Character information
Jun. 16th, 2021 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lovelycharmingName: Kojiro (Japanese), James (English)—flexible on this, I can use whatever you’re happy with and will default to English because most folks are familiar with the dub.
Age: 25 (he's gotten called "ojisan"/"uncle" in DP and Musashi/Jessie was subject to jokes about being an “oban” (old maid)/“old hag” in the first season because it was unusual up until the 90’s to be unmarried at 25, although these attitudes are changing...), they're both in their mid-twenties.
Affiliation: Team Rocket (although he and his team are on the kinder side and still have some morals and standards, so, they’ll refuse exceptionally cruel or world-ending endeavors.)
Personality: [CW vague mentions of physical and emotional child abuse and past self-destructive tendencies.] Despite being a villain and part of a shady criminal organization described as the Pokemon mafia (he cruelly steals Pokemon from loving trainers, aids in missions where Pokemon are captured en masse via traps instead of challenged in battle with a choice to be caught or not, and has even injured people, threatened with bombs and guns early on, and caused property damage), James and his team mates are among the weakest and kindest members of Team Rocket, and James is easily the most sensitive, sentimental, childish, and soft-hearted of the Team Rocket trio.
Even when he is given a bit more power or even promoted, he remains the kindest one at heart. Even at their darkest, he’s described as pure-hearted. Most of his Pokemon, only joined because he asked them if they wanted to be with him. Without even a battle!
James is very sentimental and loves to collect things, namely bottlecaps, but also Pokemon Cards, which the Rocket trio used in place of a PokeDex for information when they didn’t own one.
James also loves sweets, particularly chocolate. Cutting back on sweets (to maybe just one or two chocolates...) is a great sacrifice for him, it’s what he does if he wants to save money.
James has a childish temperament and to be fair, he did run away from a very abusive home at around, 8 or 9? Certainly younger than most Pokemon trainers... while he’s matured in some respects, in others, he’s still very much stuck in that mindset.
If he’s upset or tired, he tends to whine and complain, sometimes quite dramatically, as he had a pampered upbringing before this life of abject poverty (at least until the promotion in Unova.)
If something makes him sad, he bursts into tears, sometimes running off.
While he’s confident in his looks and loves to dress up and wear disguises (whether masculine or feminine), he lacks confidence in his everyday life, and as such, tends to get bossed around by Jessie and Meowth rather easily.
He adores Jessie and considers her his eternal partner. He loves Jessie and Meowth both and would do anything for them, and the same can be said for his Pokemon... he’ll even happily give them up (but of course, he won’t be able to keep the tears at bay for long) if it’s for their benefit... their happiness and health always comes first.
He had a bit of a self-destructive tendency back in his training days, quick to martyr himself for his friends’ sake, rather than figure a way out to save everyone... he would rather fall to his possible death than hurt his team mates trying to save himself! He doesn’t seem to act this way much anymore and is better at trying to save his team mates and himself.
Because of his messed-up childhood, he’s weirdly flippant about being paralyzed with Stun Spore and
treats it like a very common ailment, thinking Jessie is acting like a big baby when she’s sick with it. ^^;;
James does have a few triggers because of his abusive fiancée, one of them is literally the word fiancée (it gives him flashbacks and had him climbing up a tree to get away from some teenager with a crush who kept saying it) and the other is the concept of getting married... he at one point says he’d rather die than get married to Jessie, imagining being bossed around while she calls him darling. He seems to be gamophobic. He can be fine with pretend weddings, and has comfortably dressed as a bride for a disguise once!
James does not handle the sound of a cracking whip very well. Jessie used one while training Meowth once—never actually striking at him with it, just snapping it— and James was visibly stiff, with his back turned, trying to ignore it, but at the last whip crack and command, he shouted “yes!” to it as Meowth did. It was a very unsettling...
