Reviewing Pokemon's Human Characters - Hoenn

The third generation always had a special place in my heart, due to the fact that the third generation was basically when I first really got into Pokemon beyond 'hey, that cool cartoon with that cool game'. This was when I started reading about Pokemon online, started buying and reading the manga, tried to catch the anime every week, started really reading up on every single Pokemon's dex entries... the fact that they had remakes of the first generation games out is also something that ended up causing me to basically dive in head-first into what the peeps in '90's call 'pokemania' and never really exited.

Well, the humans in the generation are also slightly more interesting, too, due to the sprite-work of the GBA allowing for more details than what the GBC allowed. So let's go through this generation! I had originally intended this to be a single article combined with the Johto guys (which I didn't think I would have much to talk about), but man, combined with the Battle Frontier and the new OR/AS guys, plus my decision to talk about generic trainer classes does mean that this article kind of ballooned up from what I intended it to be.

(Also, yes, I know, Isle of Armor is out. I've purchased it, but I'm taking my time actually playing it. We'll probably do a couple of shorter, lighter text playthrough because apparently word down the grapevine is that there really isn't a whole ton of super-interesting content. We'll see.)

I considered putting some of the spinoff characters like the ones from Pokemon Colosseum, Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, Pokemon Ranger or Pokemon Ranch here but then it'll be way too cumbersome. Maybe if/when I get enough time or if these articles do well I'll do a special Fiore or Orre version or something.
_______________________________________________________________________

HOENN


Brendan

• Position: Player Character/Rival
• Japanese Name: Yuki

So the male and female protagonists in Generation III is something that's a bit more interesting that subsequent generations would sometimes play around with. When you pick your gender, your opposite number ends up being your rival, which is probably why the names 'Brendan' and 'May' are a bit more familiar to the fandom at large compared to, say, 'Ethan' or 'Hilda'. Brendan and May are both relatively similar if they end up being your rivals, being the child of Professor Birch and being relatively supportive of you as the first of the many 'friendly rivals' that the franchise would have from Generation III onwards. And while it's perhaps a way to make it so that kiddies don't feel bad when they lose to a fictional character in a video game, we kind of lost something when we lost Silver and Blue's heckling. 

Brendan's design is also the first protagonist that tries its best to distance itself from the 'jacket, shorts/jeans, cap, backpack' uniform look that Red, Ethan and the next couple of protagonists would have. And while it does take a bit to really get used to Brendan's design, I did find that the rather sharp edges of the reds and blacks of his original design (which was all over the place in R/S/E's aesthetic, I feel) was pretty sharp. Of course, the biggest thing that people asked about in regards to Brendan's design is that... thing on his hair. Does he have white hair and is that a bandana? Or is it just a bizarre sock-hat? Turns out that as his manga and 3D portrayals would show, that's just a bizarre hat. Said hat sort of dangles and flops about when your character model runs around the overworld, though, so through the many, many hours I've sunk into the Hoenn games, I've gotten used to this bizarre sock-hat. The Hoenn games do try to distance themselves from the feel of the previous two games, so this certainly works a lot in giving Brendan a unique silhouette and vibe to the other male character avatars. 

In Emerald, the protagonists got a bit of a rework, gaining some green highlights and looking a bit sportier. I'm not the biggest fan of the new green highlights and the somewhat more orange hue to Brendan's shirt, but at least he doesn't look like he's going to be sweltering in heat when he walks out of his house into the tropical region of Hoenn. In the Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire remakes, Brendan basically got a bit of a tan and is wearing a streamlined version of his Emerald getup, albeit minus the inner pants. A pretty standard protagonist design, I feel, but one that manages to look different despite being a wee bit goofy. ORAS also adds this whole 'contest' look to the protagonists, which I've never really paid attention to... and I really love the fact that the normally somewhat stiff-looking Brendan has completely rocking it with that rockstar jacket, one too many bangles, that fur on one side and that fancy chain. Also, yeah, the fandom is right, the sock-hat doesn't flatter him at all. 

May

• Position: Player Character/Rival
• Japanese Name: Haruka

May is the female avatar for this one, and, again, I think there's a bit of a conscious effort to make the male and female character avatars sort of look like gender-flipped versions of each other, at least from a clothing standpoint, and while it's not quite as criss-crossed as Brendan's, May's original outfit also is mainly red and black with sharp cut-off points. She's also got a white mini-skirt (or is that just part of her shirt?) over her bike shorts, and a more sensible-looking bandana. Her hair's... that probably takes a fair amount of time to get those parts of her hair looking like that consistently. I do like this look a fair bit.

May's Emerald redesign also swaps red for orange, and adds a bit of green, but the change works a bit better for May than Brendan, I feel, by limiting the green to her bandana and fanny pack. She also cut off her sleeves and her shirt basically extends all the way down like a dress, and while I still prefer the original colour palette it's a pretty neat redesign that makes her still have the same general vibe as her original look in Ruby/Sapphire while also making it distinct. 

Unlike Brendan, May gets redesigned even further in ORAS, swapping the futuristic outfits she wore in Generation III for a simpler tank-top, and the weird maybe-skirt-maybe-dress white bit gets turned into short-shorts she wears over her bike shorts. It's actually kind of interesting to see that May's got a lot more tweaks to her design whereas Brendan is basically just a redrawn version of his Emerald artwork. Like Brendan, she gets a contest hall outfit... and not that it doesn't look cute or anything, because it sure does, but it's kind of... disappointingly obvious, I guess, that the girl protagonist gets a super-frilly pink idol dress. 

Again, I really don't have a whole ton to say about the protagonists. They are kind of forgettable rivals, mostly notorious for not fully evolving their starter pokemon until Emerald. They stuck pretty close to me, though, being very memorable and pretty much one of the first images that jump to my head when you say 'Pokemon protagonist', becuase of how prevalent the Ruby/Sapphire anime (May replaces Misty as the main female lead), games and manga were in my high school days. 

Roxanne

• Position: Rustoboro City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Tsutsuji
• Type Specialization: Rock

Hoenn's answer to Brock, Roxanne is the first gym leader you encounter in Hoenn and basically has a near identical-team to Brock... Geodude and Nosepass, with Nosepass being a (then) non-evolving rare Rock-type monster that looks pretty exotic compared to what you would've met at that point, but isn't that much tougher than a Geodude. Also, unlike the original Generation I Brock, Roxanne's Pokemon actually knows Rock-type moves. Emerald is also the start of when gym leaders start to regularly have post-game rematches with you, and Roxanne would update her team with a bunch of fossil Pokemon, which, I feel, suits her profession as an academic a lot better than Brock.

She's meant to be a youthful academic, with both her anime and manga counterparts focusing on the fact that she's basically cum laude in the local Pokemon Academy and is chosen to be a gym leader because of that fact. Her design is honestly pretty simple -- just a long-sleeved dress (said dress gets swapped for a vaguely schoolgirl-inspired one in ORAS) and some stockings, but comparing her to, say, the previous generation's Jasmine or Karen, you can tell that the game designers get to show off just how more complex the character designs in the sprites can be. She's neat.


Brawly

• Position: Dewford Town Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Touki
• Type Specialization: Fighting

Brawly being a Fighting-type gym leader has always been a bit bizarre to me. His whole deal is that he's a surfer bro dude, he lives in an island, and all his outside-game appearances show him being a surfer bro. His gym, meanwhile, has a gimmick of the room being dark and you have to make your way through the dark maze and fight trainers to make the room lighter. And he's... a Fighting type gym leader? It's very neat that  he's a bit more subversive than boring old Chuck or Bruno, but it's kind of bizarre that a Fighting gym leader's biggest and most memorable trait is that he's a surfer bro. I'm not complaining, I just find it odd. Some later material try to justify this by having Brawly use surfing and moving with the waves as a way for him and his Makuhita to practice how to 'counter' the moves of stronger opponents, judo-style, but ultimately in the game he's a bit of a bore, even with the comparatively larger amount of dialogue that the post-Generation-II games have. 

