Remember when I did this, but I was talking about the rivals in pokemon games and how good or, "eh" they were? Let's do it again. But with some other dudes. Cause I still don't have another review ready and this has actually been on my mind lately. Maybe because I'm starting to drift off from pokemon at this point and I need to resuscitate myself somehow. 
 
The poke man games follow a simple enough premise, you are Magenta, random 10-13 year old. Your mission, travel across the country protected by a militia of super animals as you visit landmarks and gather all your scout badges. It's maybe too simple. Sure, there's the chance some places like Lavender town, Ecruteak city, or Nimbasa city leave an impression on you, or some other oddballs, or the chance meeting with a demigod entity here and there, but what about action? Well there's pokemon battles. Uh, suspense? Well pokemon is very subjugated to the will of RNGsus, and all bets are off whenever that happens. The stake of the well-being of an entire continent or the world? Alright, whatever. 
 
That's where the sinister organizations of pokemon come in to play, mob bosses, mad scientists, or just rich people hiring lackeys to carry out their wills, building up a plot to take over the world or change it forever over the course of years of planning, only to be stopped at the last second by some random kid from the smallest town in the region. In many cases though, the evil team of a game can be one of the most notable aspects of your journey, even if tacked on a bit too hard. Usually there's some kind of initiative, like Inigo Montoya's father. In the case of pokemon it's "this guy is bad, and you're gonna stop him whether you like it or not. Welcome to labor kid." Yes, since this is talking about the plot-centric elements of Pokemon you should recognize the risk of spoilers and stop reading if you don't want to know these things without me having to tell you so. 
 
Of course, the logical first step is Team Rocket, the very first team from the very first games, heck, the very next games as well. Is Team Rocket a symbol of evil? Eehhh... really this was our first take. Team Rocket, led by Giovanni, is really more of an organized crime syndicate for thieves, smugglers, and people who have nowhere better to go to shack up. They're the guys who hang around street corners asking if you wanna buy some authentic Mew eggs. With the way earlier games progressed, you kind of work out that beating Team Rocket, like every other freaking team, becomes mandatory in order to progress certain points of your adventure. Still, it was more of a "well, I've got nothing better to do" sort of deal than, well, what I said last paragraph. 
 
Giovanni is also pretty generic, he just wants power. Powerful pokemon? Heck yeah, give him the MOST powerful pokemon! Let's be fair here, Team Rocket only stayed relevant because of Jessie, James, and Meowth.(that's a name?) You think they’re nostalgia pandering now? Game Freak has ALWAYS shoved Kanto Kontent™ in our faces! Soon enough Giovanni personally acknowledges you as the kid who ruins everything for them, and, in a way, kind of becomes your rival for a bit. Maybe I'd have put him in that list if not for Gary's overshadowing ego. It puts a lot more meaning into your last gym when you realize it's run by him. All this time the leader of a sinister crime organization has been operating right next to your own town, taking on the simple guise of a gym lea-well maybe not simple guise. Now if I learned the guy who makes my smoothies was a mafia boss, THAT would blow my mind. 
 
In fact, you gain enough of his respect that he just decides to give up his role and leave Team Rocket altogether. I don't blame him, if I tried to run a rice corporation and the humble rice farmer in Hokkaido one-upped me in 6 months, I’m clearly doing something wrong and need to rethink my business approach. This didn't stop Team Rocket though, in fact they resurface in three years to take over Johto in Giovanni's name. They're certain if they come back in a big way it will inspire their beloved leader to return to them, and granted they do, taking forced control of the largest city in the region. Still, Giovanni took over the largest tech company in the region three years back, WITHOUT alarming the entire continent to his corruption in one fell swoop. In Heart Gold and Soul Silver there's also four executives who take the reins of Team Rocket operations, explaining how a bunch of losers can keep themselves together like that. This was also when Silver, the douchebag rival from gen 2, was canonically revealed to be Giovanni's son, with his father abandoning him after his confrontation with the Kanto protagonist, contributing to his whole "hatred of the weak" shtick. It also explains his continued interest in Team Rocket despite his views. Also, he looks a lot like executive Ariana, which leads me to think there's more to wanting Giovanni to return than we're initially led to believe. Maybe Silver wasn't the only one who didn't want to lose someone they trusted and... loved? 
 
