I’ve been watching the Pokémon anime on and off since 1999, when I was but a wee ten-year-old boy. Pokémon was an instant hit at my house, with my siblings and I immediately entranced. It was the first time I had ever seen an anime, and little did I know where that anime path would one day lead. There’s one particular episode that tends to stick in my mind, however, for a few reasons, and it’s probably not one you’d expect.

We watched Pokémon every day after school, and recorded a fair number of episodes on VHS to watch when there was nothing else on. One of the episodes that happened to end up on VHS tape was the episode known as “Holy Matrimony!”, which focuses on James of Team Rocket as his past and family are revealed for the first time.

It was just one of many episodes on tape, but we ended up watching that particular tape quite frequently, partly because it was the same tape that contained the epic “Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon,” where Ash’s Charizard evolves. I can’t remember my first time watching it at this point, but the more we watched it, the more confused I became.

Team Rocket Taught Me How to Sympathize With the Villains

James’ Plight Tugged at the Heartstrings

In the episode, Team Rocket finds a missing poster with a picture of a young boy who looks a lot like James on it. It’s revealed that James ran away from home at a very young age, desperate to avoid an arranged marriage to a sadistic woman who looks a lot like Jessie. James had to say goodbye to his beloved pet Growlithe, Growlie, and set out on his own, eventually ending up in Team Rocket. Of course, along with the poster, Jesse and Meowth discover that James’ family is very wealthy, and try to force him into going home to secure his cut of the inheritance.

Naturally, James manages to avoid the arranged marriage and ends up rejoining Team Rocket, but not without another tearful goodbye to Growlie. It was this moment that got me every time: why was it so sad to see mean old James say goodbye to his dog Pokémon? Jessie and James were the bad guys, so why was I feeling so sympathetic to him? Maybe it was more that I was feeling sympathetic towards this loyal Growlie, but that didn’t quite explain it.

What I couldn’t put together as a kid was that this was reminding me of my own dog, Rosie, who we only had for a brief time before she had to be rehomed. Saying goodbye to that dog was one of the most difficult things in my little life at that point. I remember crying loudly and openly in the yard as Rosie’s new owners came to pick her up. But the circumstances meant there was nothing that could be done about it, and that was the last I saw of her. I hope she had a good life with her new family.

Because I’d had my own experience saying goodbye to a loyal dog, I was actually able to relate to James on a personal level, something that had never really happened with a villain character before. It was a confusing feeling, to feel bad for James when most weeks we were laughing at his failure. While I didn’t fully understand it at the time, that was definitely a turning point in how I looked at Team Rocket as characters, something only furthered when Meowth got his own tragic past in “Go West, Young Meowth.”

The Best Villains are Still Relatable People

Even Villains Have Humanity

Being able to relate to the villains was a little scary at first: what if it meant I was a villain too? Ultimately, though, that ability to relate to characters beyond just the viewpoint hero was more of a gift. Nowadays, I love the idea of the tragically flawed villain, someone who might’ve been a hero if not for this one particular problem that drove them down the wrong path. It’s certainly informed my taste in anime, with villains like Lust and Scar from the original 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist anime standing out as early examples.

Overall, the Pokémon anime did a very good job at keeping Jessie and James as relatable villains throughout the years, every so often exploring their past and how they came to be who they are. In a lot of ways, they’re much more interesting characters than Ash, due in large part to having different life experiences that Ash can’t really compare to. While there are times in the anime where Jessie and James feel more like a leftover from some bygone era, other series make use of them and their dreams, turning them into almost pseudo-protagonists.

As it turned out, though, James did get to see Growlie one more time, in an episode of Diamond and Pearl where he stumbled across a vacation house belonging to his family in the Sinnoh region. Growlie helped him to retrieve a long-buried treasure chest while avoiding being captured by his family. Over 500 episodes take place in between, so it’s quite a long time later, but I couldn’t help but smile when I saw it for the first time. Growlie may not get to stay with James, but he’ll always be James’ little puppy dog.

That’s how what most would consider a rather unremarkable episode of Pokémon became one of my personal favorites, and how it taught me that villainous characters can be sympathetic, too. It doesn’t necessarily undo their villainy, but it humanizes them, making them feel more like people and less like two-dimensional characters. This Pokémon episode would go on to shape my taste in later anime as well, and might even explain why I love My Hero Academia so much, as it really emphasizes the humanity of its villains without forgiving their villainy.