Giovanni

Giovanni in Pokémon: FireRed and LeafGreen Versions.
Giovanni
Species	Human
Affiliation	Team Rocket
Hair color	Black
Eye color	Black
Base	Viridian City Gym
Relatives	Silver (son)
Voiced by	Ted Lewis (2000)
Debut	Pokémon: Red Version/Pokemon: Green Version

Giovanni was the criminal mastermind who once led Team Rocket, and at the same time was the Gym Leader of the Viridian City gym (but neglected his gym duties while he was running Team Rocket). He was the primary antagonist of the "first generation" games but has gone missing since.

Background

In Pokémon Red, Green, Blue and Yellow, Red first encountered Giovanni in the Celadon City Game corner. Giovanni, like most of Team Rocket, regarded Red as a minor nuisance at first. Red then proceeded to defeat Giovanni at battle. Losing a small bit of dignity and the Silph Scope, Giovanni proceeds to resume negotiations with the president of Silph Co. Giovanni wanted Silph Co.'s new Master Ball, a prototype Poké Ball that would capture a Pokémon without fail. What his intentions were with the ball are not clear, though Red does manage to defeat Giovanni and his cronies again.

Giovanni finally returned to his gym, humiliated, to bide his time until he could rebuild Team Rocket. Populating his gym were extremely tough trainers who mostly specialized in ground type Pokémon, as did Giovanni himself. After being defeated finally, he rewarded Red with the Earthbadge and the Technical Machine 26 (Earthquake). He then disbanded Team Rocket and decided to focus on bettering himself, and being a better Pokémon trainer. He disappeared from his gym and has not been seen since.

However, not all Rockets had given up hope. Smaller more independent branches banded together and three years later, they attempted to contact Giovanni to restore the team in Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal. However it seems that Giovanni is truly gone, as he never answered their calls.

Pokémon Roster

Giovanni specializes in Ground-type Pokémon. In Red, Blue and Green (as well as FireRed and LeafGreen) he uses an Onix, a Rhyhorn and a Kangaskhan in the Game Corner battle. For the Silph Co. battle he again uses Rhyhorn and Kangaskhan along with a Nidorino and Nidoqueen. Finally the Pokémon he uses in the battle at the Viridian Gym are:

• Rhyhorn
• Dugtrio
• Nidoqueen
• Nidoking
• Rhydon

The Yellow version replaces Giovanni's Kangaskhan (in the first two battles) and Rhyhorn (in the last battle) with a Persian to reference Giovanni's pet Persian from the anime series.

Other Appearances

Giovanni was the eighth opponent in the Gym Leader Castle of Pokémon Stadium. In the first round he used Persian, Dugtrio, Nidoqueen, Nidoking, Rhydon and Tauros. In the second round he used Golbat, Raticate, Persian, Moltres, Dodrio and Parasect.

In Pokémon Puzzle League, Giovanni was the tenth enemy and the final boss of Easy Mode. Ash had to battle him for the Earth Badge. Giovanni claimed that he was the legendary Puzzle Master but was later revealed to be bluffing, as Mewtwo emerged as the true Puzzle Master. In this game Giovanni used Persian, Sandslash and Nidoking as his Pokémon.

Other Appearances

• In the Pokémon anime, Giovanni's appearances were few and far between. Unlike in the games, he never directly confronted the main character (in this series, Ash Ketchum). He was mostly seen commanding the bumbling Jessie and James from afar, usually while stroking his pet Persian. He received some more screentime in the Pokémon movie and a television special that acted as a sequel to it, in which Giovanni was trying to hunt down Mewtwo. In later seasons Givanni mostly appears in comical fantasy sequences thought up by Meowth. Unlike in the games, Giovanni has not resigned from Team Rocket and continues to oversee it past the Gold and Silver era.
• Giovanni is the main villain of the live action Pokémon Live! musical, which was based primarily upon the anime. In the musical's storyline he tries to make up for Mewtwo's failure by creating a MechaMew2 that can learn any attack that is used against it. After a tournament, MechaMew2 learns every attack except for several electrical attacks, which prompts Giovanni to send Jessie and James after Ash's Pikachu. They begin to battle, but after MechaMew2 learns the final attacks the real Mewtwo arrives and uses a collection of Ashs's happy memories to attack MechaMew2. Learning the importance of friendship, MechaMew2 then turns on Giovanni and self-destructs, During the curtain call Giovanni is seen with a charred suit, suggesting he survived somehow. This musical also revealed Giovanni having a past relationship with Ash's mother when they were teenagers, supporting speculation that Giovanni is actually Ash's father in the anime canon. He was played by 4Kids voice actor Darry Dunstan in this portrayal.
• Giovanni appears in several arcs of the Pokémon Adventures manga. First he acts as the primary antagonist of the Red/Blue/Green arc, where he controls Team Rocket with Lieutenant Surge, Sabrina, Koga and Blaine under his command. He first meets with Red when he has Red escort him through the Diglett's Cave and is impressed by his battle abilities when he defeats a pair of Magmar that had burned down the Pewter City Museum, but he was disappointed that Red spared them and after he left Giovanni had his Cloyster kill them. He enacts a plan to capture the three legendary birds and uses the power of the eight gym badges to fuse them together, although Red, Blue and Green foil this plan. Red finally faces Giovanni at his gym and defeats him, although he does not receive an epiphany as he did in the games. In the Yellow arc he saves Red from ice and gives him evolutionary stones, then summons his former minions to help in the battle against the Elite Four at Cerise Island due to the challenge they pose to his own ambitions. He successfully defeats Lance but retreats when Lugia is summoned. He is missing for the Gold/Silver/Crystal arc (at which point the Mask of Ice takes over Team Rocket) but returns for the FireRed/LeafGreen arc, where he uses Team Rocket with new lieutenants to capture an escaped Deoxys in the Sevii Islands for use in locating his lost son, which apparently was his underlying motivation all along. He is also shown to be suffering from long-term health conditions at the time. He uses Deoxys to battle Red and Mewtwo while his underlings retrieve his son, although they do not meet until Giovanni had been knocked out after losing the battle. Giovanni risks his life protecting his son, shown to be Silver, from the flames of the crashed airship and although he appears to die Silver gains some affection for his father and has his Pokémon take Giovanni to his Secret Base for recovery. His final fate in this canon remains unknown.

Trivia

• His name is a play on Geo, as in earth, and Giovanni, a common Italian name.
• While he specializes in Ground types, he also uses Normal Types.
• It was often speculated that Red (or Ash in the anime) is Giovanni's illegitimate son, but this is debunked by a scientist in FireRed and LeafGreen who states that it can't be possible since Giovanni's son has red hair. This also foreshadows HeartGold/SoulSilver officially revealing Silver being Giovanni's son (a plot point which had earlier been implemented into the manga).