Characters / Pokémon Red and Blue

aka: Pokemon Lets Go Pikachu And Lets Go Eevee

Main Character Index > Red and Blue (Protagonists and Rivals - Team Rocket)

Characters from Pokémon Red and Blue, Yellow, FireRed and LeafGreen, and Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!.

For a list of Pokémon that debuted in the first generation, see Pokémon: Generation I Families.

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Protagonists and Rivals

See Pokémon Red and Blue - Protagonists and Rivals.

Allies

Professor Oak (Prof. Ohkido)

Professor Samuel Oak / Prof. Yukinari Ohkido (オーキド・ユキナリ博士 ookido yukinari hakase)

Voiced by: Unshō Ishizuka (JP, Pokémon Snap), Stan Hart (EN, Pokémon Snap), Tadashi Wakabayashi (JP, The Two Professors), Ben Diskin (EN, The Two Professors), Joe J. Thomas (Pokémon Masters - EN), Kenichi Ogata (Pokémon Masters - JP)

The Pokémon Professor native to the Kanto region who specializes in the study of the relationships between humans and Pokémon. He is the grandfather of the player character's rival in Pokémon Red, Blue, Yellow, and their remakes. He has a cousin named Samson who lives in Alola.

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• Absent-Minded Professor: He doesn't even remember his own grandson's name, and has to be reminded by the player (who he also can't remember the name of) at the beginning of the game. He apparently also has problems with telling the difference between male and female children, but then again so do the other professors.
  • In Let's Go Pikachu! and Let's Go Eevee!, Oak's habit of forgetting his grandson's name is revealed to be a joke he often plays on Blue, though Blue doesn't find it funny.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Just look at them!
• Colorful Theme Naming: His Japanese name, Ookido, is a Japanese transliteration of the word "orchid". Orchids are a shade of light purple, hence why he's shown wearing a purple shirt in his original outfit.
• Cool Old Guy: He's a Nice Guy, a skilled Pokémon Professor, and a Retired Badass. Can't get much cooler than that.
• I Was Quite a Looker: According to Agatha.
• Mr. Exposition: At the beginning of the games, setting a tradition with succeeding Professors.
• Nice Guy: He adores Pokémon and people alike, and gives the player their starter.
• Odd Name Out: In the original Japanese, he was the only one to avert Only One Name until his cousin came along in the seventh generation. In the English translation, the professors of the fifth and sixth generations also have first names. ^note In the games alone, he did not have an English first name until Sun and Moon, but the anime had long established his first name as Samuel.
• Old Master: Implied in the games proper since it's alluded to that he was Champion at some point, and cemented further by his unused battle in Generation I where his team is even stronger than the current Champion's.
• Olympus Mons: In Masters, he forms a sync pair with Mew. Notably, he is the first character to form a sync pair with a Mythical Pokémon in the game.
• Retired Badass: According to Agatha. It's also implied he was the Champion at one point since he can enter the Hall of Fame.
• Signature Mon: Nidorino, as revealed in his Sync Pair Story in Masters. Since his old rival Agatha has a Gengar, this serves as a Mythology Gag: a Nidorino and Gengar battled each other in the opening of Red and Blue. Otherwise he uses Mew in Masters.
• Theme Naming: Oak kicks off the tradition of naming the regional professors after trees.
• Vague Age: Widely believed to be 47 years old at the time of Generation I, despite no official source ever stating such. The anime confirms him to be 50, which occurred during Generation II, so it's likely the three years between the two games were subtracted to arrive at 47 without accounting for the anime's Comic-Book Time nature. The only official word we can go on is that Oak is Professor Rowan's junior in terms of seniority, which would put him at age 59 at most as of Generation IV, being that Rowan himself claims to be 60 years old.

Daisy Oak/Nanami Okido (オーキド・ナナミ ookido nanami)

Blue's older sister. Unlike her brother, she is actually a kind and gentle young woman. She gives the player a Map in the Gen I games (and their remakes), and offers massages in the Gen II games (and their remakes).

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• Adapted Out:
  • Daisy does not appear in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!; however, the game's new rival Trace has a big sister of his own who also gives the player something nifty.
  • Her absence incidentally sidesteps the One-Steve Limit: "Daisy" is also the name of Misty's oldest sister from Pokémon: The Series, who appears as a Cerulean Gym trainer in these games.
• Big Brother Instinct: In HeartGold and SoulSilver, she worries about Blue being lonely and encourages you to call him, be it for battles or just to talk.
• Color Motif: Daisy wears a green dress, perhaps as a nod to the original Green version.
• Cool Big Sis: Sister of the rival from Pokémon Red, Blue, Yellow, and their remakes. She gives the player a Town Map and grooms their Pokémon for free.
• Former Child Star: It's indicated in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen that Daisy is a former contest coordinator—a contest champion, even. (That said, unlike the typical example she's retired and living in comfort in her family home).
• Friend to All Living Things: A lot of people mention how nice she is and that Pokémon love her. In HeartGold and SoulSilver, she'll give the player Blue's phone number only after she has groomed seven Pokémon and is shown one with maxed friendship.
• Hero of Another Story: Daisy is a contest champion; given Kanto hosts no contest halls, that would imply that Daisy's travels have taken her outside of her home region.
• Hidden Depths: It wasn't until the remakes, but examine the right bookshelf and you'll discover that Daisy's a former Contest champion. No wonder she's so good at grooming Pokémon.
• Limited Wardrobe: In her (admittedly obscure) sprites and character art, Daisy always appears in a green jumper and headband, even while the protagonist and rival designs are constantly updated.
• Nice Girl: Compared to her little brother, she's very polite and cheerful. However, more of Daisy's personality can be seen in Blue as the series progresses, especially in Sun and Moon when it's shown that he's best friends with Red again.
• No Name Given: Daisy Oak didn't have a name until Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, so before that she was just "Blue's sister". The Electric Tale of Pikachu called her May (Satsuki in the Japanese release), but keeping this name would've violated One-Steve Limit, given the female Player Character of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire.
• Sibling Yin-Yang:
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, The Rival is a Jerkass but his sister is a Nice Guy—after the rival makes it clear he means to get a Town Map from his sister and that he'll tell her not to give you one, she'll give it to you anyway.
  • Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen elaborates on that same theme; while the rival is chastised for forgetting to love pokemon, Daisy is Famed In-Story for her affinity with them.
  • Blue is prone to wandering all over (even after he becomes Gym Leader in Pokémon Gold and Silver), regardless of who is inconvenienced, but his sister is a cozy homebody who keeps a reliable schedule.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Tea. In Pokémon Gold and Silver, if you talk to her at any point from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM, she'll invite you to join her for some. According to one of her Fame Checker entries from Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, Daisy buys her tea from the Celadon Department Store. She even mentions it in her personal message to you from the same game.

Bill/Masaki Sonezaki (ソネザキマサキ sonezaki masaki)

The Pokémon Storage System Developer who operates on the Kanto-Johto landmass. He is a native of the Johto region with family in both regions. He is also a famous inventor and Pokémon researcher who is regarded as an expert in many fields. Because of his large collection of both common and rare Pokémon people, including himself, call him a Poké Maniac. He considers Eevee and its evolutions as his favorite Pokémon.

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• Accent Adaptation: He speaks with a Kansai accent in the Japanese versions. In the English anime dub, his accent is British RP, and in the English translation of the Pokémon Adventures manga he has an American Southern accent. However, his dialogue in the English translations of the games isn't too different from that of most other characters, averting this trope.
• Connected All Along: One item of trivia shared by Bill's fan Brent is that his mother was a kimono girl, which implicitly retcons Bill's favoritism for the Eevee family to be the result of family connections to the kimono-girls of Ecruteak City, who train its various evolutions.
• Demoted to Extra: In Generation II. He isn't as relevant to the plot as in Red and Blue and their remakes, to the point where the original Gold, Silver, and Crystal told you right off the bat whose PC you were using to store your extra Pokémon instead of labeling it "Someone's PC" like the previous games as well as the PCs run by Lanette and Bebe in later installments.
• Does Not Like Spam: Doesn't like milk according to Celio from the Sevii Islands.
• Forced Transformation: When you first meet him, he has been turned into a Pokémon (the miscellaneous Rhydon icon in the original, interpreted as Kabuto in the anime, Rattata in the manga, Clefairy in FireRed and LeafGreen, and Nidorino in Let's Go) due to a Teleporter Accident. He gets better thanks to you, and gives you a ticket for the S.S. Anne as thanks. It is brought up again in Sun and Moon as the reason for Lillie taking her mother to Kanto to get in touch with him to find out how to remove the last traces of the latter's fusion with Nihilego from her body.
• I'm Your Biggest Fan: In Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, a fan of Bill named Poké Maniac Brent calls you occasionally to give you trivia about Bill, such as: Bill's younger sister can't wink; Bill's first Pokémon was an Abra; Bill's mother was a Kimono Girl; Bill is not good at Pokémon battles; and Bill is attracted to the Goldenrod Flower Shop owner's daughter.
• It Was a Gift: He gives you an Eevee in Pokémon Gold, Silver, Crystal and their remakes and indirectly in Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum.
• MacGuffin Escort Mission: In Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, an extra quest was added after the Cinnabar Gym battle, in which Bill takes you to the first three islands in the Sevii Archipelago to deliver a meteorite.
• Non-Action Guy: As noted under I'm Your Biggest Fan above, he's not so good at Pokémon battles and generally isn't shown participating in them in any of his appearances. While he does have a "battle" sprite in FireRed and LeafGreen, it's only ever used for his Fame Checker profile.
• Progressively Prettier: Bill's appearance in his character art for Pokémon Gold and Silver is much cleaner and tidier than his art circa Pokémon Red and Blue.
• Shout-Out:
  • His teleportation incident is a direct homage to The Fly (1986).
  • His name has been referred to as an allusion to Bill Gates, former head of Microsoft and developer of the Microsoft Windows operating system for personal computers.
• Signature Mon: He doesn't seem to train anything, but he's strongly associated with the Eevee family.
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, he invites the player to check out his favorite Pokémon on his PC, which will let the player gain the visual data for Eevee and its evolutions Flareon, Jolteon, and Vaporeon.
  • In Pokémon Gold and Silver, he gives the player an Eevee in need of a good home.
  • Bill's association with Eevee sets the tone for another event later in the series—in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Bebe, PC Developer of Sinnoh, will give the player an egg containing an Eevee.
  • According to trivia from Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver, Bill's mother was a kimono-girl, which gives him a family connection to the kimono-girls of Ecruteak City, who all train Eeveelutions.
• Teleporter Accident: A mishap with the teleportation device turned him into a hybrid for a while.

Celio/Nishiki (ニシキ nishiki)

A Pokémon Storage System programmer who operates in the Sevii Islands and is good friends with Bill. He runs the Pokémon Net Center on One Island where he built and maintains the Pokémon Network machine.

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• Curtains Match the Window: Both his eyes and hair are the same grassy shade of greenish brown.
• Fetch Quest: He makes the protagonist search out to the rest of the Sevii Islands to find the Ruby and the Sapphire so he use them to finish the Pokémon Network machine and connect with Lanette in Hoenn.
• Fun with Acronyms: His name may be a reference to the Corps of Engineers Library Information Online, a database of all the documents in the libraries of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Gym Leaders

Brock (Takeshi)

Brock / Takeshi (タケシ takeshi)

Voiced by: Tommy Arciniega (Pokémon Masters - EN), Kosuke Toriumi (Pokémon Masters - JP)

Pewter City Gym Leader—The Rock-Solid Pokémon Trainer!

"I believe in rock hard defense and determination! That's why my Pokémon are all the Rock-type! Do you still want to challenge me? Fine then! Show me your best!"

The very first Gym Leader encountered in the franchise, a serious young man who is passionate about training. Brock specializes in Rock-type Pokémon and gives out the Boulder Badge to trainers who beat him.