His original Generation III design is literally 'just a dude', whereas the far more energetic-looking ORAS redesign gave him a shirt that kinda looks more like a wetsuit, plus some surfing goggles and gloves that preserves the look of the original while emphasizing the surfer bro parts. 

Wattson

• Position: Mauville City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Tessen
• Type Specialization: Electric

Wattson is another gym leader that I honestly didn't find all that memorable, being just a happy fat old gentleman with a full beard that just likes telling jokes and being boisterous and going 'wahahahaha' all the time. He's a fun presence after the relatively more restrained Brawly and Roxanne, though, even if I never really felt like his Generation III outfit of a hoodie and chunky pants really work. The ORAS look, with the tacky Hawaiian floral shirt draped over the yellow worker outfit, feels a bit more fitting for his very loud personality. He's all right, even if his gym and the force-field walls puzzle is admittedly a bit boring. 

Wattson actually does have a bit of a character arc and some motivations, in that he wants to expand Mauville City. In the Generation III games you basically help him out with a sidequest heading to fix the generator in the electric-Pokemon-themed dungeon of New Mauville, but in ORAS Wattson's dream actually comes true and the city has succesfully expanded into a side-city apartment complex, Sea Mauville, thing to help deal with Mauville's overpopulation. Hooray Wattson!

Flannery

• Position: Lavaridge City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Asuna
• Type Specialization: Fire

The gym leader of Lavaridge Town is always popular in the fandom for some... obvious reasons, but I've always liked her for her pretty hilarious dialogue in the game. She greets you by going ""Welcome... no, wait. Puny Trainer!" and the game makes it clear that Flannery has just very recently ascended to the role as Lavaridge's gym leader, succeeding her grandfather who apparently left to become a member of the Elite Four (who we never meet anywhere, although as a kid I've always thought this was implied to be Sidney). The ORAS remakes, allowing for the character models to actually have facial expressions, went even more over the top with Flannery's awkwardness and her attempts to project this kayfabe persona of a badass, lady who has a gym in this steaming, volcano-inspired gym (I've never quite got what those launchpads in Flannery's gym are meant to be). 

Flannery's basic Ruby/Sapphire team, of course, consists of two Slugma and a Torkoal and it's pretty pathetic (all the gym leaders have pretty harder teams in Emerald) but hey, Flannery's energy is pretty damn infectious, and it's clear that the game writers do put in a significant amount of thought in writing her dialogue. She's pretty cool, I feel... her visual design is all right, but ultimately I think the addition of a lot of extra dialogue does make people like Wattson and Flannery feel a bit more than just a generic powerful trainer. 

Norman

• Position: Petalburg City Gym Leader; Dad
• Japanese Name: Senri
• Type Specialization: Normal

Norman is a very, very boring gym leader, right? He's literally just a dude with jeans and a zip-up shirt, and a very boring haircut. He's sure a generic 'cool dude', but if I didn't already know beforehand, I'd probably think that this is an artwork for a generic trainer. And I feel that Norman is meant to be generic, y'know? He's meant to have that everyman kind of vibe, even in his more detailed (if more casual) ORAS look. He's the normal-type gym leader, and while his gym does have a dojo-style vibe to it, it's also very straightforward.

See, the thing about Norman... he is your dad. The only generation in my memory where your protagonist's father isn't only known, but also an actual character, Norman is your protagonist's dad and is also the fifth gym leader. Where in the Kanto games you can't challenge the first gym you encounter on your journey because the gym leader is actually secretly a crime boss, in Ruby and Sapphire your dad simply tells you that, no, bugger off and be an actual strong trainer before you can challenge your dad. And Norman's actually a pretty fun fight, packing a bunch of Slaking in his team. Sure, he doesn't really have a whole ton of actual personality beyond being a nice, reasonable dad (his manga counterpart, on the other hand, is a very, very tough love kind of dude) but the fact that he's your dad does give his boss fight some neat gravitas. I don't find Norman to be particularly memorable nowadays, but a younger me really, really loved Norman's boss fight for the whole dad thing.


Winona

• Position: Fortree City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Nagi
• Type Specialization: Flying

Oh man, Winona. See, all the previous gym leaders (even Norman, whose Slaking is powerful but gimmicky) were kind of pushovers, even with the buff they got in Emerald. No so for Winona, which is perhaps a gym leader that I remembered having a lot of trouble with back in the day. Forget Whitney and her silly heifer, Winona's packing an Altaria with Dragon Dance and Earthquake. Altaria doesn't even look that threatening, but there's just something about the multiple rematches I had with Winona that made me truly respect the power of setting up. See, as a kid, like every other eight-year-old that played a Pokemon game I've always thought that any move that didn't deal damage was worthless, and it was Winona and her goddamn Altaria that really hammered home how powerful set-up moves can be. The rest of her team aren't exactly pushovers themselves. That Skarmory can be tough to take out withour a fire-type, and that Tropius had a Sunny Day/Solarbeam combo. 

Ahem. Design-wise, I've always found Winona's look a bit more... exotic? So far, all the gym leaders in Hoenn have been regular dudes with regular clothes, but Winona's like wearing some sort of getup that I think is meant for... sky-divers or somthing? I'm not sure what it's meant to be, but it sure looks bizarre, and wouldn't look out of place in like a superhero comic or something. That funky helmet with goggles and Thor-wings are also pretty neat. I've always liked Winona, she was a pretty cool boss fight. 

Liza & Tate

• Position: Mossdeep City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Fu & Lan
• Type Specialization: Psychic

I've always thought that it was pretty god-damned cool when you first meet Tate and Liza. "Surprised? There are two gym leaders!" I sure am, kids, I sure am. See, double battles were a thing that was introduced in Generation III, and Liza and Tate are two gym leaders in one, playing somewhat on the trope of psychic twins. They are cheerful psychic twins (who, of course, complete each other's sentences), though, instead of creepy Shining twins. In both their original Generation III and their ORAS redesigns, they had some Chinese-inspired aesthetic, and I do appreciate that it's just there, and they don't, like, pattern their whole gym or anything around it. Still, it's a neat novelty that there are two gym leaders, and I've always love this fact about them. 

In their original Ruby and Sapphire portrayals they were honestly kind of forgettable due to them only having a pair of Lunatone and Sorlock. In Emerald, though, their gym got a massive overhaul that caused a majority of the battles with the spinning statues and switches to be double-battles, and Liza and Tate themselves got a significantly upgraded team... which was another one that gave young me a headache. I really did remember really going 'oh, so this is how a cool team built around these cool moves work'. That Claydol of hers can set up screens and unleash earthquakes (which hit both of your pokemon but none of theirs), Xatu is there to set up Sunny Day for Sorlock's Solarbeam and generally be annoying with Calm Mind and Confuse Ray, the Lunatone had screens and Hypnosis and Sorlock had moves that synergize with Sunny Day, namely Solarbeam and Flamethrower. And honestly, some fifteen years down the line... sure, those are pretty simple tactics compared to actual competitive Pokemon, but comparing Liza and Tate to a lot of modern gym leaders whose fights are pushovers... yeah, respect the Chinese twins. 