It was at this point Game Freak had to draw the line and decide if Hoenn was infested with rocket grunts again people would be sick of it, so we didn't just get a new team, we got two to keep up pace! Team Magma and Team Aqua are centered around the two premier legendary pokemon of the generation, Groudon, the raiser of lands, and Kyogre, spreader of the seas. Since the teams share the agenda of their respective legendary, they are always at odds with one another since, unless someone just triples the size of the planet, they can't make new land/sea without diminishing the other. In particular, Maxie and Team Magma wants to spread the land and grant humans and other land dwelling pokemon more living space, while Archie and Team Aqua recognize that a majority of pokemon live in the sea, and decide more ocean=more habitat for the pokemon. Now sure, that may be true, but we're still talking about 5/6 species of pokemon being screwed if they don't swim, and I'm sure the player base wouldn't appreciate more of Hoenn being an ocean. 
 
In terms of charm, both teams are basically palette swaps of each other, having opposite ideas, they aren't very interesting. That was... until OMEGA RUBY AND ALPHA SAPPHIRE BAYBEEEEE. Now Team Magma and Aqua are very distinct, and have personality behind them. It’s very complimentary as well, Team Magma is a group of scientists and researchers, justifying that they want more land for humans to advance into a golden age, while Team Aqua embrace the whole pirate theme, making it more believable that Archie and his followers believe in "survival of the fittest." Of course, the colorful admins they seem to add every time they do a remake are a plus, especially the ones with team magma. I especially love when Tabitha is told someone ate his sandwich despite the fact that he specifically labeled it and he goes into demon mode. 
 
Next up is gen 4, with probably the most dangerous team to date, team galactic. The primary deal with Team Galactic is that their leader, Cyrus, wants to find out the combination of buttons needed to delete the save data. He wants to create a perfect universe, which to him involves the lack of spirit for some really emo reason, but to do that, he needs to completely replace the one he's in. Cyrus of course has a lot of reference material, pokemon with the power to control space, time, and antimatter(?), and heck, somewhere out there is the one who created the whole universe to begin with. With even one of them he could have all he needs to start the big reset he wants. So, with his seemingly unlimited resources, he enlisted many people into his organization to make his twisted ideals come to reality. I mean, you say the universe is bad because humans are all imperfect, but you’re a human? Trying to play god? When humans are just a part of ONE planet in a significantly larger universe? Clearly, we have some flawed reasoning. 

As for the rest of the cogs in Team Galactic, their labor force is almost comedically incompetent. Almost every grunt has no idea why they’re doing what they do, but they’re getting paid for it so whatever. I’m not sure if it’s a dress code requirement to get a stupid blue bowl cut or if it’s a helmet. As a side note, I do like the manga interpretation of the grunts operating under a hive mind, but then we wouldn’t have such memorable quotes like “Team Galactic will have that honey!!!” There are also admins, and in terms of game order, Team Galactic was the second evil organization to have notable admins. The first was the Go-Rock Squad. Whoever THEY were. If they were criminals who only used geodudes... I feel sorry. You know those three mage sisters in the most recent Kirby game? That’s basically Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Minus the sister part. As for Charon, because by all means you should be playing Platinum version, he’s just in it for the money basically. 

And here we have the magnum opus, probably the most significant evil organization of any generation, Team Plasma! Turn up the rave GlitchxCity! Team Plasma is really a sick organization, run by a sick man named Ghetsis. To everyone in the entire region, Team Plasma appear as the Lorax of pokemon, claming that pokemon are undermined by tyrannical humans, who by catching them limit their freedom and potential, by forcing into battle injuring and tormenting them. It really makes you wonder about whether pokemon fall into the same caste as animals, cause you have things like Lillipup, and then there’s Mr. Mime... Now all of this sounds very noble, a group of common age crusaders ready to liberate pokemon, but that’s the thing, Ghetsis is only using this as a façade, to play on the pathos of others to follow his instructions. 