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• Achilles' Heel:
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, the choice of starter pokémon gives the player access to the Water and Grass types; both will do four times the damage against Brock's Rock- and Ground-type monsters, which are already poor in Special Defense.
  • Ignoring the Pokémon Stadium games, all his pokémon through Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver have a double weakness to Grass, except for one Rampardos (which as a Glass Cannon will fall to any Grass-type attack of moderate strength). Not until Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 gives him a Flying-type Aerodactyl does he balance out that weakness.
  • Bide, his Signature Move in Pokémon Red and Blue, requires the user to suffer damage while it's charging power, which is easily subverted by wary trainers who won't attack until it's done.
• Adaptational Badass: In FireRed and LeafGreen, Brock's Signature Move is Rock Tomb, much more aggressive than his defensive strategy in the original games.
• Adaptational Modesty: He went shirtless in the original games, but all later games starting with Yellow have him wearing a shirt. When he gets serious though, the shirt comes off.
• The Artifact:
  • In the first gen, Brock's spiel about rock-hard defense suited his Signature Move Bide, but his strategy stops being about defense and endurance in the third gen when he copies Roxanne's Signature Move, the stat-crippling Rock Tomb.
  • Because Brock's Signature Mon Onix loses Brock's signature type when it evolves to Steelix, there's been a strong trend in the games to keep his team centerpiece unevolved, causing it to fall further and further behind the Power Creep of each new generation.
• Balance Buff: The franchise held out on giving Brock access to top-shelf attacking Rock-types like Aerodactyl and Tyranitar, but yielded in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2.
• Big Brother Mentor: Serves as this to the protagonist of Masters, being one of their first companions (along with Misty and Rosa) and one of the most recurring ones to appear in story segments, giving advice and support in equal amounts.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies:
  • Starting with Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Gold and Silver, Brock has been known to use Prehistoric Monsters on his team—the most common of these are the prehistoric creepy-crawlies Kabutops and Omastar.
  • In Pokémon Stadium 2, Brock uses a Forretress on his first Gym Leader Castle team (a nod to his anime self's ownership of the same Pokémon), and also includes a Pinsir on the same team. His second team uses Heracross and Shuckle, instead.
• Clark Kent Outfit: In Masters, Brock looks rather lithe with his sweater on, but when he shreds it during his Sync Move he looks like this◊. Even if you consider this to simply be a side-effect of the Sync Moves, comparing his arms on his normal sprite◊ to his arms on his Sygna Suit sprite◊ makes for a very noticeable contrast.
• The Coats Are Off: In Masters, he shreds his shirts when using a Sync Move (though it always returns directly afterwards.)
• Combos: His Graveler can use the Defense Curl-Rollout combo in GSCHGSS.
• Convenient Weakness Placement: Inverted in the original Pokémon Gold and Silver, where a trainer in Pewter City will take a Gloom (a Grass-type that Brock's Pokémon are weak to) in exchange for a Rapidash (a Fire-type that his Pokémon will have the advantage against). Furthermore, in Pokémon Yellow and Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, the Mankey line is placed earlier in Route 22, to give all players a surefire way of hitting his Rock-types super-effectively (while also providing a Pokémon that resists Rock-type moves) regardless of the Starter Pokémon a player picked.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: His signature is Onix, which had the second highest defense in the original games, but extremely low HP and attack power, tempered by mediocre speed. All its other stats are about on par with a Pidgey. This is seemingly designed so that new players would have a hard time doing Scratch Damage with Normal, Poison, Flying, and Bug-types found prior to reaching his Gym^note while Bug deals neutral damage to Rock, Bug-types tend to not have access to STAB moves early on (if they get them at all) until Generation IV.
• Dumb Muscle: Implied by the Pokémon card game. The artwork for "Blaine's Quiz #3" features Brock helplessly racking his brains for an answer to Blaine's questions.
• Early-Bird Boss: In Pokémon Red and Blue, the Pewter Gym is the player's first real exposure to the game's Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, and Brock's team is optimized to force that kind of encounter on the player—his mixed Rock-Ground types take Scratch Damage at best from local wild Pokémon, but the battle is all but decided by the starter. Charmander will be challenged, but Bulbasaur and Squirtle will go through him like a hot knife through butter. Obvious Rule Patches in Updated Rereleases of the game make him even easier by giving the wild Pokémon and Charmander viable tactics of their own.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: He was originally shirtless, but ever since Yellow, he's been fully-clothed. He may go topless as a Call-Back to his glory days in newer adaptations.
• Eyes Always Shut: A very noticeable trait of his and is probably one of the most famous examples of the trope of all-time.
• Foil: Roxanne of Hoenn, who is a fellow Gym Leader of the Rock type and the first gym leader battled by the player character of her respective game, but while Brock (as per his original design) is physically-oriented, Roxanne (as a teacher) is mentally-oriented.
• Fossil Revival: Works Kanto's fossil Pokémon Omastar, Kabutops, and Aerodactyl into his teams in several games. In HGSS, he adds Rampardos to his rematch team.
• Improbable Power Discrepancy: Brock's first-gen teams, while having increased difficulty after the local trainers, become decidedly unimpressive once you get to Mt. Moon, hardly worthy of a supposed leading light amongst trainers. Averted in most future games, where Brock has teams of well-trained monsters available.
• Informed Attribute: Brock's initial connection to Rock-types was ostensibly based on their defenses, but the dearth of defensive rock-types and strategies have left him struggling to live up to his own spiel. Most of his pokémon tend to be offensively-oriented, down to borrowing the attacking Rampardos from Sinnoh's fossils rather than the defending Bastiodon.
• Leotard of Power: His Sygna suit in Pokémon Masters incorporates a black wrestling singlet with orange trim which emphasizes his muscles.
• Meaningful Name:
  • In English, Brock.
  • Take is a homonym for "Peak" or "Mountain".
  • In the French version: "Pierre" literally means "stone".
  • In the German versions it's Rocko.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: More of a Poke the Poodle example than most, his Onix in Yellow has Bind at Level 12, when it shouldn't have that attack before Level 15.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In Stadium, he uses Vulpix (later Ninetales) and Golbat, Pokémon used by his anime self in the early anime. Stadium 2 gave him a Forretress, which his anime self gained while travelling through Johto.
  • Masters gives us a three-fer.
    • In Masters, Brock becomes the player character's Big Brother Mentor, as his anime self was for Ash Ketchum.
    • Masters Brock gets nervous around pretty girls, in direct contrast to his anime counterpart famously flirting with every girl he meets.
    • His Sync Move animation (in both normal and Sygna Suit variants) gives him a Shirtless Scene with the same crossed arms pose he had in his original Game Boy sprites.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Every remake after Red and Blue reworks distribution and movelists to mitigate any increases in difficulty Brock might present.
  • Yellow hid the Fighting-type Mankey west of Viridian City, rearranged the Nidoran moveset to let them learn Double Kick early, and gave Butterfree Confusion at level ten.
  • FRLG—and only FRLG—have Charmander with Metal Claw to give it something super-effective against Rock types.
  • Let's Go, Pikachu!, an Updated Re-release of Yellow, cut out the middle-man and gave Pikachu Double Kick early for its own super-effective move against him.
• Paper Tiger: His signature Pokémon, Onix, has shades of this. It's a 28 foot long, 400+ pound serpentine creature made of ore, designed to look intimidating; it's also easily the largest Pokémon a player will encounter for a good chuck of their Kanto experience. That all being said, it easily folds to a player's Bulbasaur or Squirtle, due to it having low Special Defense and being quad-weak to their Grass and Water moves. It also hits as hard as a Pidgey, so the odds of it knocking out the aforementioned Starters before they do it is incredibly unlikely.
• Perpetual Frowner: Brock's expression in Pokémon Red and Blue and its Updated Rereleases is always solemn, often with a clenched fist or folded arms. This was also true in Pokémon Gold and Silver, but he appears to lighten up in Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver. In Pokémon Stadium 2, on the other hand, he can show cartoonish glee or dismay typical of his appearance in Pokémon: The Original Series.
• Personality Powers: Invoked in his pre-battle quote; he uses Rock-types to reflect his preference for determination and defense.
• Prehistoric Monster: Brock's nearly always had a slight connection to Fossil Pokémon. Pokémon Stadium introduced Omanyte and Kabuto to his team, which by Gold and Silver became Omastar and Kabutops, which was supported by FireRed and LeafGreen indicating Brock was known to occasionally assist with fossil excavations at Mt. Moon. HeartGold and SoulSilver further added Relicanth and Rampardos to his roster, and he finally received Aerodactyl in Black 2 and White 2.
• Retcanon: Brock's interest in pokémon breeding in Pokémon Yellow and the Pokémon card game was lifted straight from Pokémon: The Original Series,
• Scissors Cuts Rock: In theory, Brock's Rock/Ground-typed Pokémon counters Charmander if you start with it, however....
  • In Generation I, Brock's Pokémon have low HP and Special, meaning that even with the type-resistance, the Fire-type move Ember still takes a fair bite out of them, while he has no actual Rock-type moves to take advantage of Fire-type's weakness to his type specialty. As a result, any Charmander of Level 12 or more can hold its own.
  • Exaggerated in FRLG, which unusually gives Charmander the Steel-type Metal Claw—Steel beats Rock in the series' Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors.
• Signature Mon:
  • Onix is typically his highest-leveled and finishing option. He even calls it his best partner in Masters. Given that its evolution Steelix is Steel/Ground, Brock's Onix is almost always kept unevolved to maintain his specialty type, with the only exception being his battle in Stadium 2.
  • The Geodude line in general is one of Brock's mainstays, appearing on all of his teams in the main series, usually as the one he leads with. Additionally, Golem ends up taking Onix's place as his strongest Pokémon in the Generation VII rematches.
  • His Sygna Suit variant in Masters pairs him with Tyranitar, which notably takes over from Onix as Brock's partner just before the tournament matches of the PML begin.
• Signature Move: His TM in Gen I was Bide, which pauses two turns to absorb and then unleash damage in keeping with his defensive inclinations, but in Gen III, he inherits the more crippling Rock Tomb from Roxanne. For difficulty purposes in both, though, only Onix uses them. Gen IV gave him Rock Slide, which half his team uses.
• Silicon-Based Life: Both his Geodude and his Onix are basically living rocks.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Brock is the player's first real challenge with the type system, and his difficulty in Red and Blue hinged entirely on which starter Pokémon the player picked.
• Threshold Guardians: Brock's Boulder Badge enables the player to use Flash, which is very useful for anyone trying to traverse Rock Tunnel and Victory Road.
• Vague Age: Not as bad as fellow Gym Leader Misty (detailed below), but he's still had some of this courtesy of the anime. He's apparently not much older than Ash's other companions in the anime, but in the early games, his age was very vague and not really brought up. In remakes, it tends to go all over the place — FRLG made him look a bit younger, but in LGPE, his massive height advantage on the player character and consistently stern demeanor seems to mark him as unmistakably an adult.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: In-Universe, Brock is well-known for being one for most trainers, who are unprepared to take on his Rock-type Pokémon with their Normal, Flying, Bug, and occasionally Poison or Electric-types. For the player, the experience largely hinges on which starter Pokémon you chose. If you selected the Fire-type Charmander or Electric-type Pikachu, you'd have a naturally tougher fight on your hands, since his Rock-types are offensively and defensively superior to the Fire type and his Pokémon have a secondary Ground-type that makes them immune to Electric-type attacks.
• Warm-Up Boss: However, if you choose Bulbasaur or Squirtle as your starter, then congrats, you've won! Both do huge amounts of damage to his team with their doubly-effective Grass and Water attacks.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: His absolute earliest design was shirtless, which shows in his original sprite and the earliest mugshot art. However, outside of those two sources, every other depiction of him is with a shirt on.

Misty (Kasumi)

Misty / Kasumi (カスミ kasumi)

Voiced by: Reba Buhr (Pokémon Masters - EN), Ayane Sakura (Pokémon Masters - JP)

Cerulean City Gym Leader—The Tomboyish Mermaid!

"Hi, you're a new face! What's your policy on Pokémon? What is your approach? My policy is an all-out offensive with water-type Pokémon! Misty, the world-famous beauty, is your host! Are you ready, sweetie?"

Leader of the Cerulean Gym, a spunky young woman who trains Water-types. She gives the Cascade Badge to trainers who defeat her.