Wallace

• Position: Sootoopolis City Gym Leader (R/S, OR/AS); Champion (Emerald)
• Japanese Name: Mikuri
• Type Specialization: Water

I've seen people note how Wallace's three different artwork pieces from Sugimori end up looking like an evolutioary line. Ruby/Sapphire Wallace i just a fancy-looking dude with regular clothes and a fancy hat and hair. Emerald Wallace is like a coccoon with that cloak wrapped around him. And ORAS Wallace is him after he's embraced the fabulousness, and... well, that sure is a design. That's a very memorable design for sure, and it's genuinely surprising that the team allowed a dude character to be as... I'm not even sure what the right word is, so I'll settle for 'fabulous'. Neat!

See, the thing about Wallace is that he's not just one of the most powerul Pokemon trainers in the land of Hoenn, he's also a master in the region's Pokemon contests, the little mini-game where Pokemon parade around and get points on how pretty their moves and looks are. And Wallace loves participating in contests, something that the anime and manga took and ran with up to eleven, giving him characteristics of a flamboyant gay man while also making him a ladies' man at the same time (because it's the 90's). At no point in any of his portrayals back then that his love for beauty is portrayed as a weakness, though, and he's in fact consistently noted to be one of the most powerful trainers in Hoenn. He's the final gym leader in Ruby and Sapphire, and the champion of Hoenn in Emerald (a tough sonuvabitch there, too), and also participates in a lot of story beats due to the fact that whichever crazy weather-manipulating kaiju the evil team releases, they will end up showing up in Wallace's home town. Anyway.... Wallace's pretty cool, a neat combination of the 'beautiful but powerful' fish Pokemon he utilizes, while also being a very, very powerful trainer in his own right. I do like the association of water (and aquatic creatures in general) with both baeuty and battle prowess. 

Juan

• Position: Sootoopolis City Gym Leader
• Japanese Name: Adan
• Type Specialization: Water

In Emerald, for... no real in-story reason, Wallace replaces Steven as the champion of Hoenn, which I thought was a neat change even if I'm not sure what the in-universe story for that is. So because Wallace ascended to champion-hood, he ends up calling in his old master, Juan, to take over Sootoopolis, and Juan's... a pretty fancy-looking debonair dude with a pretty cool outfit, hairdo and mustache. He's noted to be Sootoopolis's previous gym leader before abdicating the position to Wallace, and then reassuming it when Wallace became champion. Juan is sort of kind of ignored outside of Emerald, though, not appearing in any capacity in the ORAS remakes (not even as a bonus boss!) and his only appearance outside of Emerald was in Black 2/White 2's tournament. He's pretty cool, and I do like how his Water-based team isn't just a copy-and-paste of Wallace's. He's got a terrifying Dragon Dancing Kingdra that can also Rest. I think Emerald's gym leaders just gave me a fear of Dragon Dance full stop. Juan's neat.

Sidney

• Position: Elite Four Member
• Japanese Name: Kagetsu
• Type Specialization: Dark

Just like most Elite Four members pre-Unova, Hoenn's Elite Four are also kind of dry. You don't really meet them prior to entering the Pokemon League, and unlike the gym leaders, you don't get to call them up on your phone and have them get extra dialogue. That said... Sidney manages to give a fair bit of personality with the couple of lines he's given. Design-wise he's pretty boring, just some dude in a fancy, slightly wild-looking suit (he's maybe inspired by a yakuza member or something?) and a hilarious lick of hair. But up until that fantastic ORAS artwork with that 'ya wanna fight, punk?' expression, Sidney's design has always been visually not interesting. But he's actually a genuinely friendly guy, just wanting to have a good time and a good match and praising you after you beat him. "I lost, but it was fun! So it doesn't matter!" Again, it's pretty neat that the Dark-type expert actually just merely dresses like a yakuza, but is a very nice guy beneath. It's just kind of a shame that we get back-to-back Dark type experts that are a bit subersive with Karen and Sidney.

Phoebe

• Position: Elite Four Member
• Japanese Name: Fuyou
• Type Specialization: Ghost

Speaking of subversion... Phoebe is like, a Hawaiian (Alolan?) dancer or something, dressed like she's on a vacation to the beach, with giant flowers in her hair and a cheerful looking outfit... but she's actually a Ghost-type trainer, a stark contrast to the previous Ghost expert, Agatha (I completely forgot about Morty whoops) which has a somewhat sinister vibe to her. Phoebe is noted to have actually developed an ability to commune with the dead after training, but otherwise she's just kinda there? I've always thought her team was kinda lame, with two Dusclops and two Banette, plus a single Sableye. Like, sure, there aren't a whole ton of Ghost-types to pick from, but I've always found her boss fight to be just a mite disapointing. Just a mite, mind you, because one of her Dusclopses has TM moves like Earthquake and Ice Beam, and that can really fuck up someone who thinks all she has are just Shadow Ball and nothing else. 

Glacia

• Position: Elite Four Member
• Japanese Name: Purim
• Type Specialization: Ice

Glacia's an ice-type lady, and she's... she's just a lady, y'know? In a dress, and I've always thought that her original Generation III artwork suggested that she was kind of an older lady that aged up very gracefully. She's kind of boring compared to the rest of the Hoenn Elite Four, though, just being a lady who looks like a lady and has dialogue befitting a lady. The others had interesting designs (or dialogue, in Sidney's case) but the most interseting about Glacia is that she claims to have come from a region that's not Hoenn, but eight regions down the line and we still have no real idea where she came from. Her team was also pretty boring, featuring three members of the Spehal line (two Sealeo and one Walrein) and two Glalie. Are there really that little Ice-types in Hoenn? And if there really are, why not, like, include something like Cloyster in the Hoenn regional dex? Or have the Elite Four be of another type? Or have some 'themed around Ice' Pokemon the way Lance had 'themed around Dragon' Pokemon in generation one? I dunno. 

Drake

• Position: Elite Four Member
• Japanese Name: Genji
• Type Specialization: Dragon

Drake is a dragon-type expert, but he dresses like a crazy old marine captain that walks around bare-chested, and there's always something hilarious about him, I feel. Do ship captains even have anything, really, to do with dragons? Drake doesn't even have a lot of aquatic dragon, at least until the single Kingdra in Emerald. Drake really doesn't have a whole ton to him, mostly just talking about how dragons are powerful and primal and stuff, mostly reduced to a boss fight. His Salamence and Flygon were pretty powerful dudes, I remembered, but I surprisingly don't have a whole ton to say about Drake. At least all of his Pokemon are Dragon-types and aren't repeats of each other, because Generation III finally has enough dragons to fill a party. 

Steven Stone

• Position: Champion (R/S, OR/AS); Bonus Boss (Emerald)
• Japanese Name: Tsuwabuki Daigo
• Type Specialization: Steel & Rock

Steven is just cool, isn't he? Design-wise, he's kind of mundane, but it's hard to say anything bad about a badas in a suit, and Steven rocks those massive rings he has on every other finger. In the manga, those rings can extend and are attached to Steven's suit by chains, which is kind of neat! Steven Stone is the first NPC that you really meet and is kind of an attempt by the game to surprise you by going 'hey, this helpful, seemingly innocuous NPC you met is actually the champion!' unlike Lance in Generation II, who was already going around hyper beaming Rocket grunts. Steven is introduced to us as part of a fetch quest by his dad, who wants to deliver a letter to him, and he's just this nice guy who keeps showing around and talking about fossils and the legends in Hoenn and giving you gifts and stuff, and he ends up helping out with the Groudon/Kyogre crisis... and turns out he's the champion! No way! 

