Reborn As A Pokémon Team Rocket Clerk, I Mocked Route 15 In My Head And GIOVANNI Built My ARCADE!

Summary

Yi is a low-ranking Team Rocket clerk in the Pokémon world. His goal is simple: keep his head down and survive. Unfortunately, he can’t stop mentally improving every bad plan he hears—and Giovanni, Team Rocket’s boss, keeps repeating those thoughts aloud as if they were his own. Yi first blames coincidence, then a mysterious coworker, before accepting the frightening truth: Giovanni can hear him.

Yi’s first unintentional brainstorm replaces a planned Route 15 robbery with an arcade in Celadon City. Giovanni cancels the heist and orders the business built, complete with a baby Dratini as the grand prize and the slogan “The ultimate dream of dragon slayers.” Yi earns a huge bonus for taking meeting minutes, then worries the arcade might fail and send him back to the robbery van.

When a Dratini deal goes wrong, Yi silently thinks up an elaborate rumor-and-ambush scheme. Giovanni lays it out almost word for word. Yi tries to defend himself by thinking only about dinner, but Giovanni eventually asks for ideas about a neighborhood dispute. Yi’s noodles lose out to a clever plan to expose local criminals and buy their territory legally.

From Clerk to Rocket Strategist

Yi’s practical observations keep turning into promotions. He spots holes in Team Rocket’s accounts and rewrites a terrible security plan involving a Snorlax guarding the vault. Giovanni makes him his assistant.

Yi’s advice then reshapes Rocket’s operations. He recommends performance targets for the Johto branch, warns that a smuggling route could anger the Red Gyarados at the Lake of Rage, and suggests breeding Pokémon instead of buying them. Giovanni approves the plans before Yi has even formally written them down.

Not everyone welcomes the rise of the “lucky clerk.” Executive Petrol sabotages Yi’s breeding project by diverting its equipment, but Giovanni catches him lying and demotes him to the mines. Yi feels little satisfaction—only the growing certainty that Giovanni knows every thought he has.

Yi’s mental defenses shift from dinner choices to an endlessly looping Mu Mu Milk jingle, but they work only partly. In one meeting, Giovanni rubs his temple after the jingle gets stuck in his head.

A Baby Eevee and an Unlikely Battle

Giovanni gives Yi an Eevee egg, which hatches into a healthy but intensely timid Pokémon. The two are so alike that Yi jokes, “Two cowards in one room.”

At the training ground, Eevee refuses an obstacle course, so Yi tries it himself: an out-of-shape clerk flapping over knee-high hurdles while combat grunts laugh. But Yi sees potential in Eevee’s fearfulness. Instead of making it trade blows, he builds a hit-and-run style around dodging and striking at exactly the right moment.

Archer, a battle-hardened executive who thinks desk workers are useless, challenges Yi to a “friendly” match. Yi’s one-month-old Eevee faces Archer’s Arbok, using a courage capsule, a teleport scroll, a binding headband, and a dangerously improvised electrotherapy device. The crowd laughs as Eevee runs from attacks—until it teleports behind Arbok, lands a powerful tackle, clings on with the binding headband, and overloads the device with Helping Hand. Both Pokémon faint, but Eevee wins.

Giovanni makes Yi the sole member of a new Strategic Development Department. Yi’s dry verdict on his success is: “Quest complete. Make a powerful enemy. Reward none.”

Yi staffs the department with overlooked specialists: hacker Lin Fang, engineer Wang, and Dr. Ana. Their most unusual project uses hatching conditions to produce shiny Pokémon. Their first success is a gold Magikarp—“absolutely useless and absolutely priceless”—and they set their sights on a shiny Zubat squad.

Yi’s own Eevee evolves under moonlight into an Umbreon, a defensive powerhouse whose strategy is to trap, confuse, poison, recover, and wear opponents down. Yi calls the approach “the audit”:

“It just never stops coming until the other side is out of everything.”

