Iron-Masked Marauder

Vicious (Japanese: ビシャス Vicious), also known as the Iron-Masked Marauder, is an elite officer of Team Rocket. He is the main villain of Pokémon 4Ever, and was voiced by 佐野史郎 Shirō Sano in Japanese and Dan Green in English.

Vicious is possibly one of the only characters in the whole history of Pokémon who appears to be purely evil, Vicious is known to be heartless, cruel, and above all he is egocentric. He values his life though. At the end of movie when he finds himself overpowered he begs for his life. While this could be a cowardly side, some argue that this just shows him to think of himself before everything else.

Another argument to prove his selfishness is his apparent change of plan halfway through the movie; one would think that he is aiming to capture Celebi to present to Giovanni, as he tells Jessie he needs her to see how powerful he is so she can report to the Boss. However, as he is so egocentric his plan soon changes to overthrowing the Boss and ruling Team Rocket himself.

History

Not much is known about him except he has quite a reputation within Team Rocket. Jessie, James, and Meowth all recognize him and immediately start kowtowing shamelessly. Due to a mistranslation before the movie's release, a small part of the fanon community identifies him as the future son of Jessie and James, who has come back in time, but the movie itself disproves this.

Relationships with other members

Not much seen aside from his hatred of Giovanni. This hatred can either be a personal hatred stemming from problems that might have taken place off-screen or a hatred of having to answer to a higher up. His egocentric power-hungry nature also strengthens this theory. The hatred that he feels towards Giovanni is strong no matter what the reasoning behind it.

Although he dislikes his boss, Vicious, unlike other elite officers such as Domino, Annie and Oakley, sees other Rockets as helpers to his cause, and is quick to ally with Jessie, James and Meowth, giving them a lift on his giant mechanical construct. They help him to capture Celebi by blocking Ash's party in their tracks.

During the course of the movie, he has Dark Celebi construct a mech from forest debris, and Jessie is sucked into it. While having her be present wasn't part of his initial plan, he tells her his plan with the hopes that she will circulate the word about his new powers.

Abilities

Vicious is skilled at hand-to-hand combat, even if he doesn't 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 certainly was). The origin and technology behind these Dark Balls is unknown. Whether they are Rocket technology is also suspect because nobody else seems to use them. The only quality know about this item is that they make the target creature extremely loyal to Vicious, to the point of forgetting itself and attacking without regard to previous friendships and loyalties.

Future

What happened to Vicious after Pokémon 4Ever is unknown. He was captured by a collection of Forest Pokémon and berated by Diana's grandmother after losing his iron mask, but that was the last we saw of him.

Some fans believe that Jessie and James reported him to Giovanni due to the fact that he revealed his plans to overthrow the Team Rocket boss to Jessie. If this is true, then it could be assumed Giovanni would either punish him or expel him from Team Rocket. Because of Vicious' extremely strong system of combat, however, it would be unlikely that Giovanni would want to lose him. Other fans believe that Vicious was captured and put into prison, or that he left Team Rocket and was never seen or heard from again.

Pokémon

Scizor

Sneasel

Tyranitar

Temporary

Celebi

Trivia

• According to voice actor Shirō Sano, Vicious is named after Sid Vicious, the bass player of the English punk rock band Sex Pistols.
• Vicious's method of brainwashing Pokémon with Dark Balls may have been an inspiration for Cipher's Shadow Pokémon.

Template:Vicious's Pokémon