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• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, an obese man loiters at the entrance of Cerulean Gym and describes himself as a Fan of hers (a young teen at most). He's still there three years later in Pokémon Gold and Silver.
  • A developer in the Celadon City Game Freak office also gushes over her if you talk to him.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Her anime outfit gets this in Let's Go, Pikachu!, Let's Go, Eevee!, and Pokémon Masters, with her crop top going from yellow to white with added princess seams and her jean shorts having what appear to be water-themed marking patterns imprinted upon them.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Depending on the Artist. Misty's battle sprite in the original Pokémon Gold and Silver depicts her with a graceful, elegant pose to show that She Is All Grown Up, but the Updated Re-release for Nintendo DS has her jumping and pumping a fist to show how Hot-Blooded she is.
• Adaptational Modesty:
  • Only just—her tank top and short shorts from Pokémon: The Original Series (backported to Pokémon Yellow) are skimpy in their own right, but they suspend her status as a Walking Swimsuit Scene.
  • Misty wears less revealing swimwear in most of her appearances after the original Pokémon Red and Blue, in games and official art alike. Her appearance in the Gen III Video Game Remake gives her a more conservative, athletic bikini, while in the sequel Pokémon Gold and Silver, she's wearing a one-piece with a windbreaker over it. Even her returning swimsuits in Masters cover more skin than they did original games.
• Artificial Brilliance: In rematches and tournaments, Misty's team gets a good shot in the arm of competence; her Starmie in particular often ends up with a moveset optimized for sweeping. She was an early adopter of the Rain Dance Weather of War in Pokémon Gold and Silver and takes advantage of the benefits to Thunder in Stadium 2.
• Artificial Stupidity: In the original Pokémon Red and Blue, Misty insists on using a variety of Status Buffs on her Starmie that belie her "all-out offensive" by strengthening Tackle (its absolute weakest move) and protecting it from minor physical threats. This was likely a deliberate handicap, since it not only doesn't match the typical AI Pattern of always using supereffective attacks, it effectively gives the player free turns.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The Brawn to Erika's Beauty and Sabrina's Brains, being more physically brutal in a Pokémon battle than the other two and making life hell for unprepared Trainers, especially with her Starmie.
• Boobs-and-Butt Pose:
  • In Yellow, Misty strikes a subdued version of this pose that lets you get a good look at her from the side, though it wasn't obvious until the graphical updates of Let's Go.
  • In Pokémon Masters, one of Swimsuit Misty's animations has her strike a straightforward version of the pose.
• Call-Forward: Misty is first discovered in Gold, Silver, and Crystal on a date up at the Cerulean Cape, which the player interrupts (scaring off the apparently rather shy boy she was with). In FireRed and LeafGreen, one of her Fame Checker records declares that she's had high hopes for a date at that very spot.
• The Cameo: In Let's Go, Misty's original gym trainers have been replaced with her older sisters from the anime, Daisy, Violet, and Lily, who appear as three bikini beauties.
• Character Catchphrase: In the Japanese version of Yellow, Misty uses her anime self's catchphrase, "Go! My steady!"
• Composite Character:
  • Yellow version took the anime version of Misty, complete with her Iconic Outfit (and in the original Japanese, her catchphrase), and put her in the role of her original version from the games as a Gym Leader. Let's Go even replaced the Cerulean Gym's regular trainers with anime Misty's older sisters Daisy, Violet, and Lily.
  • Misty's clothes in Let's Go are a redesigned version of her Short Tank Iconic Outfit from the anime worn over a red Palette Swap of the blue bikini she wore in the first generation games. Even the princess seams on the front of her tanktop are a throwback to the stripes on her swimsuit in her first gen. official art.
  • In Masters, she wears her Let's Go outfit but has proportions much closer to her original anime appearance.
  • In Pokémon Origins, Misty wears her swimsuit from Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, but it has stripes like her swimsuit from her Pokémon Red and Blue character art.
• Convenient Weakness Placement:
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, players who didn't choose the Grass type Bulbasaur at the start or get lucky and nab an Electric type Pikachu in Viridian Forest can still pick up a Grass type Oddish or Bellsprout while traveling the routes north of Cerulean City. The hikers on Route 25 and the sailors and fisherman on the S.S. Anne can be used to get these Grass types trained up to be more competitive against Misty.
  • In Pokémon Gold and Silver and its remakes, Misty cannot be challenged until the power plant crisis is resolved. In Crystal and the Gen IV remakes, a trainer at the power plant will give you a Magneton in exchange for a Dugtrio.
• Date Peepers: When you meet her in Gold, Silver, and Crystal, you catch her on a date. She doesn't take this well, to put it simply.
• Early-Bird Boss: Downplayed. Like Brock, her difficulty hinges in part on what starter Pokémon the player faces her with; unlike Brock, the player can catch Pokémon with type advantages against her and make them viable options with only some Level Grinding. Later games had to implement Obvious Rule Patches to give the player more options against Brock.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Between Generation I and Generation II, she stopped wearing her hair in a side ponytail and cut it shorter.
• Fangirl: According to the Fame Checker in FireRed and LeafGreen, she "worship[s] Lorelei of the Elite Four".
• Fiery Redhead: Downplayed; she gets steamed when you botch her date in the Johto-based games. When you first meet her in the Kanto-based games she's actually quite perky.
• Girliness Upgrade: In Pokémon Gold and Silver, Misty's battle sprite is much more elegant and graceful than her Pokémon Red and Blue sprite.
• Hartman Hips: Didn't have this at first, but her redesigns have each made her hips more and more prominent.
• Highly Specific Counterplay: For the purposes of standard play in Pokémon Red and Blue, the Magikarp Salesman's Magikarp is all but useless. For anyone willing to put in the Level Grinding, however, the Gyarados it becomes makes an excellent counter for Misty's Starmie—Gyarado's high special and Water type neutralize the threat of Starmie's strongest attacks, and its high attack means Gyarado's Bite can deal more damage than the Squishy Wizard Starmie can heal.
• Hot-Blooded: Her battle sprite animations in HGSS feature her jumping and pumping a fist in anticipation, which is a huge contrast from her gentle, breezy pose in the original GSC.
• Improbable Power Discrepancy: Her training place is Seafoam Islands, which have Pokémon that are higher-leveled than hers in the Kanto games. For a long time this was an Informed Ability until later Pokémon installments justified it by showing that Gym Leaders are Willfully Weak depending on their challengers.
• Legacy Character: Misty's Starmie in Pokémon Masters is not the Starmie she uses in her Gym battles in the main games. As she explains during her Sync Pair Story, the Masters Starmie is actually that Starmie's child.
• Lightning Bruiser: Trains two of them, but Starmie especially. It's very fast and hits hard with Bubble Beam/Water Pulse. It also has Recover in the remake, so if the player doesn't hit it hard enough or doesn't have a priority move, Starmie will just heal off the damage immediately in the next turn.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: When the player inadvertently crashes her date in Pokémon Gold and Silver, her date flees, never to be heard from again, but Misty marches right up to you to confront you directly.
• Meaningful Name:
  • In English, Italian, German and Spanish,Misty. It should be noted that Kasumi pretty much means the same in Japanese.
  • In French, her name is "Ondine", from Undine, water nymph in Germanic mythology.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's a Walking Swimsuit Scene, and, in her Pokémon Red and Blue swimsuit, she holds the record for most revealing outfit of any Pokémon character. In Pokémon Yellow and its remake Let's Go, she also has a Boobs-and-Butt Pose.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In the anime, Misty obtained a Psyduck that was infamously useless until it developed a headache. Following her anime self's lead, she has a Psyduck or Golduck on at least one team in Stadium, Stadium 2, Gold and Silver (and all remakes thereof), Black 2 and White 2, Let's Go, and Masters, each.
  • The anime also gave Misty trainership of the colicky Togepi, a then-Early-Bird Cameo for the unreleased Gen II. In the games, Misty has a Togetic on her first team in Stadium 2, and if you bring a Togepi into the Cerulean Gym in HGSS and talk to it, it will begin crying softly.
  • The Stadium games also contain members of other Pokémon she was close to, such as Horsea (she cared for one in the early anime), Politoed (one of her team members during the Johto era), and potentially Wigglytuff (as she once tried to catch the Jigglypuff that stalked the protagonists of the anime).
  • The Fame Checker indicates Misty worships Lorelei of the Elite Four; when Lorelei appeared (as Prima) during the Orange Islands season, Misty was delighted.
  • In Masters, she becomes a friend and companion of the player character, like her anime self was for Ash Ketchum.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Discussed. In LGPE, Misty sometimes travels down to Vermillion so she can break out of the tiny pool and go swim in the great big sea.
• Palette Swap: In Pokémon Masters, Misty's second sync-pair (featuring a slightly more modest version of her swimsuit from Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen) and her sygna-suit both come with six-star ex variants that feature different color schemes.
• She Is All Grown Up: In the original Pokémon Gold and Silver, where Misty's in-game battle sprite reveals she wears a more conservative bathing suit and has started Letting Her Hair Down. Downplayed in the Gen IV remake, where Misty is at her most Hot-Blooded.
• Ship Tease: With Red. While it doesn't appear as much in-game, where she only refers to the player character as "Sweetie", it's played up in promotional and expanded material as well as the anime and a few manga.
• Shorttank: Averted in most appearances, where she's not a co-star, but Played Straight in Pokémon Masters, where she shares her female co-star status with Rosa and even gets to use the Let's Go version of her Trope Namer Iconic Outfit.
• Signature Mon:
  • Primarily uses the Staryu line, with Starmie featuring in every one of her teams, including those in Stadium, mostly as either the lead or final Pokémon. The one notable exception is in Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, where Gyarados becomes Misty's strongest Pokémon in the rematch. Starmie also returns in Masters, albeit as the child of the one from the gym.
  • She also has a prominent association with Psyduck. Either it or Golduck has a place on many versions of her team, often as the lead. Psyduck is also one of Misty's most prominent team members in the anime and is part of an alternative sync pair with her in Masters.
  • Her Sygna Suit variation in Masters gives her Vaporeon.
• Shoulders-Up Nudity: Misty's original bikini was strapless, so in her Pokémon Red and Blue mugshot she has no visible clothes.
• Signature Move: Gives the TM for Bubble Beam in Gen I. Gen III and Gen IV give her Water Pulse instead, which most of her team uses in those games, and in Gen VII, Scald fills that role.
• Skippable Boss: Downplayed. You can put off her gym battle until you've completed the S.S. Anne, but you do need to defeat her at that point in order to unlock the ability to use Cut in the overworld so you can face Lt. Surge or proceed onwards to Route 9.
• Spirited Competitor:
  • In the Johto games, she finds the player character to be a nuisance, only to reconsider at the sight of the eight Johto badges. After a battle with her, she reveals she wants to go traveling to fight other strong trainers.
  • Black 2 & White 2 even featured her in the "Gathered! Gym Leader!" DLC tournament with Volkner, Norman, and Jasmine, fellow Gym Leaders renowned for their toughness.
  • In Let's Go, she's been champing at the bit for a rematch in the post-game after she heard how tough you were.
• Spectacular Spinning: In Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, she pirouettes right before your showdown with her.
• Tank-Top Tomboy: Misty is one of these whenever she's not a Walking Swimsuit Scene.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Has high hopes for finding a boyfriend or at least getting a date at the Cerulean Cape.
• Threshold Guardians: Misty's Cascade Badge authorizes trainers to use Cut, which (once the player collects the actual Hidden Machine from the S.S. Anne) opens up the first of Kanto's Insurmountable Waist Height Fences, giving the player access to Lavender Town^note Rock Tunnel ostensibly requires Flash to pass, but even in the first gen. can be dealt with by causing the palette to glitch and show the player character and environment and the rest of Kanto beyond.
• Tomboy: According to her title, this becomes more obvious in later installments.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: Her original design and its revamps have one, but she hasn't got one after she grows up.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Despite being known as the "Tomboyish Mermaid", she Thinks Like a Romance Novel.
• Tsundere: Though she does react poorly to you at first in the sequels, she eventually warms up, and will even call you out of the blue (once you get her number) to thank you for kicking an intruder out of her Gym. The Tsundere side of her wasn't present in the first generation games, but was probably added to match up with her anime incarnation's personality.
• Vague Age: Misty's age has always been a bit questionable, thanks to the Puni Plush style and Ken Sugimori's Art Evolution.
  • In the Kanto-based games she's nearly always proportionally similar to the preteen player character, except in Pokémon Origins, where she has smaller eyes and broader shoulders to show she's older than Red.
  • However, her "older" designs do a lot to throw things off. In the second generation, her graceful pose makes her seem much more mature than any young teenager would be, and while her fourth generation design is more energetic and active, it is also her tallest design so far. That her fourth gen design was reused in the fifth, which takes place a decade and more afterwards, seems to indicate that this design was considered fully adult.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Her Signature Mon Starmie has bar none the beastliest stat average of any Pokémon you've seen in the game by the time you can face her and her Signature Move will have some crippling stat reduction or status effect waiting for you, and in Generation 1 Starmie's immense Special stat counts for both offense and defense, so it can take a beating as well as dish it out. Like all Gym Leaders, she can be done in with the proper prep, but she can be brutal to a new player, especially if he picked Charmander as his starter.
• Walking Swimsuit Scene: To the hilt.
  • The only times she's not ready for a dip is in Yellow, where she wears her Short Tank outfit from the anime, and in the Let's Go games, where she's wearing an updated redesign of the same outfit. (And even then, the LGPE concept art shows that she's wearing a bikini underneath).
  • Exaggerated in Pokémon Gold and Silver, where Misty's sprites remain unchanged even when she's outside her gym, indicating she walks around town and goes on dates in her swimsuit and jacket. She even wears the same outfit to visit the Fighting Dojo in Saffron City in the Gen IV Video Game Remake and to the tournament in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2—in a completely different country.
• Walking the Earth: Discussed in Pokémon Gold and Silver when Misty claims she wants to go traveling, but spends most of her time in the gym. (In the anime, Misty was Ash's travelling companion for all of Pokémon: The Original Series).
• Weather Manipulation: Misty likes having her Pokémon use Rain Dance in games outside of Pokémon Red and Blue.
• Weather of War: Misty makes some use of Rain Dance, which boosts the power of Water-type attacks by half and triggers abilities used by a handful of Water-type Pokémon, in GSC and HGSS—it's in Stadium 2 that she really dives in, though; nearly every Pokémon she uses has Rain Dance, and two thirds of her Round Two team have Thunder to make it an Always Accurate Attack.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Misty's date in Pokémon Gold and Silver, who is never mentioned again after he disappears.
• Youngest Child Wins: In Let's Go, the three bikini-beauties at the Cerulean Gym are at least a Mythology Gag referring to Misty's Brainless Beauty older sisters from Pokémon: The Original Series if not Canon Immigrants of the same. If they are her older sisters, then Misty has seniority over them as the Gym Leader, possibly due to Asskicking Leads to Leadership.

Lt. Surge (Matis)

Lt. Surge / Matis (マチス machisu)

Voiced by: Patrick Seitz (EN), Taketora (JP) (Pokémon Masters)

Vermilion City Gym Leader—The Lightning Lieutenant!

"Hey, kid! What do you think you're doing here? You won't live long in combat! That's for sure! I tell you kid, electric Pokémon saved me during the war! They zapped my enemies into paralysis! The same as I'll do to you!"

Gym Leader of Vermilion City, who hands out the Thunder Badge. Surge is a proud military man who specializes in Electric-types.

---

• Ace Pilot: Apparently was one. He used his Electric Pokémon to power his planes.
• Achilles' Heel: The earthen Pokémon of Mt. Moon will absolutely bury his team in Red, Blue, or any of the remakes, where his monsters only use Electric- and Normal-type moves. Not until Let's Go gave his Raichu Double Kick did he have a viable strategy for dealing with mixed Rock-Ground types.
• Adaptational Badass: In the Gen I games, he is not too difficult in Red and Blue, but in Yellow, he can give players a hard time. His Raichu is at a noticeably higher level and in addition to Thunderbolt, it packs Mega Punch and Mega Kick, which are pretty strong moves themselves. Even that Diglett you caught will have difficulty if you're not properly prepared.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the Pokémon Red and Blue, Surge is boisterous and cocky, but he's not a jerk about it. His Alternate Self from Pokémon: The Original Series is tremendously arrogant and condescending to Ash and Pikachu, referring to them as babies who can't hope to defeat him and Raichu. This characterization was carried back into the anime-inspired Yellow version, but even then he's comparatively more mellow than he was in the anime, and it mostly only appears in post-Yellow games as a one-off line declaring the player's power puny.
• Adaptational Villainy: In Pokémon Adventures, Surge is a high-ranking member of Team Rocket before Giovanni disbands it, and keeps some ties to the organization afterwards.
• Adaptational Personality Change: As Pokémon Yellow is an adaptation of the anime, his original Drill Sergeant Nasty attitude was replaced with his Boisterous Bruiser personality from the show. FRLG reconciled the two by adding a line to his classic dialog about the player's "puny power".
• The Artifact: His title as "The Lightning American". Since the fourth generation or so, Game Freak has gone out of their way to avoid referencing real-world places, but changing a persistent title like that was presumably too much of a change. A man in the Pokémon World Tournament's lobby mentions he might be from Unova, but that still doesn't change the title. His title would finally be changed in Let's Go to the Lightning Lieutenant.
• Artistic License – Military: Surge is a long-experienced military officer, but the English translation depicts him as a lieutenant, which is normally a rank held by much younger men^note It takes about eighteen months for a newly commissioned officer to reach the rank of lieutenant, so most lieutenants tend to be in the early to mid-twenties. In the original Japanese, he's actually a Major, a rank more commonly occupied by men in their thirties.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Surge in GSC and HGSS appears to have mellowed out somewhat, as his aggressive RBY stance and attitude were replaced with a "Yankee" characterization^note "Yankee" being a pun on both "American" and a subset of Japanese Delinquents, complete with Cool Shades and yankee squatting.
  • HGSS further characterized his new personality by adding a case of Real Men Wear Pink (see below).
• Cool Shades: He has sunglasses in Generation II and HGSS, though unlike Blaine, he is seen with them off in HGSS (he simply holds them in his hand before and after battles with him), and of course in Generations I and III he never wore sunglasses at all.
• Crippling Overspecialization: In Red and Blue, his team is almost incapable of hurting a Ground-type Pokémon, with his Raichu in particular being completely helpless against them. His Yellow incarnation fixes this.
• Cuteness Proximity: In Masters, he notes that he is a total fan of the Pikachu line and loves them.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: In the first generation and the third generation remakes, he's a very gruff and mean army lieutenant.
• Eagleland: Take a look at his title. Type 1, by the way, proud and stalwart, and implied to be A Father to His Men in the war.
• Elemental Hair Colors: Spiky and blonde for an Electric trainer.
• Elemental Personalities: He's a brash and vivacious war veteran who specializes in Electric-type Pokémon.
• A Father to His Men: As one of the Gym Trainers tells the player, Lt. Surge saved his life back during the war. He has since pledged Undying Loyalty to him.
• Fragile Speedster: Comes with specializing in Electric-types. His Pokémon are fast and hit hard, but they can't take it in return.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He designed the infamous gate puzzle in his Gym.
• The Giant: In the anime, assuming his Raichu is drawn to scale, he's over eight feet tall.
• Glass Cannon: His Raichu can hit fairly hard, especially in the Yellow version, but his Pokémon can't take too many hits.
• Gratuitous English: This is how he speaks in the Japanese versions of the games, as well as in the anime. He does it in the French versions too, but only in the remakes, for some odd reason.
• Hidden Depths: According to Masters, Surge is a damn good cook, able to make Gloria's stomach growl with just the scent of his food and make her reminisce about eating curry with Zacian.
• Hurricane of Puns: The man enjoys talking about how "shocking" and "electrifying" things are.
• Irony: The anime has him with a Raichu and disses Ash’s Pikachu for being unevolved and weak. HGSS reveals that his favorite Pokémon is Pikachu for being cute.
• Large Ham: He's very prone to shouting and boasting of his prowess.
• Majorly Awesome: Surge's rank in the original Japanese is Major. (This would make him Major Matis).
• Meaningful Name:
  • Surge, as in "electric surge".
  • His Japanese name refers to the Clematis flower, which is called "Tessen" in Japanese. "Tessen" is a homonym for "steel wire", as in the type used in electrical work. Incidentally, we would later have another Electric-type Gym Leader using more or less the exact same naming joke...
• Military Rank Names: Has only gone by his military title in English releases.
• Mirror Boss: Invoked in adaptations that have Red/Ash using Pikachu against his Raichu. This also carried over to Yellow Version, where Raichu was his only Pokémon, seemingly encouraging the player to use their starter Pikachu against him. Of course, you could still use whatever you want.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: In Pokémon Stadium and Pokemon Stadium 2, Surge's Pikachu and Raichu know Surf, a move they couldn't learn at all in any version of Pokémon Red and Blue or Pokémon Gold and Silver. (Certain Pikachu can be taught Surf via an Old Save Bonus provided by Pokémon Stadium if they meet the requirements, however).
• Patriotic Fervor: Again, his title is The Lightning American!
• Phenotype Stereotype: He's a blond blue-eyed American man. This is made even more noticeable as most of the leaders have dark hair colors.
• Real Men Wear Pink: In HGSS. For such a manly guy, he seems to like cute Pokémon, and his favorite Pokémon are the Pikachu line. You can show him a Pikachu to get his phone number, and he practically gushes over the sight of it like a fangirl. He also adds a Pachirisu to his team for the rematch, which is at a higher level than any Pokémon on his team save his signature Raichu.
• Riddle for the Ages: Many fan theories have been sparked from the mysterious war that Lt. Surge, his Pokémon, and the other Trainers in his Gym have fought in. An old Trainer card◊ show Lt. Surge with what seems to be a map of German occupied Poland behind him, which would suggest he fought in WWII (thereby making him older than he appears), but with how the Pokémon world has undergone Earth Drift over the generations this likely isn't canon anymore, leaving the war he fought in a mystery to this day.
• Retired Badass: Was formerly a soldier who earned the rank of Lieutenant in some unknown conflict before becoming a Gym Leader. He's still quite young, however, looking to be in his late twenties.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: His signature Raichu.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Why he makes you solve a puzzle to unlock a gate to get to him: he's cautious and paranoid and sets traps to protect himself.
• Signature Mon:
  • His primary Pokémon is his Raichu, which appears on all of his teams, often as the strongest member. It also forms a BP pair with him in Masters. In HeartGold and SoulSilver, he reveals that its pre-evolution, Pikachu, is his favorite Pokémon.
  • His initial battle in the Johto games sees Electabuzz take over as his strongest Pokémon before switching back to Raichu for the rematch. Additionally, from HeartGold and SoulSilver onward, all but one of his teams featured an Electabuzz or Electivire. Electabuzz is also part of Lt. Surge's Pokémon Scale World Set.
  • Voltorb or Electrode acts as the lead on all of his Kanto teams. He also uses two Electrode during his gym battles in Generations II and IV and forms his default sync pair with Voltorb in Masters.
• Signature Move: Thunderbolt in Gen I — coming from a Raichu, it hurt a lot. Gen III and Gen IV give him Shock Wave, which is more manageable, but he teaches it to his entire team instead. In his rematch in Gen IV, he goes back to Thunderbolt, and it's his main attack in Pokémon Masters as well.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: He says "goddamn" in the Japanese versions. That's right, in the Japanese versions, he curses in English.
• Skippable Boss: Downplayed. You can put off his gym battle for quite some time since beating him doesn't unlock an HM move needed to traverse the overworld, but eventually you will have to circle back and deal with him in order to unlock the Viridian Gym.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: His outfit leaves his bulging biceps bare.
• Taking You with Me: In Pokémon Masters, his Voltorb can learn the passive skill "Last Word", which causes it to use Explosion when it faints.
• Threshold Guardians: Downplayed. Surge's Thunder Badge authorizes players to use Fly and use Video Game Flight to conveniently travel around the region. The Badge is only necessary in the sense that a guard on the path to Victory Road demands it before you can pass.
• Trap Master: The first Gym Leader in Kanto to make you solve a puzzle to get to him, letting you stumble around fighting the other Trainers in his Gym while he waits for you in the back.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Catch a Geodude in Mt. Moon or a Diglett (or, if you're lucky, a Dugtrio) in Diglett's Cave right next to Vermillion City, train it a little, and wreck his gym.