James does seem to get annoyed or jealous when Jessie falls for other people (there’s a bit where he breaks the fourth wall to rip Steven Stone out of a wedding fantasy she’s having... ^^;;), but his feelings for her aren’t explicitly romantic in the anime (they do marry at the end of the very loose manga adaptation, though), although there are hints. What is canon is that they’re very much attached and James especially gets absolutely heartbroken if left alone too long (a day is too long for him!)
He does show his maturity in how he handles it when it seems she’ll marry a doctor who was kind to her when she nearly drowned... despite looking obviously, clearly upset, he tells Meowth, if Jessie is pursuing her happiness as a woman, they should cheer her on. It had a very I want my beloved to be happy (even if it’s with someone else) vibe, but again, Jessie would love to settle down and be happy, but James is afraid of marriage entirely, so we’re unlikely to see progress on that front...
History: James was the sole heir to a luxuriously rich, but cold and stuffy family... he enjoyed many pleasures his two orphaned and impoverished team mates never had the chance to, but he was terribly lonely. While Jessie had an abysmally poor but loving mother who unfortunately had to give her up to foster care, James had wealth and no friend on that estate but his loyal dog Pokemon Growlie.
When he was very young, his parents announced his engagement to a girl named Jessiebelle (who looks a lot like Jessie...), at first glance, he fell in love, even writing her a childish love letter he would later hide)... but soon after the party he first met her at, he learns she’s really quite awful!
From hating his beloved Growlie, to frequently paralyzing him with her Gloom (later Vileplume)’s Stun Spore and torturing him with whips, clubs, racks, and a variety of other methods in a sort of dungeon (... with his parents’ full approval, as they see her as turning him into a proper gentleman), needless to say... James had enough and chose to run away.
He left Growlie with his family, even when he reunited with him again as an adult. Which he only did because his parents faked their deaths, so his team mates bossed him into going home to collect his inheritance, but it was only a trick, as James anticipated! Growlie saves him when Jessiebelle paralyzes him again, and defends him. He escapes, but tells Growlie to watch over his parents, showing James still loves them, in his own way, despite how terrible they are to him.
James is also fond of a grandfather (never shown, unless it was actually the elderly servant he calls Pop-pop/Jiiya) who used to make him antidotes for paralysis due to Stun Spore from Salveyo weed...
At one of his family’s many summer homes, there is also an elderly pair of servants James calls Nanny (Baaya) and Pop-pop (Jiiya), who loved James, and let him play and explore his hobbies, like bottlecap collecting and ham radio, while staying there. James loved them so much, that when he saw them again, he spent the whole day trying to keep the fact that he joined Team Rocket secret from them, not wanting to disappoint them... when the truth eventually came out, they were shocked, but were pleased to see he made good friends, even in such a loathsome organization, and that he still had the same kind heart.
He left his ill Chimecho, a Pokemon he wanted to train ever since he saw one in a festival as a small child, in their care, which seems rather fitting.
After running away, canon is a bit inconsistent about what happened... the old history (which may have been retconned out) was that he and Jessie attended the illustrious Pokemon Tech, but flunked out. They also joined a bike gang as teenagers (James was the only member who still needed training wheels ^^;;;;;;;)...
The new history is that they met during their training days in Team Rocket (but their first meeting was very unusually intense, so, they may have recognized each other...?), where Jessie was very cold and distant and had a bad habit of leaving her partners behind, saving only herself. This earned her a bad reputation and the nickname Shinigami Musashi (something like “Soul Reaper Jessie,” but the dub didn’t really translate this part for obvious reasons.) She lost 12 partners before James was assigned to her team, making him her thirteenth partner.
When she tried to coolly inform him how many failed before him, he tells her he isn’t interested in hearing about the failures of those before him (the dub turns this into some awkward exchange where she tells him she won’t carry him and he says no one’s carried him since his mom ^^;;;)... he also reassures her he won’t run away.
His kindness shines through when Meowth gets hungry and thirsty while climbing, even though he already finished his share, so James gives him his bread and water, asking only for a bottlecap for his collection.
(For the record, he still has that bottlecap today.)