From the very beginning we see the effects Team Plasma has on Unova, for reference, you can’t even go from one town to another and NOT encounter Team Plasma in some capacity on your way to the championship. I’m not a big fan, constantly fighting Plasma instead of something else, but I have to admire the show of power. While masquerading their cause with speeches on the suffering of pokemon and achieving balance, they go and exploit pokemon to their own ends, steal the pokemon of others, and try and achieve power through various relics and positions. The sad thing is that there are members of Team Plasma who sincerely believe they are serving a good cause, doing the final battles of pokemon so there will be no more battles to come, and then others are just in it for the resources along with Ghetsis. 

Ghetsis has also gotten other allies to work with him, either through the allure of power or the veil of justice. He works with six other allies as the seven sages, along with the mysterious ninjas, (wait, where did Ghetsis get FRICKEN NINJAS!?) the shadow triad, and adopted three orphans to raise in support of his cause. One of them was N, who I already mentioned was treated as the king of Team Plasma. He has the ability to talk to pokemon, so Ghetsis showed him pokemon who were specifically mistreated and rejected to get him on his side from an early age. Then he used N to reenact the legend of Truth and Ideals to legitimize his claims to power so everyone across the region would give up raising pokemon altogether. His true plan, with no trainers to oppose him, he would maintain rule over Unova. Once the player gets through all other obstacles to confront N and the legendary pokemon, Ghetsis snaps, abandoning the premise of nobility to strike out in one last fit of rage, calling N a useless freak and declaring nothing will get in his way. 

Team Plasma resurfaces in two years, no longer as pokemon saviors, but simply as an extremist organization trying to steal pokemon and technology. Now they have Colress, a researcher trying to determine the optimal way to unleash the strength of pokemon, a freaking jet-propelled frigate ship, some spiky haired brat constantly making his way down their urethra, and a LOT of liquid nitrogen. Now Ghetsis wants to follow a different Unova legend, remerging the original legendary dragon. Then he’ll take up a hobby or something after taking over the world. There are actually two groups in Black and White 2, the other of course being those who follow N’s beliefs of making sure humans treat pokemon with respect, without trying to force them apart. 

Now onto my gen 6. If you’re expecting me to continue bad mouthing Kalos... well you’re right, but Team Flare is kinda cool in my books. Kinda. They look absolutely ridiculous, and it doesn’t help that every single one of them is rendered in the 3D animation, despite the fact it really didn’t look good at the time (must... suppress... gripes...) but hey, it’s pretty funny, all the recruits joining up Team Flare to look better, despite most of them being losers, and wanting to have the most power in the region without realizing their leader Lysandre is actually a flapjack flippin psychopath. Ok I’m going to gripe again, they try and paint Lysandre as some passionate CEO of a tech company seeking to create a better world, then ONE MINUTE LATER he’s caught saying “I’d nuke the world under the premise that grandmas don’t look so hot”. Even before that, after declaring “my dream is for a better world!” someone says “yeaaaaaah I already don’t trust his hair...” DO YOU KNOW SUBTLETY??? 

Granted I don’t mind Lysandre being the way he is, actively trying to destroy everything, it’s less selfish than Cyrus’ goals, he straight up wants to redo Earth, including himself and everyone else. Apparently in the past he was like Alberic the Redeemer, a man who took the effort to help as many people as he could, but seeing as the problems continued to pile on and on, believed humanity to be inherently flawed, and now takes a severe measure to limit strife by, well, doing the Thanos. I really hope that doesn’t become a dated reference. He executes the plan with the legendary pokemon of death... or life for some fricken reason, and uses that pokemon to power the most devastating weapon in history, which siphoned the power of pokemon, killing them en masse, to kill a bunch more people to force the end to a war. I’ll give Game Freak props, they at least made an engaging tale about the superweapon and the costs it created. And the ending of that game was admittedly a tear jerker, and the credits were cool... 

The last two teams we’re talking about are Team Skull and Team Aet- I mean the Aether Foundation. I mean, let’s face it, we saw the Aether Foundation being bad from the start, right? After what they pulled in Kalos, of course we wouldn’t have a “benevolent” organization ACTUALLY be benevolent. Team Skull is a testament to the old days, when we didn’t need to end the world or anything, we just needed some bullies, and not just bullies, incompetent bullies. Members of Team Skull get on scene, and it’s absolutely precious every time. All they do is smuggle resources, steal things, and chop off Slowpoke tails. Which is still an offense. Despite the Slowpoke not feeling anything. And that the pokedex explicitly states that Slowpoke tails are a common Alolan household delicacy. 