Erika

Erika (エリカ erika)

Voiced by: Xanthe Huynh (Pokémon Masters - EN), Ai Kayano (Pokémon Masters - JP)

Celadon City Gym Leader—The Nature-Loving Princess!

"Hello. Lovely weather isn't it? It's so pleasant. ...Oh dear... I must have dozed off. Welcome. My name is Erika. I am the Leader of Celadon Gym. I teach the art of flower arranging. My Pokémon are of the Grass-type. Oh, I'm sorry, I had no idea that you wished to challenge me. Very well, but I shall not lose."

The Gym Leader who resides in Celadon City, and giver of the Rainbow Badge. Erika is a polite and traditional lady who trains Grass-types.

---

• A.I. Breaker: Because the AI of the original Pokémon Red and Blue insists on moves that win at Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, Erika's Victreebel and Vileplume hit a wall against other Grass-Poison mixes. Both must use Poison-type moves for the advantage over Grass-type, but the only such move they know is Poison Powder, which merely poisons the target, and Poison-types are immune to being poisoned. Her first gen Tangela, however, only knows Constrict and Bind and evades this flaw.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, her Tangela only knows Normal-type attacks, so a Ghost-type will No-Sell whatever it tries to do.
  • In Pokémon Gold and Silver, Erika shows off the new Weather of War by teaching her strongest monsters Sunny Day, which improves their use of Synthesis to heal damage and lets them use Solarbeam without charging it. By the same token, however, it also makes them that much weaker to Fire-type moves, which were already supereffective.
• Adaptational Wimp: Erika's Vileplume no longer knows Petal Dance in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen—instead, its strongest move is Giga Drain.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The beauty to Sabrina's brains and Misty's brawn. In a Pokémon battle, she's a Lady of War who uses Grass-types in combat, her Pokémon team itself is a kind of flower-arrangement, and her post-battle dialog indicates she only collects Pokémon that she considers attractive—albeit, her ideas of "attractive" are a little strange.
• Convenient Weakness Placement:
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, any player who didn't start with the Fire type Charmander can pick up Growlithe or Vulpix on the routes to the immediate east and west of Saffron City, which the player must cross to reach Celadon. Erika's gym is filled trainers that make easy Level Grinding fodder, and the player can pick up a Fire Stone at Celadon Department Store to evolve them for a power boost if desired.
  • In the same games, Celadon Department Store sells the risky One-Hit Kill Horn Drill TM and X Accuracy, which will make it an Always Accurate Attack.
  • In Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver, Celadon Department Store sells the Ice-type move Avalanche.
• Critical Hit Class: The Victreebel playing front-man on Erika's team in Pokémon Red and Blue is the fastest monster she has and knows Razor Leaf, a move with an increased critical hit rate.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Erika's original sprite depicts her with her yukata worn right-over-left. This is unusual because that's usually how women are dressed for burial, but it's not an accident as even her concept art depicts her this way. Yellow fixes this and depicts her yukata folded more standardly.
• Elemental Motifs: She's a Grass-type specialist with a specific emphasis on grace, tradition, and beauty of flowers.
• Eyes Always Shut: In her battle sprite and character art for Pokémon Red and Blue, Erika's eyes are closed to highlight her dignified air (and possibly her dozing off); likewise, her mugshot for Pokémon Stadium. This trait vanished afterwards, however, and she's been open-eyed since she was released with the other Gym Leaders in the Pokémon TCG.
• The Gimmick: Erika is a master of flower arranging, and her team in Pokémon Red and Blue is an arrangement of Grass-types.
• Gossipy Hens: In HGSS, catching her chatting with Jasmine in Celadon on her days off will indicate she appears to not simply spread but generate surprisingly harsh gossip about other female gym leaders^{The Dirt}After starting off by claiming Whitney thinks Jasmine dresses a little plain, Erika will suggest Jasmine wear a light blue outfit with a cape, but when Jasmine says it would be a little embarrassing, Erika takes her to mean that she thinks Clair — who wears that exact outfit — is a little embarrassing. In Masters, she giggles while telling Koga and Clair they have a bold sense of fashion style.
• Granola Girl: Very in-tune with nature and peaceful for it.
• Heavy Sleeper: Apparently has some mild form of narcolepsy. She almost dozes off before her battle with the player. It could be a side effect of frequently carrying Pokémon with Sleep Powder. In Masters, she says she only falls asleep in the middle of the day when it's sunny.
• Hungry Jungle: Many of her Pokémon are creepy or vicious tropical plants. In a more literal example than expected, her signature moves are Mega Drain and Giga Drain.
• Kimono Fanservice: Along with the outfit's general beauty, Erika's kimonos in FRLG and HGSS are both the very wide-sleeved furisode, which is the most formal kimono type worn by unmarried girls, which notably replaced the not quite as wide-sleeved houmongi she appeared to be wearing in Yellow and GSC, which serves the same role for married women. In Let's Go, she appears to be wearing an iromuji, which doesn't specify marital status.
• Kimono Is Traditional: In the Japanese Fantasy Counterpart Culture called Kanto, Erika is one of the most pointedly Japanese of them all, and her outfits only highlight it.
• Lady of War: A traditional and graceful Gym Leader who has a preference for feminine Grass-type Pokémon.
• Life Drain: Her TM moves Mega Drain and Giga Drain damage your Pokémon and heal hers.
• Meaningful Name: Not readily apparent, but even in English her name, Erika, is the genus of a type of plant. The same pun applies in Japanese, and in addition, the ka in the common name Erika is often written with the characters for either "flower" or "fragrance".
• Mighty Glacier: All of her Pokémon are slow, but have high offense and defense.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant:
  • In the original Pokémon Red and Blue, Erika's post-battle dialog reveals she would never collect "unattractive" Pokémon... after you've seen her team is nothing but horrifying monsters of the Hungry Jungle. On top of that, she wears her yukata in the style of a body being prepared for burial. (This became downplayed as soon as Gen II introduced cute Grass-types like Jumpluff and Bellossom, and she wears her kimonos normally in future appearances).
  • Also of note is Erika's Life Drain Signature Move, either Mega Drain or Giga Drain. Possibly to preserve the trope after the introduction of more cute Grass-type Pokémon, in Pokémon Gold and Silver, she starts describing its Vampiric Draining effects as "wonderful"—in the Gen IV remakes, she describes it as both wonderful and horrifying to get the point across.
• No Sense of Direction: Pokémon Masters has her getting lost in the middle of a town while trying to find a shop, despite the fact that her Vileplume knows the way and was walking straight ahead of her. She admits that she'd never find it on her own.
• Noble Bigot: As far as Pokémon are concerned. She generally prefers to use beautiful Pokémon. What's her definition of "beautiful Pokémon"? Any Pokémon at least partially of the Grass type.
• The Ojou: Explicitly called such in the Japanese version, and this trope is a part of her official title.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: She wears black tights with her Holiday 2020 outfit and white tights with her Sygna Suit.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Has pale skin but dark black hair.
• Signature Mon:
  • Erika is chiefly associated with the Oddish line, which appears on all of her teams. Between its two final evolutions, she is mostly seen with Vileplume, including in Masters where she reveals that she raised it from an Oddish.
  • Tangela and Tangrowth both appear very often with Erika. She lead with the former on a number of her teams and the latter served as her strongest Pokémon at one point. Tangela also appears as part of a BP pair in Masters.
  • Her Sygna Suit variation gives her Leafeon.
• Signature Move: Mega Drain in Gen I, Giga Drain from Gen II on.
• Skippable Boss: Downplayed. You can put off her gym battle for quite some time since beating her unlocks an HM move that isn't needed in the main quest until The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, but eventually you will have to circle back and deal with her in order to unlock the Viridian Gym.
• Sleepy Head: When you speak to her to challenge her, she exclaims she dozed off, and a rumor says peepers on the Gym often spy her snoozing in the middle of the day. She appears to be a mild Cloudcuckoolander-type, given that her post-battle dialog indicates she thinks her collected Pokémon are all beautiful. In Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee and Pokémon Masters, she's even able to doze off while standing.
• Threshold Guardians: Erika's Rainbow Badge enables the player's monsters to use Strength, allowing them to deal with large boulders, which in some cases are an Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence and in others a Block Puzzle.
• Weaksauce Weakness: In Pokémon Red and Blue, Beedrill is basically considered an afterthought by most players. However, the fact that Twineedle hits twice and the programming error of making Poison weak to Bug means that Beedrill easily sweeps this gym, as her two strongest Pokémon are both 4x weak to it.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In Yellow, Erika had a Gloom instead of a Vileplume, which presumably evolved into Bellossom by the time of the Johto games. However, FireRed and LeafGreen reaffirm her Vileplume, which is entirely absent from HeartGold and SoulSilver, both in her Gym battle and rematch teams, not reappearing until Black 2 and White 2.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: The kimono, the class, the fighting plants, etc.

Koga (Kyō)

Koga / Kyō (キョウ kyou)

Voiced by: Christopher Bevins (Pokémon Masters - EN), Tōru Ōkawa (Pokémon Masters - JP)

"Poison brings steady doom. Sleep renders foes helpless. Despair to the creeping horror of Poison-type Pokémon!"

A Ninja who specializes in Poison-types. Originally the Fuchsia Gym Leader in Red, Blue, Yellow, FireRed, and LeafGreen, Koga moves to the Elite Four in the Johto games, with his daughter Janine taking his previous position. The Fuschia Gym gives out the Soul Badge.

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• Action Dad: Koga's goal in personal bouts is as much to impress his daughter with his fatherly dignity as it is to win.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Pokémon Masters turns down the terror and intimidation theatrics.
• And I Must Scream: Invoked. "Poison brings steady doom. Sleep renders foes helpless."
• Artificial Stupidity: The Skuntank leading Koga's team during the rematch in HeartGold/SoulSilver has a lot of Situational Sword techniques—Toxic, Sucker Punch, and Explosion—leaving it with only one reliable attack, Dig. Ironically, while Dig supports Toxic by sending Skuntank underground and preserving it from most attacks, the move also exposes Skuntank to tremendous danger from Earthquake. Because Earthquake is already powerful and easy-to-use even before Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, it is very common at high levels of play, so Skuntank ends up in a situation where Kryptonite Is Everywhere.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: His Bug-types get pretty big.
• Call-Forward: In Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, Koga's rematch dialog includes a nod to Janine and mentions that he's been thinking of joining the Elite Four, as he does in Pokémon Gold and Silver.
• Combat Medic: As a master of poison techniques, he also has a large amount of knowledge over medicine and apparently heals his Pokémon with concoctions of his own.
• Composite Character: With himself; that is, his anime counterpart. In the original Gen I games, Koga used Weezing and Muk and their evolutionary relatives. Then the anime depicted him with a Venomoth, which carried over to Yellow by replacing his entire team with three Venonats and a Venomoth. Thus in the two Stadium games and in the Gen II games and their remakes, Koga has several Bug-types on his team while still being a Poison-type specialist. His second anime Pokémon was Golbat, and its evolved form Crobat would become the Signature Mon of his Elite Four team.
• Damage Over Time: Koga's Signature Move Toxic deals unique accelerating damage over time.
• Despair Event Horizon: Invoked. Koga uses his Status Effects strategy to cause challengers to despair, as he elaborates in his pre-battle speeches.
• Didn't Think This Through: The Skuntank on Koga's rematch team in the remake of Pokémon Gold and Silver knows Dig, which will not only give it a decent attacking option but briefly sends it underground to help it avoid most attacks and stall while its Toxic causes Damage Over Time. At the same time, Dig opens it up to retaliation by Earthquake, which not only does double-damage to Skuntank as a Poison-type but doubles damage against underground enemies as well.
• Doppelgänger Spin: He likes using the Double Team move as a tactic in battle, to give himself extra evasion to stall for toxic.
• Evil Laugh: While he's not really evil, he mostly does this to look intimidating to the player.
• Gratuitous Ninja: There is exactly one ninja in Pokémon Red and Blue, and his name is Koga.
• Irony: He became a Poison-type specialist after he himself was poisoned by a Venomoth, which sparked his fascination for the typing.
• The Kids Are American: An acute example. Despite Kanto (as well as Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh) being a Fantasy Counterpart for a region of Japan, in Masters he's the only character who affects a Japanese accent (likely due to appearing as a stereotypical ninja). This is especially noticeable because his Ninja daughter Janine does not have the accent.
• The Maze: Back when he was a Gym Leader, he used an invisible maze in his Gym to force the player into Pokémon battles while walking around. The maze itself isn't 100% invisible, but can mess with players who don't look too closely.
• Meaningful Name: Named after the Koga-ryu school of ninjutsu.
• Mighty Glacier: His multiple Koffing and signature Weezing in RBGY and their remakes. Yellow replaces them with the more squishy Venonat and Venomoth, respectively.
• Nature Is Not Nice: Discussed in Pokémon Masters. "Beautiful things often hide their share of danger. Remember that for the future."
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Some of his dialog in Pokémon Masters indicates that he thinks the uncanny Venomoth are beautiful.
• Ninja: His motif, and self-declared as one. He comes from a long line of ninjas, hundreds of years in fact, and possesses several fantasy ninja abilities such as being able to seemingly teleport, disguise himself in an instant, and even seemingly create copies of himself. Its unclear if these are actual superhuman powers like Sabrina's psychic abilities, or some kind of highly advanced trickery.
• The One Guy: The only male Poison-type specialist.
• Only the Worthy May Pass: Koga doesn't use HMs to bar the entrance to his gym like Surge or Erika, but he *does* use an invisible maze to frustrate the weak and weed them out—in Pokémon Masters, he reveals his daughter Jasmine got lost in there once and made a huge scene.
• Opposing Combat Philosophies:
  • Koga's strategy sets him apart from hard-hitting brute force users like fellow Elite Fourman Bruno—as he himself puts it, Pokémon are not merely about brute force. As per his spiel in Pokémon Gold and Silver, "Pokémon is not merely about brute force—you shall see soon enough!"
  • Janine's Divergent Character Evolution in the Gen IV remakes of Pokémon Gold and Silver has led her to abandon her father's Signature Move Toxic for the more aggressive Poison Jab.
• Passing the Torch: To his daughter Janine after he ascended to the Elite Four.
• Purple Is Powerful: He cripples foes with his mastery of Poison-type Pokémon (with the type generally being depicted with purple coloration), and is one of few Poison-type specialists to have ascended to the status of Elite Four.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: In Fire Red and Leaf Green, his Koffing and his Weezing have lost their weakness to Ground-Type moves due to them gaining the Levitate ability.
• Sadist: Possibly with the way he talks of enjoying poison's effects on enemies.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Wears a scarf and went from Gym Leader to a member of the Elite Four.
• Secret Art: The Toxic technique in his possession has been passed down through his family for 400 years.
• Signature Mon:
  • In Red and Blue and its remakes, Weezing is his highest level Pokémon. It and its pre-evolution also take up most of the slots on both teams and Koga's Pokémon Scale World set features the former.
  • As an Elite Four Member, his strongest Pokémon is Crobat, which he also uses in Masters and calls his equal. Its pre-evolution, Golbat, is part of his initial and rematch teams in Generation VII and his Pokémon Scale World Set.
  • Venomoth is his strongest Pokémon in Yellow and Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!. It is also his lead in the Stadium games and one of the only Pokémon he uses as both a Gym Leader and Elite Four member. Masters expands on this relationship by revealing that an encounter with Venomoth was what inspired him to become a Poison-type specialist.
• Skippable Boss: Downplayed. You can put off his gym battle for a bit if you want to take on the Saffron Gym beforehand, but eventually you will have to circle back and deal with him in order to unlock the ability to use Surf in the overworld and proceed to Cinnabar Island.
• Status Infliction Attack: As both a Poison-type master and a Ninja, he specializes in subversive and tricky battling styles. This translates to relying on status ailments and other status moves like Disable, Double Team, and Spikes.
• Taking You with Me: He uses a Weezing, sometimes as his last Pokémon. The AI is not averse to using Explosion if this is the case. This results in the player losing if their last Pokémon faints. He will do this regardless of what you have out, so you could get some laughs out of the AI using Explosion against your Gastly, against whom the only effect will be his Weezing fainting.
• Theme Naming: With his daughter in the Japanese version.
• Threshold Guardians: As a Gym Leader in Kanto, Koga gives out the Soul Badge, which authorizes the player to use Surf, which opens up access to Cinnabar Island and the latter part of the path to Victory Road.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • In Yellow, his final Pokémon is a level 50 Venomoth. This is quite the leap compared to the original where his strongest Pokémon was a level 43 Weezing. The rest of his team also are Level 44, 46 and 48, even if they're just Venonats.
  • From Gym Leader in Gen I/III to Elite Four in Gen II/IV.
  • Takes another one in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! where his Pokémon are equal to Sabrina's at Level 43 and his ace Pokémon Venomoth is at Level 44, the same level as her Alakazam. But in order to challenge his Gym, players will have to had caught 50 different species of Pokémon compared to Sabrina's 45 level or higher Pokémon requirement, meaning that his challenge is supposed to be more difficult. This is a reference to the fact that Koga is above Will in the Johto series of the games despite Will having a type advantage over him.
• Torture Technician: Invoked—Koga's style is to harass and terrify the opponent by piling on status effects over time and describes his combat style with lots of emphasis on crippling the challenger.
• Weak, but Skilled: Koga's style relies on mixing disruptive support moves with Damage Over Time. As he puts it, "My intricate style will confound and destroy you."
• We Win, Because You Didn't: In Pokémon Red and Blue, if Weezing is his last Pokémon and it defeats a challenger's last Pokémon with Explosion, Koga wins.
• Who Dares?: "A mere child like you dares to challenge me?"
• Worthy Opponent: Koga describes challengers who beat him as having proven their worth.