But, after some difficult training, where he keeps insisting to Jessie that he won’t run away, they retire for the night, camping out. Jessie finally starts eating her share of bread, but Meowth is hungry again, so she gives him a piece... recalls that James ate nothing, so she gives him a piece too.
James finally starts opening up (but the dub for some reason completely removes all their references to the past, so, again, I’ll go by the original)... he tells her that, in truth, he had spent his entire life running away from different things... he’s always been running away, up until this moment.
She confesses to always being alone, even though she keeps being paired up with different partners.
He tells her they can’t change the past, but they can create a new one tomorrow...
They’re finally closer, but their practice mission goes badly when they have to cross a wooden rope bridge... it snaps, like basically every rope bridge in this series, and James is dangling while Jessie tries to pull him up... and poor Meowth is the rope between them! James can’t stand seeing Meowth in pain, so he lets go, falling into the rapids below.
James is hospitalized after this. He stays like that until the final exam, which Jessie proceeds to, alone and partnerless again... she bitterly asks (in the original) “is this all that there is?”
But James appears and replies with what will be the basis of their motto “If you ask us ‘if this is all there is?’ Our answer will be the universe’s compassion!” (The Japanese motto usually quotes the last line spoken by another character or it’ll just be “if you ask us about ‘this or that’” as default)
He even throws off the bandages dramatically too! He’s well enough to join her, Jessie’s touched ro finally have a partner who won’t run away, and they proceed to their final exam.
They successfully infiltrate a building, reach the top, and have another scare where James is about to sacrifice himself for his team again, but Jessie absolutely refuses, even risking failing a timed exam just to pull him and Meowth up to safety, putting no one in harm’s way.
They succeed in their test and they and their (injured) rivals, Butch and Cassidy, also succeed.
Well, Jessie and Cassidy are rivals, James just likes to antagonize Butch sometimes by calling him the wrong name. Butch and Cassidy also made their own motto parodying Jessie and James’, so, that’s something...
At some point during their training, Jessie and James helped out a junior rookie called Christopher who admired them so much, that when he left Team Rocket and reformed, he opened a line of ramen shops named after them. He might be the anime’s equivalent of Mondo (a minor, rookie Team Rocket member only present in the CD dramas who shows up to save Jessie, James, and Meowth from whatever fixes they’re stuck in after run-ins with Ash... like Cristopher, Mondo has short brown hair and brown eyes, and admires Jessie and James.)
Age: 25 (he's gotten called "ojisan"/"uncle" in DP and Musashi/Jessie was subject to jokes about being an “oban” (old maid)/“old hag” in the first season because it was unusual up until the 90’s to be unmarried at 25, although these attitudes are changing...), they're both in their mid-twenties.
Affiliation: Team Rocket (although he and his team are on the kinder side and still have some morals and standards, so, they’ll refuse exceptionally cruel or world-ending endeavors.)
Personality: [
Even when he is given a bit more power or even promoted, he remains the kindest one at heart. Even at their darkest, he’s described as pure-hearted. Most of his Pokemon, only joined because he asked them if they wanted to be with him. Without even a battle!
James is very sentimental and loves to collect things, namely bottlecaps, but also Pokemon Cards, which the Rocket trio used in place of a PokeDex for information when they didn’t own one.
James also loves sweets, particularly chocolate. Cutting back on sweets (to maybe just one or two chocolates...) is a great sacrifice for him, it’s what he does if he wants to save money.
James has a childish temperament and to be fair, he did run away from a very abusive home at around, 8 or 9? Certainly younger than most Pokemon trainers... while he’s matured in some respects, in others, he’s still very much stuck in that mindset.
If he’s upset or tired, he tends to whine and complain, sometimes quite dramatically, as he had a pampered upbringing before this life of abject poverty (at least until the promotion in Unova.)
If something makes him sad, he bursts into tears, sometimes running off.
While he’s confident in his looks and loves to dress up and wear disguises (whether masculine or feminine), he lacks confidence in his everyday life, and as such, tends to get bossed around by Jessie and Meowth rather easily.
