Pinkie’s Evil Pokémon Team

With Galar’s Team Yell and with Alola’s Team Skull we twice in a row had .. not so evil evil teams. Team Magma and Team Aqua weren’t all THAT evil either. Team Rocket , Team Plasma, Team Flare and most of all Team Galactic were pretty evil though.  Still those bowl haircuts of team Galactic just made them kinda weird and not scary. A team that wants to end reality should be a bit scarier! Yet their goal also a bit too edgy, like why would you even want that .. how do you get so many people to follow you in that goal? Team Flare looked to dandy, those poses, those silly haircuts and sunglasses. Yet their message to destroy the world to make it more beautiful was something I really dug, it felt crazy enough but again it got held back with their design. Team Plasma started out great, but turned out to be simple disney evil. No evil team is perfect. So how about we come up with our own? Today I will discuss my take on an evil team.

Team Darwin

My team would entirely based on the way the pokémon world works.  It would focus on themes we can find in each game so they could basically be placed in any region. Team Rocket just being a  group that uses pokémon for crime. However, Team Rocket’s biggest flaw is that they never really had a common goal. Why would Grunt A  rob a house and then give the loot to the team so it could be distributed? Probably because they took some maffia inspiration. Yet their missions do not  make to much sense. There is too little gain to be had for all these people to band together. No one is getting rich out of it, and there is no real other goal to joining it other than committing crime with your pokémon… a quick way to get easy cash. Something doesn’t fully work out here. Even if we consider their goal is global domination it doesn’t always add up. You can’t enforce that with a single pokémon like Mewtwo. Even if you could Giovanni seems much too reasonable. He and his team for that matter give up after losing a pokémon battle to a ten year old. Why would any team do that? I get it from a game perspective but  in none of the teams that have been created so far.. except for Team Yell it makes sense for them to give up. Could we perhaps create a concept where we can let this make sense? Destroying reality, aspiring true beauty, desiring more land .. or water. It all kinda works but Pokémon are never really the source of these beliefs. Could we perhaps tie their very existence into an evil team’s beliefs? Yes we can! Enter MY team .. Team Darwin!

Team Darwin (name could be changed to fit the pokeworld better)  in essence follows the teachings of the famous evolutionist Charles Darwin.  They see how Pokémon are constantly evolving and getting stronger and feel that mankind is lagging. We do not adapt fast enough, we do not evolve fast enough. If we keep going on like this , they believe Pokémon will eventually rise up against humans and wipe them out because we will be unable to beat them. Pokémon who are able to evolve  also should evolve at all times. The world of pokémon is very viable to follow survival of the fittest after all. They do believe that pokémon battling is indeed the way for us and our pokémon to evolve but they believe our human hearts hold us back from reaching our full potential. We do not push out pokémon hard enough, we do not push ourselves hard enough and sometimes we are so complacent that we even dare to use pokémon as pets and stay at home.  The team is known to push their own pokémon extremely hard, to a breaking point even after all only the strongest deserve to survive. Their ultimate goal to be to awaken some evil legendary pokémon that fights humanity, or to start a new pokémon war like the ones in Kanto and Kalos. Only trough true life or death situations humans and their pokémon can reach their full potential..survival of the fittest. This belief would also make it very credible that a team trainer would simply give up after losing a pokémon battle. After all they have failed to be that fittest one. Their spirit is broken and you have proven that you indeed are strong enough to survive. Their doctrine while scary enough lends itself perfectly to how the game adventures are shaped. I think a team like this could be the perfect fit for the pokémon world.

Designing Evolution

So first of all how should this team look? Team Rocket looked kinda bland and I certainly do not want any of those bowl haircuts. I want to create a team that looks intimidating. Because it’s a team that is all about survival of the strongest, I’d opt for a combat armor like design. Not like the ones that early team plasma used, no these are not knights. No I think design wise we should think a bit militia like. Survival of the fittest fits warrior cultures as well so depending on what region you’d place them in you could also go for a viking or spartan like design. In fact I really like the concept of that last one. Conceptually the military like look would also make sense. These people would be obsessed with training and getting stronger so armors that convey abs would help sell that design.  Think.. stormtroopers of sorts.
These people will be drilled and would take influences from famous warrior cultures like the spartans, vikings but also for example the Mandalorians from Star Wars. Instead of axes and guns they would use pokémon as their weapons.  Because if pokémon can evolve through their humans , perhaps humans can evolve through their pokémon or at least that is what this team would believe. Colourwise I would go for a grey, blue and mostly white colour design. These are the colours associated with the light of evolution after all so it makes sense they would choose something like this.