Sabrina (Natsume)

Sabrina / Natsume (ナツメ natsume)

Voiced by: Lizzie Freeman (Pokémon Masters - EN), Rie Tanaka (Pokémon Masters - JP)

Saffron City Gym Leader—The Master of Psychic Pokémon!

"I had a vision of your arrival! I have had psychic powers since I was a little child. I first learned to bend spoons with my mind. I dislike fighting, but if you wish, I will show you my powers!"

An aloof woman with Psychic Powers of some sort, who fittingly trains Psychic-types. The games and various adaptations occasionally portray her as being able to communicate with her Pokémon directly thanks to her powers. She presides over the Saffron City Gym and hands out the Marsh Badge to worthy trainers.

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• Adaptational Skimpiness: The anime has her wear a miniskirt (albeit with thigh-high boots), while the Generation II remakes have her wearing a midriff-revealing top. Compare that with her original sprite, where the closest to either was a short-sleeved top.
• Adaptational Villainy: Like Lt. Surge, Sabrina is prone to this in adaptations. Despite her ominous looks and demeanor, she's not an evil character at all in the games. Pokémon Adventures has her as a high-ranking member of Team Rocket at the start. The anime had her as stoic and dangerous, terrorizing people For the Evulz, though her true personality behind the Split Personality is similar to her game persona. Possibly as a nod to this, Black 2 and White 2 has her reprise a villainous role in Pokéstar Studios films.
• Adaptational Personality Change: One of the most commonly reinterpreted Gym Leaders in Kanto. While a pacifistic but talented trainer in the games, she's a Team Rocket officer in Pokémon Adventures, a Creepy Child in the anime, and a sweet and gentle shrine maiden-like in The Electric Tale of Pikachu.
• Art Evolution: Sabrina's official art for Yellow introduced her signature segmented red and black outfit, which was streamlined over the course of her appearances in the Trading Card Game, Pokémon Gold and Silver, Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, and Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The Fighting Dojo used to be the Saffron City Gym. Then Sabrina came with her Psychic-types and utterly thrashed them. Now Sabrina's gym is the Saffron Gym.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: During her appearances in the Nintendo DS era of games, Sabrina switches out her bodysuit for casual clothing that shows off a fair bit of belly.
• The Baroness: For a very brief window, Sabrina had a forceful, militaristic element in her design, seen best in Pokémon: The Original Series and Sabrina's official art for Pokémon Yellow. The anime even updated her sex appeal by changing her Proper Tights with a Skirt to Zettai Ryouiki. This was lost as soon as Pokémon Gold and Silver.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The brains to Erika's beauty and Misty's brawn. She has Psychic Powers like telepathy and seeing the future, doesn't like fighting, and Psychic-types are generally associated with minds (her Signature Mon Alakazam in particular is noted for an extra-large head). In her Pokégear conversation in HGSS, she describes "true" Psychic Powers not as Mind over Matter but the ability to influence people and control your own mind.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Has a Venomoth in Red and Blue and their remakes despite the abundance of Psychic-types in Kanto. However, while Venomoth is not a Psychic-type itself, it does learn several Psychic-type moves.
• Creepy Good: Despite having all the glaring signs of an antagonist — being a psychic, having red eyes, being an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette, having a whip in her original design — she's a pacifist, and shows no signs of being malicious or even mean. Note that she does suffer from Adaptational Villainy in Pokémon Adventures as well as the anime, though she gets better in both. She actually laments this a bit in Black 2 and White 2, as she seems pretty aware of just why she was cast as the villainess of the movies she appears in.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: She crushed the Fighting Dojo in battle, making her the new Gym Leader.
• Depending on the Writer: In different incarnations, she's a dreaded Gym Leader but actually a nice girl who cannot control her powers, a movie star, a heroic and motherly figure, someone who terrorizes the entire Saffron City because she can, or an Obviously Evil Team Rocket member who enjoys doing evil things for Giovanni because she has a crush on him.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference:
  • Her whip was removed past Generation 1. All trainers except Tamers had their whips scrapped once Pokémon became more anthropomorphic.
  • Sabrina's collared shirt from Pokémon Red and Blue (or rather Japanese Red and Green) and Pokémon Stadium, was almost immediately replaced with her outfit from her Yellow official art.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Historically this was limited to the anime, but Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! add this trope back to the original Sabrina by giving her intense and staring eyes, amplified to Glowing "Uh-Oh" Eyes and a Face Framed in Shadow when using her powers.
• Glass Cannon: The majority of her Pokémon tend to lean toward hard hitters that can't take hits themselves.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Some of her artwork has shown her to have pretty well defined hips. But her Bellelba costume in Black and White 2 shows off her curves. Her waist is very thin, while her hips are very wide in comparison.
• Martial Pacifist: Doesn't enjoy fighting, but is one of the strongest Gym Leaders in all of Kanto.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: In Black 2 and White 2, she acts as the villainess of a fantasy movie.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Sabrina, as in "brain", as in the source of psychic powers and the like (and a possible reference to the fictional character, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch).
  • The me in Natsume is a homonym for "eye".
  • In French, "Morgane" refers to Morgan le Fay, from the Arthurian legends.
• Olympus Mons: In one (presumably non-canon) Japan- and Korea-only downloadable World Tournament, she uses Mewtwo.
• Power Floats: Her Black 2 and White 2 World Tournament sprite shows her briefly levitating. In Let's Go! she levitates when issuing commands to her Pokémon, as well as levitating her Poké Ball when she throws it.
• The Power of Love: In her post-battle dialogue from Pokémon Gold and Silver, Sabrina speculates that the power of love is a kind of psychic power.
• Prehensile Hair: In LGPE, Sabrina's hair falls below her knees. In a likely Call-Back to the whip from her RGBY design, her hair appears to coil and whip about.
• Psychic Powers: Not only do her Pokémon have these, but she possesses them as well. She also claims that everyone has psychic powers, but that tragically few people even realize it, let alone develop it.
• Reluctant Warrior:
  • She constantly goes on about how she doesn't like to fight, but she will if she must. It makes you curious why she's a Gym Leader, then.
  • Pokémon Masters elaborates that it isn't so much battles themselves that Sabrina dislikes but conflict in general. Her becoming a Gym Leader was likely a way to tone the conflict factor down, as now she only battles those who are skilled enough to reach her, essentially rewarding them rather than doing anything that could be taken as antagonistc.
• Rooftop Confrontation: Invoked by the redesign of her gym in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!—rather than teleporting from one isolated room to another, the player must teleport from the top of one indoor building to the next—Sabrina herself is faced atop an indoor skyscraper (a likely Mythology Gag referring to the Pokémon-based stage in Super Smash Bros. 64, which was the top of the Silph, Co. building).
• Seers:
  • She quietly boasts that she foresaw the player's arrival whenever you battle her, possibly to intimidate her opponent. In Pokémon Gold and Silver, she claims to have foreseen your arrival three years ago as a Call-Back to Pokémon Red and Blue, and then reuses the line in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 during the World Leaders Tournament... though the date in question (a year before Pokémon Black and White) is far more arbitrary.
  • Comes full circle in Let's Go! after you defeat her in a rematch. She says she won't meet another opponent like Chase/Elaine for another three years. Many fans assumed a Johto follow-up was on the way as a result.
  • Subverted For Laughs in HGSS, where she'll claim to have had a feeling you'd come (to face her at the Fighting Dojo), only for the player character to point out that they'd arranged to meet there beforehand. She further predicts the player will call her again afterwards.
• Shout-Out: She shares her English name with another teenage girl with magic powers popular in the late 90s.
• Signature Mon:
  • Alakazam, which is fitting, as it is the strongest non-legendary Psychic-type Pokémon in Gen I and it represents the stereotypical trappings of said type well. It appears with her again in Masters with a Mega Evolution.
  • Her New Year's 2022 variant in Masters pairs her up with Chingling, a Pokémon she had not previously been seen with before.
• Signature Move: Her signature TM in Gen I was Psywave, Gen III gave her Calm Mind, and Gen IV had Skill Swap. Being the Psychic-type leader, however, she tends to teach her entire team Psychic and Psybeam too, which are far more dangerous than her TM moves.
• Skippable Boss: Downplayed. You can put off her gym battle for a bit if you want to take on Blaine first, but eventually you will have to circle back and deal with her in order to unlock the Viridian Gym.
• The Stoic:
  • Is very stern and does not show much emotion. It's implied this may be because she's holding back her tremendous powers (though the anime version was because the side of her that actually showed emotion manifested itself into a doll she carried with her all the time. When Sabrina learned to laugh after Haunter gave her a cartoon bomb, the doll [her emotional side] disappeared).
  • Pokémon Masters suggests that her stoicism is actually due to her being shy and not socially adept. Once you scout her and are able to interact with her, she lets more emotions show and even smiles.
• Threshold Guardians: Downplayed; in the remakes, Sabrina's Marsh Badge enables use of Rock Smash, which deals with a third type of Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence.
• Uncatty Resemblance: Sabrina's official artwork for Yellow features her in a segmented outfit with padded shoulders reminiscent of the "armored" chest shared by her Signature Mon Abra and its evolutions.
• Whip of Dominance: Her character wielded a whip in Pokémon Red and Blue, which fit which her original characterization as a more domineering, militaristic and villainous type of trainer. This aspect of her character was dropped in Gen II forward, and the whip was dropped alongside it. Notably when the Gen I remake came out her new design also didn't feature the whip.

Blaine (Katsura)

Blaine / Katsura (カツラ katsura)

Voiced by: Kirk Thornton (Pokémon Masters - EN) Ken Uo (Pokémon Masters - JP)

Cinnabar Island Gym Leader—The Hotheaded Quiz Master!

"Hah! I'm Blaine! I am the Leader of Cinnabar Gym! My fiery Pokémon will incinerate all challengers! Hah! You better have Burn Heal!"

The eldest of the Kanto Gym Leaders, who gives out the Volcano Badge from Cinnabar City. Blaine is a Fire-type Pokémon specialist and former researcher who is passionate about Pokémon knowledge.