Even moreso than Roxanne, Steven is noted to be an avid archaeologist and ruin maniac, which allows him to be knowledgable about the backstory of the game's main legendary plot, and also gives him a neat theme for the game designers to build a team around. Steven is technically a Steel-type expert according to everyone in the game, but he's only got three Steel-type Pokemon (his ace Metagross, Aggron and Skarmory), whereas an equal amount of his team are Rock-type (Aggron again, plus the fossils Cradily and Armaldo). I really do like the composition of Steven's team, which is patterned more around his love for archaeology. We've got two fossil Pokemon, the mysterious ruin-themed Claydol, the likewise enigmatic (but more modern) Metagross, the cave-dwelling Aggron and Skarmory is there so he can fly around. And honestly? Champions with a team that you can't sweep with a single powerful type make for the best champions... and Steven's team is actually pretty well built. That Metagross is a powerhouse, that Cradily will make you cry if you don't find a way to one-shot or two-shot it, the Skarmory is a set-up beast, and the Aggron has random TM moves like Solarbeam and freaking Thunder. And while he's no longer the champion in Emerald, he's still around as a bonus boss. I think it's simply because he got tired of being a champion and just wanted to return to his hobby of rock-collecting. He's pretty cool, and during the ORAS period that one animated special with Steven riding around on a Metagross fighting Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre is pretty damn awesome. 

Also, having the champion of a Pokemon game share more or less the same name as you? That's pretty cool for a younger me, I must say.

Team Magma Grunts
It feels like we've been here for a while, but we're not even close to being done. So in Generation III we've got not one, but two evil teams. Originally which team was the villainous one depended on which version you bought, so if you're playing Ruby, the crazy Team Magma is trying to take over the world with Groudon, and in Sapphire, Team Aqua's trying to take over the world with Kyogre. In Emerald (and I guess what forms the 'canon' story), both teams are actually crazy and are trying to awaken their respective legendaries. And... and Team Magma and Aqua get a lot of flak for having a rather silly goal of "expand the land!" and "expand the ocean!" respectively, and honestly in the games a lot of their bumbling and nearly causing a weather apocalypse could've been avoided if they had actually checked to see if the colour of the plot device they stole matched the legendary monster they're trying to awaken. Their plan is basically a combination of an amalgamation of generic Bond villains (at one point they try to blow up a volcano with a laser; and they have secret coastal bases) and a bizarre cult, only instead of hailing Cthulhu they want to resurrect an ancient Godzilla-esque creature with weather-manipulation powers.

All their Pokemon are near-identical to their cross-game counterpart, too, basically using the same old Poochyenas and Zubats almost exclusively, and swapping out Numels for Carvanhas depending on the team. Again, presumably it's to make the vibe of the two games not too different, but I appreciate it more when Emerald and the remakes actually gave the two teams a bit more identity. In OR/AS, Team Magma gains their own bizarre version of the Hail Hydra salute (pictured) where their arms vaguely form an M. I like them a lot more with their bizarre tweed undersuits in the redesign, they look like such dorks.

Maxie

• Position: Team Magma Admin
• Japanese Name: Matsubusa

Visually, I've always vastly preferred Team Magma over Team Aqua, at least in their original iteration. I'm not particularly great at talking about fashion, but I've always thought that Team Magma has this pretty cool style that's like... I'm not sure how to even describe it. It's sort of cult-like with the grunts having hoodies and horns, and Maxie wears some fancy kimono-esque dress-shirt thing? I've always liked Maxie's look, even if he does look like a generic Bond villain. Again, Maxie's original characterization is honestly always been pretty bland and safe, just a generic doomsday villain that has an obsession with the cover legendayr.

The OR/AS remakes gave all the evil team members a significant revamp, however, including giving all Team Magma members this, uh.. tweed felt undershirt thing going on? I'm not entirely sure. Maxie also got an upgrade into a completely different kind of a Bond villain, being like this stuffy-looking dude in a business suit and a glasses. Said glasses are important, they house his Mega Evolution keystone, which I thought was hilarious. But... I dunno. If he was just a badass in a nice suit (like Giovanni or Lysandre) he would've been a lot more badass, but the turtleneck thing he's got going on is so ridiculous. Man's an eco-terrorist leading a cult that's obsessed with drying up the sea, he can dress however he wants to.

Tabitha

• Position: Team Magma Admin
• Japanese Name: Homura

One thing about Team Magma and Aqua's blandness, to me, was always how much their dialogue was interchangeable... and that's because they are. Developing two games at once, the dialogues of Maxie, Archie and their respective goons are basically identical to each other over in the opposite game, just swapped around to say 'land' instead of 'sea', 'Kyogre' instead of 'Groudon', and the like. It's kind of a shame, really -- for the longest time, the only real characterization for Team Magma and Aqua came from the manga, which takes some real great liberties with the characters (Tabitha looks like this) to make them interesting antagonists that end up making members of our good guy cast be confused which side is the evil one. But we're talking about the game itself.

And in the game? Magma Admin Tabitha (a.k.a. the dude one) is just a dude grunt in a different pose, and the only interesting thing about him is that he's got a name that's traditionally given to a girl. OR/AS gave all the bad guy admins some unique dialogue and a lot of extended scenes, and in Omega Ruby, Tabitha becomes a fatter dude that goes 'ahyahyahyahya' a lot. Are they just making members of Team Magma the nerds and Team Aqua the jocks? Tabitha's new personality is less of a character and more of a trope, being this originally confident goon that ends up being beaten down by you so many times that they end up having a hard time keeping the facade up, but ultimately the most memorable thing about him is still his visual design. 

Courtney

• Position: Team Magma Admin
• Japanese Name: Kagari

Courtney, on the other hand, went from 'boring Team Magma Admin' into the fandom's darling overnight thanks to her portrayal in Omega Ruby, and I must say, I actually approve! Again, she gets significantly redesigned so that she's not just a regular grunt with a different pose and a longer skirt, and I'm not entirely sure what that thing around her tweed pencil dress is supposed to be, but it sure is neat-looking. Most importantly, though, is that Courtney is essentially a goddamn robot in Omega Ruby. Not that she's actually one (that we know of), but she has a dead-fish expression throughout the entire game and speaks in terms like 'Target... acquired" and "commencing... experiment" and speaks with a lot of A.I. sci-fi tropes and even goes crazy near the end as she gets obsessed with your player character. She's an interesting one in this new one! I like her a lot, and she's probably the most interesting out of the newly-revamped admins.

Team Aqua Grunts

I liked the style of original Team Magma a lot, but Team Aqua's whole crazy pirate vibe was always the cooler one of the two. The striped shirts, the pants with the bubble markings and the pirate bandanas all look pretty damn cool, and they really highlighted it even more with the OR/AS upgrade, giving Team Aqua's goons more pirate-y ripped shorts instead of the impractical-on-the-ocean huge tube pants. I'm not sure how those super-long striped stockings work on the dudes, but they sure are rocking it! Also, all the members of Team Aqua get a noticeable tan in the remakes, which make sense since they're all sea-faring people.

Sadly we don't actually see them being pirates, since the plot of Alpha Sapphire is still basically the same with Sapphire where they are crazy eco-terrorist Bond villains, but it's the thought that counts. Team Magma's whole reason for expanding land at least could be somewhat understood because they want to make more land for people (and presumably profit for it) but I guess Team Aqua just really really likes the ocean. The manga and the remakes give them a bit more depth by saying that 'the sea is the origin of all life' and stuff, but Team Aqua's members are all to crazy and rowdy for me to believe that they're led by any sort of higher purpose. I've also always thought that it's always a shame that the Team Aqua never really had a lot of variety considering the sheer amount of water Pokemon in Hoenn. It's only ever Carvanha (and the odd Wailmer or two in Emerald), and even when Alpha Sapphire had the chance to change teams, it's Grimer that they gave random Team Aqua grunts. Some water-loving team they are!

