Iron-Masked Marauder

Iron-Masked Marauder ビシャス Vicious
Vicious
Gender	Male
Hometown	Unknown
Region	Unknown
Relatives	Unknown
Team	Team Rocket
Rank	Elite Officer
First episode	Celebi: Voice of the Forest
English voice actor	Dan Green
Japanese voice actor	Shirō Sano

The Iron-Masked Marauder (Japanese: ビシャス Vicious) is an elite officer of Team Rocket. He is the main villain of Celebi: Voice of the Forest, and was voiced by 佐野史郎 Shirō Sano in Japanese and Dan Green in English.

The Iron-Masked Marauder is possibly one of the only characters in the whole history of Pokémon who appears to be purely evil; he is shown to be heartless, cruel, and above all, egocentric. He values his life above that of others, whether out of cowardice or selfishness.

The Iron-Masked Marauder is ambitious and megalomaniacal — although he makes pretense of capturing Celebi to present it to Giovanni, his true intentions are to use its power to overthrow his boss and rule Team Rocket himself.

History

Not much is known about him except that he has quite a reputation within Team Rocket. Jessie, James, and Meowth all recognize him and immediately start kowtowing shamelessly.

Relationships with other members

Not much is known about The Iron-Masked Marauder's connections in Team Rocket aside from his strong hatred of Giovanni and ambitions to usurp his boss's position.

Although he dislikes his boss, the Iron-Masked Marauder sees other Rockets as helpers to his cause, and is quick to ally with Jessie, James and Meowth for the purpose of helping him carry out his plans and spreading the word about his new found power.

Abilities

Marauder unmasked

The Iron-Masked Marauder holding a Dark Ball

The Iron-Masked Marauder is skilled at hand-to-hand combat, but does not have the best balance. His primary combat relies on Pokémon that are brainwashed by his Dark Balls (it is not known if his Sneasel and Scizor were victim to this, but his Tyranitar was). The origin and technology behind these Dark Balls is unknown; they may not be Rocket technology because Vicious is the only one seen using them. The only quality known about Dark Balls is that they make the target Pokémon extremely loyal to the user, to the point of forgetting itself and attacking without regard to previous friendships and loyalties.

Future

What happened to the Iron-Masked Marauder after Celebi: Voice of the Forest is unknown. He was captured by a collection of Forest Pokémon and berated by Diana's grandmother after losing his iron mask, but nothing more is seen of him afterward.

Pokémon

Escaped

Scizor

Sneasel

Tyranitar

Celebi

Trivia

• According to voice actor Shirō Sano, the Japanese name Vicious comes from Sid Vicious, the bass player of the English punk rock band, Sex Pistols.
• Due to a mistranslation before the movie's release, it was mistakenly thought for a time that he was the future son of Jessie and James.
• In the film novelization, he is simply referred to as "Iron Mask".

This article is part of Project Anime, a Bulbapedia project that covers all aspects of the Pokémon anime.