Who is Giovanni?

A couple years ago, for the spooky season, I spotlighted Team Rocket’s Jessie, James, and Meowth. Since I try to do as many villain related posts as I can each October, this year I’m moving on to spotlight the Team Rocket boss: Giovanni. 

Main Series Game Giovanni

In the original Gen I games (and their remakes) Giovanni led Team Rocket to catch and collect rare and powerful Pokemon (but somehow most grunts only had the likes of Zubat and/or Raticate). At some point he fathered the rival character known as Silver. During the course of the game, the protagonist Red faced off against Giovanni’s grunts in Lavender Town and against Giovanni himself at the Celadon Game Corner and Silph Co.

After Red stopped Giovanni from obtaining the Master Ball (maybe to reclaim Mewtwo?), the Rocket leader retreated to the Viridian City Gym, as the gym leader. Naturally that put him inadvertently in Red’s crosshairs again. Once the protagonist won his Earth Badge, the humbled Giovanni disbanded Team Rocket. A group of Rocket executives tried to convince him to return a few years later, but thankfully he didn’t respond to the call. 

During the events of Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, an alternate version of Giovanni formed Team Rainbow Rocket. Having come through an Ultra Wormhole, this version of the Rocket boss wasn’t thwarted by Red and proceeded to recruit the boss villains from the other preceding games. 

Anime Giovanni

Similar to the video game version, in the anime Giovanni was the boss of Team Rocket. For a long while his character was literally shrouded in shadow. Like in the video games, he was the gym leader in Viridian City. However, in the anime, he had control of Mewtwo for a time after commissioning his creation, leading into the first theatrical Pokemon movie. He definitely wasn’t a fair gym leader, throwing out Mewtwo against challengers on his whim; Gary Oak had two Pokemon fighting Mewtwo and he still lost. 

Things differed somewhat from season to season, but generally Giovanni was exasperated by Jessie, James, and Meowth. At the beginning of the series, he seemed to trust them and act like they were confident. Things probably started to go downhill for them when they fixated on capturing Pikachu (Did Giovanni ever actually want Ash’s Pikachu or was that just part of the trio’s fantasy?). Sometimes he seemed to trust the trio with later assignments… other times their assignments were to get them out of his way…. There was literally an episode about giving them some vacation time to get them out of his way… Somehow they still got in the way. 

Despite his incompetent lackeys, Giovanni was the mastermind behind many (almost) successful Team Rocket ventures, like commandeering the St. Anne, commissioning and controlling Mewtwo, and trying to reclaim Mewtwo later on. In the end, he wasn’t much more successful than Jessie, James, and Meowth. The bigger the scheme, the bigger the failure. 

Pokémon Go Giovanni

In the world of Pokemon Go, Giovanni is the boss of Team Go Rocket. His subordinates include the Team Go Rocket Leaders Arlo, Cliff, and Sierra and an abundance of grunts (including the special appearances by Jessie and James in their Meowth balloon). He can only be found with a Super Rocket Radar, which can only be obtained after defeating the three leaders during Team Go Rocket Special Research. His location may be masked by grunts pretending to be him. He’s definitely a level above the leaders, as his shadow Pokemon include his Persian, some tank usually, and a legendary Pokemon (which are killer hard to purify, in my opinion). 

I’m far from being caught up on the Pokemon anime and video games, but I’d always appreciate a Giovanni cameo. “Where are they now? The Team Rocket boss.” Enjoy the rest of your spooky season with some villains and baddies. I’ll be back next week with one more big bad for Halloween.