Archie

• Position: Team Aqua Leader
• Japanese Name: Aogiri

While I'm a bit more neutral on both of Maxie's looks, not really preferring one over the other, Archie is vastly improved by his OR/AS redesign. The original Archie was... what? Some sort of vaguely-maritime inspired yakuza boss who forgot to wear his undershirt and just decided to rock that exposed chest? The remakes gave him this awesome crazy pirate wetsuit deal with a waist-cape and a gigantic anchor necklace, and that's where he keeps his mega stone. He looks a lot more like a supervillain pirate, even if I think his underlings all rock the Team Aqua vibe a lot better than he does. He looks pretty cool even if at this point I've ran out of things to say about the Hoenn teams without resorting to their manga counterparts. Archie's facial hair screams 'villain' pretty well. 

Shelly

• Position: Team Aqua Admin
• Japanese Name: Izumi

Shelly went from a redhead with a puffy hair into a tanned lady with still-glorious hair. Costume-wise, I feel like she also changed a whole ton, but that's probably because the Team Aqua admins actually look significantly different compared to the grunts in the first place.  Compare original Shelly and the vanilla Aqua grunt with original Courtney and her respective grunt! Both versions of Shelly are pretty awesome-looking, although I'm not sure what those weird bulges are on the lower half of her outfit in the remake. There's really not a whole ton to say here, though. Out of the two Aqua admins, Shelly is the more mundane, cool-and-competent one. There's really nothing to be said... really kinda wished that the remakes gave these sub-bosses unique teams or something, y'know? At least the post-game story has these lieutenants be the big bads trying to like, further Archie or Maxie's goals after they have been reformed, but it's not quite as memorable. 

Matt

• Position: Team Aqua Admin
• Japanese Name: Ushio

In the original Sapphire, Matt was basically just a dude without a shirt, and it's like... he's sort of flexing or something? The ORAS redesigns took it a step further. Clearly at some point ORAS!Matt had some sort of shirt or vest, but as the tattered remains on his waist proves, he probably flexes a bit too much and he's probably more stacked than a Machoke. I love Matt in Alpha Sapphire, too, where he's clearly the admin that the game crew paid a bit more attention too, like Courtney. They don't quite go as over-the-top as giving Matt a gimmick speech pattern, but he's just so hammy and boisterous, saying that he "loves his bro Archie" and he's going to "love you to bits", and mocking Tabitha as a "little Makuhita man." He's just here to trash-talk his oppnents and have a good time beating people up with his pet shark.

Also, for the longest time I thought that the Aqua symbol on Matt's chest and abs is a tattoo because he loves Team Aqua a lot, but people have pointed out that it's probably him making like, un-tanned parts of his skin or something? A tattoo is infinitely cooler, but the mental image of Matt lying on top of the Team Aqua base suntanning himself and trying to get an Aqua symbol juuuust right on his chest is funny. 

Professor Birch

• Position: Pokemon Professor
• Japanese Name: Odamaki

Professor Birch is mostly interesting for just how different he is to Oak and Elm, and that's because unlike the two professors before him, Birch's whole deal is that he's an on-field Pokemon researcher, going into the wilds in his shorts (that's a bad idea, by the way, those Wurmple stings are going to be painful) and stuff. He specializes in researching Pokemon habitats, and I do like it that from Birch onwards all the professors have their own unique specialty. Makes poor Elm just that much more boring, huh? He's also the father of your rival, but that really doesn't become any sort of a factor in the games themselves.... I can see that this man is clearly a dad, though, with his dad gut. Birch's a bit more boisterous and bubbly, and you first really meet him when he's being chased around by a Poochyena or Zigzagoon in the wild, and he dropped his bag with all his Pokeballs. Not super memorable, and that's going to be a running commentary on me that none of the regional professors have much in lieu of memorability beyond unique designs, but at least the image of Birch being chased around by a little angry dog is funny.  

Wally

• Position: Pseudo-rival (Emerald, OR/AS)
• Japanese Name: Mitsuru

Wally is sort of a... pseudo-rival? You meet him early on and he is this sick kid who has to keep moving around before eventually settling on Verdanturf City where the air is a lot more suitable for him. And his design is honestly always pretty boring, just a generic kid with pajamas. In the original games he's always kind of just kinda there, a neat little recurring theme that you meet like three or four times in your journey after you help him catch a Ralts, and being consistently on the back-foot compared to you... even compared to Brendan/May. And then you meet him at the end of Victory Road, and suddenly he's got a pretty impressive team of five fully-evolved Pokemon. It's even more impressive in ORAS, where he gets a unique stage, a unique music, and also is one of the few trainers in the story to use post-Generation-III Pokemon, having evolved the Magneton and Roselia he had in Ruby and Sapphire into their final forms, plus having a mighty Mega Gallade. He's all right, and I don't think he's quite enough of a presence to be that memorable, but I've always loved that he eventually managed to become a little badass. In ORAS, he even has a Life Orb/Gale Wings Talonflame in rematches, the cheeky little shit! Anyway, Wally's always kinda neat, but I really wished they had dnoe more with him.

Honourable mentions for other Hoenn NPC's whose only visual artwork are from the TCG, anime and manga: Mr. Briney, the kooky old man who owns a boat and sails you around; Lanette the scatter-brained PC manager; her sister Brigette who runs Pokemon Box Ruby & Sapphire and later shows up for the 3DS's Pokemon Bank; Professor Cosmo, who's just there to be held hostage but also gives you some hints about the Bond-villain volcano laser; Wanda, Wally's sister who gets separated from her fiancee in Rusturf Tunnel and is unable to meet up with him until you help them break the rocks; Mr. Stone, Steven's dad who gives you a free cell phone and tells yo to deliver a letter; Captain Stern, whose submarine is hijacked by the evil team for their plan to dive into the ocean. 

Scott

• Position: Battle Frontier Owner
• Japanese Name: Enishida

No, I will never forget the Battle Frontier! I love that area, even if Nintendo forgets all about the Frontier Brains since 2004!

And now we've entered the characters introduced in Pokemon Emerald, which, while the main story is going on, has a recurring character with a unique model called Scott who watches you and talks about how good you're improving. Turns out that he's basically like this crazy billionaire who's made a gigantic theme park, only instead of Universal Studios Japan, this is the Pokemon world so he's made Battle Frontier, a giant island with unique facilities where you enter in with Pokemon and fight in gimmicky situations. I love this, but evidently since the Battle Frontier would be phased out very quickly in favour of generic Battle Towers, apparently the majority of the fandom didn't care enough or the creators just couldn't be bothered to program in as many variations. 

I know I wouldn't have anything to say about Scott. He's neat and he's got a neat Hawaiian (Alolan?) shirt and stuff, and with his sunglasses he does look like a rich billionaire... but as a kid I got it in my head for some reason that Scott's likely the final boss after you beat the seven Frontier Brains. But he isn't, he's just a funny dude that introduces the Battle Frontier to you. Both the anime and manga had entire seasons revolving around the Battle Frontier thanks to the longer gap between Generation III and IV, though, so these guys get a fair bit of screentime there. 

Noland

• Position: Battle Factory Head
• Japanese Name: Datsura

The Battle Factory is a giant office-inspired building that basically tests your knowledge about Pokemon as a whole by giving you a group of Pokemon to choose from and you can only select three for a run, and after every victory you're able to swap in and out. It's pretty cool, sometimes maybe you want that unimpressive-looking Linoone who's jacked up with random TM moves for coverage, or maybe you want that boring-but-speedy Electrode simply to get a sweeper. Or something. Noland himself is a pretty regular-looking guy who also uses randomly-generated Pokemon. I'm sure he reminds me of something, but I'm not sure what. He's like, just some dude, perhaps a bit more detailed than a named NPC would be in Generation I or II, but ultimately he's kind of boring. 