Adaptation would also play a key role in their design. THis team would most likely feature several looks depending whether you fight them in the desert , frozen wasteland or in a factory. These lands would also determine what type of pokémon these teams bring. In the desert they would bring pokémon that would be strong against the element or get a buff from the terrain. In general they prefer pokémon that fit the warrior theme. Pokémon like honedge and pawniard for example convey that aspect. Remoraid and Octillery are other examples. Marowak,  Galarian Meowth and Perrseker and basically any fighting pokémon would work. Of course there is one thing that all these pokémon would have in common. They would have to be able to evolve. Pokémon that only have one form.. they will not use and they will actively hate. Pokémon who have a baby form that you need to breed still will not count as pokémon that have an evolution. So Dunsparce and Jynx will be very disliked by this team.
While grunts usually wield pokémon that evolve once, the executives would use pokémon that evolve twice. So a grunt would use pokémon like Koffing, Remoraid and Pawniard, the executives would use Honedge , Machop and Seedot. Executives could wear those fancy military suits like generals wear. Perhaps have three of them to represent the stages a pokémon can go trough. A young kid that is a tactical genius , a teenager desperately trying to get stronger and stronger. And a mature female who is remorseless. The team leader would be an older man,not too old but someone who is just about to enter their waning years. Before he does so he would desperately be trying to evolve! Before it is too late. This gives the man and the team some desperation making them feel a bit more dangerous. Throughout your entire game you will learn that this man is not completely sound of mind.. adding to the treat. 

Forcing growth

Throughout your pokémon adventure you would encounter these evil doers at numerous occasions. A team like this is a lot more usually for incidental encounters as well. A single grunt stole a kid’s rare candy to force his own pokémon to level up, a girl is cornered as a team member is trying to use a grass stone on her gloom, while she loves it the way it is. Other options could be them replacing a gym leader using a way to powerful team, thinking it is wrong that a gym leader holds back as much as they do.  This team is designed to be able to be everywhere. Not just two dungeons, final encounter and done! This is a truly evil team that is harmful to both human and pokémon and it is made to be shown anywhere. General Charles’s (the leader name) teachings ring through to some but the treat looms that if people start taking him to serious it could be the end of legal pokemon fighting. The team still has some dungeons related to them of course because it would not be an evil team otherwise. Maybe they have invented a radio signal using the old evolution experiment of team rocket, which would be a nice call back to Johto. This signal might make pokémon more aggressive, allowing them to fight harder and longer.. more ferocious Level them up as well, as a result they do not go with trainers as willingly forcing them both to try harder. Maybe they used this in our new region’s safari zone causing chaos as they go along. Of course this is only a field test to use it on the legendary pokémon later. They could raid a department store to gain all the evolutionary items. They could easily take over a small town and force the villagers to do battle with each other and them, even if they would normally not battle or do something similar in a daycare centre. There are so many options here! 

Now a said earlier a team like this could be seen giving up after they lost their respective battles. Even if they have evil goals, by winning you simply prove yourself in their eyes so you can pass and move on.  Yet I think there would also be a difference in the way they battle. As much as I would love to say that they battle more competitively I do not think that is enforceable in a main game so let’s think outside the box a bit. Since the AI in most games sucks let’s highlight their aggressiveness by making sure all their pokémon just carry four offensive moves. No defending, no buffing.. just damage , unescapable damage. We often see teams buff themselves when they are a lot low hp making getting a win really easy, but these guys are plentiful and do not carry moves that give you a break. Executives will use battle items like X Attack on their pokémon though to give them a buff and make you bleed harder. Fighting them feels like an endurance match, fitting their entire team of survival.  I am not expecting them to be that much more difficult than your regular teams but these will consume more of your items. During nuzlocke challenges these guys will be a lot trickier to deal with as they just will not relent. If they have a pokémon that evolves through a stone, they evolve it right away (at least post the raid on the department store). They push you and themselves beyond their limits to force evolution upon the world, no matter the cost. When facing my team Darwin, you’ll have to be the very best, like no one ever was..because if you are not the strongest, you will not survive!