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• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the first gen. games and all remakes thereof, Blaine's gym is locked and must be opened with the Secret Key... which is hidden in the inmost room of the Pokémon Mansion's basement, where Mewtwo was created. While the original games never explained this, adaptations and remakes have given the connection Adaptation Expansion.
  • While Pokémon Adventures factored in his scientist apparel to suggest that he personally created Mewtwo, FRLG instead follows the trail laid out by Pokémon: The First Movie and indicates Dr. Blaine was an associate of Dr. Fuji, who created Mewtwo. Let's Go expands on this by filling the mansion's inmost room with lab equipment and having Dr. Blaine make an explicit nod to his friend's research, implying him to be The Atoner.
• Artificial Brilliance: In Gen IV, his Pokémon all use Overheat, which is even stronger than the blistering Fire Blast, but makes the user's Special Attack peter out. To counter this, he uses Flannery's trick of having his monsters carry Anti-Debuff White Herbs to let them get a second shot in.
• Badass Arm-Fold: His sprites in Gen I and II depict him with this pose.
• Badass Bookworm: He's a quiz master, and is sometimes depicted as a scientist in spin-off media.
• Characterization Marches On: When he first arrived, Blaine's scientist apparel didn't really matter; in fact, as per You Don't Look Like You below, he may not have been intended to be a scientist originally. FireRed and LeafGreen implied a science background by making him friends with Dr. Fuji, which the Let's Go! games have reinforced.
• Convenient Weakness Placement:
  • Setting aside the fact that Blaine is on an island surrounded by water and the Water types within, the Dungeon immediately preceding Cinnabar Island is the Seafoam Islands, which are filled with unique Water types.
  • The Surf HM, which teaches the second-most-powerful Water attack in Pokémon Red and Blue to anything capable of learning, is obtained at the Safari Zone and is necessary to get to Cinnabar Island in the first place.
• Cool Old Guy: He may be old, but he's still a hot-blooded quiz master and a Gym Leader.
• Cool Shades: According to one of his Fame Checker trivia entries, he's said to take them off only while thinking up new quiz questions.
• Deus ex Machina: One of his gym trainers explains that Blaine was lost in the mountains once and was rescued by the appearance of a Moltres, whose light allowed him to find his way down. The experience inspired him to become a trainer.
• Eccentric Mentor:
  • Old age has not extinguished his fire for life at all. He's one of the older Gym Leaders seen, up there with Pryce, and is still capable of trouncing your team.
  • His Game Show in the Let's Go games is increasingly ridiculous as you approach the end, where he'll accept "What's That?" as a correct answer (the question is True or False) and gives you a question with six potential answers that is impossible to get wrong.
• Elemental Motifs: Fire. He's an energetic Fire-type master who lives in a city filled with hot springs and surrounded by volcanic activity.
• Fragile Speedster: His Ponyta and Rapidash move fast, but don't take hits well.
• Game Show Host: In Let's Go Blaine's gauntlet of quizzes has been remodeled into a straight up Game Show. He does this to entertain the families of the scientists on Cinnabar Island which (unlike the tourist trap in the anime) has really nothing to do. He's not the best Emcee, but he's a very Large Ham to make up for it.
• The Gimmick: Not quite a full gimmick so much as a notable pattern. In Pokémon Red and Blue, Blaine's team consists entirely of two-stage fire-type pokémon found in the neighboring mansion. Pokémon Yellow rounds out his team with a third two-stage fire-type, Ninetales, which like Arcanine is a canine pokémon that evolves with a fire-stone.
• Hot-Blooded: Surprisingly so for an old guy, as mentioned in his title. The TCG even had a Trainer Card called "Fervor" dedicated to his hot-bloodedness. Both of these explicitly use the phrase "hot-blooded" in Japanese.
  • In Let's Go he's so eager to get started that he comes running to the front of the gym to ask you your first question before the attendant has to remind him it's too early, and once you actually get to fight him, his eyeglasses reflect fire.
• Kill It with Fire: Blaine hands out Fire Blast in Red and Blue and all remakes thereof, which was the strongest Fire type move until Generation III. In Gen. IV, he provides the newer, stronger Overheat. He insists that these moves be used on Fire Pokémon for maximum incendiary potential.
  Blaine: Fire Blast is an attack to be shown the utmost respect. Don't waste it on Water-type Pokémon.
• Lightning Bruiser: His two canine Pokémon, but mostly this applies to Arcanine. It's fairly sturdy, hits hard with both of its high attack stats, and is very speedy to top it off.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Blaine sounds like "blaze", or arguably Blaine as in "flame".
  • The "Ka" in "Katsura" is a homonym for the compound word for fire. In the anime, he wears a wig as part of his disguise, and guess what the Japanese word for "wig" is? Amusingly, Katsura is also the Japanese name of a tree, which means Blaine could qualify for a Pokémon Professor.
  • In German, his name is Pyro, meaning "fire" in Greek.
  • In French, his name is Auguste, from "ustion', a type of burn.
• Opaque Lenses: Though since they're sunglasses, it makes some sense that they'd be hard to see through.
• Pop Quiz: In the first generation games and their remakes, his gym is full of segmented rooms that force you to answer questions right or face a trainer.
• Riches to Rags: Blaine in Gold and Silver. His Gym was destroyed when the Cinnabar volcano erupted one year prior and he now operates out of a tiny cave on the Seafoam Islands. Downplayed in HGSS where he's expanded the cave into a proper Gym with Trainers and a light maze element.
• Signature Mon: Like Erika, he's a bit varied on this once you get past his Fire-type association.
  • Whenever it shows up on his team, Arcanine is always his strongest or, in the case of the PWT, his lead Pokémon.
  • In the Generation II games and their remakes, his strongest is Rapidash, another frequently recurring team member. Its pre-evolution, Ponyta, even appears as his default partner in Masters, where it can evolve into Rapidash.
  • Following in the footsteps of his anime counterpart, Blaine has repeatedly used the Magmar line from Generation II onward. Its evolution, Magmortar, was even his strongest Pokémon in his Fighting Dojo battle.
• Signature Move: Fire Blast in Gen I, Gen III, and Gen VII, Overheat in Gen IV.
• Threshold Guardians: Downplayed. In FRLG, the Volcano Badge counterintuitively authorizes the use of Waterfall, allowing the player to surmount the large watery obstacles.
• You Don't Look Like You: Due to Early-Installment Weirdness, Blaine's design in the franchise's early days was a bit fluid. His original character art depicted him as a military man with a jungle camouflage top and brown hair that was balding, but his in-game sprite showed him wearing a Labcoat of Science and Medicine with pants, a tie, and round glasses, and he was completely bald. The anime uses the "military" look as the basis for his design with his hair, but he wears more casual clothes as part of a disguise as a hippie, during which he wears his glasses from his "scientist" design that now serve as Round Hippie Shades, and the Pokémon Adventures manga has him use his "miltary" look as a disguise for his "scientist" look. From Gen II on he settled on the "scientist" design where he's completely balding and wears a labcoat and glasses, and various media offer a Hand Wave that Blaine is a Master of Disguise who can totally change up his look if he likes.

Giovanni (Sakaki)

Giovanni / Sakaki (サカキ sakaki)

Boss of Team Rocket and Viridian City Gym Leader — The Self-Proclaimed Strongest Trainer!^note He has no official Gym Leader title, but is called this by the Pokémon World Tournament announcer. (Red, Blue, Yellow, FireRed, and LeafGreen)

For information on Giovanni, check his folder on the Team Rocket page.

Elite Four

Lorelei (Kanna)

Lorelei / Kanna (カンナ kanna)

Voiced by: Fumiko Orikasa (Pokémon Generations - JP), Erica Lindbeck (Pokémon Generations - EN), Lauren Landa (Pokémon Masters - EN), Serika Hiromatsu (Pokémon Masters - JP)

"Your Pokémon will be at my mercy when they are frozen solid!"

A cool-headed woman who trains Ice-types. By the time of the Johto/Sinnoh games, she is no longer a member of the Elite Four.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the original games and Pokémon: The Series, her hair is red; it's sandy blonde in Pokémon Stadium and purple in Pokémon Adventures.
• Adaptation Name Change: She's referred to as Prima in the anime's English dub in order to match the number of syllables that her Japanese name has.
• Adaptational Modesty:
  • In Let's Go and Pokémon Special, Lorelei wears a miniskirt (which reaches to her knees), while in other installments it's microskirt that's a fair few inches shorter.
  • Let's Go adds pantyhose to her outfit, though, given she's an Ice-type specialist and a Ms. Fanservice, this is likely more a case of practicality than modesty on her part.
• The Baroness: Lorelei is a light sexpot—an Ice Queen Ms. Fanservice who specializes in Status Infliction that leaves her victims helpless against her hard-hitting moves (something she boasts about).
• Bash Brothers: In Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, just before entering Rock Tunnel, she assists you in scaring off Team Rocket goons; she fights three of them at once, and if their quotes after the battle are any indication, they couldn't even touch her.
• Call-Forward: In Pokémon Gold and Silver, Lorelei has vanished from the Elite Four without a word of notice. In the Gen III remakes of Pokémon Red and Blue, optional dialog following her Day in the Limelight has her pondering if remaining with the Elite Four means she's neglecting her island home, floating a possible reason for her to leave the Elite Four in the first place.
• Characterization Marches On: Lorelei has mellowed out fairly substantially over the years.
  • While she was a haughty Ice Queen in Pokémon Red and Blue, the Gen III remakes give her a sympathetic devotion to her Four Island home, tones down her loss quote from "How dare you?" to "...Things shouldn't be this way!", and demotes half of the exclamation points in her opening speech to mere periods.
  • The Let's Go remakes give her some of her exclamation points back, but also give her another heroic moment by having her appear to engage in a Bash Brothers takedown of some Team Rocket thugs with the player character and turn her thereby into a friendly acquaintance of the player's.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • The first part of the FireRed and LeafGreen postgame serves as this for her. We get to visit her home on Four Island, help her take down Team Rocket, and see where she got her Lapras.
  • She makes a brief solo appearance in Gen VII to help you take down a few Team Rocket mooks. They were trying to take you on 4v1; she takes on three of them herself so you can take the last one down.
• Delicate and Sickly: In Masters, she tells the player she had a weak constitution as a child and had to force herself to remain at home until she got better, which took a long time. During then, she had a Lapras plushie that, to this day, she treasures and often appears in her dreams.
• Divergent Character Evolution:
  • While Lorelei and Karen both entered the series wearing a Little Black Dress, their fashion sense has diverged sharply in the years since.
  • Will's Sharp-Dressed Man sensibilities were a short sidestep from Lady in a Power Suit Lorelei, but he has since become The Dandy.
• Elemental Motifs: An Ice-type specialist with an aloof and cold personality located in an icy location.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Misty is said to admire her.
• Exposed to the Elements: Lorelei's room is filled with ice tiles, ice pillars, or both, depending on what version of the Kanto games you happen to be playing, but despite her generally light outfit and usually bare legs, she seems quite cozy. This is most apparent in Gen I when her bare-legged battle sprite indicates she's kneeling directly on the ice.
• Funetik Aksent: In the French version, where she's called Olga, she speaks with an apparent German accent, pronouncing her S sounds as Z's, at least one T as D, and finishing her introductory text with a stereotypical Evil Laugh. Her accent has been removed without a trace in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: She shows shades of this as her Four Island home is full of plushies. She adds 1 plushie to the collection for every 25 times you enter the Hall of Fame. She stops after your 200th Hall of Fame induction because then it's just getting stupid.
• Horse of a Different Color: In Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, Lorelei almost always appears riding on her Stock Ness Monster Lapras, both near Rock Tunnel and in her personal room at the Indigo League. Given Lapras is her Signature Mon, she may also ride it as a Beast of Battle.
• Hot Teacher: In adaptations. In Pokémon: The Original Series, Lorelei appears in the Orange Islands to give a lecture and demonstration on Pokémon battling, while in Pocket Monsters she actually disguises herself as a teacher and gives Red exams at her school.
• Kill It with Ice: Downplayed. Lorelei boasts that her Pokémon will freeze the player's solid, and in remakes is more than willing to directly threaten Team Rocket Mooks with being frozen solid.
• Lady of War: She is regarded in-game for her logical, cool, and calculating style of battling.
• Lady in a Power Suit: Lorelei's jacket and skirt from Pokémon: The Original Series came to the core series with a Palette Swap in Pokémon Stadium, and Lorelei's sprites from prototypes of Gold and Silver show her in the same. While her jacket was lost in the Gen III remakes, her Let's Go design emphasizes the full ensemble.
• Lonely Doll Girl: In FireRed and LeafGreen, Lorelei is revealed to live alone on Four Island in a house filled with dolls. As an Easter Egg, a new doll will be added to her collection for every twenty-five times (up to a total of two hundred) that the Elite Four is defeated.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Lorelei pronounced like the I in "ice." Lorelei is also the name of a siren said to lure sailors to their deaths.
  • Kan'na contains a homonym for a reading of the kanji meaning "cold".
• Mighty Glacier: Most of her Pokémon are slow, but they have high defenses and offenses.
• Minidress of Power: Lorelei has always worn one, starting with a Little Black Dress in Gen 1, but transitioning to a sleeveless top and miniskirt combo in Gen 3. Her Let's Go outfit gives her a skirt and jacket combo that takes a few notes from her appearance in Pokémon: The Original Series.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: She wears toast-colored tights as part of her Generation VII outfit.
• Psychic Powers: Has the part Psychic-type Jynx.
• Psychotic Smirk: Lorelei is capable of some sinister smiles in her Let's Go pre-battle dialog and battle introduction.
• Put on a Bus:
  • She will disappear to Four Island after you first defeat the Elite Four in Fire Red and Leaf Green. You need to visit her and complete a small side quest in order for her to return; without her, the Elite Four refuse to accept your challenge.
  • She isn't present in any games outside of Kanto, not even in the Pokémon World Championships. Unlike Agatha, who could be excused through her advanced age, Lorelei's absence is a mystery.
• Regal Ringlets: In Pokémon Generations, Lorelei's ponytail is a very thick curl, but extends to the same length as her usual straight ponytail.
• Rule of Sexy: How is she not freezing sitting in a cold room while wearing a miniskirt?!
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Lorelei is a haughty, threatening Ice Queen and most of her sprites depict her with Opaque Lenses; if you squint, you can see her Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen battle sprite has one eye glaring out of the left lens.
• Signature Mon:
  • In the games, her Lapras, reflecting her icy but caring demeanor and dual-focus on Ice and Water.
  • The anime and manga adaptation put the focus on her Cloyster instead. Notably, she's had a Cloyster on every single team she's used in the games.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Lorelei's personal room is usually filled with ice.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: Battling with her can soft-lock the game in Red, Green, and Blue. In Generation I, opponents do not deplete PP, and because Lorelei leads with a Dewgong which knows Rest and the way "smart" AI works, it's possible for the player to get locked in an endless battle with her by using Rage, which also has a lot of weird mechanics in Gen I. This was fixed in Yellow with a special check for whether the opponent is Lorelei's Dewgong, in which case, a different pattern is used; this applies only to her Dewgong and no other opponent. It was more properly fixed in later generations.

Bruno (Siba)

Bruno / Siba (シバ shiba)

Voiced by: Takanori Hoshino (Pokémon Generations - JP), Bill Rogers (Pokémon Generations - EN), Greg Chun (Pokémon Masters - EN), Jiro Saito (Pokémon Masters - JP)

"I always train to the extreme because I believe in our potential. That is how we became strong."

A burly Fighting-type specialist. Uniquely, Bruno serves on both the Gen I and Gen II Elite Four teams, though he moves up from the second member to the third between games. However, he is mostly the same opponent in both instances.

