3rd Gen Say Hello to the Bad Guys [February 2016]

[Brendino]

Welcome to Third Generation's new featured thread- the Poll of the Month! Seeing as this board's a bit slower than most on PokéCommunity, we'll be doing monthly polls rather than weekly ones, but the premise will be the same- pick one of the options from the poll above, and feel free to post about your choices. Also, if any of you have a question that you would like to see featured as the PotM, feel free to send me a VM with your idea(s), or leave it with your post in this thread. If your topic gets picked, you may even be awarded with a special emblem!

Now with all that said, this month's poll question is:

"Which villainous team leader is your favourite?"

Not only did we see the return of Team Rocket in the Kanto remakes, but we were treated to two new evil organizations in Hoenn- Team Aqua and Team Magma. And of course, behind every evil group is an extra evil leader, and this month we're asking who the best of the bad guys is. So let your voices be heard, and let the voting begin!
​

 

[The Annoying Rollout]

Nah Maxie and Archie are more of crazy environmentalists IMO.

Giovanni on the other hand,might not be the hardest antagonist on the series,but the way he run his organization was amazing.Stealing pokemon,Running the Game Corner to gain money and in the same time trying to catch the Kanto's Legendaries(He did it in the manga) was too much for an antagonist on a Kid's game.Plus he kill two Magmars into pieces too.

 

[Flowerchild]

Giovanni all the way. He was the only one who actually felt like a genuinely threatening person and a real antagonist. Archie and Maxie were just misguided extremists, and saw the error of their ways towards the end of the games, but Giovanni just kept on bein' evil. Also I'm pretty impressed with his ability to co-ordinate stealing Pokémon, genetic research on Mew, and run a gym at the same time.

 

[GalufKitten]

i liked Archie because he is like a pirate and thats awesome

 

[Nas160]

I like both Archie and Maxie overall a bit more than Giovanni, and out of the first two, I remember Archie more from playing Emerald. Plus, I've played through my AlphaSapphire, so I've come to like him a lot more.

 

[DigitalMewtwo]

Giovanni all the way. He was the only one who actually felt like a genuinely threatening person and a real antagonist. Archie and Maxie were just misguided extremists, and saw the error of their ways towards the end of the games, but Giovanni just kept on bein' evil. Also I'm pretty impressed with his ability to co-ordinate stealing Pokémon, genetic research on Mew, and run a gym at the same time.

Exactly. He just seemed like a real threat. Nasty all around.

 

[Imperator161]

Giovanni all the way. He was the only one who actually felt like a genuinely threatening person and a real antagonist. Archie and Maxie were just misguided extremists, and saw the error of their ways towards the end of the games, but Giovanni just kept on bein' evil. Also I'm pretty impressed with his ability to co-ordinate stealing Pokémon, genetic research on Mew, and run a gym at the same time.

I agree with this. Also, I can't remember quite how they presented him in the instruction booklet and such in FRLG, but in RBY, I remember that he was always half in shadow in the instruction booklet, and looked really sinister. That image used to scare me when I first started playing, actually. But overall, Giovanni seems like a cruel mob boss, and however you spin it, he's willing to do whatever it takes to benefit himself, at the expense of others. Archie and Maxie, by contrast, actually seemed to feel that they were doing the world a favor with their plans (as misguided as they were). Giovanni wanted to dominate, in many ways, and there was never any pretense about his actions. I did find it strange how easily he just decided to give up after the player beats him in his gym, though.

 

[Otamajakushi]

I think I'm going to go with Giovanni! Archie and Maxie were great, but I thought that Giovanni was really cruel. I think he demonstrated this well with Mewtwo. Im happy Mewtwo was triumphant in both occasions versus Giovanni.

 

[Caite-chan]

Giovanni all the way. I think it's because I'm old school and I just love Team Rocket in the first place. :D

 

[Melody]

hnngh Not enough Love for Maxie. Like seriously. At least with Archie you knew he was good guy with misguided intentions.