Lucy

• Position: Battle Pike Queen
• Japanese Name: Azami

Lucy heads the Battle Pike, a gigantic tunnel shaped like a Seviper that seems to be based on game shows, there are random encounters that you can enter in every room, and depending on your luck (or reading the hints) you can basically reach all the way to the end of the requisite runs and battle Lucy with no battles, or you might fight tooth-and-nail to reach her while random rooms cause your Pokemon to be paralyzed or poisoned for no real reason. 

Lucy's a pretty cool looking and snazzy design, looking pretty hot and badass, and I do like that she's basically patterning herself after her favourite Pokemon Seviper without it being too obvious (like, say, Riley from Gen IV). Love that pair of bangs that are coloured like a Seviper's fangs. Lucy's team is always fascinating because she doesn't base her team on a type or even strategy, but she uses exclusively Pokemon with a serpentine body, which means that her two teams in Emerald include her ace Seviper; the two sea serpents Gyarados and Milotic; the giant ground snake Steelix... and Shuckle? I've never thought about Shuckle as a worm-like or serpentine Pokemon until I fought Pike Queen Lucy. Actually, I've never thought about Shuckle at all until Pike Queen Lucy's Shuckle was a literal wall that constantly frustrated me as I keep trying and failing to beat her. Damn that Shuckle! Anyway, Lucy's great. All respect for her. 

Tucker

• Position: Battle Dome Ace
• Japanese Name: Heath

Speaking of fabulous characters, Dome Ace Tucker's pretty fabulous, too, huh? I guess it's probably around this time that these sort of more flamboyant characters start to get more positive portrayals in general Japanese media. It isn't enoguh for Tuckhave a skin-tight purple suit and fancy traditionally-feminine hair, though, he also has those gigantic Tinkerbell fairy wings on his back. His characterization is basically a gigantic narcisstic showboat but hey, if you dress like that, you can rock being a gigantic showboat. The Battle Dome is basically a generic Battle Tower with a faux-tournament setting, but since everyone you face is an AI trainer it really doesn't matter. Like all the Battle Frontier Heads, Tucker has two teams, one for each time you challenge him, and like all Frontier heads Tucker isn't afraid to use a mixture of starters, pseudos and legendaries (he's got a Latias in his rematch battle)... but the one consistent Pokemon he has in both his teams is his Swampert. Aww, he loves his big fat frog-fish. 

Greta

• Position: Battle Pike Queen
• Japanese Name: Kogomi

Greta looks like a very traditional athletic martial arts practitioner, albeit her outfit is a bit more colourful than most... that blue and pink really blend with each other pretty well, yeah? Greta herself leads the Battle Arena, a martial-arts-tournament style system where your victory isn't based on whether you KO all your opponent but on points given depending on how you win. Greta herself is kind of a boring 'strength!' trainer, with her dialogue being very generic. Despite looking like a Fighting-type expert (and, mind you, she does use a Heracross and a Breloom), Greta's Pokemon is pretty varied, and the only one that stays consistent within her two teams is, unexpectedly, an Umbreon. Neat!

Brandon

• Position: Battle Pyramid King
• Japanese Name: Jindai

Perhaps the most interesting one out of the Battle Frontier Heads is Brandon, who's basically a huge Indiana Jones style arhaeologist, sans fedora and whip. He's got a pretty neat getup and design, even if it does look kind of boring, but the Battle Pyramid is always my favourite part of the Hoenn Battle Frontier, where you actually walk around in dungeons avoiding trainers and wild pokemon and scavenging for healing items while you make your way to the next level and so on before you finally earn the right to fight Brandon. He's a boisterous adventurer who talks about how great it is to have passion and stuff, and an easter egg in ORAS tells us that he's the star of a reality show where he runs around looking for legendary Pokemon in ruins. 

And for such a typical-looking person.... Brandon's Pokemon really shows what a great ruin spelunker he is. Your very first battle has Brandon wielding a team full of Legendaries -- the three Regi golems, in fact, which is a huge, huge surprise and I thought it was the coolest thing as a kid. Your rematch has Brandon show up with the three legendary birds from Kanto. And, sure, the other Frontier Brains might use one or two legendary Pokemon, a Latias here, an Entei there, but Brandon's the only one whose team is exclusively made up of legendary Pokemon... a fact that he retains in all his other appearances, and in the anime and manga, using legendaries are a bigger deal! He's cool. Also... a Brendan and a Brandon in the same game? Someone was probably named that in the English localization team. 

Spenser

• Position: Battle Palace Maven
• Japanese Name: Ukon

Spenser is the leader of the Battle Palace, another vaguely dojo-inspired facility. Only unlike Greta's (where your Pokemon is given marks), in the Battle Palace you don't issue orders to your Pokemon and you have to trust that your Pokemon can battle properly and land that super-effective move or something. It sound neat in theory, but ultimately it's kind of the most boring of the Battle Frontier in Emerald because it just involves you deciding when to switch Pokemon and hope that your mons are smart enough to use coverage moves. Spenser himself uses a Slaking in both his teams, the only one that remains consistent... and he has to really trust that huge lazy gorilla-sloth.

Design-wise, Spenser is kind of a generic old mysterious shifu archetype (and the subversion is that he puts up a front of a rowdy old man when he first fights you), but there are parts of him I've always found to be interesting -- he's got Unown tattoos on his shoulders and his staff is patterened after Kyogre's patterns. This doesn't really get followed up at all in the games, but the manga does give Spensers unique outlook on life some backstory in that he's someone who tried and failed to use the Orbs to control Kyogre before. Huh!

Anabel

• Position: Battle Tower Maiden
• Japanese Name: Lila

Anabel is always the most boring of the Frontier Brains to me. She's a lady called Anabel, she leads the Battle Tower (the most straightforward one, it's just fight then move on) and her design is... that's sure a fancy shirt you got there, but you're really just kind of boring, Anabel. Her signature Pokemon is a Snorlax (always annoying in these Battle Towers) although both of her teams feature one of the Johto legendary beasts -- a Raikou and later an Entei. She's also extremely boring.

That all changed when, for some reason, after more than a decade of the Emerald Frontier Brains being kind of forgotten, Anabel (or, rather, 'an' Anabel) was chosen to show up in Sun and Moon as an amnesiac person who had dimension-traveled to Alola from a different timeline after nearly being killed by an Ultra Beast, dresses up in a smashing suit with a fancier-looking hair, and basically ends up being a serious extradimensional-monster-hunting secret agent. And she's extra-useful because she is a 'Faller', not coming from the Sun/Moon dimension herself, which makes her ideal bait to draw the Ultra Beasts towards her. This is a very wild and surprisingly out-there remake of her character, and it's genuinely interesting that out of all the underutilized characters it's Anabel that gets to be a member of the Pokemon version of X-Files.

Zinnia

• Position: Lorekeeper
• Japanese Name: Higana

The remakes, Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, added a bunch of extra characters, because they also added a whole new epilogue called the 'Delta Episode' that focuses on your protagonist dealing with unlocking Rayquaza's true power atop the Sky Pillar and also a meteorite containing Deoxys threatening the Earth. And also the Magma/Aqua admins being villains. Tying this all is Zinnia, a mysterious girl hailing from the 'Draconid Tribe' and holding the position of Lorekeeper, which all sounds a bit too D&D-fantasy for a Pokemon game... but Generation VI and VII did kind of experiment a lot with the genres Pokemon can be. As a character design... Zinnia's cool, with a tattered cape and everything, but perhaps looks a bit too... modernized for me to buy that she's from some kind of dragon tribe or something.