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• Adaptational Nice Guy: In Updated Rereleases of Pokémon Red and Blue, he's not the Sore Loser he originally was.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Brock and Bruno in the English translation.
• Ambiguously Brown: In the original games and their artwork; like Brock, he became less so in the remakes.
• Ambiguously Related: In the original Pokémon Red and Blue, Bruno is a Walking Shirtless Scene with Shonen Hair and has his Eyes Always Shut, which gives him a striking resemblance to Brock of Pewter City. Moreover, the only pokémon that Bruno uses that don't belong to his Signature type Fighting is Onix, Brock's Signature Mon. However, no relationship between them was ever elaborated on.
• Badass Normal: He reportedly trains with his own Pokémon. When you read the Pokédex entries for some of them, you realize Bruno is one hell of a strongman.
• Bruce Lee Clone: He certainly takes inspiration from Bruce Lee.
• Combat Pragmatist: In a rarity for the franchise, Bruno in Masters forgoes a traditional Pokémon battle during the Johto Villain Arc and knocks a Team Rocket grunt unconscious with his bare fists.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Apparently being in a room full of lava is part of his training.
• Divergent Character Evolution: While Brock and Bruno were Ambiguously Related in Pokémon Red and Blue, their designs changed almost immediately afterwards to make them more dissimilar—Bruno opened his eyes and Brock started wearing a shirt.
• Eyes Always Shut: In older artwork his eyes are always closed, giving him a strong resemblance to Brock.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: In Yellow and Gen II, and the remakes of the latter, his Hitmonchan has the three Elemental Punches.
• Kiai: HOO-HA!
• King Mook: Of the Blackbelt trainer-class. Bruno specializes in the Fighting-type and his only clothes are the pants of a tattered gi and the belt needed to hold them up.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Bruno sounds like bruiser or brawn.
  • Shiba sounds like shibaku, to strike.
• Mighty Glacier: His Pokémon tend to have great physical stats for both offense and defense, but aren't so good with speed.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in the Spanish translation, where he keeps his English name but Brendan is named Bruno too.
• Real Men Hate Sugar: Subverted. Despite his Testosterone Poisoning, the Gen III remakes reveal Bruno's Trademark Favorite Food is the Rage Candy Bar.
• Signature Mon: Machamp, reflecting his reliance on brute power.
• Sore Loser: When you beat him in the Gen 1 games, he says "How can I lose?" He then begrudgingly tells the player character to go to the next room, turning away once he does so. (He will turn away every time he's talked to, so you can make him spin in circles if you keep trying to speak to him from the front).
• Spirited Competitor: Gen III says that he joined the Elite Four so he could battle the region's most powerful trainers.
• The Stoic: His expression is always the same for all of his sprites.
• Took a Level in Badass: A minor case, but he jumps from second Elite Four to third Elite Four between the first two games.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Rage Candy Bars. He apparently went all the way to the Sevii Islands to get his hands on some.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Never wears a shirt ever either.
• Wild Man: Bruno appears to be a martial artist that has abandoned civilization—the only item of real clothing he wears is a tattered pair of pants held up by his black belt, the apparent leftovers of a gi. He's also let his Anime Hair grow out to Barbarian Longhair length, and in Let's Go he even has feral "Uh-Oh" Eyes.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Fighting-type master, but specifically focuses on the martial arts and wrestling-themed ones rather than just any Fighting-type.

Agatha (Kikuko)

Agatha / Kikuko (キクコ kikuko)

Voiced by: Hisako Kyouda (Pokémon Generations - JP), Ellyn Stern (Pokémon Generations - JP), Dorothy Elias-Fahn (Pokémon Masters - EN), Yoshino Ootori (Pokémon Masters - JP)

"Player! I'll show you how a real Trainer battles!"

An elderly Ghost-type specialist. She is no longer a member of the Elite Four in the Johto/Sinnoh games.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: in the original games (and Stadium) her hair was gray, but later changes to graying blonde in the remakes. Also, the only time she appears in the anime, her hair was pure blond.
• Always Someone Better: According to Pokémon Masters, Professor Oak was this to her during their youth. No matter how many times she challenged him to a Pokémon Battle, she could never defeat him.
• Amazon Brigade: Her original Elite Four team in FRLG is all-female, but the rematch team is all-male.
• Artificial Stupidity: In her Red and Blue battle, all of her Ghost-type Pokémon know the same four moves—Confuse Ray, Night Shade, Hypnosis, and Dream Eater— except for her final Gengar, which trades Hypnosis for Toxic. Without Hypnosis, Dream Eater is completely useless, leaving it with a completely wasted slot.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Implied between her and Professor Oak. In her own words, "that old duff was once tough and handsome. But that was decades ago."
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Agatha provides a template that numerous characters deliberately contrast with—Karen, Phoebe, Fantina, and Shauntal are all younger and prettier than her, for starters.
• Creepy Cemetery: Her battlefield in the first generation games is apparently her own personal graveyard, complete with the soundtrack from Lavender Town's Pokémon Tower. This would be downplayed in remakes, down to a few large tombstones in FRLG and some spooky obelisks or pylons in LGPE. It's unknown whether she has any connection to the Tower besides sharing the motif.
• Creepy Housekeeper: She's an older woman with an apron, and specializes in the Ghost type.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: She goes into her backstory about her and Samuel Oak in Pokémon Masters, where she reveals that she preferred to keep to herself to contemplate while Oak would attempt to be sociable with her. Over time she gradually warmed up to him, partially through her battles with him which caused her to respect the future professor and his unbeatable battle record. She describes this is one of the reasons she resents the professor so much in the main games when he stopped battling to focus on research. She also warms up to the player and claims her Gengar brings this out in her as well.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Further implied by her Childhood Friend Romance with Professor Oak; as a grandfather, Oak appears to have gone on to get married and have children with another woman.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: An NPC in Gen III remarks that it doesn't take much to make her angry. Not that you get to see for yourself.
• Handicapped Badass: Given that she uses a walking stick.
• Meaningful Name: Agatha sounds similar to "aghast", and if you're feeling mean to the old lady, "hag".
• Mythology Gag: In Pokémon Masters, Professor Oak battles her Gengar with a Nidorino, directly recreating the opening cutscene of Pokémon Red.
• Never Mess with Granny: She may be old, but she's still very capable of kicking your ass. FireRed and LeafGreen add flavor text that state she's the oldest Elite Four member to ever join the group, at least in the Indigo League. Bertha, who may or may not be her sister, is around her age and is a member of the Sinnoh Elite Four.
• Old Master: A feeble looking elderly woman, do NOT underestimate her—she’s a member of the Elite Four for a reason.
• Poisonous Person: Like with Lance and his Dragon-type, the Ghost-type was not very well established in Pokémon Red and Blue, so Agatha's team was rounded out with Golbat and Arbok, making her a de facto Poison-type specialist.
• Progressively Prettier: Downplayed—while Agatha was introduced in the first generation of games as a Miniature Senior Citizen, her return in the third generation saw her get an Age Lift to the far side of middle-age (likely to keep her contemporary with the middle-aged Professor Oak), adding some color back to her hair and giving her some extra height. Zigzagged in the seventh generation, where Agatha's Let's Go design is a compromise between her first two.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Arrogantly sniffs that Oak is a shadow of his former self and that Pokémon are for battling, not researching.
• Put on a Bus: Like Lorelei, she disappears after any Kanto-based games, not even reappearing for the Pokémon World Championships.
• The Quiet One: By her own admission in Pokémon Masters, while people like Professor Oak thrive in the company of others, she prefers solitude so that she may contemplate to herself.
• Recurring Element:
  • The first in a line of female Elite Four members introduced in odd-numbered generations that specialize in spooky monsters and most often the Ghost type.
  • Played With in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, which introduces a Suspiciously Similar Substitute in Bertha that trains an entirely different type.
• The Rival: Gen III has it said she and Professor Oak were rivals in their younger days.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: If Bertha and Agatha are indeed twin sisters, than that would make Bertha the nice one and Agatha the mean.
• Signature Mon: Gengar. She has two on all of her teams, one of which is always her strongest Pokémon. Her cane in Let's Go is even carved to look like Gengar.
• Status Infliction Attack: By nature of being a Ghost-type specialist, she relies on a lot of status ailment moves like Hypnosis, Confuse Ray, and Toxic.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Oak putting his battling days behind for research is a sore spot for Agatha.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Agatha is no longer a member of the Elite Four in Generation II games or their remakes, but her absence is unexplained. She's only to be found in a certain photograph with Oak and Kurt.

Lance (Wataru)

Lance / Wataru (ワタル wataru)

Voiced by: Yoshimasa Hosoya (JP, Pokémon Generations), Ben Diskin (EN, Pokémon Generations), Toshiyuki Morikawa (JP, Pokémon Masters), Bill Millsap (EN, Pokémon Masters)

"We will battle to determine who is the stronger of the two of us. As the most powerful trainer and as the Pokémon League Champion... I, Lance the dragon master, accept your challenge!"

Lance is a world-famous Dragon master, and the leader of the Elite Four in Red, Blue, Yellow, and the Gen I remakes. In Gold, Silver, Crystal, and their remakes, he has become the Champion for the joint Kanto/Johto Pokémon League.

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• Achilles' Heel: Ice-type attacks will slice right through Lance's Dragon-types, especially his Dragonite, which is doubly weak to ice-attacks thanks to the fact that it also has the Flying-type.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • His Dragonite in Yellow knows Fire Blast, Blizzard and Thunder, making it much more formidable than it was in Red and Blue.
  • In his initial Champion battle in HeartGold and SoulSilver, Dragonite's Outrage hits much harder than in Gold and Silver, because Generation IV has increased Outrage's base power from 90 to 120 and classified Outrage as a physical move, which Dragonite is able to take full advantage of due to having higher Attack than Special Attack.
• A.I. Breaker: Due to the smart AI of the original Pokémon Red and Blue prioritizing Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors over all other considerations, Lance's Dragonite, if confronted with a Poison- or Fighting-type, will only spam its Psychic-type Status Buff, Barrier.
• Always Someone Better: Discussed in Masters. Lance notes how Blue had believed himself to be "the strongest" after beating him and winning the Pokémon League, only for another trainer to show up shortly afterwards and beat both of them. As a result, he no longer has any interest in pursuing titles like "the strongest", as he's aware the distinction is fleeting; sooner or later, someone is going to surpass you. The indication that he's talking about losing to Blue, and then both losing to Red afterwards is that he notes it occurred while he was still an Elite Four member, before he ascended to Champion three years later.
• Ascended Extra: Lance only appears as the last of the Elite Four in Pokémon Red and Blue, but guest-stars for a chapter of Pokémon Gold and Silver, initiating the raid on the Team Rocket hideout in Mahogany Town.
• Ascended Meme: His extreme policy on tossing Dragonite and have it use Hyper Beam on humans doesn't go unnoticed in Masters, where people actually bring that up as a compliment to his skills. His character episode even has him blasting a Team Break grunt with Dragonite's Hyper Beam. And to cement things further, a Karate Man at the center reveals (and whines) that it was him whom Lance Hyper Beam'd at Team Rocket's Johto HQ.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He jumped up in rank by honing his skills further between games.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Lance loves Power at a Price—he uses Powerful, but Inaccurate moves like Fire Blast, Blizzard, and Thunder; his Signature Move Hyper Beam causes enough Power Strain to force the user to lose a turn and recover; and anything that uses Outrage becomes confused and dangerous to themselves—these all let him hit very hard, but they can also leave him very vulnerable.
  • Special notice must be given to Pokémon Masters, where his Signature Move Hyper Beam is the first attacking move in the game that uses up four bars of your move gauge, and Lance's Dragonite is, as of the game's second anniversary, one of only four Pokémon that can learn it, alongside Lance's Gyarados.
• Badass Armfold: In HeartGold and SoulSilver, Lance folds his arms after he teams up with the player to battle Ariana and a Team Rocket Grunt.
• Badass Boast: "You're league challenge ends with me, Player!" in Pokémon Red and Blue.
• Badass Cape: He's never seen without a cape in all his appearance across the games. The lone exception is his New Year 2021 attire in Masters, and even then, he expresses his desire to get a cape to match said outfit. According to the Fame Checker in FireRed and LeafGreen, he buys his capes at the Department Store in Celadon City.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: He teams up with the protagonist during a part of the Rocket plot in Gold, Silver, Crystal and their remakes, and with Clair as a Dual Boss in HeartGold and SoulSilver.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He's a chill guy who cares about Pokémon and even humble when you face him in the Indigo Plateau. He's also not afraid of using Hyper Beam on human beings if he has to and considering he held the place of Champion, this is definitely not someone you want to get on the bad side of.
• Blow You Away: While Lance is officially a Dragon-type specialist, it would be just as accurate to describe him as a Flying-type specialist, since most of his dragons, both official (Dragonite) and in spirit (Gyarados, Charizard), are Flying-type. It wasn't until Generation V that the Dragon-type was diverse enough for Lance's team to avoid being dominated by Flying-types.
• Cape Wings: Evokes this in his Gold and Silver battle sprite.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • In Gold, Silver and Crystal and their remakes, he has Dragonites at levels 47 and 50, well before Dragonair evolves.
  • His Dragonite in Red, Blue and Yellow has the move Barrier, which it could not actually learn at the time until Generation VI.
  • His Aerodactyl in Gold, Silver, and Crystal has Rock Slide, which it couldn't learn until Generation III.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Since Dragon-types were scarce in early games, several of his Pokémon are dragons in appearance and/or dinosaur-inspired such as Aerodactyl, Lapras, Kangaskhan and Tyranitar. Lampshaded in Pokémon Masters, when he refers to his Gyarados as a dragon. When the player character points out that Gyarados isn't a Dragon-type, Lance responds that "not all dragons are Dragon-type Pokémon".
• Dragon Tamer: Specializes in Dragon-type Pokémon, but due to their general rarity, especially in early generations, he often uses Pokémon that are draconic in aesthetic like Aerodactyl and Charizard.
• Dual Boss: You can fight him alongside his cousin Clair in HeartGold and SoulSilver as an Optional Boss in the Dragon's Den, but only after you've fought your rival at Mt. Moon (as he's your partner against them).
• Final Boss: In Pokémon Gold and Silver, Lance has become the regional Champion, and defeating him lets the player enter their team in the Hall of Fame and causes the credits to roll. He is, however, followed by lots of Post-End Game Content, with a second region to explore and a fight with the True Final Boss at the very end.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: A recurring theme is for him to distribute moves of these types among his team, particularly the move trios of Fire Blast, Blizzard, and Thunder, as well as Flamethrower, Ice Beam, and Thunderbolt.
  • His Dragonite in Yellow knows all the former group, and as the Champion in the Johto games, his three Dragonite each get one of the moves.
  • In his FireRed and LeafGreen rematch, one of his Dragonite has Flamethrower while the other has Thunderbolt and Ice Beam, and the Kingdra that replaces his second Dragonair with also has Ice Beam.
  • In HeartGold and SoulSilver, his Gyarados, Aerodactyl and Charizard know Ice Fang, Thunder Fang and Fire Fang respectively, while his three Dragonite keep Thunder, Blizzard and Fire Blast.
• Foil: To Clair, his cousin and fellow Dragon trainer. She introduces herself to the player by bragging about her skills and claiming she's on the Elite Four's level (despite being a "mere" Gym Leader and having a weaker team), is a Sore Loser upon being defeated, and couldn't pass the Dragon Den master's quiz. By contrast, Lance introduces himself to the player in the Johto games as just another Pokémon Trainer (despite being the very Champion), is a Graceful Loser, and was stated to have passed the quiz.
• Fossil Revival: He uses an Aerodactyl, who resembles a wyvern.
• Good Is Not Soft: Lance is apparently willing to sic his Pokémon on human criminals. When you meet him at Team Rocket's Johto HQ, the first thing he does is tell his Dragonite to Hyper Beam the grunt running the front store. You can find another grunt downstairs who's also been blasted, and when Executive Ariana tries to double-team you with a grunt, the Dragonite physically slams said grunt away from you. All three grunts apparently survive, thankfully.
• Guest-Star Party Member: In HeartGold and SoulSilver, he teams up with the player to battle against Team Rocket Executive Ariana and a Team Rocket grunt in the Mahogany Town hideout.
• Humble Hero: He became this during his tenure as the Champion in the Johto games, hiding his status from player and claiming to be just another trainer, before the player faces him in the Pokémon League.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
  • In Pokémon Gold and Silver, Lance introduces himself once the Player Character resolves the Lake of Rage incident, but his Establishing Character Moment won't come until the Rocket Hideout raid: the instant the player enters, Lance orders his Dragonite to knock a grunt across the room—with Hyper Beam, no less.
  • Later in the raid, when he explains the hideout's password system, he indicates that a nearby Rocket "graciously" told him so. Talking to the grunt afterward will only make him groan about how tough Lance is.
• Killer Rabbit: In Masters, he admits that Dragonite looks too docile to be considered threatening, though he also knows Dragonite is anything but weak.
• King Mook: The design of the Dragon Tamer class is heavily based on Lance's typical suit and cape, which makes this an unusual example of the king predating the mooks.
• Large Ham: The way he announces the name of the Champion in Red and Blue comes across as this. When he himself is the Champion, he's not much less hammy, as he demonstrates with the moves he makes with that cape.
• Meaningful Name:
  • A lance is a weapon used by knights, often fabled for slaying dragons and all that. And that's not mentioning the famous series of books beginning publication in 1984...
  • In the German versions he's named "Siegfried", after a legendary Germanic hero who is said to have slain the dragon Fafnir.
  • In the French versions, he's "Peter", the French name of the hero of Pete's Dragon (1977).
• Mentor Archetype: In Pokémon Gold and Silver, Silver has a life-changing encounter with Lance in the Team Rocket Hideout that effectively puts him on the road to redemption.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules:
  • Lance has used Pokémon with Special Attacks that they should not be able to learn.
    • In Red and Blue, his Dragonite knows Barrier, a move that to this very day the Dratini line cannot learn. The closest this has ever come to "legal" was the release of this same original Dragonite as a downloadable event Pokémon in 2016.
    • The Aerodactyl he fields in Pokémon Gold and Silver knows Rock Slide, a move the species could not learn at the time (though this attack became legal in later games).
  • The games often scale Lance's Pokémon down to an appropriate level for the Player Character, which means Lance uses fully-evolved Pokémon at levels below their actual evolution threshold.
    • In Gold and Silver, his three Dragonite are all below legal level, two at 47 and one at 50 when Dragonair doesn't evolve until Level 55.
    • In Stadium 2 his levels fluctuate between 50 and 100, but below 55 he'll still have a Dragonite and a Tyranitar, which also evolves at 55.
    • During a team-up with the player at the tail end of the Rocket Hideout infiltration in HeartGold and SoulSilver, he uses a Level 40 Dragonite.
• Nice Guy: Despite his intimidating appearance and status, he's actually a fairly nice person; he's helpful to the protagonist, and has passed the Dragon's Den test, which requires knowledge of proper Pokémon care.
• Person of Mass Destruction: By virtue of his Signature Move being Hyper Beam (the Japanese name of the move means "Destruction Beam"); Lance has a clear love of laying waste to his enemies.
• Power Equals Rarity: Dragon-type Pokémon are known for not only being powerful, but also relatively rare compared to Pokémon of other types, especially in early generations where they were by far the rarest, and Lance has the status to accompany the power of Dragon-type Pokémon by being either a Champion or the final member of the Elite Four the player faces. In fact, in Red, Blue, and Yellow, he is the only NPC trainer in the game to use any Dragon-type Pokémon at all.
• Pre-Final Boss: In Pokémon Red and Blue, Lance is the last of the Elite Four, the final challenge of the game. Upon entering his room, the Player Character traverses a long and winding Boss Corridor—the only one of it's kind in the whole game—with the ominous Victory Road score playing in the background. Lance, complete with his suit and Badass Cape, welcomes you magnanimously and confronts you with his specialty—the Infinity +1 Element Dragon-type. When defeated, he congratulates you... and then drops The Reveal: The Rival got there before you did and now he's the Final Boss.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: After running circles around Silver in a battle, Lance gives one to Silver about how the latter's lack of compassion towards his Pokémon is what makes him a subpar trainer. Silver doesn't take it well, but a couple more losses to you manages to convince him that Lance is right.
• Related in the Adaptation: While Clair and Lance were originally unrelated, Pokémon Crystal obliquely implies that they are—the guard stationed at the entrance of the Dragon's Den explicitly declares that the master is Clair's grandfather, while one of the master's attendants implies that Lance has a Strong Family Resemblance to the master. Pokémon Adventures and Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver would make their relationship as cousins explicit.
• Rule of Three:
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue, all of his Pokémon come from one of three families—Magikarp-Gyarados, Aerodactyl, and Dratini-Dragonair-Dragonite. His team also has three representatives from the last family, two Dragonair and a Dragonite.
  • In Pokémon Yellow, Lance's Dragonite has all three of the Powerful, but Inaccurate Fire, Ice, Lightning moves—Fire Blast, Blizzard, and Thunder.
  • He has three Dragonite in his team as the Champion in Gold, Silver and Crystal. Here, the Powerful, but Inaccurate Fire, Ice, Lightning moves are distributed amonst them.
  • In Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver, he also implements the Fire, Ice, Lightning fang moves, which are distributed among his Charizard, Aerodactyl, and Gyarados.
  • In Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver, exchanges two of his three Dragonite for Salamence and Garchomp in his rematch team; instead of having three of the same pseudo-legendary Dragon-type, he has three different kinds of them.
  • For his Pokémon World Tournament team in Black 2 and White 2, he also has three Dragon-type pseudo-legendary Pokémon — Dragonite, Salamence and Hydreigon.
• Secret A.I. Moves: In Pokémon Gold and Silver, Lance commands his Dragonite to attack villainous trainers directly, a power the player character has not been given.
• Signature Mon: His highest-leveled Pokémon is always Dragonite, the only fully-evolved Dragon-type in Red, Blue and Yellow and the first pseudo-legendary Pokémon in the series.
• Signature Move: Hyper Beam, a Death or Glory Attack in the form of a Wave Motion Breath Weapon. Lance's love for this move cannot be understated.
  • In Pokémon Red and Blue and each subsequent remake, every single Pokémon on his team knows it. (In the original games, his team consists of nothing but Pokémon that learn it naturally).
  • All of his Pokémon in the original Pokémon Gold and Silver and Pokémon Stadium 2 are also decked out with the move, but he dials it back in Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver, restricting the move to his Signature Mon Dragonite during the original championship bout and then to his Dragonite, Charizard, and Altaria in rematches.
  • Both his Dragonite and Gyarados in Pokémon Masters know Hyper Beam as well. In cutscenes, Lance is frequently heard calling for Dragonite to Hyper Beam human targets, usually to prevent crimes.
  • Unusually, the move is completely absent when Lance competes at the Pokémon World Tournament, however.
• Stealth Pun: Doubling as a Bilingual Bonus, it seems odd that Lance dresses, and in some games even has the mannerisms of a classical vampire, particularly Count Dracula. The reason? Dracula, or rather dracul, literally means "the dragon."
• Super Mode: In Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, his Charizard from his rematch team can Mega Evolve into Mega Charizard X.
• Took a Level in Badass: Not only does Lance becoming Champion of the Johto League mean that he gets stronger Pokémon at his disposal, but he also starts taking an active role to stop the villainous Team Rocket where as before he was not seen taking a single action against them.
• Unskilled, but Strong:
  • While League Champions in general are no stranger to hitting hard and fast with powerful moves and powerful Pokémon, Lance's love for the Awesome, but Impractical sets him apart from the other Champions who, on the whole, tend to favor a balance of power and accuracy and to eschew techniques with such drawbacks.
  • In particular, Lance's specialty Hyper Beam is one of the hardest-hitting moves in the game, but is only a Normal-type move, so it has no possible type advantage.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: In Red, Blue and Yellow and their remakes. "You are now the Pokémon League champion! ...or you would have been, but you have one more challenge left."