He adores Jessie and considers her his eternal partner. He loves Jessie and Meowth both and would do anything for them, and the same can be said for his Pokemon... he’ll even happily give them up (but of course, he won’t be able to keep the tears at bay for long) if it’s for their benefit... their happiness and health always comes first.
He had a bit of a self-destructive tendency back in his training days, quick to martyr himself for his friends’ sake, rather than figure a way out to save everyone... he would rather fall to his possible death than hurt his team mates trying to save himself! He doesn’t seem to act this way much anymore and is better at trying to save his team mates and himself.
Because of his messed-up childhood, he’s weirdly flippant about being paralyzed with Stun Spore and
treats it like a very common ailment, thinking Jessie is acting like a big baby when she’s sick with it. ^^;;
James does have a few triggers because of his abusive fiancée, one of them is literally the word fiancée (it gives him flashbacks and had him climbing up a tree to get away from some teenager with a crush who kept saying it) and the other is the concept of getting married... he at one point says he’d rather die than get married to Jessie, imagining being bossed around while she calls him darling. He seems to be gamophobic. He can be fine with pretend weddings, and has comfortably dressed as a bride for a disguise once!
James does not handle the sound of a cracking whip very well. Jessie used one while training Meowth once—never actually striking at him with it, just snapping it— and James was visibly stiff, with his back turned, trying to ignore it, but at the last whip crack and command, he shouted “yes!” to it as Meowth did. It was a very unsettling...
James does seem to get annoyed or jealous when Jessie falls for other people (there’s a bit where he breaks the fourth wall to rip Steven Stone out of a wedding fantasy she’s having... ^^;;), but his feelings for her aren’t explicitly romantic in the anime (they do marry at the end of the very loose manga adaptation, though), although there are hints. What is canon is that they’re very much attached and James especially gets absolutely heartbroken if left alone too long (a day is too long for him!)
He does show his maturity in how he handles it when it seems she’ll marry a doctor who was kind to her when she nearly drowned... despite looking obviously, clearly upset, he tells Meowth, if Jessie is pursuing her happiness as a woman, they should cheer her on. It had a very I want my beloved to be happy (even if it’s with someone else) vibe, but again, Jessie would love to settle down and be happy, but James is afraid of marriage entirely, so we’re unlikely to see progress on that front...
History: James was the sole heir to a luxuriously rich, but cold and stuffy family... he enjoyed many pleasures his two orphaned and impoverished team mates never had the chance to, but he was terribly lonely. While Jessie had an abysmally poor but loving mother who unfortunately had to give her up to foster care, James had wealth and no friend on that estate but his loyal dog Pokemon Growlie.
When he was very young, his parents announced his engagement to a girl named Jessiebelle (who looks a lot like Jessie...), at first glance, he fell in love, even writing her a childish love letter he would later hide)... but soon after the party he first met her at, he learns she’s really quite awful!
From hating his beloved Growlie, to frequently paralyzing him with her Gloom (later Vileplume)’s Stun Spore and torturing him with whips, clubs, racks, and a variety of other methods in a sort of dungeon (... with his parents’ full approval, as they see her as turning him into a proper gentleman), needless to say... James had enough and chose to run away.
He left Growlie with his family, even when he reunited with him again as an adult. Which he only did because his parents faked their deaths, so his team mates bossed him into going home to collect his inheritance, but it was only a trick, as James anticipated! Growlie saves him when Jessiebelle paralyzes him again, and defends him. He escapes, but tells Growlie to watch over his parents, showing James still loves them, in his own way, despite how terrible they are to him.
James is also fond of a grandfather (never shown, unless it was actually the elderly servant he calls Pop-pop/Jiiya) who used to make him antidotes for paralysis due to Stun Spore from Salveyo weed...