Legends, Schemes, and Escalating Trouble

When Team Magma infiltrates Rocket’s base to steal the breeding research, Yi’s team defeats them without a conventional fight. Magnets, fake alarms, a rewritten map, glue traps, a slowly closing corridor, and sleep pollen turn the base into what Yi calls “Team Rocket’s high-tech theme park. Admission is free. The exit costs extra.” Their leader, Tabitha, eventually gives up intelligence about Team Magma’s search for Groudon.

The League’s Lorelei investigates the arcade, but Rocket quickly disguises it as a family-friendly game hall and presents spotless accounts naming Gym Leader Erika as a major shareholder. Later, Yi turns the League’s attempt to seize Celadon into a public-relations trap. Rocket poses as a partner helping Erika defend the city, forcing Lorelei to confront the Gym Leader in front of the press. Headlines make the League look like the aggressor, and Lorelei’s force withdraws.

Giovanni then sends Yi on increasingly dangerous missions involving the legendary birds. At the Seafoam Islands, Yi’s knowledge of the maze helps the squad reach Articuno. Rather than attack the legendary, he orders everyone to lower their weapons, offer food, and help drive poachers off the island. The rescued Pokémon include several baby Dratini. Even Archer, usually all swagger, walks away to hide his tears and blames it on the wind.

At the abandoned power plant, Rocket’s shiny Crobat slip through a web of live wires and disable it with insulated nets. Zapdos erupts into a devastating fight until Lieutenant Surge arrives, hoping to capture it. Yi lets Surge’s squad wear Zapdos down, then uses a song decoded from the ancient slab to calm the bird. Zapdos gives Rocket a golden, humming device—not a cage, but a token of trust—and protects them from Lorelei as they escape.

Yi’s other memorable “battle” with Lorelei’s unit takes place in a canyon. Rather than attack, he traps them between rockslides and offers a stand-down, winning without firing a shot.

The Moltres mission goes badly. Yi bargains with Blaine, offering to use Zapdos’s power to relieve pressure in the volcano in exchange for access to its depths. After Yi solves an ancient rune puzzle, Moltres gives him a glowing feather—but Blaine steals it, triggering an eruption. Archer holds up falling rock with a battered Golem while Yi finds an escape route, and Giovanni’s submarine rescues them.

Cinnabar Island is destroyed, Blaine is captured, and Yi wakes in a luxurious new residence with Ariana assigned as his personal assistant.

An Ominous Ending

Giovanni asks Yi to interpret the three legendary tokens. When their combined energy threatens to explode, Yi realizes that the ancient slab is a harmonizer and the flute’s notes are a key. Their experiment summons Lugia, which calms the elements and shows Yi a vision of the disaster the three birds could cause if their balance is broken.

Yi’s real thought is to bury the tokens and stop meddling. Giovanni hears him—but interprets the warning as a challenge to unite the powers more perfectly and make the world obey. The video ends with Yi realizing that his boss has heard his most sensible advice and understood exactly the opposite.

Personalities Featured

• Yi (Yeli): A cautious, clever clerk whose involuntary strategic thinking keeps advancing him through Team Rocket.
• Giovanni: The formidable, calculating boss who appears able to hear Yi’s thoughts and turn them into orders.
• Archer: A proud, combat-focused executive who gradually comes to respect Yi’s unconventional methods.
• Mtori: Giovanni’s sharp-eyed secretary, who investigates Yi and is later placed in charge of internal supervision.
• Ariana: A disciplined Rocket executive who becomes Yi’s assistant.
• Petrol: A traditionalist executive who sabotages Yi’s breeding project.
• Lin Fang, Engineer Wang, and Dr. Ana: Yi’s talented, previously overlooked technical team.
• Lorelei: The League investigator and Elite Four member pursuing Team Rocket.
• Erika: Celadon’s Gym Leader, whose alliance with the arcade becomes central to Yi’s political maneuver.
• Blaine: Cinnabar’s scientist-Gym Leader, who betrays the team after helping them reach Moltres.
• Lt. Surge: Vermilion’s Gym Leader, whose reckless attempt to capture Zapdos unexpectedly helps Yi.