But Maxie, oooh man you just KNEW he was a Grade A+ Psychopath. He was a lot more evil in my opinion than Archie was. Mind you that Ruby versions were always my first choice and that I am aware of the story differences between the two as I've played both, but I really felt like Maxie was more evil. Like Giovanni Level Evil with a modern twist. I really couldn't even hate Giovanni, he was admittedly, in the first gen, one of the Gym Leaders. In my outlook; Gym Leaders aren't always necessarily Evil...to lead the Gym implied that he still had a softer side, and that even as the leader of the "Criminal Empire" he was actually doing Kanto a favor by organizing the criminals and making their impact on the region far less destructive. Yes, he did pretty much try to steal a lot of powerful Pokemon, but Team Rocket definitely did not do anything overwhelmingly Evil. They just wanted to grab cash and Pokemon...which isn't really so evil in the scheme of things, it's just like a bunch of petty thieves for the protagonist to school and beat on as they journey. Team Rocket provided necessary and realistic resistance to a trainer's quest.


Team Magma on the other hand, would have largely stayed out of the protagonists' way had they not gotten greedy with Groudon. Largely, Team Magma did stay out of your way. You don't really learn that they exist as a threat until you're actually kinda almost ready for the Pokemon League. You certainly don't Meet them at all until you've a few badges under your belt and have had time to enjoy Hoenn as it is. Even more evil is that they sound, on the surface like a political movement. You meet them and they don't sound too bad from the way the grunts act. You think "Oh, well they're balancing out the other team, OK, nothing for me to do here" and move on. You don't get a sense of how serious things are until you reach the Weather Institute on Mt. Chimney and see their shenanigans there.

Spoiler:

...And then you meet Maxie. Briefly. He goes on his evil monologue and even fires up his evil machine, which shows he's perfectly content to allow his foolish plans to eliminate ocean from Hoenn to Kill Innocent People. and unlike Archie, he shows absolutely no remorse. Unlike Archie he has no real reason to care that he will wipe out the entire landmass of Hoenn just to create this new land. He is unlike Archie in so many many ways. Even if a mistaken Archie succeeds, the cost in human lives...is smaller, though no less horrifying. But you can tell that Archie would probably go and save as many as he could in his ships. That he'd probably be wrong in doing so but he would likely evacuate a place by force before calling upon Kyogre to flood it out.

 

[ジュナイパー]

I'm probably gonna go with Maxie. I've never played any games with Team Rocket in it though, but still Maxie is the best, or worst, villain. He almost engulfed the world in FLAMES for crying out loud.

 

[illumine]

Robert Frost jokes aside.

You'd probably say it was Maxie of those three, their thing had more of an aesthetic to it with burning things down and so on, while Aqua's thing in R/S/E was more of an eco-terrorism thing - especially since they near-completely missed the first movie tie-in there. Anyway, though. So water Pokémon having ice-type moves is pretty much the cool thing to do, it was even the basis for an Ice-type gym in G/S/C.

Giovanni on the other hand,might not be the hardest antagonist on the series,but the way he run his organization was amazing.Stealing pokemon,Running the Game Corner to gain money

Once you notice that 'stealing' Pokémon was a part of the criminal organisation's thing in some ways, being involved with gambling and such doesn't seem that much of a stretch. You figure his active role in the game is quite limited compared to the team, but as a result you might not want to propose them upon the basis of the games primarily or alone.

In my outlook; Gym Leaders aren't always necessarily Evil...to lead the Gym implied that he still had a softer side

No, it implied that Team Rocket were powerful enough to be making such incursions. This is part of why they came off as sinister.

Gym Leaders are just opponents and obstacles, though, like a Snorlax with more intent, so they don't inspire sympathy generally - unless you're Ash Ketchum, in which case they are not opponents but frequently allies. This role of his would imply a further antagonism when playing.

 

[Lycanthropy]

This is a tough question. I do really like Maxie (and Archie as well, though for some reason Team Aqua didn't seem to be organized as well). However, the poll asks who's good at being bad and let's face the truth: Team Magma and Aqua were a joke. They didn't even succeed their plans in the tiniest bit and were scared to death when they found out about the orbs' true powers. So yeah, I voted for Giovanni instead.

Spoiler: Bonus image

 

[Brendino]

As much as I like Team Aqua, it's really hard to vote against Giovanni here. While Giovanni may not have been the best leader, getting toppled by a young Pokemon trainer (though, this could be said of any of them, really), I think his team was focused on being bad for the sake of it, whereas Team Aqua and Magma are more misguided than anything.

Also, I remember seeing that comic Lycan posted a few years ago, and it's been tough to take Archie seriously since :P