Yeah. Outside of Gary, who kept chugging on until Johto, those other two trainers (who had Charmander and Bulbasaur since Gary had Squirtle) just completely disappeared. We never even saw their faces.
One Strip! One Strip!Casualties along the journey.
Perhaps they didn't make it due to trying to attempt that journey on their own.
(Ash had Brock and Misty. Gary had his cheerleaders.)
Being a pokemon-trainer in this world, might even serve as a harsh wake-up call to many who thought they could take it "easy" through it and instead, make them pick other career-paths instead.
Even wild pokemon attacks are a danger at any time to be considered as well.
The anime doesn't have the "luxury" that is the "White-out screen" when all of one's pokemon have been defeated after all...
Heck, even getting poisoned by a wild pokemon might be a real danger for newbie-trainers, especially in a thick forest shock-full of beedrills that goes off on the slightest disturbance...
So you're saying these two guys DIED and no one cared?
I know the anime was pretty ruthless back in the day (Ash was a moron, but literally everyone got on his case for not being good enough right away), but I think even that is a bit much.
One Strip! One Strip!Not according to Training Daze/later episodes where their rivalry was much more even.
The Protomen enhanced my life.Gary, Butch and Cassidy aren't bound by the status quo, they're able to live fulfilling lives while Ash, Jesse and James are stuck in an endless cycle.
Ash at least won a championship eventually, but Team Rocket still have nothing to show after all of these years.
Then again, they haven't really been harassing Ash and co at all in recent years. They're more or less just doing their own thing separate from the main group.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Jan 31st 2022 at 8:13:23 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.And a Z Move, and made sure the other evil teams were taken out so Team Rocket could still reign supreme, and basically succeeded in Operation Tempest until they couldn't control the Legendaries.
Yeah, they could lowkey quit. Meowth could be a chef, Jessie a coordinator, and James a mechanic expert.
Except:
James can't settle down anywhere without the overwhelming threat of his family pinpointing his position and drag him back into their household by force.
Jessie has zero education to speak off and no survival skills of her own and is completely dependent on James and Meowth for her own well-being and survival.
Meowth is still a wild pokemon and if he didn't had the other two, how many would try and capture him for science in order to figure out how on earth a meowth managed to learn human speech and walking by itself.
Really, living like nomads while working for Team Rocket might be the best thing the T Rio have going for them in life.
Fair enough for James and Meowth, but Jessie can definitely handle herself. A common Running Gag for her is that she beats the shit out of the Pokemon she catches single-handedly.
The legend has returned.
I meant "in society".
How far do you get without even the most "basic" level of education, I might ask?
(In the wilderness though, she is more fit to adapt and survive, since she can just beat up whatever predator and prey she wants to have for dinner by herself... even if she probably can't cook it beyond roasting it over an open flame or something similar...)

We don’t know, don’t think the anime bothered to show any of them.