User blog:AustinDR/PE Removal: Iron-Masked Marauder

Who is he?
The Iron-Masked Marauder is the main antagonist of the fourth Pokémon anime Pokémon 4Ever. In the film, he was an elite officer from Team Rocket whose main goal was to overthrow his boss Giovanni and take over the world. To this end, he was trying to acquire the Legendary Pokémon Celebi. He is also known for creating the Dark Balls - Poke balls which cause the Pokémon it captures to become more vicious and evil.

He also does a few more misdeeds such as attempted murder; or crushing Ash's hand until he fainted from the pain. But as always, he gets defeated and imprisoned.

Why He Doesn't Qualify?
Goes without saying that just because a villain lacks redeeming traits or felt no remorse for their actions doesn't guarantee that they are PE. With the Iron-Masked Marauder, yes, creating Dark Balls to brainwash Pokémon is bad...but as far as the anime goes, it's nothing unique to the show. In the anime, he obviously doesn't have to compete with higher ranking villains like Cyrus, Lysandre (extending towards Anime!Xerosic as well), among others. But where the Iron-Masked Marauder to me fails at standing out is that, like I said, the creation of the Dark Balls are no longer unique. In Pokémon: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel, Cabinet Minister Alva (or Jarvis) was responsible for the Mega Wave, which could trap Pokémon painfully in their Mega Forms. That's not even getting into the end where instead of taking his defeat gracefully, he instead tried to drop his fortress onto the plateau to kill everyone on it.

Even if you argue that you shouldn't take the games into account (since they both have distinct heinous standards), the idea of corrupting Pokémon making them incapable of being purified is delved upon. That was literally the goal of the Cipher organization. Going back with his other actions in 4Ever such as crushing Ash's fingers, I wouldn't chalk that up to be anywhere as bad as to what Kodai pulled off in Zoroark: Master of Illusions. Aside from the personal cruelty, what Kodai does is electrocute a baby Pokémon in front of its adoptive mother, says that he got a thrill from it, and the baby Pokémon even says in the English dub that it felt that it wouldn't last long. That level of depravity had not been seen in the anime thus far.

Ultimately, I feel that the Iron-Masked Marauder fails at PE because his one call to infamy -- the creation of the Dark Balls -- no longer stands out as horrific when later villains in the show take that concept to more excruciating levels.