At one of his family’s many summer homes, there is also an elderly pair of servants James calls Nanny (Baaya) and Pop-pop (Jiiya), who loved James, and let him play and explore his hobbies, like bottlecap collecting and ham radio, while staying there. James loved them so much, that when he saw them again, he spent the whole day trying to keep the fact that he joined Team Rocket secret from them, not wanting to disappoint them... when the truth eventually came out, they were shocked, but were pleased to see he made good friends, even in such a loathsome organization, and that he still had the same kind heart.
He left his ill Chimecho, a Pokemon he wanted to train ever since he saw one in a festival as a small child, in their care, which seems rather fitting.
After running away, canon is a bit inconsistent about what happened... the old history (which may have been retconned out) was that he and Jessie attended the illustrious Pokemon Tech, but flunked out. They also joined a bike gang as teenagers (James was the only member who still needed training wheels ^^;;;;;;;)...
The new history is that they met during their training days in Team Rocket (but their first meeting was very unusually intense, so, they may have recognized each other...?), where Jessie was very cold and distant and had a bad habit of leaving her partners behind, saving only herself. This earned her a bad reputation and the nickname Shinigami Musashi (something like “Soul Reaper Jessie,” but the dub didn’t really translate this part for obvious reasons.) She lost 12 partners before James was assigned to her team, making him her thirteenth partner.
When she tried to coolly inform him how many failed before him, he tells her he isn’t interested in hearing about the failures of those before him (the dub turns this into some awkward exchange where she tells him she won’t carry him and he says no one’s carried him since his mom ^^;;;)... he also reassures her he won’t run away.
His kindness shines through when Meowth gets hungry and thirsty while climbing, even though he already finished his share, so James gives him his bread and water, asking only for a bottlecap for his collection.
(For the record, he still has that bottlecap today.)
But, after some difficult training, where he keeps insisting to Jessie that he won’t run away, they retire for the night, camping out. Jessie finally starts eating her share of bread, but Meowth is hungry again, so she gives him a piece... recalls that James ate nothing, so she gives him a piece too.
James finally starts opening up (but the dub for some reason completely removes all their references to the past, so, again, I’ll go by the original)... he tells her that, in truth, he had spent his entire life running away from different things... he’s always been running away, up until this moment.
She confesses to always being alone, even though she keeps being paired up with different partners.
He tells her they can’t change the past, but they can create a new one tomorrow...
They’re finally closer, but their practice mission goes badly when they have to cross a wooden rope bridge... it snaps, like basically every rope bridge in this series, and James is dangling while Jessie tries to pull him up... and poor Meowth is the rope between them! James can’t stand seeing Meowth in pain, so he lets go, falling into the rapids below.
James is hospitalized after this. He stays like that until the final exam, which Jessie proceeds to, alone and partnerless again... she bitterly asks (in the original) “is this all that there is?”
But James appears and replies with what will be the basis of their motto “If you ask us ‘if this is all there is?’ Our answer will be the universe’s compassion!” (The Japanese motto usually quotes the last line spoken by another character or it’ll just be “if you ask us about ‘this or that’” as default)
He even throws off the bandages dramatically too! He’s well enough to join her, Jessie’s touched ro finally have a partner who won’t run away, and they proceed to their final exam.
They successfully infiltrate a building, reach the top, and have another scare where James is about to sacrifice himself for his team again, but Jessie absolutely refuses, even risking failing a timed exam just to pull him and Meowth up to safety, putting no one in harm’s way.
They succeed in their test and they and their (injured) rivals, Butch and Cassidy, also succeed.
Well, Jessie and Cassidy are rivals, James just likes to antagonize Butch sometimes by calling him the wrong name. Butch and Cassidy also made their own motto parodying Jessie and James’, so, that’s something...
At some point during their training, Jessie and James helped out a junior rookie called Christopher who admired them so much, that when he left Team Rocket and reformed, he opened a line of ramen shops named after them. He might be the anime’s equivalent of Mondo (a minor, rookie Team Rocket member only present in the CD dramas who shows up to save Jessie, James, and Meowth from whatever fixes they’re stuck in after run-ins with Ash... like Cristopher, Mondo has short brown hair and brown eyes, and admires Jessie and James.)