Zinnia primarily uses a small army of fully-evolved dragon-type Pokemon, and the animation team has her basically crouch and have an almost bestial pose when you fight her, which I find was pretty cool. Zinnia herself is trying to actually help out Team Magma/Aqua (depending on your game) to revive Groudon/Kyogre, which, in turn, would allow Rayquaza to awaken, which, in turn, would allow her to use Rayquaza to stop the even bigger threat of a giant meteor coming to Earth... but of course, Rayquaza becomes buddies with you instead. Her main plot is kind of honestly not the best-written one with a bunch of plot holes here and there, but throughout the story she keeps talking with her Whismur (who she doesn't battle with), named Aster, and it's very heavily implied that she's doing all of this in the memory of her mother or mentor or something, also named Aster. Her story's a bit heavy-handed, but I did like it for what it is.

Aarune

• Position: Secret Base Expert
• Japanese Name: Giri

Ruby and Sapphire actually had a whole ton of random little gimmicks which really blew my mind when I jumped from the GBC games to the GBA games, but not all of them had enough focus to them in-game. ORAS tries to highlight this by introducing specific new NPC's to introduce you to said gimmicks. So the Secret Bases (you can make a fancy treehouse in like, specific trees and cave cracks and stuff) is given an NPC called Aarune. He sure is a cowboy-looking dude, and he sure is boisterous! He's pretty much just a massive exposition machine, but he's neat. I don't really remember him at all to have an opinion either way. 

Lisia

• Position: Contest Idol
• Japanese Name: Lutia

The Pokemon Contests in Hoenn are a very neat concept where your Pokemon perform and get judged like a pet contest, but while they are a Huge Deal in both the anime and manga, which had major members of their respective casts be a 'Coordinator' instead of a regular battler, in the games themselves the contests are almost an afterthought that future generations would discard for less-interesting and less-elaborate minigames. ORAS gives us Wallace's niece Lisia, who sure shares her uncle's fashion style! She's associated with an Altaria and, like Lucy, clearly models aspects of her outfit after Altaria without being too obvious about it. I don't really play enough of the contests in ORAS to really remember what she's like. She's basically just 'young Wallace' from her dialogue. Neat, I suppose.


More trainer classes! Due to the way double battles work, sometimes a bunch of existing sprites (like Tubers and Swimmers) are smooshed together to form a double battle class similar to the Twins, being called like the 'Sibling Team' or something, or two Cooltrainers being called 'Cool Couple'. There's a bunch of this not just in Ruby and Sapphire, but in all future games, and I won't really be talking about any of them. Also, I'm going to be including a pair of ersatz trainer classes that debuted in FireRed and LeafGreen, the third-generation remakes of the Kanto games.

Let's start off with the Pokemon Breeder (Pokemon Burida), which I could've sworn was introduced in the previous generation, which was the introduced the concept of Pokemon Breeding in general. Since forever in the anime, Brock has been saying that he wants to be a 'Breeder' instead of a battler, which basically sort of entails into a combination of a farmer, a real-life animal breeder and a nursery schoolteacher. They tend to have aprons and carry around buckets and brooms and whatnot, because as anyone who has owned a pet will tell you... them dogs and cats poop a lot.

Most Breeders tend to look similar, just swapping the specifics of the apron and shirt they're wearing, other than Generation V's Breeders, who lack aprons at all; and Generation VII's Breeders, who are yee-haw cowboy ranch folk. In battle, they tend to focus more on un-evolved Pokemon, and tend to have them at a lower level than the other trainers in their area. Specifically in Generation III and IV, they also be ones that want to give you rematches, and you can actually see the progression of their little baby blobs into more powerful ones.


Pokemon Ranger (Pokemon Renja) is another staple of the games that has shown up in a whole lot of games, showing in every game between Generation III and VI. And they almost look alike, just being dudes and ladies in athletic ranger outfits, although of course the Unova male ranger is basically doing an Indiana Jones cosplay. The XY variants are probably the most different and my favourite, with the zip-up-to-neck jackets they have. Like real-life Rangers, these Pokemon Rangers basically go around protecting the nature and also, presumably, making sure ten-year-olds that aren't video game protagonists don't break their necks jumping on rock formations with their acro bikes. In Generation V, Rangers have a nice little quirk of handing out healing berries after you defeat them, which I thought was a nice little touch.

But wait, that's not all! The concept of Pokemon Rangers are brought into its own spin-off mini-game series, Pokemon Ranger; Shadows of Almia and Guardian Signs. It's basically a gimmicky game to make use of the touch-screen of the Nintendo DS more, but the world-building was pretty neat. These other Pokemon Ranger in the regions of Fiore, Almia and Oblivia don't actually capture Pokemon in Poke-balls, but use these Beyblade-esque devices to spin around rampaging Pokemon and calm them down, or to somehow befriend wild Pokemon and have them tag along with you. It's a nice little concept where the Pokemon Ranger sort of acts more in a Tarzan sort of way, befriending wild creatures that aren't... domesticated? There's a lot of fanfiction and fan theories out there about the implications this raises for the Pokemon world in general, and if the Pokeballs we've been using all along are actually unethical, but since it's the premise of the main games it's sadly not going to be a concept that they explore at all. To wit, all of the Rangers in the main-series game still utilize Pokeballs very visibly in their sprites.

The Interviewers (Intabyua), namely a pair called Gabby & Ty, are such a presence as recurring characters in the Hoenn games that I'm going to talk about them first. They tend to not be too impressive as actual trainers, using vaguely technology-related or sound-related Pokemon like Magnemites, Loudreds, Klinks and the like, but the thing is that they interview you, you can say something to them and when you see one of the many TV screens scattered across the region, sometimes you tune in to the interviewers talking to you. They don't really show up a lot outside of Hoenn and Sinnoh, but make a triumphant and very appropriate return in Galar, which fits a lot with the whole showman athlete superstar vibe that your protagonist has in that game. And, of course, this being a GBA game, this leads you to answering questions with one-word replies. It's a small thing, but I always thought that this was pretty cool. The Interviewers Gabby & Ty are actually pretty major recurring characters in the manga, too, which is nice.


The Lady (Ojo-sama; roughly High Class Girl) is another one that shows up a lot, showing up in all games up to Generation VI. Is there something about VII and VIII that caused them to have a lot more trainer class cuts? Probably something to do with the development time between main series games. There's really not much to say here, the Lady is just a high-class lady that walk around in cute dresses and have a huge sun-hat. Is that like, an actual thing? Do all high-class ladies wear those sun-hats? Basically, the Ladies tend to use (relatively) weak Pokemon and give out a lot of money when defeated, and also use their Full Restores on their level 7 Zigzagoons. They aren't assholes, though, unlike...

...unlike their snotty male counterparts. The Rich Boy (Obo-chama; roughly High Class Boy) is more obviously meant to be counterparts with the Lady in the original Japanese, but virtually all the Ladies in the game are all nice sports and generally friendly, while Rich Boys tended to be a lot snottier. Just look at that pose in the XY artwork! They're basically identical to the Lady as a class concept and in the variety they use, though.


Collector (Pokemon Korekuta; Pokemon Collector) is basically me, huh. They don't really care about the competitiveness of the Pokemon they catch, they just wanna catch 'em all! They're sort of like the spiritual successor of the Super Nerd, who gets phased out around the same time that the Collector gets introduced. They're nerdy dudes in glasses who like to use a variety of Pokemon. And sometimes that's all there is to them, just dudes with rarer Pokemon, but Hoenn and Alola's Collectors explicitly use version-exclusive Pokemon, which actually ends up giving their 'want to hunt down rare Pokemon' spiel a bit more oomph.