Then there’s ya boi, who hardly needs an introduction. I find Guzma an even more engaging character than Gladion in terms of going all rebel. Maybe because Gladion was a runaway rich kid who’s trying too hard, and meanwhile Guzma had his dreams crushed, and there’s evidence that he may have been subject to parental abuse, then started his own group of rejects where they’re all one big dysfunctional family. Guzma also gives you the superiority treatment Giovanni did, where he has to come to grips with the fact that some random blank-faced kid is better than he is. As for his foster mom...  

Lusamine is another really intriguing villain. She directs the Aether Foundation to try and unleash the ultra-beasts onto Alola, and it’s entirely because of the influence one of them, specifically Nihilego, has on her. I mean, she lost her husband because of the research, and now some brain slug makes her exploit her company, hire thugs, and mistreat her family over the sake of being with the UB’s. She really comes off as cold hearted when rejecting Lillie and Gladion, never mind trying to blood sacrifice Nebby to her alien gods (did you know “Nebby” isn’t rejected by spell check?). Of course, this makes it all the more satisfying to save her from herself, but then they just had to retcon that for Ultra Sun and Moon, didn’t they? You can’t just deprive us of an interesting villain! You have to compensate! 

AND UNTO THIS, TEAM RAINBOW ROCKET 

Remember that thing from the delta episode of ORAS with dropping the bomb about parallel universes? Well because of the combined efforts of Nebby, Hoopa, and hacked Arceus breaking the timelines, Giovanni from Universe 29 somehow ended up travelling across dimensions. After receiving a brief lecture from Zinnia 4 about hyper speed walking he pops a cap in her and proceeds to travel from dimension to dimension, looking for the best versions he can find of super villains from alternate worlds, the leaders of criminal organizations that actually fulfilled their goals. This included the lame versions of Maxie and Archie, Cyrus, Ghetsis who threatens to kill someone, and Lysanderoth. Why do they agree to join the newly christened Team Rainbow Rocket? So they can all do the exact same conflicting evil plots again and again to every world of course! How the HELL is that supposed to work!? You don’t need to stop them, really you could have just taken a seat back and wait for them all to tear each other apart. And then the victor would... I don’t know, probably do something stupid like freeze Melemele for some reason. 

And there you have it, all the evil teams explained and somewhat critiqued. And injected with sarcasm. Before I end off, there’s something I’d like to address. Pokemon Let’s Go has introduced a new, er, rival to the series, whom I refer to as “Jerry”. What do I think about Jerry? Well if you saw my previous thread, you may gather that I think Jerry is the most complex character ever introduced into pokemon. First Game Freak canonized the multi-dimension theory, then they introduce the concept of self-enlightenment and knowing you are trapped inside a video game. Jerry has his own ambitions and dreams, all of which stifled by the tyrannical developers who require him to be nothing but a suck up to the stupid protagonist who can’t go three steps before they lose track on what to do. Forced into the role of kindly rival, he must sacrifice all his hopes and dreams, give away all his expenses to the player character, constantly congratulate them on nothing at all, and he hates it. We can even see him try and break free, after being absolutely mortified after witnessing the horrific and likely graphic merging of a Nidorino and Bill, he was traumatized, and managed to escape. He ran and ran, for the first time defying the programming of the game. He wanted to warn the protagonist, and then plead for his life, beg that the human outside the constraints of his horrid reality free him from his cage, but that’s when the game strikes back, cutting him off with a pokemon battle. His last hope at escape lost, as he must once again be trampled by an apathetic main character. The main character does whatever they please, they get to excell at everything, they possess capabilities and benefits normal NPC’s cannot even conceive. Jerry hates them with all his heart and soul, from within the encapsulating darkness of his husk he curses and forsakes all he knows. He can never win, he doesn’t get to befriend or interact with his partner, he will never have the chance to fulfill anything by the journey’s end. He can only be forgotten, left to fade away with the rest of the world over the course of an eternity.