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Giovanni (Sometimes spelled Giovani, and Sakaki in the original Japanese version) is the leader of Team Rocket in the fictional world of Pokémon, and he is also the Viridian City Gym Leader.


Team Rocket's leader

As Team Rocket's leader, Giovanni is very ambitious and intolerant of failure. As such, he has kicked Jessie, James and Meowth (the three Team Rocket members most often seen in the anime) out of Team Rocket on multiple occasions, although they always manage to find a way to get back in.

Giovanni seems to have a large sum of money at his disposal—probably from the profit of selling stolen Pokémon, Team Rocket's main source of income—which can be seen in some of his properties such as the amusement park of giant robotic Pokémon which appeared in the anime episode "Island of the Giant Pokémon". He may also be a corrupt industrialist, which is constantly alluded to in his legitimate business interests, such as the previously mentioned theme park and his attempts to rid himself of Jessie and James. In one episode, he said, regarding a fleet of old, decrepit blimps, that he hadn't done any repairs on them in years and that "The only thing I've maintained on them is the insurance," showing that collecting the money from their crashes was far more important to him than the deaths of whoever happened to be traveling on them.

Giovanni acts somewhat like a mafia leader. He has a pet Persian, and he can always be found scratching its head. Perhaps not coincidentally, his behavior with the Persian looks very similar to other evil mastermind-and feline pairs: Inspector Gadget's Dr. Claw and Mad Cat and Ernst Stavro Blofeld of the James Bond films and his cat.

Despite having been the lead villain of the early games, Giovanni's role in the anime is fairly minor, compared to his least favorite minions, Jessie and James. He makes a few appearances in the Johto League seasons, based on the Gold/Silver games (which he did not appear in), and even has a few cameos in the Hoenn League seasons, based on the Ruby/Sapphire games (in which Team Rocket is not even mentioned). These cameos usually pertain to Meowth's fantasies as to how Giovanni is going to thank him, Jessie, and James for bringing him rare Pokemon. In the case of the movies, however, he only appeared at the beginning of the first movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back, in which he financed the cloning of the rarest Pokémon, Mew, which led to the birth of Mewtwo. After an unfortunate end to his "partnership" with Mewtwo, Giovanni went looking for it, finding it in the direct-to-video follow-up, Mewtwo Returns. Despite his attempt at recapturing Mewtwo, Mewtwo escaped and erased all memory of itself from Giovanni's mind. Giovanni's role in the movie ends with him stating that he feels that he has somehow been utterly defeated.