We have a bunch of new classes to celebrate the introduction of double battles into Generation III. One of them is the 'Twins', which we covered in Generation II, and there are just some that are just a bunch of regular sprites strung together (like two Poke Fans make a "Poke Fan Family", or a Swimmer and a Tuber making a "Bro and Sis Team") but we've also got the Young Couple (Rabu Rabu Kapuru; Love Love Couple), a pair of sickeningly sweet lovebirds that are super-duper into each other. They use 'paired' pokemon. I love that they have kissing Luvdisc shirts in the ORAS artwork, that's just appropriate for this class.


And here we are with, uh, a trainer class that's literally just some person you meet on the streets. It's Parasol Lady (Parasoru Onesan), she's a lady with a parasol. They're pretty cute, and you tend to encounter them in areas where the weather's raining heavily. Oh, right, Generation III onwards are when entire areas can have a weather effect going on, huh? The Generation III and V Parasol Ladies seem like they're actually ready to prance around and dance in the rain with their raincoat-esque dresses. I used to think that there wasn't a theme to a Parasol Lady's Pokemon, but apparently it's either Water-types (so they go out in the rain to allow their buddies to play) or Pokemon with weather effects like sunny day or sandstorm (so the parasol is so they don't get bothered by the rain). Either way, they seem like they're pleasant people who take good care of their pets.

Hoenn is a region with 'too much water', so it's not just Swimmers and Fishermen that are there as water-Pokemon-wielding trainers. There are also the Tubers (Ukiwa Boi/Garu; Inner Tube Boy/Girl), who are little kids that run aroud with their inner tubes. Somehow they have Pokemon despite not even being able to be trusted to run around in the beach by themselves. It's adorable how many additional young children classes start running around in the later games. They are basically junior Swimmers, using pre-evolved, weaker Water Pokemon. They also give out a measly amount of money, because, well, they're freaking four years old or something. Of course they only had money to buy a soda. And you beat up their pet rabbit and took that money too, you big meanie.

The Battle Girl (Batoru Garu), alternatively called Crush Girl (Kakuto Musume; Fighting Girl) in FireRed and LeafGreen, are, well, martial artist ladies who appears ready to absolutely kick your ass if their Meditites and Machops are unable to do it. For a majority of their appearances they're basically dressed in midriff-baring sports attire, and I always liked just how dynamic their original Generation III artwork (and the ORAS battle sprite that homages it) looked. I also found the Battle Girls of Generation V pretty fun, too, with their kung-fu outfits. They're basically girl versions of Black Belts, using Fighting Pokemon and stuff.


Are triathlons commonly held in Kyushu? There are six variants of the Triathlete (Toraiasurito) sprite, a male one and a female one for each part of the race (jogging, swimming and cycling). They sort of take over the role of bikers for the cycling road, and the 'jogging' variant show up every now and then all over the place, but I've never found this class particularly memorable, and their Pokemon selection are kind of bland. Was there supposed to be a triathlon mini-game in the Hoenn games, perhaps? There's a biking road for sure, but otherwise I didn't really see why they needed six different sprites for this class.


The Aroma Lady (Aromana Oneesan; Aroma Lady) are like... ladies in dresses with nice perfumes? Or something? They're neat, and mostly use specifically Grass-type Pokemon that are geared more towards flowers like Roselia, Gloom and Sunflora. I really don't have much of an opinion about this one.


The Ruin Maniac (Iseki Mania; Ruin Maniac) is pretty thematic, though, and I absolutely love the look of the third-generation sprite with the huge magnifying glass and the Watson-esque mustache and the maps and whatnot jutting out of his back. The Ruin Maniacs are basically there looking at ruins, and Hoenn has one of the most elaborate ruin-based legendary Pokemon side-quest with the Regis. A fair amount of Ruin Maniacs are actually found close to where the Regis are entombed, they just had absolutely no idea how near they are. For whatever reason, though, their most common Pokemon are Sandshrew and Sandslash, and it's not until later games that they're given more appropriate Pokemon for ruin investigators like Baltoy, Nosepass and Bronzor.

The Ninja Boys (Ninja Gokko; Make-Believe Ninja) are very memorable. In the routes adjacent to Fortree City, there are these long stretches of forests... and sometimes you see a tree that looks a bit weird, like it's... some sort of two-dimensional artwork? And then the trees fold down and turns out that it's actually a foldable cut-out made by these Ninja Boys. Sometimes, in Fallarbor Town, they hide underneath piles of ash! It's hilarious! Janine and Koga might not have these Ninja Boys around as gym grunts, but they're clearly meant to be hilariously incompetent as a 'make believe' ninja, and the ORAS artwork makes this particularly clear by having them waving what's clearly a plastic sword. Also, is that Generation IV ninja boy doing the Rasengan pose from Naruto?

I, uh, genuinely forgot the Dragon Tamer (Doragon Tsukai; Dragon Tamer) exists at all, at least before Generation IV. I thought they first showed up with their Wolverine-esque hair in Sinnoh! Well, they're basically like a cheap version of Lance, if Lance wore a skin-tight bodysuit he bought in a cheap costume shop instead of dressing like a boss. The ORAS version of the Dragon Tamer still looks kinda dorky, but at least he looks like he's cosplaying Hyperion or something.


I also forgot the Hex Maniac (Okaruto Mania; Occult Maniac) showed up in Generation III! They were made extremely famous in Generation VI, with the amazing artwork with the crazy eyes, the goth-witch dress and the crazy hair that made them famous over-night. Not to mention that one fucking terrifying ghost girl in Lumiose City from Pokemon XY that uses the Hex Maniac model. You all know the one. Hex Maniacs are super-memorable in XY and ORAS that I genuinely am surprised to see that they showed up earlier in Generation III... and they're cool, they have this witch hat and blank eyes and a funky cape, but they're no manic-looking goth girls. Obviously, they use spooky ghost and psychic types.


The Bug Maniac (Konchu Mania; Bug Maniac) never really shows up outside of Hoenn games, and neither do the classes we'll cover after him. He's basically a stronger Bug Catcher, tending to have more powerful evolved Bug Pokemon, and tending to have crazier dialogue. It is admittedly very redundant and calling someone a 'maniac' for just liking bugs is mean, so I can see why this one got phased out.


They never really settle on a proper Fire-type expert, huh? Bouncing around from Burglar to Firebreather and now to Kindler (Kyanpufaia; Campfire). I've always thought that the name 'kindler' and the fact that the dude is waving around two sticks with fire made the guy look a bit like a crazy arsonist, and it's not until I saw the ORAS remake that I realized they're supposed to be burning logs for a campfire.


The Expert (Tatsujin; Expert) class is basically replaced with 'Veteran' from Generation IV onwards, the ORAS remakes notwithstanding. They're basically old people in traditional Japanese clothing who are old but are experts in battling. They tend to use Fighting-types, except in Emerald. That's a neat trope, but I genuinely forgot this class existed at all, and I'm someone who played the Hoenn games more times than I care to count.


I have never realized that the Sr. and Jr. (Senpai & Kohai) actually had unique sprites instead of just lumping the Generation III Lass sprites together. They get renamed into Teammates in later versions, which kind of lose that 'senpai and kohai' vibe... and they've only ever appeared in Hoenn games. It's an interesting trope from many anime and manga, and I'm actually kind of surprised they don't show up more in other games, even if it is just two lasses together. Like many other unique double-battle classes in the game, they're just there to emphasize double battles.


The Painter (Ekaki; painter) is exclusive to FireRed and LeafGreen, and so far is essentially replaced by the 'Artist' trainer class, which also has a different Japanese name. She's a painter, and she uses Smeargle. Another one that's basically a profession. Not much to say here.