Team Rocket

See Pokémon: Team Rocket

Others

Magikarp Salesman (コイキング売り; Koikingu uri)

A salesman found in the Pokémon Center near Mt. Moon, who offers to sell you a swell Magikarp for just $500! What do you say?

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• Ascended Extra: While he had a minute one-off appearance in the original games, his adapted self in Pokémon: The Series would become a Recurring Character who appeared about Once a Season, often with new scams to try.
• Blatant Lies: The Magikarp Salesman lays it on thick about what a great deal he's offering and how Magikarp is a secret Pokémon.
• The Bus Came Back: He returns in Pokémon Black and White on the Marvelous Bridge, still selling a Magikarp for the same price. However, his offer is much less of a scam this time, as Magikarp isn't native to Unova and $500 will be a pittance by the time you meet him.
• Con Man: Already one in his initial appearance, but he's more of one in the anime, where he also sells common Pokémon disguised as rare ones at high prices.
• The Ghost: He doesn't appear in Pokémon Gold and Silver, but a couple of boys in the Pewter City Pokémon Center will talk about how one of them was sold a Magikarp by a "weird old man" three years before.
• No Name Given: His real name is never given.
• Snake Oil Salesman: The salesman insists the deal is exclusive to the player and in Updated Rereleases claims that Magikarp is a secret Pokémon—as a matter of fact, for anyone with an Old Rod it's ubiquitous and free. If the player talks to him after the sale he insists that he gives no refunds.

Copycat/The Copycat Girl (モノマネむすめ monomane musume)

A little girl from Saffron City who not only loves mimicking people, but is also very good at it.

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• Costume Copycat: She does it for fun with no bad intention.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Copycat only appears as a generic NPC in the games, but her character art in the TCG depicts her with green hair and pigtails that are quite similar to Duplica from Pokémon: The Original Series, who was based on her, making this a case of Convergent Character Evolution.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: She collects Pokémon Dolls. In the Generation I games and their remakes, if the player gives her a Clefairy Doll, she'll give the TM for Mimic or teach it to the player's Pokémon. In the sequels, she gives the player a Magnet Train Pass for finding and returning the lost doll.
• Iconic Outfit: She loves to copy these when mimicking. In her own case, most promotional art of her (primarily from the trading card game) suggests that her favorite outfit is a copy of Ethan's which she wears most frequently.
• It Was a Gift: In Pokémon Gold and Silver, her parents suggest that her most treasured possession is the doll that Red gave her in Pokémon Red and Blue. If it's found after she loses it, she'll give the player character the Magnet Pass in gratitude.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: She's never referred to by anything other than "the copycat girl".
• Stop Copying Me: Red/Leaf's reaction to her. It unnerves quite a few of her peers too, if her parents are to be believed. Curiously, when explaining her Fetch Quest in Gold and Silver, she doesn't break character as "you" when explaining where her doll is, obligating her to act as though you told her that even though you couldn't have learned it yourself before talking to her. The player character calls her out for this for trying to tell them what to do.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: She will imitate the male player character, including their clothes.

Mr. Fuji (フジ老人 fuji roujin)

A kind old man from Lavender Town who looks after and takes care of abandoned and orphaned Pokémon.

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• The Atoner: It's suggested at a few points (and confirmed in Pokémon Origins) that he was involved in Mewtwo's creation (which Pokédex entries say involved "horrific" gene splicing experiments), and that after its escape, he returned Mew to Faraway Island and devoted his life to caring for Pokémon.
• Cool Old Guy: He's a very nice man, especially to Pokémon.
• Distressed Dude: Shortly after he went to the Pokémon Tower to pay his respects to the spirit of the Marowak that Team Rocket had killed earlier, Team Rocket shows up again, and takes him hostage inside.
• Friend to All Living Things: He takes care of abandoned and orphaned Pokémon. Just look at the page image. Though it is implied that he wasn't always like that...
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Would you believe that this kind old man is heavily implied to have not only discovered Mew, but also been Mewtwo's creator in a time where he was seemingly less moral? He himself never brings any of it up, almost no-one in Kanto knows of his actions, and even the games themselves don't elaborate much on it. Pokémon Origins, however, does.
• Heroic BSoD: Upon the creation and escape of Mewtwo; more specifically seeing its savage heart as a result of its creation. The games only show his atoner attitude, and Pokémon Origins shows the BSoD.
• Mad Scientist: There's a picture of him on Cinnabar Island with the description "Dr. Fuji?!?!" He is also old friends with Blaine (who in some continuities is a scientist), and is suspected to have been the scientist who created Mewtwo.
• My God, What Have I Done?: It's implied that he is the researcher who lived in the Pokémon Mansion^*Though the English journals use "we", as if referring to a team of researchers, the original Japanese journals are written in first-person, and following the horrific DNA experiments that led to Mewtwo's birth and its vicious nature, he moved to Lavender Town and began caring for orphaned Pokémon.
• Nice Guy: How could you not respect a guy who cares for orphaned Pokémon? But Cinnabar Island, especially Pokémon Mansion, heavily imply he wasn't always so nice to Pokémon...
• Papa Wolf: To the Pokémon in his orphanage.
• Ret-Canon: Updated Rereleases of Pokémon Red and Blue expanded on Mr. Fuji's Origin Story by lifting it directly from Pokémon: The First Movie.
• Wasteland Elder: Lavender Town has no real authority, but Mr. Fuji is well-respected to the point that he may as well be.

The Karate King / Karate Master

Voiced by: Takeharu Onishi (JP), Dan Green (EN)

The Karate King (or Karate Master) rules the Fighting Dojo, which used to be the Saffron City Pokémon Gym until Sabrina's Psychic-types crushed his Fighting-types. Now he trains students in his converted gym.

There are actually two Karate Kings, Koichi and Kiyo. Koichi/Takenori (タケノリ takenori) is the Karate King of Pokémon Red and Blue, who will give the player their choice of Mutually Exclusive Party Members Hitmonlee or Hitmonchan for besting him. Kiyo/Nobuhiko (ノブヒコ nobuhiko) is the Karate King of Pokémon Gold and Silver, who is found training in Mt. Mortar of the Johto region and will give the player a Tyrogue, which can evolve into Hitmonchan, Hitmonlee, or Hitmontop depending on how the player raises it.

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• Boss in Mook's Clothing: The Karate King is completely indistinguishable from any other Blackbelt—you wouldn't even know he was special if he didn't tell you. That said, he specializes in top-flight Fighting-types Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan, which are used only by him, the player, and Elite Four member Bruno.
• The Cameo: A Karate King (Kiyo?) is trying to set up a new dojo in Lumiose City in Pokémon X and Y, but things aren't going well.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Prior to the events of Pokémon Red and Blue, the Fighting Dojo was Saffron City's official Gym and Koichi its Gym Leader—then Sabrina crushed him, took the title of Gym Leader for herself and set up a newer, bigger gym right next door, events that her trainers still gossip about.
• Decomposite Character: In Pokémon Gold and Silver, Kiyo gave every appearance of being the same character as the Karate King of Pokémon Red and Blue—he was based at the Fighting Dojo in Saffron City, has the same Signature Mons as the original, and gives one to the player after being bested. A wrench was thrown into this assumption by Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, which named its Karate King Koichi—later remakes have preserved both names, so there appear to be two Karate Kings.
• Graceful Loser: Being that he's no longer an official Gym Leader, Koichi's under no obligation to give you anything when you beat him, he chooses to reward you with a Pokémon of his own will.
• Kiai: Most of his dialogue.
• King Mook: Of the Blackbelt trainer-class. In the Japanese version, the Blackbelt-class is known as "karate king" (karate ou), so Koichi and Kiyo are called the "great karate king" (karate daiou).
• Named by the Adaptation: The Updated Re-release Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen names the original Karate King "Koichi".
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Like most of the trainers in Gen I, he didn't have a name, and was thus only known as the Karate King.
• Optional Boss: In most of his appearances, fighting him isn't required to complete the game, though it's also the only way to get the Hitmon line outside of trading.
• Red Baron: The Karate Master, then the Karate King.
• Signature Mon: Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee.
• Training from Hell: In the Gen II games and their remakes, he's left the dojo to train deep within Mt. Mortar. Finding and beating him nets the player a Tyrogue, provided they have an empty slot in their party.
• Unique Enemy: In every game he appears, he's the only way to get any of the "Hitmon"-type Pokémon. As of Gen II, you can breed other Tyrogues so you can eventually get all of them, but in Gen I the only way to get the one you didn't choose was to trade for it.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen establishes that the current Karate King (Koichi) is not the same as the Karate King of Pokémon Gold and Silver (Kiyo), which naturally raises the question of why Koichi is absent in the sequel games.

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