to go strictly game/manga on this one, I think there would be teams or factions of sorts, maybe partners depending on the type of project, or skill of the agent. Of course, I don't think such partners would be obtained until one if of a greater rank, and I think such partners would also have some sort of command over a faction.
Other Work:
The reason you don't see this much is because I think people are too lazy to think about the nitty-gritty, and just want to get right into the action.
this is all I can think of at the moment.. might think of doing a write up for my own sake.. (along with my indepth write-ups of pokemon technology.. )
no subject
Date: 2006-03-27 03:37 am (UTC)Agreed, Giovanni certainly has the money to invest in research, but I wonder how much he'd be willing to sink into it without return, when it could be going to some other branch of TR. If his ultimate goal is a super pokemon army and everything else is there mainly for financing, then it works, but if he has other goals and the research is there to further that, then there should be some limits to how much money he'll dump without results. It's not really clear though which it is.
Also agreed on the younger trainers not being full members. It probably would make most sense to keep them out of sight, to avoid them causing problems. Actually now that I think of it that way it works out a lot better.
And yes, partners do seem to be pretty high ranked, sort of administrators in some cases, so perhaps there's some sort of greater autonomy/smaller group sizes as one climbs in rank, or perhaps partnered groups are for those at permanent kinds of jobs where they're set off on their own for long periods.
...stupid canon not bothering to think things out and make it clear...
no subject
Date: 2006-03-27 04:23 am (UTC)My guess is the funding would go to whichever had the highest priority, or whatver Giovanni considered the most important.
Also, speaking of finances.. how do TR members get compensation? Cash? Goods? Pokémon? (all three.. though this seems the most likely) and how do they determine how much they actually recieve?
Oh yes, and I have an interesting thought
when I was thinking about the more detailed aspects of how a pokeball functions, the pokedex, and other systems, I started to consider the automated pokémon transfer system.. you know, when you catch more than 6 pokémon, and the newly caught pokémon is transfered automatically to your box.
This would have to be an immensly vast, highly maintained, (not to mention highly protected) type of network, that, if it were to ever fail or be manipulated in some way, could be catastrophic to the entire pokémon world (or reigon, if said system is taken care seperately reigon by reigon) because not only would it have to know where and who the trainers are, but how many pokéballs are active on the trainer.
Could it be used to not only retrieve the extra captured pokémon, but recall the rest of pokemon in the trainer's possession if someone programed it to do such?
If say...
a group managed to gain control of it..
granted as I said, it would have to be heavily guarded, and the software, well encripted..
but it would make for a fantastic plot point.. hmmm
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 01:02 am (UTC)Yes, hacking the storage system would be interesting, but I'm not so sure it'd be a good plot point, unless it was leading into a dystopian future where TR controls the world. Because really, if they managed it, it'd be over.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 02:08 am (UTC)hacking the sytem is TR's goal, thus giving something central to work around, rather than just an aimless 'TR does bad stuff, good people stop them' with no central goal or story direction.
If that makes sense.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 01:31 am (UTC)What makes you think that people don't already know, or at least have supsicions? He could be one of those mob boss celebrities that the feds are just never able to convict.
unless Giovanni's ordering from a real store and just making liberal use of the assassins every time someone doesn't fall for the 'It's for Halloween costumes' line, which should be about every five minutes.
That would be highly impractical, but so much fun. On a related note, I have occasionally wondered whether some jackass kids in the pokémon world ever decide that it's a good idea to dress up as Team Rocket for Halloween. I wouldn't put that past human youth in any universe.
I can't believe you didn't get into the whole Saffron debacle. Even when I was a stupid kid, the way that was handled in the game made me go, "Huh?"
First off: the gaurds who let you through when you have something to drink. They can't possibly be directly employed by TR, or they'd know that that:
a.) They're not doing you any favors as you're probably just going to go get yourself killed.
b.) That sort of crass stupidity is enough to get them killed.
So who the Hell are they, and what do they think is going on?
For that matter, what does anyone think is going on? Or, if the rest of Kanto knows, why does it take a ten-or-eleven-year-old vigilante to sort out the situation? In another town, there's a kid writing a letter to a friend in Saffron that mentions "problems with Team Rocket" in about the same tone that one might use when talking about "problems with termites."
And we can't even get help by superimposing different canons here, because nothing like that ever happened in the anime, probably because it would have put Ash and crew in a little too far over their heads for such an early point in the series.
I also think it's a shame that we mostly only see J&J and B&C in the anime. It's especially a shame that Domino only ever showed up once. Anyone who can wear a big painted smile and squeal "Don't you think this baby is just so cute?" with the underlying implication that they're going to do something horrible to it if you don't do exactly as they say is pretty fucking awesome.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 02:40 pm (UTC)Plus, even assuming he's legally untouchable, pokemon is full of trainers who breaking and entering then blowing stuff up because of wrongdoing all the time. If everybody knew Giovanni was the mob boss, he'd have half the population of trainers converging on his front lawn.
Unless, of course, he's got the capabilities to take out those trainers and just takes advantage of it as people delivering him rare, high level pokemon.
Hm...costumes. You know, barring Jesse and James, Team Rocket seems pretty feared, and legitimately so. I wonder if kids would dress up and claim membership for petty theft on the assumption people will be scared and do what they say? And pranksters would definitely do what you mentioned - what better way to cause an upset than running around in Team Rocket costumes?
As to the guards - a bribe, maybe? They were told not to let anybody in, but don't know why, and they're not allowed to leave their posts (except, apparently, to warp a single bottle of fresh water to each of the other guards). So since you were so nice as to give them a drink... (The question I always had was "So, does this mean I'm the only trainer allowed into Saffron?" because they keep saying "Oh, it's you, go on through" for the rest of the game, presumably because they're still keeping everyone else out.)
It does make you wonder who they were trying to keep out, too, since I can't imagine any law enforcement just saying "Oh, okay, sure."
Or maybe it does, just like a Team Rocket guy standing in front of Silph is enough to keep you out.
I think I've just discovered the secret to taking over the pokemon world. Get a bunch of people to stand in front of critical doorways to keep out trainers and police while menacing whoever. As long as they don't have pokemon, they can't be challenged to a battle and forced to get out of the way upon losing. And no one will push past them. They're like mobile walls.
Domino is indeed awesome. I wish we'd see more competent villains in general.